A jail in Florida is reportedly not evacuating its inmates, despite being in the danger zone for Hurricane Milton.
Hurricane Milton is set to hit parts of the US today (October 9), with Florida expected to be the worst affected.
With this in mind, many parts of the state have been urged to evacuate.
Doubling down on the severity of Hurricane Milton, Tampa mayor Jane Castor warned that upcoming severe weather is ‘literally catastrophic’.
“I can tell you right now, that they may have done that with others but there has never been one like this,” she told CNN on Monday (October 7).
“Helene was a wake up call, this is literally catastrophic. I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”
Despite stark warnings like Castor’s as of yesterday, Manatee County Jail has no intention of evacuating its 1,200 inmates.
According to a deputy that works at the jail, the prison is in the Zone A evacuation zone and Manatee County has issued mandatory evacuations for all people in Zones A and B.
Manatee County Public Safety Director Jodie Fiske went on to tell Newsweek: “We do not issue evacuation orders lightly.
“Milton is anticipated to cause more storm surge than Helene. So, if you stayed during Helene and got lucky, I would not press my luck with this particular system.”
Despite Fiske’s words, the deputy said that officials had not planned to evacuate the jail, saying it had not flooded to that extent in the past.
Guards are also expected to remain inside the prison when the storm hits.
Reportedly, the jail has stocked up on supplies and sandbags. Should it flood, prisoners will be moved to the top floor of the building.
UNILAD have approached Manatee County Sheriff and Jodie Fiske for additional comment.
Hurricane Milton is expected to be so strong that experts are said to be considering creating a new category for it.
Category five hurricanes are storms with winds that are ‘157 mph or higher (252 km/h or higher)’, but on Monday Hurricane Milton reached winds of 180mph.
Retired federal scientist and science advisor Jim Kossin, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory climate scientist Michael Wehner released a paper earlier this year where they discussed a ‘hypothetical category six’ category with a minimum threshold of 192 mph.
Elsewhere, they noted that ‘a number of recent storms have already achieved this hypothetical category six intensity, and based on multiple independent lines of evidence examining the highest simulated and potential peak wind speeds, more such storms are projected as the climate continues to warm’.
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