DeSantis urges Floridians to follow evacuation orders, but they ‘do not need to drive hundreds of miles’

At a press conference on Monday morning, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged residents to follow evacuation orders in advance of Tropical Storm Idalia, which is expected to make landfall as a hurricane later this week. However, he did caution Floridians that when evacuating, they don’t necessarily need to “drive hundreds of miles” and leave the state to seek safety from the storm.

Video Transcript

RON DESANTIS: Evacuation orders. I urge Floridians to heed the admonitions and heed the directives from your local officials. There are going to be evacuation orders issued in all these Gulf Coast counties in the A and B zones. All the barrier islands, places that are low lying on the coast, you are going to be told to evacuate. So just understand that. And that will be true probably from Pinellas, maybe even Manatee, all the way up through the Big Bend.

Keep in mind, if you're told to evacuate, you do not need to drive hundreds of miles. You do not need to leave the state of Florida. You basically need to go to higher ground. In almost every instance, you can go tens of miles to a shelter, to a hotel, to a friend's house, whatever works for you, and you'll be able to ride out the storm.

The key is to not be in those areas that are going to be hit with big-time storm surge and that are going to potentially have life-threatening situations. And so tens of miles, not necessarily need hundreds of miles. And the more people that do a more limited evacuation, a more local evacuation, you're not going to have the highways and the roads clogged.

So it's not necessary to try to outrun the storm. Just get to higher ground, get in a structure that is going to be able to handle the hurricane. Ride it out, and then you'll be able to go back to your property and inspect whatever damages. So more local evacuations. You do not need to flee to Alabama, Georgia. You don't need to drive hundreds and hundreds of miles.