Lee County, Fla. Commissioner Kevin Ruane said reports that county officials may be delaying a mandatory evacuation order before Hurricane Ian lands are “inaccurate.”
Pressed by CNN’s Boris Sanchez on Sunday, Ruane said the county did what it was supposed to do.
“That’s incorrect. We’ve done everything we can using state resources, federal resources to make the necessary arrangements that we have,” Ruane said. “I think the most important thing for most people to understand is that we opened 15 shelters. During Irma there were 60,000 people in our shelters, there are 4,000 people in the shelters right now. ”
“So I don’t have to believe that if we opened shelters the day before that number would have increased a lot, because each shelter can hold an excess of 3,000 people. We have 250 people in each shelter,” he said. he adds. .
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (right) also said on Saturday that Lee County officials acted appropriately when they issued their first mandatory evacuation orders ahead of Hurricane Ian on Tuesday afternoon.
Ruane pointed out that he and other officials had urged people to get out as soon as possible, calling Floridians “no strangers” to storms.
“Unfortunately people have become complacent,” Ruane said of why people may not have evacuated sooner. “As far as I’m concerned, the shelters were open, they had the capacity, they had all day Tuesday, they had a good part of Wednesday as the storm rolled in – they had the capacity to do that.”
Ruane said the prediction patterns “changed drastically” from Monday night at 11 p.m. ET to Tuesday morning at 5 a.m. ET.
“As soon as we saw the model tilt to the northeast, we did exactly what we could to encourage people to do so. I’m just disappointed that so many people didn’t go to shelters, because they are open.”
Recovery and reconstruction are the biggest challenges facing the county right now, according to Ruane.
“Obviously we’re in the recovery and rebuilding phase now. So it’s a different stage. We’ve protected and saved so many people and I think it’s important to just recognize the efforts.”
“The reconstruction phase is going to take a long time. We recognize that.”
