Hurricane Irma is hurtling towards South Florida, and the threat of catastrophic damage is forcing residents and businesses to grapple with finding a balance between self-preservation and maintaining order.
There were several cases of tensions boiling over as Floridians scrambled to secure emergency supplies and evacuate their towns.
On Tuesday, a shopper at a Home Depot in Miami was left bloodied after a man allegedly punched him during an argument over plywood, one of many supplies flying off store shelves, WPLG Local 10 reported.
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Gas was another product in short supply; on Wednesday, a man at a gas station pulled a gun on another driver following a dispute over prized fuel, the Miami Herald reported.
Meanwhile, with Irma’s landfall less than two days away, one government official had to remind employers that employee safety needs to take precedence over workplace productivity.
“They are making them stay at work and they will be working until they close for the storm, somehow that seems wrong,” Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais said on Friday, according to the Naples Herald.
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“In this case, it really would be the right thing to do for employers to allow the employees time to secure their property and family.”
Elsewhere, some of the thousands of Floridians scrambling to get flight tickets out of the region complained about price-gouging.
Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist accused United Airlines of advertising tickets at 10 times the usual rate — despite its competitors capped their prices — and urged federal authorities to investigate the airline.
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“While I understand the fundamental economic principle of supply and demand, no company engaged in interstate commerce should exploit an emergency to take advantage of the people,” Crist wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao.
United Airlines later said it added six additional flights out of Miami and capped ticket prices at $399, a spokesperson told Snopes.
Hurricane Irma is expected to make landfall in Florida early Sunday.
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