Melbourne families unable to return to their homes

Fox 35 anchor Amy Caulfield is in our newsroom to bring us the top stories of the day. Amy, happy Friday. It's so good to have you on here with us. Great to see you, Hayden. Friday the 13th. Let's just hope it stays happy today. It started off with that crazy Microsoft outage. We're going to talk about that in a minute, but I want to get to what's going on over in Melbourne. We've really been focusing in on sort of disaster relief that is happening in both Melbourne and Palm Bay over over this last week since those floods took over so many homes, thousands of homes, not this past Monday, but the Monday before. So we're now into week two of watching what these families are going through. And there's a new layer, sadly, of the, you know, sort of the wreckage left behind by those floodwaters. We're talking specifically about the Wendover Palms apartments. These folks have been told that they have to be out by today. And they're talking about perhaps six months of cleanup that has to be done. So our own Esther Bowers is joining us right now. She has been talking to some of these people out there. And Esther, it's just heartbreaking to hear their stories and to know that some of them don't know what they're going to do or where they're going to go. Amy, people have absolutely no idea where they're going to sleep come Friday night and the devastation here. It's just hard to see. I'll flip my camera so you guys can get a better look at what these people are dealing with. Just the reality. We have dumpsters everywhere. They're filled to the brim with people's stuff. U-Haul trucks. Just out on the front of people's sidewalks, their entire lives, trash bags, everything that people, number one, already lost when these floodwaters moved in. Now they're given 48 hours to take whatever they have left, get it off property and get out of this apartment complex as fast as possible. And every single person that we've been speaking with. They just paid rent. Some just moved in, so they just paid security deposits. They truly have no idea where they are going to sleep come Friday night. I'm also being told that... The locks on these units will now start to be changed as this day goes on. So people that I've met are just racing to salvage whatever they can to try to get out of this complex. Some people saying they would have appreciated having the choice to stay here because at least it was a roof over their head than being told you have two days and we are terminating your lease. This is disabled people. This is seniors. This is young families We just spoke with a mother that has a one-year-old baby, and the devastation, the stress in this community is at a level that I have not seen. They are hoping the city of Melbourne or the Red Cross can get some kind of emergency shelter put up. The Red Cross did tell us earlier today they are monitoring the situation. But at this point, still nothing confirmed on if we'll have an emergency shelter put up. And it was really hard for me. I met a gentleman yesterday, Mr. Mark, who was just sitting on his front porch saying, I'm just going to sit here until someone can come tell me where to go, what to do. He's 70 years old. He can barely walk. He really cannot work his phone system. No access to any kind of technology. I go to talk with him today and there's a woman in And I said, hey, do you know where Mr. Mark is? She came to this complex. She doesn't live here. She saw him on our news and broke down. When she got here, his heart was giving out. So she called 911. Mark's now in the hospital. So this is a gentleman that I had just met that had no idea where he was going to go. The stress got to him. And this good Samaritan, who, again, does not live here, she saw him on the news and said, what can I do to help him? When she got here, things had gotten to be too much, so it is just heartbreaking We are trying to get more information from this apartment complex on any possible resources and folks also telling us they likely won't get any funds back for at least 20 days. And they really have no funds now to figure out where they're going to go come Friday night. So ladies, heartbreaking. And we are continuing to stay out here to see, you know, what additional resources can be brought in to try and help dozens and dozens of these people. Oh, Esther, that's just awful. Do me a favor and check on a couple things. I was just reading an updated story that says the city of Melbourne is working to try to set up a shelter for them and also that the property owner says they will refund their November rent and their security deposits. So if you're able to hopefully get somebody to confirm those two things, at least it would be a little bit of a shred of hope. But yeah, there's got to be some way the city of Melbourne can help them out. So fingers crossed. And Esther, if you're able to learn any new information, of course, let us know Absolutely. We do know that the mayor is working on stuff I spoke with him earlier today. He was at City Hall He is trying his best to get, if that's a church, a city shelter, something put up. Red Cross is trying to help. So plans are in place. The question would just be if it happens fast enough before we have cold weather move in and these people