Emotional Florida man tells how his two
best friends died while saving their wives
during Hurricane Ian
BizPac Review,
by
MJ Smith
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
10/5/2022 1:36:22 AM
Feeling lucky to be alive, a Fort Meyers Beach man recounted his harrowing experience riding out Hurricane Ian in his Estero Island, Florida home.
Mike Yost spoke with Fox News’ Charles Payne on Monday’s ‘Your World’, telling the fill-in host that he lost two friends who heroically saved their wives’ lives during the storm surge. He admitted that he also “made a mistake” by staying in the southwest Florida community.
Basing their decision on 2004’s Hurricane Charlie, Yost and several others decided to ride out the category four storm rather than evacuate when officials issued a mandatory evacuation order for Lee County on September 27, one day before Ian made landfall.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Flyball Dogs 10/5/2022 2:59:06 AM (No. 1295728)
My heart aches for Florida.
But yesterday (on NPR? — not sure) one resident was already blaming the governor and city officials for not issuing a mandatory evacuation order.
1) we all have access to the weather
2) at this point, we’re still free to make our own decisions.
3) COVID proves mass compliance (for any situation) is almost here.
4) proves we are just about at a complete nanny state.
25 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
anniebc 10/5/2022 7:07:30 AM (No. 1295804)
Why people blame a governor or any elected official for the damage of a storm in individual cases is beyond me. I can see New Orleans and the lack of work done on the levees, but evacuation orders? I live in hurricane land; I know I'm making a choice to go or stay when a hurricane is coming. I do what I can to prepare, and I make a decision about my own life. What did the world do before government dependency became such a thing and personal accountability went by the wayside? Get a grip, people!
17 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
athina 10/5/2022 7:27:11 AM (No. 1295812)
Re #1 and 2: But the article states that they clearly chose to ignore a ‘mandatory evacuation order given by officials the day before the storm hit. I live in NY and I heard the FL govt call for people to evacuate and warn those who chose to stay that they were on their own because they put the lives of the rescuers in danger. Didn’t you??
27 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Rich323 10/5/2022 7:32:09 AM (No. 1295816)
This is the danger of having previous “hurricane experience”. They based their evacuation decision based on hurricane Charlie in 2004 which was a glancing blow compared to the slow moving intense Ian. They were told to evacuate in plenty of time was a bad judgment call on their part. So sorry for their loss of life —sad days.
9 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
downnout 10/5/2022 7:34:46 AM (No. 1295817)
Another tragedy that didn’t have to happen. I don’t know how widely it was reported but DeSantis worked with Expedia and others to find hotel rooms at discounted prices for evacuees. We also have shelters for special needs people, those with pets, etc. Most of us take hurricanes very seriously. Don’t be complacent when the Weather Channel tells you the storm track is such and such. The track can change…and did.
16 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
rikkitikki 10/5/2022 8:55:17 AM (No. 1295875)
Hurricanes are always deadly, and direct hits by Cat4 or Cat5 especially so.
If the storm surge doesn't drown you outright, then you risk getting killed by:
floating debris
collapsing buildings
secondary tornadoes
electrical shorts.
Under those circumstances, there is no credible reason to not evacuate...if your life has value.
Simply saying, "I didn't think it would be that bad" is an admission of having made a very bad decision.
11 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
NorthernDog 10/5/2022 9:27:35 AM (No. 1295902)
The tragic deaths are heartbreaking. Unfortunately being anywhere near a hurricane's path can be deadly. Back in the '70s category 1 Hurricane Agnes killed over 100 people who were hundreds of miles inland- Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Maryland, etc...
5 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Flyball Dogs 10/5/2022 10:17:20 AM (No. 1295966)
#3, I was referring to the man I heard interviewed on the radio.
He had NOT been issued an evacuation order and was blaming the government not telling them. Hearing an evacuation order and ignoring it is another discussion. But NOT hearing one, yet being of sound mind and free to hear all information and make the decision to stay is another issue.
Personal responsibility is the key.
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
red1066 10/5/2022 10:22:19 AM (No. 1295976)
You live in Florida which is almost hurricane central, and you blame another human for the result of a hurricane? The MSM will jump all over this. Any chance to trash a Republican. I'm not even in Florida and three days before Ian hit, the Weather Channel, Fox weather, Accu weather and other weather stations were telling people how bad it was going to get. If people decided to stay rather than leave, then that's on them. Where I live, we might get winds and rain that are basically a small tropical storm once every ten years or so, with winds that at most reach 60 miles per hour, and I start getting ready days before. I was a high school senior when hurricane Agnes came through our area, and it was just enormous amounts of rain. There was so much rain, the army Corp of engineers drilled holes in the Conowingo dam on the Susquehanna River in Maryland to blow up the dam because water was coming over the dam.
2 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
felixcat 10/5/2022 10:36:33 AM (No. 1295993)
I am not sure when this started but for the past many years as a hurricane approaches whatever state(s). Local and state government issues warnings, especially for those who choose not to follow mandatory evacuation orders that you are on your own if you need any assistance from local PD/Fire/EMT.
Once again, you are living on a barrier island and/or on the beach. What do you expect?
1 person likes this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 10/5/2022 11:53:42 AM (No. 1296119)
I'm very sorry for those who died, and these two died heroically. But it was so unnecessary, could have been so easily avoided. That is sad.
This is a real tragedy, but the root cause was the extremely poor choices that way too many people made to remain in their homes on barrier islands with a very powerful hurricane coming. At least Mr. Yost has learned that he made a serious mistake.
The best we can hope for is that people who have lived through this will have learned that evacuation of barrier islands is absolutely necessary for safety. And the weather guessers cannot accurately predict where the hurricane will go, so, necessarily, if a very wide area is evacuated, many will go home to homes which weren't right in the brunt of the storm, and who might conclude, "Well, I needn't have wasted my time and money evacuating, so I won't bother next time."
They should take a good look at the places that were hit the hardest and know that that level of destruction could have come to their location, but for a random wobble of the hurricane's path. Evacuation zones need to be wider than "necessary" because we don't know where the storm will actually track.
0 people like this.
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