Floridians Face Emotional Toll of Milton Right After Hurricane Helene

Floridians are bracing for their second hurricane in three weeks, and the stress and uncertainty of facing back-to-back storms is taking its toll.

Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall later on Wednesday, Oct. 9, after rapidly intensifying as it moved across the Gulf of Mexico this week, according to forecasters.

Residents along Florida’s Gulf Coast are still cleaning up from Hurricane Helene — which hit the Big Bend region as a Category 4 storm in late September — and streets are still lined with debris.

But now, as locals on the western coast around the Tampa Bay area are being urged to evacuate or prepare to hunker down, Floridians say they are bearing a heavy load.

“It’s scary,” Angelina Stow told USA Today at a gas station in Fort Valley, Ga. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re kind of blind right now.”

Renae Davis, of St. Petersburg, told news station WTOP that she got emotional when she learned a second hurricane was on its way so soon.

“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,” she said.

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Authorities in Florida have delivered dire warnings about the dangers associated with Hurricane Milton, particularly around escaping the expected storm surge from the ocean.

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told CNN on Monday, Oct. 7, “If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die.”

“This is something that I have never seen in my life,” Castor said at the time. “And I can tell you that anyone who was born and raised in the Tampa Bay area has never seen anything like this before. People need to get out.”

Many residents are heeding the warning. Jake Keglor, of Seminole, Fla., told CNN that he typically stays put for hurricanes but that Helene drastically changed his perspective.

“I had never seen the stuff that we saw,” Keglor said. 

Jose Lopez told ABC affiliate WPLG that this is his first time evacuating for a storm and “we’ve been here since 2007,” he said.

Still, some residents said they feel helpless. Ninda Menegias, who lives in St. Petersburg, told NBC News she has returned to a nearby hotel where she stayed during Helene, which brought “about 4 feet” of water into her mobile home.

Now, she is being asked to evacuate again. 

It’s a difficult time for Menegias. “It’s a mobile home, but I paid a lot of money,” she said. “I lost everything. I don’t know what to do.”

Walter Smutz, a military veteran who is disabled, told NBC News that he is homeless after Helene, which flooded his mobile home as well. He and his wife have been sleeping in their vehicles ever since, he said. 

“Right now, I’m homeless and scared to death,” said Smutz. “I’m worried about getting on my feet. I just want a home. I don’t care what kind of home.”