might not have a roof Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Esther Bauer reporting live again from the Wendover Apartments there where more than 100 people have been told they have to be out by today Esther, thank you so much. We so appreciate you. And, of course, prayers for Mr. Mark as he you know, is now in the hospital and hopefully he's going to be okay. So thinking about him as well. Thank you, Esther Thank you, Bo. All right. Gosh, Hayden, it's so hard to hear that And especially because Mr. Mark we've been running that sound from him all morning talking about, you know, just how devastated he was and really not knowing where to go and what to do. But I am reading that they are working on trying to get that shelter. And it sounds like Esther said that there is sort of a pseudo plan in place. But right, if this plan is not in place in the next couple of hours, I think a lot of these people are going to just be wondering what to do next. So hopefully that gets worked out. I also want to let you know that I did go onto the City of Melbourne website and they They are offering cleanup kits for people who have been flooded. So you can go to get these cleanup kits at the Melbourne Public Library, Palm Bay Library, South Mainland Library, that's in Micco, and also the West Melbourne Public Library. So they are trying to offer up some things that will hopefully help the residents. They're also going to be sending out folks to do business damage assessments because a lot of businesses have also been damaged with these floodwaters. We're not going to forget about these people. And we will continue to be checking on our residents in South Brevard County just to make sure that they're OK and they're hopefully getting the help that they need. But certainly a tragic situation. And you certainly see the fallout. Here we are almost two weeks later, Hayden, and we're still seeing the fallout of just how bad those floodwaters were, up to two feet in some places, which is hard to imagine. It is very hard to imagine. Of course, like you said, our thoughts are always with these families. And hopefully that road to recovery is a pretty quick one so they can get back on their feet. Yes, absolutely. All right, so let's talk about now. recovery of Microsoft. It sounds like they are finally getting their footing after nearly a 20 hour outage. It's hard to imagine. I don't think anybody thought it was going to last this long, maybe not even the folks at Microsoft. This is a massive global outage that's really struck the core of most workplaces. It's hard to imagine that, you know, most of the workplaces around the world are using this technology for their email, for their Microsoft Teams, for many other other aspects of workplace and so we're talking about an Impact of 70 countries. And this is something that went down just about 1 o'clock yesterday afternoon. It did not start coming back until this morning. So this was an internal issue caused, we're told, by a cluster of back-end servers in North America that failed to automate. And so this became sort of a domino effect that then impacted Microsoft servers around the world. So they had to then reroute the traffic to healthy servers. to try to get everything back online. But then the problem became that so many were offline. Trying to bring them back all at once could send the servers down again. And so they had to do it very slowly, kind of piecemeal, bringing things back to life again. So that's why as people were trying to refresh their emails, they were seeing that message saying that it was updating or that it was trying to load. Microsoft also saying that there could be some intermittent issues today. So that if you're still having issues, that might be the reason. But again, what a massive impact. And this also goes to show what happens when you have one company that controls such a large aspect of what we do every day, right? But I have to say, Hayden, it was pretty funny on social media, and I'm sure you saw a lot of the funny comments, too. Some people were like, you know what? Turns out we can live without our email. And oh, darn, I don't have to work today because my email's not working. So a lot of people weren't so upset about this. No, they were not. I know me personally, I was going through some Instagram stories and saw some Friends saying, well, it doesn't have to come back up so that I can go home early. So I know some weren't too upset. Right, absolutely. And so we're still not 100% sure on all the reasonings behind this, and hopefully Microsoft is able to work it out. But Microsoft was saying that this was not a hack. There was no sort of nefarious outside influence or outside infraction into the system, as far as we know. And so anyway, but what a mess. Microsoft out for nearly 20 hours impacting people around the world. And it again just shows how interconnected we all are. Yeah, we were talking with Matt Rose, the CEO of TechRage IT, about that just a couple of minutes ago, about how all of these companies and businesses relying on one singular platform, when that platform goes out, it's not good for anybody. So maybe this means we need to diversify. Who knows? That's right. Absolutely. Or have some kind of backup system, right? And then in our case, and a lot of companies