DeSantis Pressed on Lee County Evacuation Order

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has been running around the state at a break-neck speed since Hurricane Ian hit the state last week.  Yesterday, The Floridian was able to receive comments from DeSantis about operations in Arcadia, including the POD program's effectiveness. While in Fort Myers, CNN correspondent Nadia Romero asked DeSantis about the mandatory evacuation order for Lee County. Twitter account DeSantis War Room provides footage of DeSantis' answer, where they say Romero was attempting to "push a misleading narrative" about the order, which DeSantis "shuts it right down."

"Today: CNN reporter questions Governor DeSantis, hoping to push a misleading narrative about evacuation in Lee County. He shuts that right down. His answer is professional, direct & empathetic... with ZERO tolerance for gaslighting," DeSantis War Room tweets.

In the clip, CNN correspondent Nadia Romero asks, "Do you stand behind Lee County's decision to not have that mandatory evacuation until the day before the storm?" DeSantis is quick to counter the question with his own. "Well, did you- where was your industry station when the storm hit? Were you guys in Lee County? No, you were in Tampa." He elaborates that Lee County's decision was its own, the order to evacuate only based on what tracking of Ian suggested. "So that's- yeah, they were following the weather track, and they had to make decisions based on that."

DeSantis says that "but you know, 72 hours, they weren't even in the cone, 48 hours they were on the periphery. So you got to make decisions the best you can." Additionally, DeSantis does not hold Lee County residents at fault, for they went on information as they received it.

"I will say, they delivered the message to people, they had shelters open. You know, everybody had adequate opportunity to at least get to a shelter within the county. But you know, a lot of the residents did not want to do that. I think for probably various reasons, some people just don't want to leave their homes period, they're island people, whatever. But I think part of it was so much attention was paid to Tampa, that I think a lot of them probably thought that they wouldn't get the worst of it. So but they didn't, and I think it's easy to second-guess them, but they were ready for the whole time, and made that call when it was justifiable to do so."

Romero is quick to point out that surrounding counties had their own evacuation orders before Tuesday. "Well great," DeSantis says, "but if you look at Tuesday morning, they had moved the track down model started showing it going to like, Sarasota. So they did that. I was in Sarasota that day with them, when they were expanding some of their evacuations. You know, I think Charlotte did the same thing either Monday night or Tuesday morning. So don't forget, Sunday, 11am advisory, it was going to go to Taylor County in North Florida. And so, at some point, you got to look to kind of see where this thing is going. So yeah, no, I think that it's easy to say in hindsight, we had most of our supplies stationed in the Tampa Bay area, as that track moved, we shifted our response further south as well."

Finally, DeSantis concludes that "we said that there would be impacts for sure, and even when it was going to hit North Florida, it's such a big storm there was going to be impacts in Southwest Florida as well. But the difference between impacts and having the eye go there is much different and for most of Sunday, Monday, and even going into Tuesday, it was a hundred, hundred fifty miles away."