Hurricane Ian's effect on Florida voting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

That is not what this article says. Nice try, though.

Predicting hurricanes is not an exact science. I heard REPEATEDLY to pay attention to the cone... not the line of the path..... since the path can not be predicted exactly.

+1 Any intelligent person living in Florida (especially near water) would have been listening to the news and weather reports and making informed decisions. I lived in Florida for years and didn't depend on a governor to tell us what to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

Floridian here. While it’s awful what happened, hurricanes are unpredictable. They evacuated St Pete and Clearwater because of anticipated storm surge, but the water ended up being sucked out of Tampa Bay, and canals much further north. It hit when it was a strong category 4. I really feel for limited preparation time those folks in the Ft Myers area had. Central Florida started prepping on Saturday, along with the Tampa area. By Sunday, they said it was likely to hit the panhandle as a weaker storm.

People cannot safely evacuate in the 24 hours before the eye comes ashore. We had orders to stay off the roads about 22 hours before the eye passed us. Hurricanes are huge, and the bands start about 48 hours before the eye passes. Then, the other half of the hurricane continues after the eye passes.

You have to require mandatory evacuations of places like Sanibel Island, Captiva, Cape Coral, and Fort Myers Beach because they are death traps if it hits and unreachable if it glances by. Even if you don’t expect the houses to be destroyed, the roads and bridges would have been flooded and damaged and the power, water, and sewer systems disabled even if Ian went to Tampa. People are stupid about risk. They look at the last hurricane and think if Charley didn’t flood them, they aren’t at risk. You have to make them leave for their own good.

There is literally no way to evacuate everyone on the coast when a storm is a few days away. It will be like what happened when they tried to evacuate Houston for Rita.

For hard hit areas, an evacuation could mean a month away from home. I don’t think people understand this, either.

Not everyone in the county, but everyone on a barrier island or in a beachfront or tidal canal waterfront development that will obviously flood and be cut off from rescues and resources. If the county is going to let developers put that many people at risk, then the county should spend some of those property taxes on inland shelters and resources for evacuation. I’m from a Gulf Coast county other than Florida and worked 5 years on Katrina recovery. It’s idiotic to suggest that people will just have to drown and suffer, there’s nothing we could do. There should be a simple rule. If you are required to buy flood insurance you should be required to evacuate for a major hurricane (CAT 3+), and if you are in a mandatory evacuation zone for a major hurricane, you should be required to buy flood insurance. It is incomprehensible how many people know to evacuate but didn’t know to buy flood insurance and how many other people knew to buy flood insurance but didn’t know to evacuate.

I'm also not sure what PP's point is. Yes, evacuation is very difficult - it's traumatic, it's exhausting, it's uncertain. You need to go somewhere, and have a way to get there. You have to bring your pets and leave not knowing what you will come back to. But the government doesn't evacuate people like put them on a bus - people evacuate themselves. There are always hurricane shelters in the general area you can go to. The people who evacuated from these areas in Florida won't be able to come home for a long time - but are you suggestion it would have been better for them to stay?

There are a lot of problems trying to evacuate. You have to have a place to go and a way to get there. You have to find someplace that will take your pets. You don't know if the hurricane is actually going to hit you - we've evacuated then it's turned out that the place we left for got hit harder than where we live. Yes, lots and lots of problems. But PP is right that if you live in a place where you are going to drown in your own house if you don't leave, or if your house could literally be washed away, if the hurricane is as serious as it looks like it *could be* - then there should be an evacuation order. Given with enough time for people to actually comply.

Look what happened when that's not what happened.

The problem is you can not evacuate everyone. It is logistically impossible. Take Sanibel island. It is one island with 6700 people in a county of 440k. If you get 90% of the people to leave you still have 670 people. That’s a lot of people to evacuate or ship supplies in for and it’s just one small area.

If you evacuate everyone where are they going to go? There are not enough hotels. Also people from Tampa went south because the storm was forecast to hit Tampa and Lee county was going to be okay.

