Florida News That Impacts You – October 5th, 2022
Bottom Line: Your daily recap of the biggest news from around the state that impacts you in South Florida. Gas prices continued lower through the weekend.
- Bucking the national trend, gas prices are a penny lower statewide today. The average price is $3.17 per gallon, or 23 cents lower than a week ago, due to the October suspension of Florida’s sales tax on gas. Independent of state gas tax collection, the price per gallon is two cents higher than a week ago.
- Florida has reached six-month lows with new COVID-19 cases. The 1200 new cases reported on Tuesday dropped Florida’s weekly trend for daily cases to 1518 – the lowest since April 4th. The low total is likely in part due to the impact of Hurricane Ian.
- Four looting arrests have been made in Fort Myers in the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Ian. Of the four looters – three are illegal immigrants. Governor DeSantis and the Lee County Sheriff have stated looters will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, while attempting to comfort victims that their property will remain safe while damage assessment continues.
- The death toll due to Ian in Florida has risen to 105 people, over half of which, 55 were in Lee County making it the deadliest hurricane in Florida since the 1935 Labor Day hurricane which killed over 400 Floridians. Overall power outages, which topped 2.5 million at the peak, have fallen to 400,000 as of this morning, an improvement of around 100,000 homes over the past day.