Daniel Souza, City Manager of Sanibel Island had a quick message at 9:30am this morning (09/30/22) encouraging people to not attempt to go on the devastated island. Listen, watch or read now:
First, I want to say that the island is unsafe to access. There was major devastation on Sanibel and we are working hard to continue with our search and rescue operation today.
We will have an urban search and rescue team today on the island that is going to be assisting the police and fire departments with this tremendous task. So I'm asking people to remain patient with us as we go through this tedious process.
Second, I want to say that there is a county-wide curfew in effect in Lee County that includes Sanibel and we are not going to allow people to access the island.
Currently we have police on the island 24 hours a day. We have police on the island now and we will have police on the island tonight.
We have also requested assistance from the National Guard in order to maintain security on the island. So I want to re emphasize, I did say this last night, there is a curfew in Lee County, and that includes Sanibel.
And we are asking people not to come to the island. We need to control access. We need to make sure that our teams that are conducting the search and rescue operations have the ability to do that.
At the same time we have crews that are starting to begin some cleanup work, so we have access to the roads. For these emergency situations and we are getting teams on the island slowly.
That's the purpose of today's message and we will have an update, I expect, at 6:30 tonight. So please stay tuned to our news releases for when when our next message will be.
But to say it one last time, please do not try to access Sanibel by boat. We will turn you away. Until we have a good understanding that the island is safe for residents to return and then we will make that message.
Please help us by staying off the island, that will allow us to continue the operations in a systematic process.
Thank you.
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