Florida must be full of stupid people. If you live on the water, you evacuate inland, not up or down the coast to another vulnerable place. Florida is especially terrible at evacuation because so many people live on the water and too many of them came from somewhere else and don’t have family near enough to stay with. If you live on the water you should have a plan. People with small children always figure out how to evacuate. It’s the old people who die. They can’t climb into the attic or up a tree or swim to safety. If your 80-year-old mother lives in a little house on a fake canal just off a tidal body of water, you need to go get her or make sure she evacuates to a safe place. People who stay because they are worried that a shelter won’t take their dog are people who drown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

Floridian here. While it’s awful what happened, hurricanes are unpredictable. They evacuated St Pete and Clearwater because of anticipated storm surge, but the water ended up being sucked out of Tampa Bay, and canals much further north. It hit when it was a strong category 4. I really feel for limited preparation time those folks in the Ft Myers area had. Central Florida started prepping on Saturday, along with the Tampa area. By Sunday, they said it was likely to hit the panhandle as a weaker storm.

People cannot safely evacuate in the 24 hours before the eye comes ashore. We had orders to stay off the roads about 22 hours before the eye passed us. Hurricanes are huge, and the bands start about 48 hours before the eye passes. Then, the other half of the hurricane continues after the eye passes.

You have to require mandatory evacuations of places like Sanibel Island, Captiva, Cape Coral, and Fort Myers Beach because they are death traps if it hits and unreachable if it glances by. Even if you don’t expect the houses to be destroyed, the roads and bridges would have been flooded and damaged and the power, water, and sewer systems disabled even if Ian went to Tampa. People are stupid about risk. They look at the last hurricane and think if Charley didn’t flood them, they aren’t at risk. You have to make them leave for their own good.

There is literally no way to evacuate everyone on the coast when a storm is a few days away. It will be like what happened when they tried to evacuate Houston for Rita.

For hard hit areas, an evacuation could mean a month away from home. I don’t think people understand this, either.

Not everyone in the county, but everyone on a barrier island or in a beachfront or tidal canal waterfront development that will obviously flood and be cut off from rescues and resources. If the county is going to let developers put that many people at risk, then the county should spend some of those property taxes on inland shelters and resources for evacuation. I’m from a Gulf Coast county other than Florida and worked 5 years on Katrina recovery. It’s idiotic to suggest that people will just have to drown and suffer, there’s nothing we could do. There should be a simple rule. If you are required to buy flood insurance you should be required to evacuate for a major hurricane (CAT 3+), and if you are in a mandatory evacuation zone for a major hurricane, you should be required to buy flood insurance. It is incomprehensible how many people know to evacuate but didn’t know to buy flood insurance and how many other people knew to buy flood insurance but didn’t know to evacuate.

I'm also not sure what PP's point is. Yes, evacuation is very difficult - it's traumatic, it's exhausting, it's uncertain. You need to go somewhere, and have a way to get there. You have to bring your pets and leave not knowing what you will come back to. But the government doesn't evacuate people like put them on a bus - people evacuate themselves. There are always hurricane shelters in the general area you can go to. The people who evacuated from these areas in Florida won't be able to come home for a long time - but are you suggestion it would have been better for them to stay?

There are a lot of problems trying to evacuate. You have to have a place to go and a way to get there. You have to find someplace that will take your pets. You don't know if the hurricane is actually going to hit you - we've evacuated then it's turned out that the place we left for got hit harder than where we live. Yes, lots and lots of problems. But PP is right that if you live in a place where you are going to drown in your own house if you don't leave, or if your house could literally be washed away, if the hurricane is as serious as it looks like it *could be* - then there should be an evacuation order. Given with enough time for people to actually comply.

Look what happened when that's not what happened.

The problem is you can not evacuate everyone. It is logistically impossible. Take Sanibel island. It is one island with 6700 people in a county of 440k. If you get 90% of the people to leave you still have 670 people. That’s a lot of people to evacuate or ship supplies in for and it’s just one small area.

If you evacuate everyone where are they going to go? There are not enough hotels. Also people from Tampa went south because the storm was forecast to hit Tampa and Lee county was going to be okay.

Florida must be full of stupid people. If you live on the water, you evacuate inland, not up or down the coast to another vulnerable place. Florida is especially terrible at evacuation because so many people live on the water and too many of them came from somewhere else and don’t have family near enough to stay with. If you live on the water you should have a plan. People with small children always figure out how to evacuate. It’s the old people who die. They can’t climb into the attic or up a tree or swim to safety. If your 80-year-old mother lives in a little house on a fake canal just off a tidal body of water, you need to go get her or make sure she evacuates to a safe place. People who stay because they are worried that a shelter won’t take their dog are people who drown.

