CLEARWATER, Fla. – Residents of the Tampa Bay area were still cleaning up two-week-old damage from Hurricane Helene Monday as powerful Hurricane Milton again put the devastated region in the crosshairs of a major storm.
On Gulf to Bay Boulevard in Clearwater, Local 10 News spoke to a man boarding up his home.
“Helene was pretty calm compared to, I think, what’s going to happen next,” he said as he cleaned up Helene debris in his yard. “Not very fun. It’s better than what those North Carolina’s got going on. But if we drove down into the Bellaire over there, into the ‘fingers’ (neighborhoods) and those guys get hit pretty hard, too. So we don’t know what’s going to happen this time here.”
As of early Monday afternoon, in Pinellas County, there was a mandatory evacuation order for long-term care facilities, assisted living facilities, hospitals in certain areas.
6 p.m. report:
Residents are wondering if that order will extend to the entire county.
“If they tell us to evacuate, we’ll get out of here,” the man said. “But where are you going to go by the time you start the — I mean, it’s like an island kind of over here, so it’s going to be hard to get out of here.”
Meanwhile, near St. Petersburg, resident Evelyn Newton said after staying to protect her home during Helene, she’s leaving this time.
“I will never ever forget the sound of the water coming into the house,” Newton said. “All of a sudden it just made this horrible whooshing, gurgling sound and started coming in everywhere.”
She escaped to the home of her neighbor, Mark Wilgshire, who says he’s also not taking chances.
“This was definitely a wakeup call,” he said. “They cry wolf over and over and over the years and everybody panics and leaves. They only gotta be right once and they got us.”
Tampa International Airport plans to suspend flights Tuesday.
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