By JIM TURNER
News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE – Recovery from Hurricane Debby will continue for weeks, but some people in the rural Big Bend were quickly back on their feet after going through a second lethal landfall in less than a year.

Linda Wicker, owner of Roy’s Restaurant along the Steinhatchee River, said she was “blessed” she was able to reopen days after the Category 1 Debby, a rainmaker that didn’t cause anywhere near as much damage as Hurricane Idalia last year.
“As things turned out, we are so thankful that there’s no damage,” said Wicker, whose restaurant was closed for four months following the Category 3 Idalia.
Global reinsurance broker Gallagher Re described Debby as a “very manageable event” for the insurance industry.
Still, Debby knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of utility customers across the state – as of midday Friday, electricity had been restored to all but about 1,000 utility customers – and caused flooding in northern and central parts of the state.
And Debby could be a preview of more to come as the Atlantic hurricane season moves closer to its mid-September peak.
Experts at Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science on Tuesday reduced from 25 to 23 the number of named storms they expect during the season. The department, however, did not change its prediction of the season producing 12 hurricanes, with six reaching Category 3 or higher status to qualify as major storms.
“Sea surface temperatures averaged across the hurricane main development region of the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean remain near record warm levels,” the department said in an online post.
Debby, the fourth named storm of the season, made landfall about 7 a.m. Monday near Steinhatchee in Taylor County before crossing parts of North Florida and into Georgia as a tropical storm.

THE DOZIER
DEFENSE

Attorneys for Death Row inmate Loran Cole are trying to block his scheduled Aug. 29 execution, in part by saying the state had a hand in his life choices through abuse he suffered while at the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.
Cole, 57, was convicted in the 1994 murder of a Florida State University student who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister.
A decade earlier, when he was 17, Cole was sent to Dozier, and his time at the now-shuttered Marianna facility is one of the key arguments his lawyers are making to try to prevent the execution.
Cole’s lawyers argued jurors who recommended a death sentence in 1995 never learned of the “torturous treatment” he suffered while confined at Dozier.
“Considering how Florida has admitted to oppressing vulnerable youth at Dozier, the fact that Cole was a student there, let alone suffered horrific abuse while confined, changes the perception and impact of the mitigation his jury was presented,” Cole’s lawyers, Ali Shakoor and Adrienne Joy Shepherd, wrote.
But lawyers in Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office and State Attorney William Gladson, whose office prosecuted Cole, said the condemned inmate’s experiences at Dozier don’t warrant special attention because the issue already has been considered as part of his lengthy death-sentence appeals.
They added that Cole’s attorneys raised the issue more than a dozen years ago, and the jury considered abuse Cole suffered as a child as a mitigating factor before recommending the death penalty.

“There is no reason to believe that this evidence of his treatment at Dozier would likely lead to a different result in Cole’s sentence,” the state’s attorneys argued.
A Marion County circuit judge Friday rejected Cole’s arguments, likely setting the stage for appeals.
The reform school was closed in 2011 after 111 years of operation. Cole is one of at least four former Dozier students on Death Row.

PORT PUT ON
NOTICE

Department of Commerce Secretary J. Alex Kelly and Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue warned Port Canaveral leaders that current and future infrastructure money is at risk if they don’t reverse dock plans that appear to favor cruise ships over the space industry.
“Florida’s cruise tourism and commercial space launch sectors are both vitally important,” Kelly and Perdue wrote in a letter to port officials. “Port Canaveral bears the responsibility of housing and supporting both. We will help you do both. But in this case, the port has announced its intention to support one sector to the direct detriment of the other. That decision must, therefore, be reversed.”
Kelly and Perdue warned Florida would take actions such as the Department of Transportation shifting planned investments to other seaports and spaceports and the Department of Commerce halting funding for Port Canaveral projects. Their agencies would also “stringently” review whether the port complied with terms of an $8.245 million grant in 2018 intended to support the aerospace industry.
Port spokesman Steven Linden said in a statement that the port’s board understands the concerns and will work with the state on resolving the issues.
“The port has been an integral part of the commercial space industry’s growth and operations in our state, and our commitment to the enterprise remains strong,” Linden said in the statement.

PRIMARY VOTING UNDERWAY

As the week came to a close, about 900,000 Florida voters had cast ballots in the Aug. 20 primary elections, most by mail.
Early voting sites opened Monday in some counties and were available in 29 counties by Friday. Counties are required to offer early voting from Saturday through Aug. 17.
“We will probably have roughly two-thirds of our voters that are going to show up and vote will have already cast their ballots before Election Day, which is a great help to get the turnout done without lines,” Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley said.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Florida faced its first hurricane of the 2024 season.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Florida does have a vote coming up on that, and I think probably the vote will go in a little more liberal way than people thought,” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Thursday on a November ballot proposal that would put abortion rights in the state Constitution.