Facing Hurricane Milton: Floridians and Minnesotans share stories of escape and resilience
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Hurricane Milton is out to sea Thursday morning after churning across Florida overnight. Later Thursday, 13 members of the Duluth-based 148th Fighter Wing will arrive in Florida to help in the aftermath.
More than two dozen line workers and support staff from Minnesota Power, Superior Water, Light and Power from the Twin Ports will also arrive Thursday to help restore power to an estimated 2 million people in the affected areas.
This comes after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed an emergency executive order authorizing the Minnesota National Guard to assist in Florida.
Wednesday was a day full of anxiety and uncertainty for Florida residents who were trying to get out of the Tampa Bay area ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall by the evening. It was the second hurricane to hit the state in two weeks.
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Captain Brooke Majchrzak from the Minnesota National Guard and her search and recovery mission team members are set to work with the Florida National Guard, the Minnesota Joint Operations Center and others to help areas where the most relief is needed.
“We’re here to support, and just remember: We are a citizen force. We live here, we work here, we serve here. We’re your neighbors, community members, family and friends. We also support and defend our great nation,” Majchrzak told MPR News.
Milton’s aftermath: ‘It’s not only my stuff, it’s my dream’
Andria Nicholson is a former Minnesotan who moved from the Twin Cities to St. Pete Beach in 2020. Her home was hit badly by Hurricane Helene, and she needed to evacuate to Dunedin, Fla., which is more than 25 miles north of the island, and farther inland.
“My dream was to come down here and never see winter again. And I’m rattled, I’m shattered, I’m sad, I’m overwhelmed,” Nicholson told Morning Edition.
Nicholson said she was keeping herself busy in Dunedin and cleaning up the down branches and trees. “There’s no power, so we have the generator going so that the refrigerator is on … This is a nice overcast day, a little cooler than it's been, and we're just trying to clean up the rubbish,” she said.
After a sleepless night filled with worry, Nicholson was able to go back to St. Pete Beach and reported her house was still standing there.
Stories from our readers before landfall
Many Minnesotans are transplants, snowbirds or just have a vacation home in the Sunshine State.
Virginia LeBlanc is a Minnesotan who owns a house in ChampionsGate, Fla. Despite living 50 miles inland from the Tampa area her family insisted for her to leave. She ended up booking one of the last available plane seats Tuesday morning.
“I am at our Minnesota house this morning and feeling grateful to be here,” she told MPR News.
Katy Buytaert from Cloquet is a mother of two University of Tampa students, 19 and 21. She told MPR News how worried she is about the situation and hopes to see her kids soon.
“We are waiting to see what happens, but we likely will be heading down to get the kids from Tallahassee and return them to their places and see what happened in Tampa,” wrote Buytaert.
‘We’re going to trust our home builder’
While thousands of Floridians are fleeing for shelter, others prefer to stay home. Melissa Coon is a former Minnesotan from Chaska who moved to Florida three years ago. Coon is living in the Cape Coral area which is just outside of Fort Myers, and decided not to evacuate amid gridlock and gas shortages.
“We weighed the idea of, ‘Do we want to get stuck in traffic and have the storm hit and not have anywhere to go? Or do we say: OK, we’re going to trust our home builder,’” Coon told Morning Edition.
“We actually moved in about six weeks after Hurricane Ian, so this house has been tested. It is hurricane-rated. We have hurricane-impact windows. And so we decided to ride it out. We’re not in an evacuation zone, and I’m not in a flood zone.“
Coon invested in a generator and have stocked up on essentials, including a camping stove.
“Just pray for us and know that we come from a hearty stock so us Midwesterners will persevere.”
‘I think next October I’ll stay in Minnesota‘
Plans for some Minnesotans who were visiting Florida for vacation were interrupted. St. Paul resident Tim Dykstal drove down to Florida to stay in a shared family condo and play golf in Palm Harbor, about a mile inland from the coast.
With Hurricane Milton approaching the coast he needed to leave the condo and is taking shelter in a hotel in Orlando to ride out the storm. Dykstal says it was hard to find gas and accommodations, but he eventually secured a three-night stay.
“It was very hard. I looked around North of Tampa — that seemed to be the smartest place to go, but all the hotels were booked … Finally, I did find this place in southwest Orlando that had three nights consecutive. I’m going to stay here through Thursday, I think, and then try to head back,“ Dykstal told MPR News.
Dykstal said the hotel staff has advised guests about power outages and property damage, but no evacuation plans are in place.
“I was thinking that the next October, I’m going to stay in Minnesota because October is a beautiful month to be in Minnesota — and nice month to be in Florida except for the hurricanes.”
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