CAPE CORAL, Fla. — Roughly 2.5 million people in Florida are under some kind of evacuation plan awaiting Hurricane Ian’s arrival.
Cindy Ardis-Jenkins, a Peoria Native now living in Cape Coral, Florida,
says they’re far enough from Punta Gorda, where the eye of the storm is expected to hit, to stay put. Though some locals are evacuating.
“We’re Evacuation Zone D, and they only evacuated A-C, so I think we’re far enough inland and not on a canal…that yeah, there’s going to be flooding for sure, but we’re not in that 12-18 foot, or even six foot storm surge,” Ardis-Jenkins says.
She tells WMBD’s “The Greg and Dan Show”, her family started putting hurricane shutters up on Monday, and finished up Tuesday.
“We watched real closely, and obviously the winds are the main concern for us right now…just because we’re not in that serious storm surge zone. We’ve thought about evacuating, we’re still thinking about it, we’re not terribly flooded, we could still get out of our neighborhood, Ardis-Jenkins says.
If they do end up having to evacuate, Ardis-Jenkins says a hurricane shelter has been set up at the nearby high school.
Officials are telling residents in the Cape Coral area that power outages are inevitable, though they haven’t started yet.
Florida Power and Light has reported roughly 40,000 power outages so far.
Another WMBD News follower communicated through Facebook Messenger, seemingly unimpressed with the storm’s impact further north near Clearwater, FL.
“People are still out walking their dogs,” said Brandon Callaway, who says he moved to the Clearwater area 5 months ago. “I’ve received so many messages so far and I just wanted to let everybody know, we’re ok,” he said in a recorded video message.
“They have 60,000 trucks and staff on-hand to respond. They’re staged at the Punta-Gorda Airport with all these power and light trucks, so they can respond at any moment, following everything,” Ardis-Jenkins says.
Hurricane Ian is expected to make landfall early Wednesday evening.
