CAPE CORAL, Fla — The United States Coast Guard is advising the public to stay off the water unless they are playing a critical role in response of Hurricane Ian and that this is not the time to disaster sightsee.
Residents looking to get back to their homes on the barrier islands, the U.S. Coast Guard is asking those boaters to stay out of the way of boats directly involved in the response to Ian and keep your wake to minimal. The U.S. Coast Guard also says there is a lot of debris in the water that could damage your boat. They add that many channel markers and buoys have been displaced. And even if there was once a known channel, shifting sands could make that waterway shallower than you might be used to.
The U.S. Coast Guard is also responding to thousands of locations to clean up the pollution in our waterways.
“We have crews that are already on the ground, and we have crews that are looking at satellite imagery to find those pollution spots and those hot spots,” said Petty Officer First Class Ashley J. Johnson, U.S. Coast Guard. “And have already determined that there is about just over 3,000 areas that we are trying to target.”
In order to prevent duplicates, the U.S. Coast Guard is asking folks not to put in multiple National Response Center or NRC reports for the same location. The U.S. Coast Guard says they will begin working on the cleanup of these sites as quickly as they get the first report.
