Several Florida jails and prisons are refusing to evacuate their residents ahead of Hurricane Milton despite being in the evacuation zone of the storm.
Manatee county jail, which has 1,200 incarcerated people and is located on the south-east side of Tampa Bay, in the path of the hurricane that was roaring towards it across the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, will not be evacuating, a representative of the jail told Newsweek on Tuesday.
The jail falls within the Zone A evacuation area, the outlet further reported. Those in Zone A could face a storm surge of up to 11ft and are supposed to be evacuated first, according to the Manatee county evacuation guide.
“We do not issue evacuation orders lightly,” said the Manatee county public safety director, Jodie Fiske, Newsweek reported. “Milton is anticipated to cause more storm surge than [Hurricane] Helene. So, if you stayed during Helene and got lucky, I would not press my luck with this particular system.”
How much do you want to bet that they don’t even have a contingency plan to evacuate and secure their inmate population?
That’s the first thing I thought, got to get the maximum profit out of prisons, contingency planning costs money and it probably won’t happen anyway…