USA: Key barriers to evacuating Hurricane Milton
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On 7 October, as Hurricane Milton was just days away from making landfall in Tampa, Florida, the city's mayor, Jane Castor, issued a dire warning to residents in evacuation zones: "If you choose to stay … you are going to die."
But leaving one's home to avoid the category 5 hurricane is not possible for everyone.
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Cierra Chenier, a writer and historian from New Orleans, said that inequalities were only exacerbated by emergency situations.
"Any socioeconomic disparity that exists on a day-to-day is only going to be heightened during disaster," she said. "It's always those, the communities that are most vulnerable, that suffer the most." Before Hurricane Milton, the Florida department of health deployed nearly 600 emergency response vehicles to support evacuations, while the Florida division of emergency management is also offering free evacuation shuttles to shelters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) is currently providing some financial relief to victims of Hurricane Helene, the category 4 storm that ended on 27 September and killed more than 225 people throughout Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. But everyone who needs help may not receive it in a timely manner, or at all.
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