You don’t live there or have family that lives there. Read the other post how hurricanes are unpredictable. Most of my family is in Florida, young and old. It’s not as easy as picking up their entire life and leaving when nothing is predicted to hit your area. Work doesn’t just say, sure, leave for a while. One family member is an essential employee.

And you try evacuating your 80 yo parents hours away inland, when it’s not predicted to hit their area, when you live in a different part of the country. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

Narrative was set up before storm hit

[Anonymous]

Lee county is a big republicans area. DeSantis will jump through hoops to make sure they are happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

Floridian here. While it’s awful what happened, hurricanes are unpredictable. They evacuated St Pete and Clearwater because of anticipated storm surge, but the water ended up being sucked out of Tampa Bay, and canals much further north. It hit when it was a strong category 4. I really feel for limited preparation time those folks in the Ft Myers area had. Central Florida started prepping on Saturday, along with the Tampa area. By Sunday, they said it was likely to hit the panhandle as a weaker storm.

People cannot safely evacuate in the 24 hours before the eye comes ashore. We had orders to stay off the roads about 22 hours before the eye passed us. Hurricanes are huge, and the bands start about 48 hours before the eye passes. Then, the other half of the hurricane continues after the eye passes.

You have to require mandatory evacuations of places like Sanibel Island, Captiva, Cape Coral, and Fort Myers Beach because they are death traps if it hits and unreachable if it glances by. Even if you don’t expect the houses to be destroyed, the roads and bridges would have been flooded and damaged and the power, water, and sewer systems disabled even if Ian went to Tampa. People are stupid about risk. They look at the last hurricane and think if Charley didn’t flood them, they aren’t at risk. You have to make them leave for their own good.

There is literally no way to evacuate everyone on the coast when a storm is a few days away. It will be like what happened when they tried to evacuate Houston for Rita.

For hard hit areas, an evacuation could mean a month away from home. I don’t think people understand this, either.

Not everyone in the county, but everyone on a barrier island or in a beachfront or tidal canal waterfront development that will obviously flood and be cut off from rescues and resources. If the county is going to let developers put that many people at risk, then the county should spend some of those property taxes on inland shelters and resources for evacuation. I’m from a Gulf Coast county other than Florida and worked 5 years on Katrina recovery. It’s idiotic to suggest that people will just have to drown and suffer, there’s nothing we could do. There should be a simple rule. If you are required to buy flood insurance you should be required to evacuate for a major hurricane (CAT 3+), and if you are in a mandatory evacuation zone for a major hurricane, you should be required to buy flood insurance. It is incomprehensible how many people know to evacuate but didn’t know to buy flood insurance and how many other people knew to buy flood insurance but didn’t know to evacuate.

I'm also not sure what PP's point is. Yes, evacuation is very difficult - it's traumatic, it's exhausting, it's uncertain. You need to go somewhere, and have a way to get there. You have to bring your pets and leave not knowing what you will come back to. But the government doesn't evacuate people like put them on a bus - people evacuate themselves. There are always hurricane shelters in the general area you can go to. The people who evacuated from these areas in Florida won't be able to come home for a long time - but are you suggestion it would have been better for them to stay?

There are a lot of problems trying to evacuate. You have to have a place to go and a way to get there. You have to find someplace that will take your pets. You don't know if the hurricane is actually going to hit you - we've evacuated then it's turned out that the place we left for got hit harder than where we live. Yes, lots and lots of problems. But PP is right that if you live in a place where you are going to drown in your own house if you don't leave, or if your house could literally be washed away, if the hurricane is as serious as it looks like it *could be* - then there should be an evacuation order. Given with enough time for people to actually comply.

Look what happened when that's not what happened.

The problem is you can not evacuate everyone. It is logistically impossible. Take Sanibel island. It is one island with 6700 people in a county of 440k. If you get 90% of the people to leave you still have 670 people. That’s a lot of people to evacuate or ship supplies in for and it’s just one small area.

