Hurricane Helene: Minnesota transplants share how they’re weathering the storm
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After slamming into Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday, now Tropical Storm Helene has left at least 30 people dead in four states according to an Associated Press tally.
Thousands of residents were left in deep water, contending with damage, power outages and mandatory evacuations — including some Minnesota natives.
Heather Forness moved to Dunedin, which is a few miles north of Clearwater on Florida’s Gulf Coast, from south Minneapolis eight years ago. On Friday morning, she said her neighborhood was littered with branches and debris. Forness said she and her husband were lucky to still have power in their home and have been helping their neighbors charge phones and other necessities.
Like for all other hurricanes that have come their way, the couple chose not to evacuate.
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The combination of taking time off of work, packing up three dogs, the cost of lodging and travel, and the potential of the storm hitting while driving outweighed the risk of staying, Forness explained. She said she’d rather be blown away in her home than blown away in her car on a highway.
And thanks to doing “a little homework” before buying, the couple’s home is on much higher ground than many of their Pinellas County neighbors. It’s also about three miles from the Gulf and another three miles from the bay, making rain-driven local flooding the biggest threat, rather than storm surges.
Forness said she feels far less anxious than she did in 2017, during her first storm since moving.
“It definitely gets less scary with time,” she said. “When Irma came, I was terrified. And now I'm just kind of apprehensive when the storms come. Less terror, more excitement.”
Unlike Forness, Cheryl Magnuson was quick to leave.
Her home situated on Boca Ciega Bay falls under a mandatory evacuation zone in western Pinellas County. She moved from Minnesota to Florida in the late ‘80s and has lived through several big storms since. But staying behind this time, in the path of the forecasted 20-foot storm surge, seemed unimaginable.
“I don’t like watching that water rise. I’m not going to do that. There’s nothing that’s worth that,” she told MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer Thursday afternoon from her in-laws’ home in Tampa. “I’ve been in plenty of storms where we weren’t ordered to evacuate. And they’re very interesting to watch. But if somebody says it’s going to be that bad, I’m out of there. I‘m not going to stick around.”
Kenzie Stein is of a similar mind after a traumatic experience earlier this year.
Stein moved to Panama City Beach last November from Minnesota. In January, a tornado outbreak hit the area, killing one person, injuring several others and destroying some buildings. The National Weather Service concluded an EF-3 twister touched down and traveled for more than five miles across land and water.
“They don’t do sirens like we do in Minnesota. So there was no warning, except for the buzz on your phone, that’s almost like an Amber Alert, and then pretty much said there’s a tornado on top of you,” she recalled Friday morning. “I just dove into my bathroom. That’s all I had time for.”
She moved to an apartment complex in St. Petersburg, also in Pinellas County, less than a month ago. Early in Helene’s forecast, Stein asked for advice on Facebook and ultimately decided not to stick around and wait for the storm to hit. She opted for a hotel in Orlando, about two hours inland.
While packing up to return home, her apartment management company let her know the power was restored and to get any maintenance requests in as soon as possible.
“I’m kind of blind going in, what to expect. I am in a first-floor unit, so we’ll see,” she told MPR. “But I got most things off the floor, so if anything floods — this is a nice thing about renting — the floors will be on the apartment complex. So I’m also fortunate in that aspect. It’s not my home.”
In New Tampa, just northeast of Tampa proper in Hillsborough County, Olivia Lavin was prepared for the worst but woke up feeling lucky in her apartment complex.
“There really wasn’t, like, any flooding, nothing like that. No trees are down. There were branches and leaves and stuff like that, and, like, big puddles, but no flooding,” she said Friday morning. “I’ve just seen the videos on TikTok and Instagram of everybody else in Florida getting these horrible floods. And that’s kind of what I was expecting.”
Originally from Maple Grove, Lavin moved to Florida to pursue a PhD two months ago. With the best of caring intentions, friends and family back home worried, fueling her own fear while her new neighbors remained almost eerily calm.
“There wasn’t like, a huge rush at Target and Publix and stuff like that. Instead, people were kind of just casually buying water,” preparing to “hunker down for the next few days,” she said. “So I kind of decided to play along with everyone here in Tampa, rather than in Minnesota.”
The hours of waiting for the storm to hit and power to go out were mostly in vain, as her lights stayed on and what reached her “was just some wind and rain.”
“Lucky me,” Lavin said.
MPR News producer Alanna Elder contributed to this story.