Before Hurricane Milton’s devastating landfall on Wednesday evening, millions of residents decided to flee. That wasn’t an option for about 1,200 inmates at the Manatee County Jail, which is in a large evacuation zone near Sarasota, Florida. Local authorities decided not to evacuate the prisoners, and so they remained in prison through the storm, which brought widespread flooding, property damage and high winds to the area.

They weren’t alone. According to the New York Times, the Manatee County Jail is one of many that has decided not to evacuate. Pinellas County and Lee County, two others on the Gulf Coast that were in the storm’s direct path, also did not evacuate their jails, according to a news conference from Pinellas County and a spokesman for the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. (The Manatee County and Pinellas County sheriff’s offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The plight of Florida inmates is just the latest example of how vulnerable incarcerated people are during natural disasters when they have no control over their mobility or exposure to dangerous situations.

As the Appeal and the Fort Myers News-Press reported, officials in Manatee, Pinellas and Lee counties argued that they could move inmates to higher floors in the event of flooding and storm surges. Manatee County officials also described the prison as “hurricane-prone,” while Pinellas County officials cited the logistical challenge of moving 3,100 inmates from the facility during the storm as a reason for their decision.

The Lee County Jail was fully staffed and had water tanks on standby, the spokesman said, noting that all inmates were safe as of Thursday afternoon. The main facility lost power during the storm, the spokesman added, but there were no other “notable incidents.”

The Manatee Sheriff’s Office also told the appeals panel that the inmates had been “storm safe” since Thursday and that the power had been turned on and off, but they had not lost running water. The Pinellas Sheriff’s Office told the publication there were power issues and no running water issues.

The Florida Department of Corrections (DOC), which oversees state prisons, said in an update released Thursday morning that “all staff and inmates in the path of Hurricane Milton have been accounted for.” According to the DOC, 5,950 inmates have been evacuated from 37 facilities across the state at this time.

The DOC has also said its public list of evacuated facilities has a lag and may be incomplete because it is not updated until 24 hours after inmates are transported. It told Vox that it weighs several risk factors when considering evacuations, including “the path of the storm… timing, traffic disruptions, the risks of evacuating occupants, and the conditions of the facilities being evacuated.”

In total, more than 28,000 people were confined to facilities in counties for which either full or partial evacuation orders had been issued, and many were not evacuated, the appeals court reported.

Decisions not to evacuate certain facilities stood in stark contrast to dire warnings from regional leaders that areas in the storm’s path would have to be abandoned and that people would face “life or death” if they did not. For example, the Manatee County Jail is in Evacuation Zone A, an area that was at high risk of flooding.

“We do not issue evacuation orders lightly,” Manatee County Public Safety Director Jodie Fiske previously said in a news release. “Milton is expected to cause more storm surges than Helene. So if you had stayed during Helene and were lucky, I wouldn’t push my luck with this particular system.”

Florida inmates aren’t the first to be forced to seek shelter during a major hurricane. When Hurricane Helene hit last month, 550 men in North Carolina were left in flooded cells at the Mountain View Correctional Facility for five days without light or running water, Intercept reports. Previously, during Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of prisoners were left without food and water after staff at Orleans Parish Prison fled.

Incarcerated people are often neglected when it comes to ensuring their safety during natural disasters, but they are often exploited as labor following the same situations. In Louisiana, incarcerated people provided cleanup and recovery work after Hurricane Francine in September, and in California, they have been crucial in fighting wildfires for years. While some of these duties provide an alternative path to rehabilitation or allow inmates to hone new skills, none come with the same job protections in terms of safety or wages that other workers generally receive.

“The incarcerated population is doubly vulnerable,” Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, told Vox. “First, they are often overlooked or deliberately ignored… when disaster strikes, and then after the disaster they are expected to turn around and clean up the mess.”

There are no federal requirements to ensure the safety of incarcerated people during natural disasters, Kendrick told Vox. And although policies vary from state to state, a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that only six states mentioned safety protocols for incarcerated people in public plans that detail their emergency response measures, while 24 mentioned the use of their Disaster preparedness workforce mentioned.

“This patchwork becomes even more patchy when you go to the local level of prisons, because there is significant local control over how prisons operate,” Mike Wessler, communications director for the Prison Policy Initiative, told Vox.

And although there is a Supreme Court decision setting a safety standard for inmates, experts note that lawsuits over mistreatment continued after the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act in the 1990s, which made it significantly more difficult for prisoners to file civil lawsuits face a tough fight. Prisons and correctional facilities also have limited federal or state oversight, meaning their work often has little regard for accountability.

As a result, incarcerated people in general, and during natural disasters in particular, are particularly vulnerable to neglect and other abuses that can endanger their health and lives. In previous Florida disasters, such as Hurricane Ian in 2022, inmates described a lack of running water, including a lack of potable water as well as unflushable toilets.

Kendrick and Wessler found that prisons and jails suffer from a lack of preparation for these increasingly common natural disasters, as well as a general lack of concern for the well-being of inmates. To carry out an evacuation, these facilities need agreements with other facilities to transport inmates, large group transportation, fuel and other resources – proposals they must implement before the actual emergency.

As a basic requirement, states and counties should have policies that apply mandatory evacuation orders to inmates just as they do to other non-incarcerated people, Kendrick said. (Although the government is not forcing people to leave, it is technically illegal to be in a mandatory evacuation zone during a storm.)

The federal government could also tie disaster assistance to states to their evacuation policies to ensure occupant protection, attorney Maya Habash explained in the University of Maryland Law Journal. Federal laws such as the Stafford Act and the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which require the government to provide resources to protect vulnerable populations, could also be amended to include references to prisoners to make it clear that they are also recipients of funding should be. And the federal government could issue clear regulations outlining how prisons and jails must treat their inmates during natural disasters.

“I think the federal government should set national standards for prisons and jails and emergency response, and those should be the floor, not the ceiling, of what places need to do,” Wessler told Vox.