use this system called Slack. And so we were able to communicate with Slack. And that's also a system that many people use around the world. But if you don't have a backup system, now what, right? Now we're back to pen and paper, which maybe that's not so bad. Maybe not. Maybe not so bad at all. Okay, so something fun for students at UCF today, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is going to be there speaking to students. This is happening at 3 o'clock. If you want to watch it, this is going to be streaming on YouTube, so people will also be able to check out his visit to UCF today. He's going to go over and talk to the kids about a number of things, including human spaceflight. He's going to talk about leadership, entrepreneurship, the future workforce, and also, you guys, this is pretty impressive. But an estimated 29% of the employees at NASA's Kennedy Space Center are actually UCF alumni. So UCF once was known as the space school. This was the school, you know, where that you would go to this school and it was like a direct beeline right over to to working at NASA. And so it certainly still has that reputation, although UCF is much more diversified than it was in its humble beginnings. But that was the initial purpose of the school. All right. So I did a little fact digging about Jared Isaacman. First of all, this guy is brilliant, Hayden. But I found some interesting things about him. Did you know he dropped out of high school? No. He actually dropped out when he was 16 years old. He said that it wasn't interesting to him. So yeah, at 16, he dropped out, and then he ended up going back to school. He got his GED, and he graduated from Embry-Riddle in 2011, which of course, Embry-Riddle is a great school, right in Daytona Beach, that it actually turns out a lot of astronauts and flight personnel and meteorologists of the like. So dropping out of high school, earned his GED, went back Embry-Riddle graduated from there in 2011. But listen to how brilliant this guy is. So he founded the payment processing company that became Shift for payments out of his parents' New Jersey basement in 1999. And this company now processes payments for a massive portion of both U.S. hotels and restaurants. So that is actually what turned him into a multimillionaire. So he developed this company as a teenager. He's also an accomplished pilot. He has over eight what he does and ofentimes you'll see him getting in the planes and flying back and for job. And so Jared Isaacman of course now the administrator of NASA going over to talk to the students at UCF today. Should be a huge, a lot of fun, I would think, for the students to hear from him in person and to hear about his leadership qualities and skills. But I do feel like, Hayden, we hear this a lot about people who are entrepreneurs or go out and really make a difference in the world of tech. A lot of times they go to school and they're bored and they drop out and they end up doing something else. And it's just always fascinating to me that some of the most brilliant minds in the world either fail at school or they're just almost too smart for school. Like it just doesn't hold their interest. Yeah. I mean, it does make sense. Like if you have that level of IQ and like the basic schooling probably just doesn't match up for you. And it makes sense that they might get bored, but how crazy is that? You don't finish school the proper way or the way that most people do. And you go on to do all of these great, amazing things. So I'm sure it'll be great for the students at UCF to hear from him, get inspired by his leadership. But And also, just in what exactly they're doing with space exploration right now is so exciting. I'm sure it's going to be a great speech. It sure will. I'm sure it will, too. And again, it's streaming today from 3 to 4. You can find it on YouTube. He's going to be at the Fairwinds Alumni Center, so it should be a lot of fun. There's a moderator for it, too, a U.S. Space Force major. Haida Star Eagle is going to be moderating this. And so, you know, kind of doing a Q&A. And I'm sure the kids will hopefully be able to ask some questions as well, but it should be a lot of fun. I'm sure it will be. And I actually am interested. I'm interested in listening into this myself. Now, do I want to be an astronaut? No. But do I find space very interesting, Amy? Absolutely. Me too. I could spend days at Kennedy Space Center, the visitor's complex. It really is an incredible place. So if you've not been to anybody watching right now, it is certainly worth your time. And certainly if you can get over there during a launch. By the way, I should mention that the ULA launch today, the one that was supposed to send up those 40 Starlink satellites, or sorry, Amazon satellites, not Starlink, but Starlink has been scrubbed, they had some fueling issues, so they're going to try again tomorrow afternoon right about 1230. Well, we will be live tomorrow afternoon, I will at least at that time, so if that happens don't worry if you're watching at home and want to see that, we will be taking it for you live tomorrow at that time. Amy, thanks so much for joining us for the newsroom for our top stories, it's always such a pleasure. Great to see you, honey. I'll be watching you tomorrow too. Oh, please do.