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.