If you evacuate everyone where are they going to go? There are not enough hotels. Also people from Tampa went south because the storm was forecast to hit Tampa and Lee county was going to be okay.

Florida must be full of stupid people. If you live on the water, you evacuate inland, not up or down the coast to another vulnerable place. Florida is especially terrible at evacuation because so many people live on the water and too many of them came from somewhere else and don’t have family near enough to stay with. If you live on the water you should have a plan. People with small children always figure out how to evacuate. It’s the old people who die. They can’t climb into the attic or up a tree or swim to safety. If your 80-year-old mother lives in a little house on a fake canal just off a tidal body of water, you need to go get her or make sure she evacuates to a safe place. People who stay because they are worried that a shelter won’t take their dog are people who drown.

You don’t live there or have family that lives there. Read the other post how hurricanes are unpredictable. Most of my family is in Florida, young and old. It’s not as easy as picking up their entire life and leaving when nothing is predicted to hit your area. Work doesn’t just say, sure, leave for a while. One family member is an essential employee.

And you try evacuating your 80 yo parents hours away inland, when it’s not predicted to hit their area, when you live in a different part of the country. Good luck.

In that case, the truth is that people will just have to live with the consequences of those choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

Floridian here. While it’s awful what happened, hurricanes are unpredictable. They evacuated St Pete and Clearwater because of anticipated storm surge, but the water ended up being sucked out of Tampa Bay, and canals much further north. It hit when it was a strong category 4. I really feel for limited preparation time those folks in the Ft Myers area had. Central Florida started prepping on Saturday, along with the Tampa area. By Sunday, they said it was likely to hit the panhandle as a weaker storm.

People cannot safely evacuate in the 24 hours before the eye comes ashore. We had orders to stay off the roads about 22 hours before the eye passed us. Hurricanes are huge, and the bands start about 48 hours before the eye passes. Then, the other half of the hurricane continues after the eye passes.

You have to require mandatory evacuations of places like Sanibel Island, Captiva, Cape Coral, and Fort Myers Beach because they are death traps if it hits and unreachable if it glances by. Even if you don’t expect the houses to be destroyed, the roads and bridges would have been flooded and damaged and the power, water, and sewer systems disabled even if Ian went to Tampa. People are stupid about risk. They look at the last hurricane and think if Charley didn’t flood them, they aren’t at risk. You have to make them leave for their own good.

There is literally no way to evacuate everyone on the coast when a storm is a few days away. It will be like what happened when they tried to evacuate Houston for Rita.

For hard hit areas, an evacuation could mean a month away from home. I don’t think people understand this, either.

Not everyone in the county, but everyone on a barrier island or in a beachfront or tidal canal waterfront development that will obviously flood and be cut off from rescues and resources. If the county is going to let developers put that many people at risk, then the county should spend some of those property taxes on inland shelters and resources for evacuation. I’m from a Gulf Coast county other than Florida and worked 5 years on Katrina recovery. It’s idiotic to suggest that people will just have to drown and suffer, there’s nothing we could do. There should be a simple rule. If you are required to buy flood insurance you should be required to evacuate for a major hurricane (CAT 3+), and if you are in a mandatory evacuation zone for a major hurricane, you should be required to buy flood insurance. It is incomprehensible how many people know to evacuate but didn’t know to buy flood insurance and how many other people knew to buy flood insurance but didn’t know to evacuate.

I'm also not sure what PP's point is. Yes, evacuation is very difficult - it's traumatic, it's exhausting, it's uncertain. You need to go somewhere, and have a way to get there. You have to bring your pets and leave not knowing what you will come back to. But the government doesn't evacuate people like put them on a bus - people evacuate themselves. There are always hurricane shelters in the general area you can go to. The people who evacuated from these areas in Florida won't be able to come home for a long time - but are you suggestion it would have been better for them to stay?

There are a lot of problems trying to evacuate. You have to have a place to go and a way to get there. You have to find someplace that will take your pets. You don't know if the hurricane is actually going to hit you - we've evacuated then it's turned out that the place we left for got hit harder than where we live. Yes, lots and lots of problems. But PP is right that if you live in a place where you are going to drown in your own house if you don't leave, or if your house could literally be washed away, if the hurricane is as serious as it looks like it *could be* - then there should be an evacuation order. Given with enough time for people to actually comply.

