Ken Wood, 58, a state ferryboat operator in Pinellas County, fled his Dunedin home on Florida’s Gulf Coast with his 16-year-old cat Andy, after making the “harrowing” mistake of riding out Hurricane Helene two weeks ago in his mobile home.
They heeded evacuation orders and headed north but only made it as far as a hotel about an hour’s drive away when he decided the roads were no longer safe.
“It was pretty loud, but Andy slept through it all,” he told Reuters by telephone.
He is worried about his home but was awaiting official word that the roads are clear before returning. Helene destroyed about a third of his neighbourhood, and the streets were still piled with rubble that could have become wind-driven projectiles.
AUTHORITIES “LEARNED A LOT OF LESSONS”
Jason von Meding, executive director of AmeriCorps programme GatorCorps, told CNA’s Asia First Programme about their involvement in responding to Milton.
The group is based across Florida and has an agreement with Cedar Key city to help out with recovery work and reduce risk in the long term.
“The authorities, I think, learned a lot of lessons, maybe from (Hurricane) Katrina, from a lot of failures, and a lot of the emergency management that we see kicking into action is very professional and very prompt,” added von Meding, who is also an associate professor at the University of Florida’s Rinker School of Construction Management.
He noted that residents of Gainesville, where he lives, expected much stronger winds and rain than what came.
“Personally, I was kind of spared the dramatic effects that others experienced. But it’s part of living in Florida,” he said.
“What is unexpected is the frequency of destruction in the last couple of years.
“If you’re living in the Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Tampa area, there’s been just a series of devastating storms, and some people have now been been flooded three or four times in the past couple of years.”
