Clay looking at roughly $3 million in damages from Hurricane Matthew

They don't know how much it'll be yet, but it's definitely going to be a lot of money.

That's the word from Clay emergency management officials regarding the damage inflicted on the county by Hurricane Matthew when it passed by the First Coast last week.

John Ward - the Director of Emergency Management for the county - estimates the cost at around $3 million for now. That includes a variety of factors, some of which are the costs of response, employees and debris pickup.

"We currently still have teams out doing assessments," Ward added. "At this point we have identified 45 homes with damage."

That includes one home that's completely destroyed and 17 with major damage, but those numbers could go up once the assessment teams get access to areas which are currently too dangerous to go into, per Ward.

"We still have areas that we have limited access to due to downed power lines and larger trees that are down," Ward noted. "We're going to be recovering from this for weeks to come."

Some of those areas are along the St. Johns River as well as near Black Creek and Doctors Lake.

Around $1.7 million has already been submitted to FEMA for approval and more will be added once the teams finish their work and the county adds in other items such as damage to docks and businesses.

"We're pulling debris contractors in beginning of this week to start the debris collection by the end of the week," Ward stated.

The county will also be able to declare any repair costs incurred from the Clay Electric Co-Operative.

Nassau County has provided an estimated amount of $10 million in damages so far from Hurricane Matthew, while St. Johns County has estimated their damages at over $2 billion.

Duval County has yet to give a damage estimate.