A.G. Gancarski
As Tropical Storm Milton begins its fateful path toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, the state’s Governor is abandoning Operation Blue Ridge, leaving the recovery mission in what he calls “Florida North” to the locals.
Ron DeSantis is saying that the multiagency initiative that involves the Florida State Guard, Florida National Guard, Florida Department of Transportation, Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Florida law enforcement’s efforts “to go up and to effectuate rescues of people who are not able to get out of those areas” is coming to an abrupt end with an almost certain landfall of a major hurricane in one of Florida’s major population centers.
“Our folks did their duty on that,” DeSantis said.
Those state assets “currently assisting in North Carolina and Tennessee” will “return the necessary equipment and personnel home ahead of Milton’s landfall” and will be “home, manned up, ready to deploy in Florida, should those assets be needed to respond to Hurricane Milton,” he said during a press conference at the state Emergency Operations Center.
The abrupt end of the out of state rescue mission comes after the Governor likened Florida’s response to storm damage in the Blue Ridge Mountains to “bring people back to safety … just like we did when Oct. 7 happened and Floridians were caught up in the Israel-Hamas war, just like we did when Haiti started going even more haywire than normal.”
DeSantis said the state didn’t need federal manpower after Helene, saying the state had it “handled”
“We have what we need,” he said at a presser Monday. “We’re going to be bringing people to safety. I don’t think they have any major way to get out of those western North Carolina places right now. That’s going to require us doing the air missions.”
The Governor stood up Joe Biden during his visit last week to survey storm damage. The President was met by local Democratic officials in Tallahassee, with DeSantis and the Cabinet seemingly unwilling to be photographed with Biden.
“No reason. We had this planned,” DeSantis said to reporters during a midday news conference with other state officials in Anna Maria. Though the flight down there took roughly 40 minutes, apparently the event simply couldn’t have been rescheduled so he could meet the President.
14 comments
Frankie M.
October 6, 2024 at 12:38 pm
What about all those Republican voters in FL North? Is Ronnie just going to abandon them?
Victor Von Doum
October 7, 2024 at 11:39 am
Fingers crossed, yeah
Nelly Korda
October 7, 2024 at 12:04 pm
They won’t say something about that too. Lol!
KathrynA
October 6, 2024 at 2:33 pm
The state needed these people when DeSantis sent them north–people homeless and more and he did a political stunt. It would have been fine to help North Carolina if Florida also hadn’t taken the brunt of this extreme storm. Just makes me wonder why he left his state without this needed help.
ScienceBLVR
October 6, 2024 at 3:07 pm
Exactly! And all the Floridians who will find themselves out of their homes after these storms will see more examples of lax ineffective leadership from DeSantis and his GOP predecessors when they try to use their property insurance.
Operation Blue Wave - Begin!
October 6, 2024 at 3:09 pm
Abort operation blue ridge and commence operation blue wave!!! The blue wave is coming!!! These are the mistakes that are made when politics get in the way of common sense! The nonsense takes over! Ronnie, you’re fired!
Phil Morton
October 6, 2024 at 8:22 pm
Meanwhile, about 10,000 Floridians have been without power for 11 days. Taking care of Florida should trump trying to score political points and a useless waste of taxpayer dollars.
FLPatriot
October 7, 2024 at 7:18 am
Next time, Don’t play political theater and keep our emergency crews at home to prepare. Everyone except DuhSantis knows this is peak season and we will need to NOT waste money sending people back and forth to other states.
Nelly Korda
October 7, 2024 at 12:05 pm
That’s right! Someone has to say it!
SallyB
October 8, 2024 at 5:10 am
Just another hit piece of yellow “journalism” propagated by Florida Politics, corporatist legacy news media, and leftwing activists. Shame on you all.
KathrynA
October 8, 2024 at 9:31 am
This is true and DeSantis announced it–they left while our state was (and still is) a mess with flooding, devastation from the storm. It’s okay to help other states when your own state is doing fine. This was not the case!
Maria Linelli
October 8, 2024 at 6:40 am
My husband and I watched Governor DeSantis’ news conference yesterday, in which he publicly thanked President Biden, adding that he had spoken with President Biden. I’ve read a reported White House statement confirming that President Biden had spoken with both the mayor of Tampa and Governor DeSantis.
Maria Linelli
October 8, 2024 at 7:14 am
My husband and I have fiends in the mountains of western North Carolina, and those whom we were finally able to reach. They thanked Floridians for Operation Blue Ridge and profusely praised our Governor, not only the National Guard, FWC, State Guard, Florida State Troopers, the Blackhawk helicopters deployed in search & rescue operations, and thousands of temporary bridges designed to reopen washed-out infrastructure to facilitate transportation while more permanent repairs can be made.
KathrynA
October 8, 2024 at 9:34 am
You probably have seen that other northern states not affected by the hurricane are there as well as FEMA and the Army Corp of Engineers and countless disaster relief agencies. We needed the national guard here–have you looked at videos of the impact of Helene here and so much more needs doing and now another storm approaches. This was not the appropriate time for him to send our help out of state–another time perhaps, but not a day or two after Helene hit directly here.
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