BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At a press conference this morning, Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward and other local officials said there would be no local curfew for Hurricane Milton, but they urged everyone to stay indoors during and immediately after the storm.
13 crashes during Hurricane Helene power outages
Ward discussed the possibility of tropical storm-force winds and power outages, then continued, “but let’s be honest, that’s not why you’re here today. You could have learned all that in other places. You’re here because we talked at the City of Gainesville about the potential, the idea, of a curfew overnight, Wednesday night going into Thursday. The reason that we considered that is that two weeks ago, during Tropical Storm/Hurricane Helene, we had about three-quarters of our traffic lights go dark and stay dark for a good long time, more than 170, I believe, traffic lights, intersections, lighted intersections went dark. The City of Gainesville is responsible for those traffic lights. They’re powered by GRU, and the power wasn’t there. So we responded by sending police officers to as many of those intersections as we possibly could, but there were a total of at least 13 car crashes at those dark intersections. We don’t want that to happen again. So our goal here is to encourage folks to stay off the roads.”