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After three days on the ground in Central Florida, Governor Charlie Crist is back in the state Capitol tonight, but his mind is still on the tornados that claimed 20 lives. As Mike Vasilinda reports, the governor plans to be back in the area later this week.

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The governor arrived back in Tallahassee at mid afternoon Sunday and went straight to the emergency operations center where he was briefed on the latest news. The first thing he heard from emergency manager Craig Fugate was that the wind from the three tornados that touched down far exceeded current building codes. “And these would be tornadoes that have wind speeds greater than a category five hurricane.”“So 165?” asked Crist.

The next stop was the fishbowl at the EOC itself, where as several hundred people have been working around the clock since Friday. Crist made a point to personally thank as many as possible. Fugate introduced the Governor to the people leading the recovery.
“She’s gonna lead our recovery efforts. She’s getting all our teams together. She’s gonna match up to our federal partners down there.”

“Great.”

“And then Marsha’s gonna go down and she’s gonna move down there for the next couple months, whatever it takes to do this.”

Acknowledging many are tired, the governor implored them not to slack off. “This is not about getting some piece of paper across your desk in a timely fashion. This is about getting aid and support to somebody down there who is counting on us.” Crist told the crowd.

Afterwards he told reporters he had never seen such damage and such cooperation. “With the FEMA Director coming down and approving, Rick, you know, the federal funding through the president yesterday within record time… uh, the local officials… they’re the real heroes.”

The governor cancelled a trip to the Superbowl and will instead watch at least part of the game with firefighters in Tallahassee. Governor Crist says he plans to return to the scene of the disaster on Tuesday to assess the state’s response and recovery efforts.