Look what happened when that's not what happened.

The problem is you can not evacuate everyone. It is logistically impossible. Take Sanibel island. It is one island with 6700 people in a county of 440k. If you get 90% of the people to leave you still have 670 people. That’s a lot of people to evacuate or ship supplies in for and it’s just one small area.

If you evacuate everyone where are they going to go? There are not enough hotels. Also people from Tampa went south because the storm was forecast to hit Tampa and Lee county was going to be okay.

Florida must be full of stupid people. If you live on the water, you evacuate inland, not up or down the coast to another vulnerable place. Florida is especially terrible at evacuation because so many people live on the water and too many of them came from somewhere else and don’t have family near enough to stay with. If you live on the water you should have a plan. People with small children always figure out how to evacuate. It’s the old people who die. They can’t climb into the attic or up a tree or swim to safety. If your 80-year-old mother lives in a little house on a fake canal just off a tidal body of water, you need to go get her or make sure she evacuates to a safe place. People who stay because they are worried that a shelter won’t take their dog are people who drown.

You don’t live there or have family that lives there. Read the other post how hurricanes are unpredictable. Most of my family is in Florida, young and old. It’s not as easy as picking up their entire life and leaving when nothing is predicted to hit your area. Work doesn’t just say, sure, leave for a while. One family member is an essential employee.

And you try evacuating your 80 yo parents hours away inland, when it’s not predicted to hit their area, when you live in a different part of the country. Good luck.

I’m from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. If you live on a hurricane coast, evacuation is part of life. I have evacuated. I’ve stayed to help while the rest of my family evacuated. I have siblings and grown children whose homes flooded while they were evacuated from Katrina. It’s not debatable that people in flood-prone areas should evacuate when a major hurricane is threatening. What is wrong with people in Florida that they think they can ignore flood risk just because evacuation is inconvenient?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

Floridian here. While it’s awful what happened, hurricanes are unpredictable. They evacuated St Pete and Clearwater because of anticipated storm surge, but the water ended up being sucked out of Tampa Bay, and canals much further north. It hit when it was a strong category 4. I really feel for limited preparation time those folks in the Ft Myers area had. Central Florida started prepping on Saturday, along with the Tampa area. By Sunday, they said it was likely to hit the panhandle as a weaker storm.

People cannot safely evacuate in the 24 hours before the eye comes ashore. We had orders to stay off the roads about 22 hours before the eye passed us. Hurricanes are huge, and the bands start about 48 hours before the eye passes. Then, the other half of the hurricane continues after the eye passes.

You have to require mandatory evacuations of places like Sanibel Island, Captiva, Cape Coral, and Fort Myers Beach because they are death traps if it hits and unreachable if it glances by. Even if you don’t expect the houses to be destroyed, the roads and bridges would have been flooded and damaged and the power, water, and sewer systems disabled even if Ian went to Tampa. People are stupid about risk. They look at the last hurricane and think if Charley didn’t flood them, they aren’t at risk. You have to make them leave for their own good.

There is literally no way to evacuate everyone on the coast when a storm is a few days away. It will be like what happened when they tried to evacuate Houston for Rita.

For hard hit areas, an evacuation could mean a month away from home. I don’t think people understand this, either.

Not everyone in the county, but everyone on a barrier island or in a beachfront or tidal canal waterfront development that will obviously flood and be cut off from rescues and resources. If the county is going to let developers put that many people at risk, then the county should spend some of those property taxes on inland shelters and resources for evacuation. I’m from a Gulf Coast county other than Florida and worked 5 years on Katrina recovery. It’s idiotic to suggest that people will just have to drown and suffer, there’s nothing we could do. There should be a simple rule. If you are required to buy flood insurance you should be required to evacuate for a major hurricane (CAT 3+), and if you are in a mandatory evacuation zone for a major hurricane, you should be required to buy flood insurance. It is incomprehensible how many people know to evacuate but didn’t know to buy flood insurance and how many other people knew to buy flood insurance but didn’t know to evacuate.

