Drivers across Central Florida are facing mounting frustration as many gas stations remain out of fuel days after Hurricane Milton, leaving motorists scrambling.
Some stations are posting signs reading, “We don’t have gas, sorry for the inconvenience,” or have been entirely closed off by caution tape.
“We ran out of gas actually,” said Demetrice Naulings, who works at a BP station at the corner of John Young Parkway and Orange Blossom Trail.
His station had no fuel available until Tuesday night.
“Customers would come inside and say, ‘Is it any gas?’ and we’d be like, ‘No, unfortunately, we don’t have any gas right now because of the hurricane,’” Naulings said. “Most people were mad or looking for gas because they have to go to work or they’re on their last.”
Naulings noted that some customers were desperate after trying multiple stations.
“Oh no, people were like this was their 10th, 15th, or dozen times trying to get gas. Some people were even coming from Daytona and Sanford,” he said.
Naulings said he contacted the fuel supplier daily for updates.
“The gas company was telling us that because of the hurricane, they were trying to get trucks out, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to,” Naulings said.
Nearby, a Wawa station had taped off all its pumps Wednesday, indicating no fuel was available.
Despite the frustrations, Gifford Briggs, Gulf Coast Region Director for the American Petroleum Institute, reassured residents that there is no fuel shortage in Florida.
“There is no shortage of fuel in Florida at this time. All of the terminals and ports that provide fuel from all over are filled with fuel, and trucks are running as quickly as possible to restock the gas stations,” Briggs said.
However, he added that even after a hurricane passes, safe transportation remains a challenge.
“Just because the hurricane passes doesn’t mean that trucks can run safely on the road,” he said.
Briggs also explained that emergency responders and health care providers are prioritized for fuel deliveries.
Some stations that had fuel couldn’t pump it due to power outages.
“It could’ve been that the backup generators they had weren’t working, or they didn’t have generators in the first place,” Briggs said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed concerns over gas stations being required to have backup generators during a conference on Monday.
“I think it was written in a way that if you want to conduct your operations to not be covered by that, you can. So I think there’s a lot of them that are in kind of like a loophole,” he said.
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