Hot News - International. For the past several days, residents of Florida and neighboring states have been desperately trying to get out of the way of Irma, one of the largest and most powerful hurricanes ever recorded. But the exodus has been hampered by another hurricane that struck two weeks earlier more than 1,000 miles away.
Mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders covered almost 7 million people across Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. But many residents pulled into empty gas stations as they tried to flee the storm.
The worst was Gainesville, where 70 percent of gas
Particularly for Florida residents, the shortages exacerbated what were already stressful preparations for a massive, threatening hurricane. Some were #
stranded on the sides of highways and abandoned cars #
clogged evacuation routes, while other families were #
stuck at home due to high gas prices and low fuel levels.
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| Blame Hurricane Harvey |
But the gas crunch is also a stark illustration of the narrow bottlenecks in US energy infrastructure and how disruptions to energy production from extreme weather in one area can harm other regions.
“Harvey obviously shut down a vital connection Florida has to gasoline supply,” said Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy who I spoke to from Tallahassee, where he’s helping emergency responders. “Florida receives almost all its fuel, every gallon, from Gulf Coast refineries.”
Up to a quarter of US oil-refining capacity went offline ahead of the Texas hurricane as surging floodwaters inundated plants. These refineries are massive, billion-dollar industrial facilities and it will require weeks to assess flooding damage and restart production, continuing to cut into gasoline and diesel supplies around the country.
Source:www.vox.com
