TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The capital city of Florida is bracing for the biggest storm it has ever seen.

If the trajectory of Helene holds, striking Tallahassee as a major hurricane, the city would see “unprecedented damage like nothing we have ever experienced before as a community,” Mayor John Dailey said Wednesday.

With landfall anticipated Thursday night, the outlook was so concerning that Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state would deploy a small team of state emergency officials to a neighboring county in case the state’s emergency operations center fails.

“This building has never really been tested in terms of how it would handle a major hurricane,” DeSantis said about the 1990s brick building in the southeast part of the city.

Helene entered the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 1 hurricane Wednesday morning, forecasted to make landfall Thursday night as a powerful Category 4 storm, packing winds of up to 130 miles per hour. The storm’s maximum sustained winds will slow as it moves inland, but it could still pack hurricane-force winds at 75 mph by the time it’s over Tallahassee — with gusts up to 120 mph.

The city, known for its lush canopy of live oaks draped with Spanish moss, is particularly vulnerable to high winds. Last year’s Hurricane Idalia, the governor noted, toppled a 100-year-old oak tree on the governor’s mansion lawn. In May, twin tornadoes hit the city and destroyed major chunks of the area’s canopy and buildings in the city’s arts district near the downtown area.

Tallahassee is home to the state capitol building, the governor’s mansion, the Florida Supreme Court, state agencies that keep Florida’s $116.5 billion government functioning and many other government functions. Florida State University and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, commonly known as Florida A&M, are also located in the city.

DeSantis told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that he will be riding out the storm in the state’s emergency operations center, located in the southeast part of the city. His wife and three children will stay at the governor’s mansion near the downtown area, where the state capitol building is located. The mansion was built in 1956, but DeSantis said he thinks it will be safe.

“I will say this about Tallahassee: Some of these old buildings are really good buildings,” the governor said. “I mean, they were built well.”

The last time Tallahassee was hit by a major hurricane was in 2016, when Hurricane Hermine made landfall just south of the city. The Category 1 storm, with sustained winds of 80-miles per hour, left about 100,000 people without power, 90% of the city’s traffic signals inoperable and hundreds of trees toppled.

Helene has the potential to be more devastating than Hurricane Hermine, which the Tallahassee Democrat has described as the storm that “changed everything for Tallahassee.” Since Hermine, Leon County has been brushed by a few other storms, including close calls from Hurricane Michael in 2018, Tropical Storm Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Idalia in 2016. Only 2022’s Nicole directly crossed the county — as a tropical storm.

DeSantis said he worried about the city’s canopy being a vulnerability.

“The difference that I see in the Tallahassee region versus other parts of the state that have been hit is, just, there’s just a lot more debris that’s likely to be flying around, because we’ve got a lot of trees,” DeSantis said.

But DeSantis says he does not expect the storm’s anticipated path through Tallahassee to impact the state’s response in its aftermath.

The governor said the state’s emergency operations center is built to withstand winds of about 128 mph. The brick building, nestled in a business park in southeast Tallahassee, has long been where state and federal officials coordinate during major storms.

DeSantis said the center’s walls were built in 1996 to sustain a Category 5 storm, but apparently the state didn’t have enough money to ensure the roof was that strong, he said.

So, “out of an abundance of caution, our Florida division of emergency management is sending a team of 21 to Escambia County” until the storm passes, he said.

In Tallahassee, the mayor said the city will first direct recovery efforts to the most critical facilities, such as hospitals and that mutual-aid crews are on their way to the city to help in the storm’s aftermath. He added that residents should prepare to lose power.

“Recovery will be a marathon, it will not be a sprint,” Dailey said. “Restoration, recovery and rebuilding will take time given the catastrophic damage we could possibly experience in our community.”

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