I'm also not sure what PP's point is. Yes, evacuation is very difficult - it's traumatic, it's exhausting, it's uncertain. You need to go somewhere, and have a way to get there. You have to bring your pets and leave not knowing what you will come back to. But the government doesn't evacuate people like put them on a bus - people evacuate themselves. There are always hurricane shelters in the general area you can go to. The people who evacuated from these areas in Florida won't be able to come home for a long time - but are you suggestion it would have been better for them to stay?

There are a lot of problems trying to evacuate. You have to have a place to go and a way to get there. You have to find someplace that will take your pets. You don't know if the hurricane is actually going to hit you - we've evacuated then it's turned out that the place we left for got hit harder than where we live. Yes, lots and lots of problems. But PP is right that if you live in a place where you are going to drown in your own house if you don't leave, or if your house could literally be washed away, if the hurricane is as serious as it looks like it *could be* - then there should be an evacuation order. Given with enough time for people to actually comply.

Look what happened when that's not what happened.

The problem is you can not evacuate everyone. It is logistically impossible. Take Sanibel island. It is one island with 6700 people in a county of 440k. If you get 90% of the people to leave you still have 670 people. That’s a lot of people to evacuate or ship supplies in for and it’s just one small area.

If you evacuate everyone where are they going to go? There are not enough hotels. Also people from Tampa went south because the storm was forecast to hit Tampa and Lee county was going to be okay.

Problem is that Florida does not want to deal with the predictable consequences of their own choices. The coastline of their state is being altered dramatically (relatively speaking) by climate change. But rather than deal with that reality, they build communities in places that will require more and more frequent evacuations. Because they don’t want to look the problem in the eye and try to figure out to deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Wow Lee county voted 60% for trump in 2020 and 77% in 2016. Wonder why those people are not flying their trump flags?

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

Floridian here. While it’s awful what happened, hurricanes are unpredictable. They evacuated St Pete and Clearwater because of anticipated storm surge, but the water ended up being sucked out of Tampa Bay, and canals much further north. It hit when it was a strong category 4. I really feel for limited preparation time those folks in the Ft Myers area had. Central Florida started prepping on Saturday, along with the Tampa area. By Sunday, they said it was likely to hit the panhandle as a weaker storm.

People cannot safely evacuate in the 24 hours before the eye comes ashore. We had orders to stay off the roads about 22 hours before the eye passed us. Hurricanes are huge, and the bands start about 48 hours before the eye passes. Then, the other half of the hurricane continues after the eye passes.

You have to require mandatory evacuations of places like Sanibel Island, Captiva, Cape Coral, and Fort Myers Beach because they are death traps if it hits and unreachable if it glances by. Even if you don’t expect the houses to be destroyed, the roads and bridges would have been flooded and damaged and the power, water, and sewer systems disabled even if Ian went to Tampa. People are stupid about risk. They look at the last hurricane and think if Charley didn’t flood them, they aren’t at risk. You have to make them leave for their own good.

There is literally no way to evacuate everyone on the coast when a storm is a few days away. It will be like what happened when they tried to evacuate Houston for Rita.

For hard hit areas, an evacuation could mean a month away from home. I don’t think people understand this, either.

Not everyone in the county, but everyone on a barrier island or in a beachfront or tidal canal waterfront development that will obviously flood and be cut off from rescues and resources. If the county is going to let developers put that many people at risk, then the county should spend some of those property taxes on inland shelters and resources for evacuation. I’m from a Gulf Coast county other than Florida and worked 5 years on Katrina recovery. It’s idiotic to suggest that people will just have to drown and suffer, there’s nothing we could do. There should be a simple rule. If you are required to buy flood insurance you should be required to evacuate for a major hurricane (CAT 3+), and if you are in a mandatory evacuation zone for a major hurricane, you should be required to buy flood insurance. It is incomprehensible how many people know to evacuate but didn’t know to buy flood insurance and how many other people knew to buy flood insurance but didn’t know to evacuate.

I'm also not sure what PP's point is. Yes, evacuation is very difficult - it's traumatic, it's exhausting, it's uncertain. You need to go somewhere, and have a way to get there. You have to bring your pets and leave not knowing what you will come back to. But the government doesn't evacuate people like put them on a bus - people evacuate themselves. There are always hurricane shelters in the general area you can go to. The people who evacuated from these areas in Florida won't be able to come home for a long time - but are you suggestion it would have been better for them to stay?

