Tampa Bay Mayor Jane Castor didn’t hold back.

“Helene was a wake-up call, this is literally catastrophic and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Castor warned.

 

 

Echoing the first responder’s messages, the Mayor warned people to evacuate NOW.

“The number one message, as it has been for several days now, is that you need to prepare. Do whatever you need to do and then get out of the evacuation zones which now are evacuation zones A and B, and as we all have heard so many times now, you hide from the wind and run from the water and we are talking about, right now, the possibility of a direct hit with 10 to 12-foot tidal surge — put that in perspective, Hurricane Helene, which just left the Tampa Bay area a week ago, there was 6-foot storm surge and that literally devastating to so many in our coastal areas.”

‘This is not a drill,’ she stated bluntly.

Just today she stated those in single-story homes who haven’t left that they will “ultimately be in a coffin”