As Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida as a tremendously powerful storm, officials in the Sunshine State are preparing for yet another disaster in a span of less than two weeks.
Officials are ordering mandatory evacuations in Florida, which many are heeding.
Several major hubs shut down ahead of the storm’s arrival including Orlando International Airport and Tampa International Airport. About two dozen flights heading out of Reagan Airport in D.C. to central Florida are canceled Wednesday.
Here’s what you need to know.
The evacuees
Renae Davis, of St. Petersburg, and her husband have spent the past two weeks helping flood victims nearby in Madeira Beach following Hurricane Helene. But her family has now evacuated with Milton threatening their home.
Davis and her husband own a boat shop. They’ve been ferrying supplies, including food, to people on barrier islands struck by Helene where Davis called the devastation “overwhelming.”
“We went to Restaurant Depot, bought about enough food to feed 600 people,” Davis told WTOP.
She worries this storm could flood their home.
“I have a high level of concern for our home,” she said. “When the storm was projected to hit us dead on, I had a couple of good crying sessions just preparing to have nothing when we came back.”
After Milton passes through, the couple plans to come back to help those people in Madeira Beach.
Bob Gervey moved to Tampa after Hurricane Ida, thinking it would be a safer area.
“We were told they had no hurricanes there for 100 years, so we were going to be situated just fine,” Gervey said.
Since the move, he’s evacuated four times — counting Milton.
“We live in a condo on the seventh floor, and it’s a little bit away from the water,” he said. “We were never mandatory evacuated and we never had damage, but this time it’s mandatory.”
Milton could be the first storm in a century to land a direct hit on the populous Tampa Bay region. The area is still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall 100 miles north of Tampa in late September.
“This is déjà vu, and we actually took a ride last week after Helene and looked at one of the islands that we would frequent. It’s very charming, very cool — Davis Island — and that looked like post-Katrina flooded,” Gervey said. “The whole island was underwater. And the nice little village, with all the nice little boutique stores and sort of nice little chic sort of restaurants — all the furnishing was all on the street.”
One of the homes inundated by Helene belongs to former WTOP commentator Chris Core, who now lives in the Tampa area.
“Our home was taken away by Helene. It was still standing, but it’s not livable, and then this is coming along, as we were trying to fix it up and now we’ve evacuated,” Core said. “In order to find a place to go where we can get in, we had to drive all the way to, basically Disney World, because everybody in the Tampa area is trying to get the heck out before the next one comes. So, it’s just about as bad as it could possibly be.”
Core said his town, Pass-a-Grille Beach, is “history,” and will likely never be recovered.
“I’m not a kid anymore, so at my age this is really tough. But we’re coping the best we can,” Core said.
Eileen Gaul lives in the Riverview suburb of Tampa. Sunday, while getting ready for the storm, she had to go to three different gas stations just to fill up. At the third station, she had to wait about 20 minutes.
Grocery shopping was also a challenge.
“Sam’s Club did not have one roll of toilet paper. They had all the big packs of paper towels, but not one roll of toilet paper. It’s the craziest thing,” she said. “Bread was another big thing. There was no bread. You had to either get rolls or some kind of English muffins, things like that. Loaves of bread were gone.”
After seven anxiety-ridden years in the Tampa area, Gaul said she’s planning to leave Florida.
“It’s beautiful to look out at the ocean, but when you got to worry about all this, you know, six months out of the year … it’s time to go,” Gaul said.
WTOP’s Dick Uliano contributed to this report.
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