Governor DeSantis blames legal ‘loophole’ on shortage of generators at gas stations, but probably won’t fix it

Governor Ron DeSantis says it wasn’t his fault that gas stations didn’t have generators after Hurricane Milton, but that despite statutes requiring generators in many circumstances, he has no desire to tighten what he calls a “loophole” in the law.

While Florida law mandates that gas stations must be able to operate on “an alternatively generated energy source for a minimum of 72 hours… a maximum of 36 hours following a major disaster,” the law granted in facilities built before 2006, and offered exemptions for gas stations based on arbitrary population cuts.

In counties with 300,000 or more residents, the law applies to stations with “16 or more gas stations.” In counties with between 100,000 and 300,000 inhabitants, the limit is 12 gas stations. And in smaller counties, the state says eight is enough. Chains with more than 10 locations must provide a portable generator, but the law appears to let smaller providers off the hook.

“I think it was written in a way that if you want to conduct your operations without being covered by this, you can. So I think there’s a lot of them… they’re kind of a loophole. They did it this way,” DeSantis said Monday in Porto Marinho manatee.

At the weekend, when implementing public fuel depots, DeSantis spoke tougher about gas stations that didn’t buy basic equipment that could have made a difference. He said that while “a lot of these gas stations, frankly, should have generators, from what I saw very few of them used them, especially in the areas that were hit the hardest.”

However, the chief executive pushed back on such condemnations, explaining the business case for these companies not to worry about quick energy fixes, while offering vague assurances to “look into the issue”.

After all, Florida is more efficient than ever at restoring electricity.

“I think some of these stations, they think that because we provide all these electricians, they probably won’t be available for two, three weeks, like maybe in the past. And so I think they think it’s cheaper to maybe just wait,” DeSantis said, adding that about 1 in 10 accounts are open now in Sarasota and Manatee, about four days since Milton left the state.

DeSantis’ “sense” on the issue “is that you have to figure out how much you want to dictate from the state or how much you want to just work collaboratively on some of these things. And to say that we’re going to impose almost everything, I don’t know if that’s necessarily the best approach. I mean, the fact is that these are private companies, fuel supply is a private sector. We are not Venezuela.”

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