Two people were charged with looting a home damaged by Hurricane Idalia in Florida's Big Bend region, as residents' concerns grew that burglars could be tempted to hit other hurricane-ravaged homes since law enforcement is stretched thin in the remote, wooded area along the Gulf Coast.
Some residents of Horseshoe Beach, Florida, one of the communities hardest hit after Idalia made landfall Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane, urged law enforcement to set up checkpoints where people would have to show identification in order to get into the town.
The authorities “did really good,” Ford said. “Now, the only thing I've seen where they've dropped the ball is you can come right into Horseshoe without showing you're a resident or anything like that. That's a problem, especially with no power. You've got to have somebody here keeping out everybody other than the residents.”
The officer found the man and woman loading up items from the waterfront home into a rented pickup truck. One of the suspects told deputies that the homeowner had given him permission to remove items from the house on stilts. But the homeowners told deputies when contacted that they had done no such thing, according to a statement from the Dixie County Sheriff's Office.
“We are taking strong action against this criminal activity,” the sheriff's office said in the statement.On Saturday, there were more than 61,000 Florida residents and 8,700 Georgia residents without power due to Idalia. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden headed to Florida Saturday for a tour of the hurricane-damaged area.
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