

“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,” Mr. The sheriff defended the late call on October 2 as did the governor three days earlier in the source article. 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.Īn image (click on the source article – image is just below the second paragraph) from the National Hurricane Center shows the slight change southward in the hurricane paths forecasted on the Monday and Tuesday mornings before landfall as well as the actual path on Wednesday. Kovaleski and Lazaro Gamio on September 28. “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,” wrote Frances Robles, Mike Baker, Serge F. The questions on the evacuation orders arose on Friday after The New York Times reported that Lee County officials had delayed by one day issuing the evacuation order due to modeling on the path of the hurricane. Twenty-four deaths were recorded in Charlotte County – up from 12.

“The number of people killed in Florida by Hurricane Ian rose to at least 101 on Monday, days after the storm made landfall at Category 4 strength, decimating coastal towns and leaving rescue crews searching for survivors while communities face the daunting task of rebuilding,” reported CNN on October 3.Īt least 54 people died in Lee County alone, Sheriff Carmine Marceno said Monday – up from the county’s previously announced death toll of 42 – and officials there are facing questions about whether evacuation orders should have been issued earlier.
