Dire Warnings for Storm-Weary Floridians as Hurricane Milton Approaches

Dire Warnings for Storm-Weary Floridians as Hurricane Milton Approaches

Officials urged residents in the expected path of the hurricane to heed evacuation orders as the state mobilizes resources to respond to the storm.

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By Patricia Mazzei

Reporting from Miami

Weary Floridians prepared on Monday for mass evacuations as Hurricane Milton, the second major hurricane in two weeks, took aim at much of the state’s Gulf Coast.

Gov. Ron DeSantis urged residents to heed county evacuation orders for vulnerable areas, including parts of the densely populated Tampa Bay region. Highways seemed certain to snarl with traffic as people living in low-lying and coastal areas began fleeing to higher ground.

“If we knew exactly where it’s going to hit, we probably would evacuate fewer people,” Mr. DeSantis said on Monday morning at a news briefing about the storm. “But we don’t know that.”

The people of Florida are suffering from hurricane fatigue.

Many remain out of their homes, having experienced a devastating storm surge during Hurricane Helene last month. It was the second Category 4 storm to strike the western coast of Florida in 13 months, after Hurricane Idalia in 2023. A weaker storm, Hurricane Debby, also blew through the region in August.

And few residents have been able to forget Hurricane Ian, a fierce Category 5 storm that killed about 150 people when it made landfall in Southwest Florida in 2022.

Some of the people who drowned in Ian’s storm surge might have lived if they had evacuated to the mainland from barrier-island communities, Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a somber tone during the briefing.

“If your plan calls for you to evacuate, you should do so today,” he said. “Get on the road today, wherever that might be.”

Mr. DeSantis said that tolls would be suspended on evacuation routes, including highways in western Central Florida and Alligator Alley, the stretch of Interstate 75 through the Everglades between Naples and Miami.

Mr. Guthrie said that certain state buildings and vacant buildings could be put to use as supplementary emergency shelters if places already designated as shelters — in most cases, public schools — fill up with evacuees.

To prepare for the storm, the state has marshaled fuel supplies, utility crews and ambulances, Mr. DeSantis added.

“We have no way of knowing how it’s going to shake out,” he said, referring to the storm’s precise path and intensity at landfall. Even so, Milton is projected to remain a hurricane, he said, as it blows across the Florida peninsula to the Atlantic: “All the way until it exits the state, it’s going to be powerful.”