GREENSBORO, N.C. — Help is on the way for folks living in Florida who are experiencing the affects of Hurricane Ian.
Samaritan's Purse and Duke Energy are sending crews to Florida to help with relief efforts. Bruce Poss with Samaritan's Purse says they've been keeping a close eye on the storm to prepare to send volunteers.
"So we've been watching it with everybody else the storm approaching over the last week or so and so we are deploying disaster relief units to the hardest hit areas," Poss said.
Samaritan's Purse has helped out in several disasters relief efforts. Just this week they sent teams to Puerto Rico to help in the aftermath of Fiona. Others are already headed to Florida and more will leave in the next few hours.
"What we will be doing is assessing and partnering with local churches in the area to do tarping, to cut down trees and certainly to mark out houses that have been flooded," Poss said.
Randy Wheeless with Duke Energy says linemen for the Mid-West are already on the scene in Florida. He says crews from the Carolinas will stay put to see how the storm affects us here.
"Right now we're keeping track of the storm and what kind of outages we're looking at. We're also just making sure we're up to speed on materials, transformers, wires. The things that we need to go out in the field and restore power," Wheeless said.
Wheeless says crews have been taking precautions like trimming trees and wants the public to take some their own precautions too.
"So it's just a matter of going through your home and saying if I have an outage am I semi prepared, and if high winds come through are there things in the yard or elsewhere that will be blowing away and I don't want that to happen," Wheeless said.
Samaritan's Purse volunteers leave Thursday morning. Duke Energy officials say if the Carolinas aren't hit too hard they may send more linemen to Florida.