Some Florida Jails And Prisons Evacuated Ahead Of Milton, But Many Incarcerated Remained In Storm's Path

Ahead of Hurricane Milton, thousands of inmates were evacuated from jails and prisons in Florida. But many weren’t, despite being in counties with evacuation orders.

The Florida Department of Corrections evacuated 4,636 inmates across 28 facilities. But sheriff’s offices in Manatee, Lee, Pinellas and St. Johns counties said they had no plan to evacuate local jails before the storm, Tampa Bay 10 reports. A Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson described the jail as a “secure building” where employees and inmates would be safe. 

A Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said Orient Road Jail, a facility located in mandatory evacuation Zone A, is transporting inmates to Falkenburg Road Jail in evacuation Zone E, which is equipped to sustain the storm.

Other state prisons in places with evacuation orders, including Hernando, Pasco, Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte and Lee counties have not evacuated.

Julie Reimer, a Florida resident who asked to be identified by her maiden name in fear or retaliation, has family members in FDC’s Charlotte Correctional Institution and Hardee Correctional Institution. She said she called the facilities Monday and Tuesday to check on their status and was told they did not plan to evacuate.

“They said their buildings are able to sustain a storm like this,” she said. “They seem to think this storm is not serious.”

Reimer worries about her son, who is an inmate at one of the facilities, and the organization’s lack of action when it comes to protecting inmates ahead of the storm.

“When my son was sentenced, he was not given a death sentence,” she said.

Multiple jails and prisons in hurricane-hit states have previously failed to evacuate incarcerated people during a natural disaster, despite being located in a mandatory evacuation zone, the Guardian reports.

In South Carolina, at least two prisons were not evacuated during Hurricane Florence in 2018. “In the past, it’s been safer to leave them there,” a spokesman for the South Carolina department of corrections said, the BBC reported.

During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hundreds of incarcerated people were left in the Orleans parish prison for four days during the deadly storm, left locked in their cells amid rising flood waters and without food or water.