As Floridians flee the parts of of the state expected to take the worst damage from the incoming hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall tonight, some jails located directly in its path will not be evacuated, according to officials. The sheriff’s offices of Manatee, Lee, St. Johns, and Pinellas counties have all stated as of Tuesday that they have no plans to evacuate local jails, with a spokesman for the latter stating that the jail is a “secure building” that would keep employees and inmates safe. The Florida Department of Corrections has already evacuated 28 facilities of some 4,500 inmates. Hurricane Milton is expected to bring storm surges of over 10 feet in the area expected to be hit the hardest, a level that meteorologists have described in past instances as “unsurvivable.”
A Manatee County Sheriff’s Deputy told the New York Times earlier today that the roughly 1,200 inmates, guards, and support staff in the local facility intend to ride it out: “We have supplies […] we also have a two-story jail, so we can go up to the second floor if it does flood.” Other officials brought up questions of feasibility as it related to evacuating jails. “It’s really not possible, feasible to evacuate people out of there,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri in a press briefing yesterday regarding the 3,100 inmates held in the local jail. Like the official in Manatee County, Gualtieri stated that inmates and staff could go into the upper floors of the building if needed: “everybody will be safe up there.” A storm surge of 10 feet or more, as is predicted for Tampa the surrounding counties, which include Pinellas and Manatee, would be life-threatening for anyone left on the first floor of a building.
Prisons are not the only facilities where people are planning to ride out the storm. Tampa General, the region’s only Level 1 trauma center, has a temporary flood wall that it has kept up after erecting it for hurricane Helene, whose storm surge it successfully repelled. Aside from this hospital and a select few other facilities, around 6,600 patients across over 70 facilities in Pinellas County, ranging from nursing homes to hospitals, are being evacuated. While jails and certain healthcare facilities are hunkering down, the message from public officials to everyone else is an urgent plea to leave. “I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re gonna die,” said Tampa Mayor Jane Castor.
When it comes to communicating the level of storm surge, the figures given to the public are not an average of predicted results, but rather the “reasonable worst-case scenario,” given how quick-moving and deadly the phenomenon has been historically. Milton is expected to make landfall in the Tampa area at around 11pm tonight.
