TravelTime
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Facing a Dire Storm Forecast in Florida, Officials Delayed Evacuation (Published 2022)
A day of hesitation in Lee County came despite warnings that the Fort Myers and Cape Coral area could see mass flooding. Now authorities are encountering mass death.
www.nytimes.com
As Hurricane Ian charged toward the western coast of Florida this week, the warnings from forecasters were growing more urgent. Life-threatening storm surge threatened to deluge the region from Tampa all the way to Fort Myers.
But while officials along much of that coastline responded with orders to evacuate on Monday, emergency managers in Lee County held off, pondering during the day whether to tell people to flee, but then deciding to see how the forecast evolved overnight.
The delay, an apparent violation of the meticulous evacuation strategy the county had crafted for just such an emergency, may have contributed to catastrophic consequences that are still coming into focus as the death toll continues to climb.
At least 16 storm-related deaths have been identified in Lee County, the highest toll anywhere in the state…
…Lee County, which includes the hard-hit seaside community of Fort Myers Beach, as well as the towns of Fort Myers, Sanibel and Cape Coral, did not issue a mandatory evacuation order for the areas likely to be hardest hit until Tuesday morning, a day after several neighboring counties had ordered their most vulnerable residents to flee.…
…local schools had been designed to be shelters and that the school board had made the decision to keep them open on Monday….
…“The county could have been more proactive and could have given us more time to evacuate,” she said. On the road toward the east side of the state, she said, she was driving through torrents of rain, with tornadoes nearby….
…Lee County is now an epicenter of devastation, with mass destruction at Fort Myers Beach, the partial collapse of the Sanibel Causeway and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. With water mains broken, the county utilities agency has advised residents to boil their water.
President Biden said on Friday that the destruction from the storm was likely to be among the worst in U.S. history.
“It’s going to take months, years to rebuild,” he said.
On Florida’s Islands, Scenes of Paradise Lost, Maybe for Good (Published 2022)
On Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel Island and Pine Island, cherished landmarks and an easygoing existence were obliterated by Hurricane Ian.
www.nytimes.com
On Florida’s Islands, Scenes of Paradise Lost, Maybe for Good
…In places like Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel Island and Pine Island, just west of Fort Myers, an easygoing existence that once revolved around seashell hunts, shrimping, turtle-watching, taking in sunsets over the Gulf, and the ebb and flow of a seasonal tourist economy had been obliterated….
…“It looks like a bomb went off,” said Dana Gosford, a managing partner of Shucker’s, a century-old seafood restaurant and bar in Fort Myers Beach that was flattened by the storm. “We’re just — I don’t know if we’re going to be rebuilding at this point. We’re just still in shock.”…
…“It’s a war zone,” Mr. Hanson said. “It couldn’t really be any worse.”…
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