TAMPA, Fla. — Residents across the Tampa Bay area are bracing for Hurricane Helene to make landfall Thursday night. Numerous residents faced evacuation orders more than 32 hours before the storm hit Florida's coast.
Hillsborough County officials were among the first throughout the region to issue mandatory evacuation orders for residents in Zone A and for all mobile homes and manufactured housing within the county starting at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
The evacuation orders caused Floridians to flood search engines with questions, mainly asking how "mandatory" the orders were, according to Google Trends. The difference tends to be tied to severity, rather than potential criminal persecution.
Emergency management officials throughout the country use "mandatory" evacuation orders as a protective action in natural disasters and emergencies to save lives. The orders signal to residents that no first responders or public service workers will be in the area to provide assistance until after the emergency subsides.
“If someone does not evacuate the Beaches, are we going to go in and find them or enforce a law against them? No," Former Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry previously said during 2016's Hurricane Matthew. “But they will have no access -- it’s important that they know this – they will have no access to public safety workers, or any other government needs that they may need, particularly during a storm or after a storm.”
Police historically haven't arrested individuals who have ignored mandatory evacuations, but some states list the refusal as a criminal misdemeanor. Flordia, however, does not list any criminal charges for those who refuse mandatory evacuation orders in the "Evacuation" section of the state's "Emergency Management" statutes.
