A common concern of people contemplating the purchase of an electric vehicle is what they would do in an emergency. Florida’s state government showed the answer to that question during evacuations for Hurricane Milton when the Department of Emergency Management positioned ten mobile charging stations along evacuation routes to ensure EV drivers wouldn’t run out of power.

The state positioned chargers on Interstate 75 and on I-4, where drivers could be expected to drive while fleeing Hurricane Milton. The chargers were 50-kilowatt DC fast chargers, which are far from the fastest chargers available but which can be expected to add a meaningful amount of driving range within 20 to 30 minutes.

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Drivers of combustion-powered vehicles are not exempt from fuel concerns, as drivers quickly bought out all of the available gas in many stations, leaving some drivers with little fuel in their tanks and no place to get more.

An important difference between EVs and combustion vehicles in the kind of traffic jams that emergency evacuations cause is that combustion vehicles continue to burn down their fuel level even when stationary, but EVs don’t use any power when they aren’t moving, other than the electricity used for lights, entertainment, and HVAC.

Related:Blink Mobile Charger is a Virtual Gas Can for EVs

In a blizzard situation, HVAC loads in an EV would be considerable. But in temperate Florida, stationary EVs would use little range-sapping power. The good news for evacuees: The chargers were free and could accommodate CCS, Tesla’s NACS, and Nissan’s CHAdeMO charge plugs.

The bad news: There was only a single charging cable at each of the ten stations. So it could take a while if multiple drivers needed a charge.

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In the aftermath of Milton, with widespread power outages, Tesla says it is fielding mobile Supercharger stations powered by the company’s Megapack battery packs.