With at least 42 people dead, officials in Lee County, Florida face criticism for their efforts to evacuate residents in the path of Hurricane Ian last week, ignoring the county’s own emergency planning, NPR reports.
Prior to Ian hitting shore, the National Hurricane Center estimated the expected storm surge to be 4- to 7-feet along Lee County’s entire gulf shoreline, from Englewood to Bonita Springs to Fort Myers. The county’s emergency plan called for the evacuation of of barrier islands, low-lying communities and neighborhoods bordering the Caloosahatchee River; those evacuation orders were not issued in advance of the hurricane reaching Florida.
With more than half of the hurricane’s current known 76 fatalities, Lee County didn’t issue an evacuation order until about 12 hours before the storm hit land Wednesday, with a notice going out Tuesday afternoon as winds and rain picked up. Neighboring Charlotte County had issued an evacuation warning Monday, giving its residents more than 24 additional hours to vacate.
All five members of the county commission are Republicans, who decry federal government interference but will undoubtedly have their collective hand out begging for the socialist federal aid needed to clean up their conservative utopian county with little regulation and now, flattened homes.