There are a lot of problems trying to evacuate. You have to have a place to go and a way to get there. You have to find someplace that will take your pets. You don't know if the hurricane is actually going to hit you - we've evacuated then it's turned out that the place we left for got hit harder than where we live. Yes, lots and lots of problems. But PP is right that if you live in a place where you are going to drown in your own house if you don't leave, or if your house could literally be washed away, if the hurricane is as serious as it looks like it *could be* - then there should be an evacuation order. Given with enough time for people to actually comply.

Look what happened when that's not what happened.

The problem is you can not evacuate everyone. It is logistically impossible. Take Sanibel island. It is one island with 6700 people in a county of 440k. If you get 90% of the people to leave you still have 670 people. That’s a lot of people to evacuate or ship supplies in for and it’s just one small area.

If you evacuate everyone where are they going to go? There are not enough hotels. Also people from Tampa went south because the storm was forecast to hit Tampa and Lee county was going to be okay.

Florida must be full of stupid people. If you live on the water, you evacuate inland, not up or down the coast to another vulnerable place. Florida is especially terrible at evacuation because so many people live on the water and too many of them came from somewhere else and don’t have family near enough to stay with. If you live on the water you should have a plan. People with small children always figure out how to evacuate. It’s the old people who die. They can’t climb into the attic or up a tree or swim to safety. If your 80-year-old mother lives in a little house on a fake canal just off a tidal body of water, you need to go get her or make sure she evacuates to a safe place. People who stay because they are worried that a shelter won’t take their dog are people who drown.

You don’t live there or have family that lives there. Read the other post how hurricanes are unpredictable. Most of my family is in Florida, young and old. It’s not as easy as picking up their entire life and leaving when nothing is predicted to hit your area. Work doesn’t just say, sure, leave for a while. One family member is an essential employee.

And you try evacuating your 80 yo parents hours away inland, when it’s not predicted to hit their area, when you live in a different part of the country. Good luck.

I’m from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. If you live on a hurricane coast, evacuation is part of life. I have evacuated. I’ve stayed to help while the rest of my family evacuated. I have siblings and grown children whose homes flooded while they were evacuated from Katrina. It’s not debatable that people in flood-prone areas should evacuate when a major hurricane is threatening. What is wrong with people in Florida that they think they can ignore flood risk just because evacuation is inconvenient?

Plenty of people along the Gulf Coast choose stupidly not to evacuate - including in Mississippi and Louisiana. Frankly, I find it an incredible waste of taxpayer money to send in National Guard, Coast Guard, etc. to search for the dummies who refused to leave.

Why people continue to live along this coast is beyond me.
DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

This is complete BS. Nice try, though. Anyone who chose not to evacuate is fully to blame for their consequences.

The day before the storm he called “the big one” arrived, Florida’s governor met with residents of the state’s vulnerable Gulf Coast. His first and firmest message was: Get out. “You have the potential for 10, 15 feet of storm surge that can absolutely be life threatening,” he said Tuesday at the Sarasota Emergency Operations Center. He demanded that everyone evacuate, saying “those orders are not taken lightly.”

Mr. DeSantis had gotten an early start. To free up Federal Emergency Management Administration money for rescue work and debris removal, “he called it an emergency before it was even a tropical storm,” Mr. Arroyo says. That declaration came five days before Hurricane Ian made landfall.

At the time meteorologists projected that Ian would touch down as a Category 3 storm, rather than the 155-mile-an-hour Category 4 force it became. Nonetheless, Mr. Arroyo says the governor sent more state support than usual. “Since the last storm, a big difference is that Gov. DeSantis has the Florida guard,” he says, referring to the Florida State Guard, established in June. The governor ordered members of the state-funded civilian force to affected zones along with National Guardsmen. “They had hundreds of people in armories just ready to go.”

