The Lee County Operations Center is urging people to find a safe place to be by 11 p.m. Saturday night. But with shelter space running out in Lee County, that might be getting harder for some people.
In a 4 p.m. media briefing Saturday, County Manager Roger Desjarlais urged people to find safer shelter.
"People who are in those flood zones need to leave," said Desjarlais.
He said those are areas that flood during regular summer thunderstorms. But, he said space in shelters is running out.
Desjarlais said it’s physically impossible to accommodate all of the people that need to be sheltered. The shelters that still have space, as of Saturday night, are Germain Arena, Mirror Lakes Elementary, North Fort Myers Academy for the Arts and Veterans Park Rec Center.
If there’s no shelter, Desjarlais said go inland and go east.
"In the event people cannot get to a shelter, they need to start thinking about refuge of the last resort, which is simply finding a place where they can get out of the wind and get out of the water," he said. "And it may be scary as hell, but they will survive."
Lee County Emergency Management Director Lee Mayfield said the window is closing to leave.
"This is not just a beach event," said Mayfield . "This is going to go more inland than people might expect. It's going to start going hill later this evening"
The presence of law enforcement at shelters was highlighted. That’s because background checks which are usually done before people can get into shelters have been suspended in order to get people to safety more quickly. Law enforcement is at shelters to ensure everyone’s safety.
