Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) defended the evacuation in one county hit on Wednesday by Hurricane Ian, stating that local officials in Lee County, Florida, where the storm made landfall, acted appropriately when they issued the orders on Tuesday.
“There is a difference between a storm that’s going to hit north Florida that will have peripheral effects on your region, versus one that’s making a direct impact,” DeSantis said at a news conference on Friday in Lee County, according to the New York Times. “And so what I saw in southwest Florida is, as the data changed, they sprung into action.”
Some Florida counties, such as Charlotte, gave the orders on Monday, and DeSantis said that people in the Tampa Bay area were put on alert on Monday night. But tracking a hurricane is tricky, and as landfall approached, the expected path of the storm went south. Ian made landfall as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday near Fort Myers, sparing Tampa from the worst of the storm.
“When we went to bed Monday night, people were saying this is a direct hit on Tampa Bay — worst-case scenario for the state,” he said during a news briefing in Fort Myers on Saturday, per Politico.
“As that track started the shift south, and the computer models the next morning, they [Lee County leaders] called for the evacuation, they opened their shelters and they responded very quickly to the data,” DeSantis added, according to CNN. “But at the end of the day, Fort Myers and Naples, on Sunday, I think at the 11 a.m. advisory, 72 hours out, they weren’t even in the cone [of uncertainty for the center of the hurricane’s forecast path]. That’s just the reality, so they followed it very closely.”
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Death toll estimates in Florida have risen to above 70 as a result of the hurricane, with a majority of the deaths coming from Lee County. Most of those who perished died by drowning.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell also defended officials in Lee County, telling Fox News Sunday, “As soon as the storm predictions were that it was going to impact Lee County, I know that local officials immediately put the right measures in place to make sure that they were warning citizens to get them out of harm’s way.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that Lee County is one of many areas in need of a lot of relief. CNN anchor Dana Bush asked Scott if a quicker evacuation notice would have saved more lives.
“Every life is important … I think, once we get through this and we do an assessment — what I always tried to do as governor is say, ‘OK, what did we learn in each of these?'” he said, not specifically agreeing with Bash that the delay of evacuation was a mistake.
He added that he believes everyone is responsible for their own safety, but it is also important for officials to look at evacuation routes to get the most people out of the area. “Everything I’m seeing is, people are working their butts off,” Scott said. “I’m scared to death people haven’t been rescued yet, because there’s still — as of this morning, there’s still people to go.”
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One local official who criticized the evacuation in Lee County was Fort Myers City Council member Liston Bochette.
“Obviously, about one time in 10 when they warn you, it happens,” Bochette told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday. “Well, this is that one time. And people did not evacuate as they should have. And I think we’re lulled into … this is a little paradise corner of the world and we got lulled into a passive mindset that it’s not going to hit us.”
