new York
CNN
—

Hurricane Milton hit Florida days ago, but the consequences were devastating Storms are still causing chaos at gas stations.

Hundreds of gas stations in Florida are still out of gas, including about half of the stations in the hardest-hit area of ​​Tampa.

Florida residents lucky enough to have access to functioning gas stations often find themselves standing in long lines. And tensions have increased as fights have reportedly broken out over access to gas.

The good news is that help is on the way, as ships carrying gas are expected to reach Tampa in the next few days. The number of gas stations without gas has now fallen sharply.

The bad news is this Experts assume that it could take a few more days until the situation returns to normal.

“I expect the headaches in Tampa to ease significantly over the next two to five days, but there may be ongoing outages for another seven to 10 days as gas stations catch up,” said Patrick De Haan, director of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

De Haan said there should be “very noticeable” improvements for the rest of the state in the next few days and the situation should return to normal in 5 to 10 days.

Starting at 1 p.m. ET According to GasBuddy, 17.3% of Florida gas stations were out of fuel on Monday, up from 33.2% on Sunday afternoon.

This represents a significant improvement, although it still means more than 1,300 gas stations in Florida remain dry five days after Hurricane Milton made landfall.

Nearly half (49.9%) of the 1,801 gas stations in the Tampa area were out of fuel as of Monday afternoon, GasBuddy reports. That's a significant drop from 87.5% on Sunday afternoon and the first time below 50% since Wednesday.

The problem is that Florida relies heavily on Port Tampa Bay for fuel shipments from Gulf Coast refineries. More than 43% of Florida's gas, diesel and jet fuel consumption is transported through this critical piece of infrastructure.

There are no pipelines delivering gas to the region to meet Florida's daily demand of 20 million gallons of gas.

According to FEMA, 70 million gallons of gasoline and other petroleum products will be delivered to Tampa over the next seven days.

Although Port Tampa Bay reopened Saturday morning after avoiding what some feared would be catastrophic flooding, it was not operating at full capacity. Shipping traffic was restricted to daylight and one-way trips, affecting the port's ability to accommodate fuel.

Another problem is that analysts say some gas stations near Port Tampa Bay and Port Manatee have not reopened. This limits how much fuel these terminals can receive from ships and prepare for loading onto trucks for delivery.

As a result, some of the fuel destined for Tampa gas stations cannot leave the ships.

“Things are being backed up,” said Andy Lipow, president of consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates. “Outside of Tampa Bay, there's over 30 million gallons of fuel waiting to arrive, and they can't because of one of these issues.”

Lipow hopes that the fuel situation will return to normal by the end of the week. The key, he said, is when Port Tampa Bay can fully reopen.

Anxious drivers in the Tampa area face long lines, and the frustration sometimes reaches ugly proportions.

The Pasco Sheriff's Office said Friday that it had received “numerous calls for assistance regarding disputes and altercations” at gas stations in Pasco County, which is north of Tampa.

“We recognize that demand is high and frustration may be great as fuel companies work to replenish supplies, but we urge you to be patient and respectful of others,” the sheriff’s office said from Pasco in a statement.

A security guard at a Tampa Bay Wawa told Fox 13 that customers were involved in scuffles.

“A girl hit another girl with her car, they were really fighting over gas… We had to call the police because they were really crazy,” the security guard said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said officials are doing everything they can to get fuel supplies to where they are needed, including providing escorts for tankers through highway patrols.

The state has opened several public gas stations where customers can get 10 gallons of gas for free each.

However, these free gas stations were at times overloaded.

At one location in St. Petersburg on Sunday, the gas line stretched several blocks long and had to be temporarily shut off by police, according to the Tampa Bay Times. One woman told the newspaper she waited more than four hours for gas and advised others to bring food and water if they wanted to leave.

“These lines are slow. Really slow,” she said.

The gas station outages highlight how vulnerable the region is to supply disruptions and spikes in demand.

Demand for gas surged last week as millions of Floridians followed evacuation orders and others filled their tanks to power generators.

Although the Gulf Coast has abundant additional fuel supplies, local regions often do not. They typically work with so-called “just-in-time inventory,” where they only receive what they would normally need.

“For the most part, it works like a well-oiled machine,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. “But when there's a disruption, 'just-in-time' can become simply unbearable. We’ve seen that in the last few days.”

Kloza said this is particularly true in the Tampa area, as the region relies heavily on Port Tampa Bay for fuel deliveries.

“I think this will largely go away,” Kloza said. “By Wednesday or Thursday you will see gas everywhere and there will be no more fights at the pump.”