DAYONA BEACH, Fla. -- Preservation of life in a cataclysmic storm like Hurricane Irma is foremost in policing a community, especially one as challenging as Daytona Beach.
Consider the added challenges like the rolling ocean surf on the World's Most Famous Beach®. There's the equally lengthy stretch of the Intracoastal Waterway. And even Daytona International Speedway's Lake Lloyd with potential to overrun its banks.
Such added elements for this tourism-driven coastal city with Irma barreling up the Sunshine State presented first-year Police Chief Craig Capri with the daunting task to serve and protect with the harsh realities of life and death hanging in the balance.
As it turned out, Irma’s wrath caused property damage and extensive loss of power on Sep. 10, but no deaths.
Three days later, however, Daytona Beach cops dealt with a post-Irma casualty in Wednesday morning’s death of 34-year-old Dorothy Giddons as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator inside a residence that should have been outside, first responders said.
While several other top cops in the I-4 corridor counties of Volusia, Seminole and Orange begged off of in-person interviews just days after the hurricane, Capri re-juggled his schedule for a video interview at the Daytona Beach Police Department that would become the premiere Headline Surfer podcast.
Capri agreed to the exclusive one-on-one interview conducted Wednesday "in the interest of transparency."
In backing up his claim of transparency, it was Capri who brought up the accidental death of the carbon-monoxide victim without mentioning her by name in the interview just hours after the fact because police were in the process of informing next of kin of her passing.
Editor's Note: The 9-second podcast intro sound is from an instrumental, "Rapture," by Ross Budgen. It is copyright- and royalty-free. Here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vja87ZXejyk