With the escalating conflict in Iran, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state is moving quickly to get Floridians and other Americans in Israel out of harm’s way and to safety.
During an early morning news conference Thursday at Tampa International Airport, DeSantis called the mission very complex.
“This is not the first time that the state of Florida has led rescues in situations like this. But I will say, given what’s happening over there, given that you have a barrage of missiles being launched by a very hostile regime into Israel, given that the airport’s totally shut down, given that the neighboring areas aren’t exactly easy to navigate, this is probably the most challenging and logistically difficult mission that the Florida Department of Emergency Management has done, certainly in my time, and I don’t think there’s been anything like it,” DeSantis said.
According to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the state has already helped return hundreds of Americans from Israel, and evacuations are ongoing.
UNCUT: Press play below to watch DeSantis’ full news conference.
South Florida resident Josh Hammer, an editor for Newsweek, was evacuated along with his family, who had been visiting the area for a family wedding.
“You’re essentially living on pins and needles for the sirens to go off,” said Hammer, who is Jewish. “And then you have 90 seconds to 2 minutes to basically take, in our case, our 6-month-old baby, and just run to the bomb shelter.”
But Hammer, a political commentator from Broward County, pointed out even the bomb shelters aren’t a guarantee of safety.
“We’re dealing here not with these lower-level Scud missile-type mortars. We’re dealing here with Iranian ballistic missiles. These are no joke,” Hammer said.
He said his first instinct as a political analyst would not necessarily have been to flee the conflict, but as a father, the turning point came overnight Sunday when two people tragically died in the Israeli center while they were in a bomb shelter.
“The bomb shelter did not protect them because the ballistic missile was a direct hit,” he said. “That was kind of my impetus to say, ‘OK, we need to figure out how to get the heck out of here.’ Not an easy thing to do, by the way.”
He said that’s when he spotted a social media post by Florida State Sen. Jay Collins about the operation Florida was conducting with Grey Bull Rescue to evacuate Americans from the Middle East.
The exhausted and grateful father then described his family’s “marathon journey” through Jordan to Cyprus and then safely back home to Florida.
“The whole week has just been a total blur,” Hammer said. “I feel like I’m not even here right now physically.”
Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie explained that Hammer and his family were on the second flight of returning Americans.
“As of today, we have flown over 300 individuals, and we have put on a passenger ferry over 1,100 more and facilitated that,” Guthrie said. “Evacuation flights are still ongoing as a part of Florida’s unprecedented mission to bring our residents home. This operation will continue 24-7 with the safety and well-being of Americans and Floridians as our top priority.”