Fort Myers Beach, FL - Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marenco announced the county's death toll from Hurricane Ian has risen to 54 during a press conference on Monday.
Marenco, along with Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey and Fort Myers Beach Mayor Ray Murphy, delivered the update during Monday press conference on Hurricane Ian recovery efforts.
Sheriff Marenco announced that Emergency Operations Centers made the decision to close Fort Myers Beach to residents to preserve crime scenes, stating "when someone is deceased we have to make sure that we collect that evidence, we have to do it properly, we cannot contaminate the scene and the last thing we need is other people being in the way of that or being in an unsecured place where they could get hurt."
When it comes to looters, Marceno warned there will be "zero tolerance, I mean zero tolerance. We are in full force, we have quadrupled the number of law enforcement on the streets. We are not going to tolerate any type of looting."
According to the Lee County Sheriff's Office, there have been three different cases involving looting that have ended with arrests.
Sheriff Marceno also announced there's over 100 National Guard members deployed to the devastated area of Pine Island, stating “I’m proud to tell you with the assistance of our great Governor Ron DeSantis, as of this morning at 0700 hours we are working with FDOT to begin the construction of a temporary gravel bridge to get people on and off the island."
LSCO said their focus is on life-saving, law enforcement, and enforcing law and order in the county.