Evacuees travel up East Coast as Hurricane Milton takes aim at Florida

CHARLOTTE — Floridians from the Gulf to the Atlantic coasts are boarding up windows and stocking up on sandbags in preparation for Hurricane Milton.

”Everything that was outside, the grill, doormats all of that stuff is in the garage,” said David Peveler, an Orlando resident. “So there’s nothing outside that the wind can pick up and throw around.”

Hurricane Milton could make a direct hit on Tampa and St. Petersburg.

The storm previously weakened, but the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Hurricane Milton is once again a Category 5 storm.

Some families are choosing to get out of the Sunshine State.

Peveler took a break from driving from Orlando to Virginia Tuesday at a rest stop on Interstate 77 at the North-South Carolina border.

He thinks Florida deserves a break after back-to-back hurricanes.

“The ground is saturated,” he said. “We’ve had so much rain that there’s nowhere for the water to go.”

Some decided to stay in Florida.

Nanette Leonard moved to Florida 12 years ago to be close to her mom.

She said she left their condo in Punta Gorda, about 100 miles south of Tampa, to ride out the storm about 10 miles inland.

“My mother is going to be 102,” said Leonard, a Punta Gorda resident. “And we can’t go that far because she can’t sit that long.”

Leonard said in a Zoom interview that she hopes the 10 miles from the shore will keep them safe.

She doesn’t know if she and her mom will return home to flooding, fallen trees, or worse.

However, she’s trying to stay positive.

“Worry is a wasted emotion,” Leonard said. “It’s not going to stop anything. It’s not going to help anything. It’s just wasting your energy for right now.”

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