Florida Gov. DeSantis speaks to Hannity on Hurricane Idalia's response efforts

Now while Joe's at the beach under his little umbrella, that chair by the way, he has a hard time moving it. Probably somebody should help him. Well, Florida Governor DeSantis, he's been hard at work. That's what leaders do in times of crisis. They show up, they get to work, natural disasters, don't take a break during your holiday weekend. And today on Twitter, the first lady of Florida, Casey DeSantis, she posted this picture on Twitter. It's a fallen 100 year old oak tree at the governor's mansion where the first lady of Florida and her children were at the time. Luckily, thank God, nobody was injured from this fallen tree. But the death toll in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, sadly, it's expected to rise. I hope it doesn't. Our prayers are with everyone in the Southeast tonight. All right, joining us now with the very latest from his home state, actually the free state of Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis. Wow, 100 year old oak tree. I'm sure a little scary for you and your family, Governor. But the devastation that I saw this morning on TV, what's your assessment at this hour? Well, Sean, we were ready for this. So we had a search and rescue team staged National Guard. We had 5,500 National Guard. We had 1.2 million gallons of gasoline in the event of fuel shortages. We had over 30,000 linemen to restore power. And so as soon as the storm passed, our first responders were on the scene checking on people. The good news is, is that we have not seen the type of loss of life like we did at Hurricane Ian in the coastal areas. They did experience significant storm surge. Most of the people did evacuate. And so we're cautiously optimistic that we're going to end up OK on that. And the storm hit landfall probably about 8 AM this morning. We've since restored 370,000 power to customers. And there's about 175,000 outstanding. So all those linemen have been working to get people back connected. We know that there's going to be a lot of things we need to do. But we want to get everybody back on their feet as quickly as possible. My understanding is that the storm surge was great, but it receded quicker than most people were predicting. True? Yeah, look. I think that, I mean, this was a category 4 storm all the way up until maybe about 15 miles on the coast. And then it went to a high cat 3. So it did drive up a lot of storm surge in some of the areas. Some of it over 7, 8 feet. I think maybe even 10 feet. But I think that people protected themselves. When Hurricane Ian hit, you remember that down in southwest Florida. And I know you know that area well. You know, there were frantic calls to 911 because the water was rising in people's homes so quickly. We did not see those types of phone calls like we did in Hurricane Ian. And so I think it's a combination of the surge was a little bit more manageable. And I think it was a combination of people did heed the evacuation warnings. They got off the barrier islands. And they got to places that were on higher ground and not susceptible to the surge. I mean, go back to last year's hurricane and Fort Myers and Sanibel. I mean, it was utter devastation. You just never know with these hurricanes. However, I mean, being prepared, having everybody in place, getting electrical power up, especially tomorrow. I understand it's supposed to be extremely hot in Florida tomorrow. That means older people especially, they're going to need their air conditioners working. It looks like you're on track to get everybody up and running as soon as possible. Yeah, we've got a lot of linemen that are there to help with the, and a lot of this part of Florida that's without power, a lot of these are like rural cooperatives, other types of municipal electrical. So they may not have as much resources as some of the private companies like a Florida Power and Light. So we have all these extra linemen that are there to offer the assistance. And we want to get that done as quickly as possible. There are going to be some areas because there's massive amounts of debris with all the forests and everything like that. Some of the power lines got chopped up pretty good. So some of it's going to take a little bit more time than others will. But the bottom line is we have an overwhelming number of personnel that are on the ground working to restore everybody across the board. Let me ask you about a problem that has emerged. There was an article in the paper today about it in the New York Post. And there have been other articles I've read about this. Based on the number of hurricanes and the amount of damage, homeowners insurance, especially in coastal areas, have gone up anywhere from 25%, 30% or even higher. And it is, especially in this recession, this Biden economy, it is forcing people to self-insure because the premiums are up so significantly. Is there anything that maybe on the state level you can do, the federal government needs to do to deal with the rising costs, the dramatically higher costs for insuring your home? We've done a number of reforms in the last year, Sean, including My Safe Florida Home Program. People can get grants to fortify their homes and make improvements, and then they get lower rates. We also did huge reforms in the structure of our market earlier this year. What that has led to is we now have four new companies that are actually entering into Florida's property insurance market, which was not happening for so many years. And we've got a fifth company on deck. I mean, as you know, you need to have consumers, need to have choices. That's how you keep premium increases in check. So we've got four in the hopper, one on the way, and I think you may, when this hurricane season's over, have more companies that are gonna be willing to get in the market. But we've had a lot of issues with inflation generally, as you know, and then particularly having Hurricane Ian, which is one of the most costly storms in the history of the United States. All right, Governor, our prayers are with the people of my future state, and I mean it, Florida. Our prayers are with everybody tonight, and we will be following closely. Thank you for being with us. Hey, Sean Hannity here. Hey, click here to subscribe to Fox News' YouTube page and catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis. You will not get it anywhere else.