Before hunkering down in their home in Davenport, between Tampa and Orlando, Caymanian Chandel Green and her family were making last-minute preparations Wednesday for the arrival of winds and rain from Hurricane Milton.
The Category 3 storm made landfall near Sarasota, Florida on Wednesday evening and was expected to bring catastrophic conditions through Thursday morning.
Green’s mind was on her mother and 82-year-old grandmother, both of whom are in the evacuation zone in the Tampa area but don’t want to leave.
On Wednesday morning, Green was keeping a close eye on the weather forecast for the storm, which, at that point, was a Category 4 hurricane predicted to bring huge sea surges and devastating wind damage.
As of noon, 15 of Florida’s counties were under mandatory evacuation orders, with residents being warned that their windows of opportunity to leave were getting smaller as the storm barrelled toward the state.
Worried about family
Green’s mother and grandmother live in Temple Terrace, about 10 miles northeast of downtown Tampa.
“My mom is in the evacuation zone but she has decided to stay, and so has my grandmother,” she said.
“I called both of them and asked them to come to my house, but my grandmother said she’d been in her house for 50 years and she wants to stay and try to protect her house … My mom says she’ll be OK because she has a second storey.”
But, she said, she’ll be worrying about them throughout the storm, while she, her husband, three children and four dogs are riding out the hurricane in their Davenport home.
Green says she was in Cayman for 2004’s Hurricane Ivan, “so I know what to expect, except the houses here aren’t concrete like a lot of those in Cayman, so it’s a bit more worrying”.
She said the area where she and her family live is “kind of hilly” so she’s hoping that will protect them from severe flooding.
“We have our go-bags packed and ready in case we have to run out very quickly, with our important documents and passports,” she said.
By 10am Wednesday, she said, they were already starting to experience light rainfall.
“There’s no wind just yet,” she told the Compass by telephone.
Despite being inland – about 65 miles from the coastal city of Tampa – Green and her family were prepping for the storm.
“Everyone’s doing their last-minute preparations, and a lot of stores are already closed,” said Green, adding that the power company had advised that the area was likely to be without electricity for a few days following the passage of the storm.
“We have an electric generator and a grill with coal to cook on,” she said.
Seeking shelter
Anne Rice, a Caymanian living in St. Petersburg, an area that is under a mandatory evacuation order, said she’d already left her apartment, which was badly flooded in Hurricane Helene two weeks ago.
“I got packed up and I got on the road, and I’m actually in Sanford, Orlando. I am safe,” she said over WhatsApp.
She added, “I’ve been in touch with most Caymanians up here and I think everybody’s found somewhere to be. I feel blessed that I have somewhere to be.”
After finding a storage unit in Brandon to put belongings she had saved from her flooded apartment, she headed to Sanford on Monday, at a time when the roads out of the area were already busy, as others evacuated ahead of the storm.
“What would ordinarily be a two-hour drive was a four-hour drive, but it was a safe drive. Actually, they opened up the left shoulder for an extra lane so it made a huge difference in the traffic,” she said.
She added, “I was glad I got out then.”
Hunkering down
Caymanian Shania Rodriguez, who lives in New Tampa, about 20 miles inland from the coast, says she’s not in an evacuation zone, so she is staying put with her family.
“Me and my family are staying here. We are prepped up and we’re hunkering down at our place,” she told the Compass by telephone Wednesday morning.
“We’re in a second-floor apartment, so I think we’ll be OK,” she said. “Our windows are fairly sturdy. They’re north-facing windows. We taped them up.”
She said nearly everyone in her building has decided to stay put.
Rodriguez, who moved to Florida from George Town about 15 years ago, said her area had not been badly impacted by last month’s Hurricane Helene, which devastated communities across the southeastern United States.
She says she has friends who live in the evacuation zone, who have left.
“Some came to this area, and some went south toward Bradenton and the Fort Myers area,” she said.
At 10am Wednesday, Hurricane Milton was moving northeast towards the Florida coast at 17 miles per hour, with wind speeds of almost 145 mph.
“Milton is expected to remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane when it reaches the west-central coast of Florida tonight, and remain at hurricane strength across the Florida peninsula through Thursday,” the US National Hurricane Center in Miami reported.
Cayman, despite its distance from the storm, is nonetheless being impacted by southwesterly winds and rough seas, which are forecast to continue over the next 24 hours as the hurricane moves towards Florida, according to the Cayman Islands National Weather Service.
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