Florida Fuel Outages Grow as Residents Evacuate Ahead of Hurricane Milton

Wedoany.com Report-Oct 10,Nearly a quarter of Florida's gasoline stations were out of fuel on Wednesday afternoon as residents rushed to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Milton, which some fear could become one of the most destructive storms ever to hit the state's Gulf Coast.

More than a million people in coastal areas were under evacuation orders, clogging highways and causing fuel shortages from Tampa to Orlando in a region still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago. Milton is expected to slam ashore in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area late on Wednesday.

About 24% of nearly 8,000 gasoline pumps in Florida were out of fuel as of 12 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, up from over 17% the previous evening, according to market tracker GasBuddy. Outages were most severe in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area with more than half of the regional stations out of gasoline.

Other regions in the predicted path of the storm also reported high outages. Over 35% of stations in Fort Myers-Naples area were out of fuel, and about 27% of stations in the Orlando-Daytona Beach area were empty, GasBuddy data showed.

U.S. gasoline demand jumped by 1.1 million barrels per day in the week ended Oct. 4, the biggest weekly increase since 2001, according to government data. The data does not breakdown state-level demand, but analysts said stockpiling by retailers in Florida was partly behind the surge.

Florida is the third-largest gasoline consumer in the United States. There are no refineries in the state, so it depends on fuel shipments from elsewhere by land or water.