Back in Tallahassee that evening, Mr. DeSantis briefed the press on the destruction in Lee County, search-and-rescue operations, and food and shelter options for displaced people. He acknowledged that the death toll is certain to rise. But he also echoed some of the Sarasota mayor’s optimism. “There have been more than 700 confirmed rescues,” he said. “Two hundred thousand accounts have been restored in Southwest Florida,” he said of the power outages, because “the pre-staging for this was over 42,000 linemen.” His remarks were fairly short on thoughts and prayers and long on initial measures of progress.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-hurricane-test-for-the-florida-model-ron-desantis-hurricane-ian-election-governor-storm-emergency-economic-freedom-11664570975?mod=hp_trending_now_opn_pos3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The destruction based on the Hurricane Ian is devastating. So, many homes and infrastructure destroyed. We are little over month away from midterm. Based on the destruction, people would be displaced and voting areas would be closed etc.

How would this affect the election. Is there a precedence? Can these folks who have lost a lot vote. Has Desantis and his AG have a plan to protect voting rights of the disaster affected folks? Are they going to play games to depress Democrat voting area not being supported where as republicans voting area being given alternatives?

Let's see... I've just lost my entire house, cars, personal property... perhaps my job... perhaps I have a family member who was injured in the storm. But by golly, the first thing I'm thinking about is my voting rights for an election 6 weeks away.

OP, frankly I find your post really offensive. This is not about you and your desire to cling to the D's handful-seats majority in the House.

+100
OP seems to believe that Democrats are the only ones affected by this disaster.
This thread is a window into the mind of a liberal. Priorities.

It’s a better one into the minds of cons. You guys are clearly very angry that people can see how your party targets and attacks Democrats and prevents Democratic votes from counting.

To be honest? This ‘con’ doesn’t even begin to understand where your anger and disdain come from. If ‘cons’ prevented Dem votes from counting, Biden would not be in office. JFC

THIS ^^. So much nuttiness on display here.

They are gonna lose their crap when they found that a judge in GA has declared voter IDs as *gasp* constitutional.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DeSantis - and local officials - are starting to get called out in local media for failing to raise the alarm early enough in the parts of Florida that were destroyed by Ian

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2022/09/30/ian-turned-southwest-florida-scrambled-was-there-enough-time-leave/

People literally drowned in their own houses because these areas weren't evacuated early enough - they didn't give people enough time to prepare and get out.

There is a quote in here from someone who said that listening to the governor and local officials, she'd have stayed home - it took the weather report telling her how serious this was.

That is not what this article says. Nice try, though.

Predicting hurricanes is not an exact science. I heard REPEATEDLY to pay attention to the cone... not the line of the path..... since the path can not be predicted exactly.

+1 Any intelligent person living in Florida (especially near water) would have been listening to the news and weather reports and making informed decisions. I lived in Florida for years and didn't depend on a governor to tell us what to do.

+2
By all accounts, DeSantis started early to prepare for this hurricane, and warned people to LEAVE. If they chose not to evacuate, that's on them. Every time there's a storm, there are idiots who decide to stay. I have zero sympathy for those who lack common sense, and I certainly don't blame DeSantis for their stupidity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The destruction based on the Hurricane Ian is devastating. So, many homes and infrastructure destroyed. We are little over month away from midterm. Based on the destruction, people would be displaced and voting areas would be closed etc.

How would this affect the election. Is there a precedence? Can these folks who have lost a lot vote. Has Desantis and his AG have a plan to protect voting rights of the disaster affected folks? Are they going to play games to depress Democrat voting area not being supported where as republicans voting area being given alternatives?

Let's see... I've just lost my entire house, cars, personal property... perhaps my job... perhaps I have a family member who was injured in the storm. But by golly, the first thing I'm thinking about is my voting rights for an election 6 weeks away.

OP, frankly I find your post really offensive. This is not about you and your desire to cling to the D's handful-seats majority in the House.

+100
OP seems to believe that Democrats are the only ones affected by this disaster.
This thread is a window into the mind of a liberal. Priorities.

It’s a better one into the minds of cons. You guys are clearly very angry that people can see how your party targets and attacks Democrats and prevents Democratic votes from counting.

To be honest? This ‘con’ doesn’t even begin to understand where your anger and disdain come from. If ‘cons’ prevented Dem votes from counting, Biden would not be in office. JFC

THIS ^^. So much nuttiness on display here.

They are gonna lose their crap when they found that a judge in GA has declared voter IDs as *gasp* constitutional.

+100

GOP will find a way to let Republicans vote in 5 weeks.