Florida gas stations running low on fuel amid Hurricane Milton evacuations

Floridians fleeing Hurricane Milton on Tuesday faced shortages at gas stations in addition to congested roads.

“Every highway is dead-stop traffic it seems,” said Chris Cain, a resident of Sanibel Island readying to evacuate Tuesday with his girlfriend and 8-month-old. “There are fuel outages throughout the area, so there’s navigating that to even get to” the hotel 20 miles inland that the couple booked earlier in the week, Cain told CBS MoneyWatch.

As of late morning on Tuesday, nearly 15%, or 1,146, of Florida’s 7,912 gas stations were without fuel, Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told CBS MoneyWatch. Hardest-hit are the Fort Meyers/Naples and Tampa/St. Petersburg areas, where percentages were running far higher. In Cape Coral, as many as 50% of stations were without fuel, De Haan said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attempted to assuage supply concerns, asserting at a Tuesday morning news briefing: “There is no fuel shortage. Fuel continues to arrive in the state of Florida,” the governor added. 

Although technically correct, the governor’s assertion doesn’t necessarily pass the smell test, according to De Haan. “You can’t tell someone outside a pump with no gas that there’s no shortage,” he said.

The issue, according to De Haan, is not a lack of fuel, but that the system of refueling can’t keep up with demand, he said. “Some of the bigger names, if they run out, it could be an hour or two — but some stations could be out [for] 24 hours.”

According to Gas Buddy, a technology company that tracks the locations and prices of gas across the U.S., as of 11:10 a.m. ET, the percentages of stations without fuel in major Florida cities were:

• Fort Myers/Naples: 27.79%
• Gainesville: 24.71%
• Jacksonville: 1.55%
• Miami/Fort Lauderdale: 1.05%
• Pensacola: 0.57%
• Orlando/Daytona Beach: 14.68%
• Panama City: 0.00%
• Tallahassee: 2.06%
• Tampa/St. Petersburg: 43.06%
• West Palm Beach: 1.51%

De Haan said those without an immediate need for gas should not be racing to fill up. “This is not an event that is going to cause gas prices to skyrocket,” he said.

But calmer heads don’t always prevail, as Cain recalled a chaotic scene earlier in the week at the Walmart in Fort Myers Beach as residents readied for the storm.  “People were ripping cases of water off the pallets as they were brought from the back of the store,” Cain said.

—The Associated Press contributed to this report.