Residents of the Florida Panhandle, where Hurricane Dennis hit on Sunday, face gasoline shortages, power outages and health issues ranging from mosquitoes to falls from ladders, according to John Agwunobi, Florida Health Secretary.
“It’s the days after a storm that are indeed more dangerous than during a storm,” Agwunobi told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. He said Dennis is responsible for at least seven deaths, including an electrocution of a 26-year-old man in Broward County on Sunday, four drownings elsewhere, and the death of a 3-year-old after falling from a vehicle in rural Walton County.
State officials on Wednesday were not yet including in their fatality statistics a 58-year-old man’s Friday night drowning in the Keys and a Pensacola man, 84, who was found dead in his home next to a gasoline-powered generator. Emergency officials found a high level of carbon monoxide.
Nearly all shelters in the Panhandle have closed and thousands of residents are in the throes of reopening businesses and beginning home repairs.
In the five-county area of the western Florida Panhandle hardest hit by Dennis, power remained out Wednesday morning for 127,000 customers. That was 43 percent of the residents of Escambia County, which includes Pensacola.
Agwunobi told the Sun-Sentinel hospital emergency rooms in the area have been congested with residents injured while cleaning up after the hurricane.
Gulf Power Co. officials said that they don’t expect full power restoration to the area until early next week. Agwunobi said health authorities are concerned about carbon monoxide poisoning from improper indoor use of power generators and food-contamination issues, as well as power-tool and heat-related injuries.
“Hospitals in the Panhandle are seeing an upsurge in injuries,” he said, adding that standing water has also created mosquito abatement issues.
Authorities acknowledged that many residents are growing frustrated by closed fuel stations due to low supplies and power outages at open gas stations.
“Fuel supplies are still going to be extremely tight into the next 24 hours,” Allan Bedwell, deputy secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, warned at a news briefing in Tallahassee.
Topics Florida
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