As Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm, heads toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, Tampa’s mayor went on CNN Monday with an urgent warning for those who end up staying in evacuation areas: “You are going to die.”
Jane Castor told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the storm surge—which is currently projected to be between 10 and 15 feet—would be disastrous for the low-lying area.
“My number one message, as it has been for several days now, is that you need to prepare, do whatever you need to do, and then get out of the evacuation zones, which now are evacuation zones A and B,” she said.
Castor noted that Hurricane Helene had a storm surge of only six feet, yet it was “devastating.”
“We have 126 miles of coast just in the city of Tampa, and so people need to be heeding that warning, and from the looks of traffic on all of our northbound highways, they’re doing just that,” she said, alluding to slow-moving lanes heading out of the city.
Addressing those who don’t evacuate in time, Castor said Hurricane Helene was “a wake-up call.”
“This is literally catastrophic, and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”
As of 8 p.m. Monday, Milton’s maximum sustained wind speeds were 180 miles per hour, making it one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record. It is expected to make landfall late Wednesday. As many as 15 million Floridians are under flood watches.
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