As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida, many residents find themselves confronted with gasoline shortages and price gouging in the rush to stockpile or evacuate.
As of Tuesday evening, 17.4% of Florida's 7,912 gas stations had run out of fuel as thousands of residents flee the storm's path, according to data from GasBuddy.
Despite the long lines and widespread outages, Governor Ron DeSantis assured residents that there is no fuel shortage, as the state has been stockpiling gasoline ahead of the storm.
"The sheer bulk of this is simply people getting out of harm's way," Patrick De Haan, head of analysis at GasBuddy, told CNBC. He added that gas prices should remain stable as the storm isn't expected to effect gasoline industry infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the Florida Attorney General's office is investigating over 160 cases of price gouging amid the chaos. The average price for a gallon of gas in Florida is currently $3.103, according to AAA.
"We just came off of the last storm and now going into another," Anna Maria Fiallos, a consumer protection investigator for Pinellas County, told WFLA. "There's a lot of devastation and unfortunately in any situation, even in a disaster, there's bad actors that will take advantage of it."
Lipow Oil Associates president Andy Lipow warned that terminals in Tampa could be vulnerable to flooding and storm surges, potentially disrupting fuel distribution in the area through the weekend, CNBC reported.
Milton is currently a Category 4 storm and is forecast to arrive on Florida's central west coast Wednesday night.
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