Floridians reconsider staying home as Hurricane Milton edges closer

SARASOTA, Fla. — Chris Smith hustled to the entrance of his local Sarasota Walmart Tuesday afternoon looking to stock up on food, water and other supplies as Hurricane Milton approached the western Florida coast.

Smith, 62, said he's doing something different to keep safe from the storm: He's leaving his Sarasota home.

"I have a friend that lives downtown in one of the high-rise condos, so I can park my car at a higher level. There's no way that building's gonna be affected," Smith said.

Before driving over there, he is fortifying his home's windows. Seeing the massive destruction of Hurricane Helene, which was a Category 4 when it hit Florida nearly two weeks ago, has Smith feeling paranoid about this storm, he said.

"It's very serious," he said. "And I never feel that way. With all the information, all the numbers and everything, it's going to be destructive," he said.

Communities like Sarasota, Tampa and Fort Myers, and others along the western Florida coastline, are bracing for what officials warn will be a life-threatening storm. Storm surges are predicted to reach up to 15 feet high and several towns were placed under a mandatory evacuation.

The National Hurricane Center and Florida officials are using dire language to communicate the storm's threat to residents. Surprisingly, the usually hurricane-hardened Floridians appear to be taking it seriously. Cameras with the state's Department of Transportation showed crowded highways filled with evacuees heading north away from Milton's trajectory Monday evening.

Smith, from Sarasota, said he'd normally consider driving away from his home and into Georgia, but saw the traffic and decided against it because he's concerned about potential gas shortages.

"The issue is you're driving and there's nowhere to get gas. Everybody's filling their take up. So I bet half the gas stations are empty," he said. And if he wanted to drive to Georgia, he believed it was unlikely to find a gas station with fuel.

Early Tuesday, Florida officials said there weren't fuel shortages, but that lines at gas stations have been long with increased demand.

"We have been dispatching fuel over the past 24 hours as gas stations have run out. We have an additional 1.2 million gallons of both diesel and gasoline that is currently en route to the state of Florida. Fuel continues to arrive in the state of Florida by port," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a press conference Tuesday morning.

At least one gas tanker truck was seen driving along the highway south to Sarasota with state police escorts.

GasBuddy's Fuel Availability Tracker showed that as of 11 a.m. ET, 43% of gas stations in the Tampa and St. Petersburg area run out of fuel. About 28% of stations in the Fort Myers/Naples area were out of gas.

Floridians remember past destructive storms

In other areas of the state, it's not Hurricane Helene's recent devastation or fears of Hurricane Milton that are top of mind, but rather a storm from two years ago.

In Fort Myers, the fears of Milton impacting the city like Hurricane Ian did in 2022 are palpable.

At least 149 people were killed in Hurricane Ian due to flooding, brought on by 15-foot storm surges, and 155-mph winds. It was the third-costliest hurricane on record after Katrina and Harvey.

Robert Parker, 37, stayed in his house with his son and fiancé when Hurricane Ian hit. His property is near the Caloosahatchee River, an area prone to floods due to the storm surge. During Hurricane Ian, they almost drowned.

“My son was two at the time,” Parker told NPR. “I had to pull my fiancé, my son, and our dog out the window.” It took him a year and a half to rebuild his home, he said. But now he and his family are leaving it, at least for now. The handyman went to Home Depot on Tuesday morning to buy some plywood to put up as hurricane shutters in his house. They are staying in a hotel inland.

“We are going to board everything up and ride it out in a hotel,” Parker said. “And then as soon as the storm is done I gotta get back to the property and make sure everything is alright.”

But city officials continue to deal with residents refusing to evacuate. Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson has been encouraging people to leave and to expect the worst due to the unpredictability of the storm. “My suggestion is you prepare yourself like it’s going to be a dead-on bulls-eye hit on Fort Myers,” Anderson said in a video posted on Facebook Monday. “Anything less would be a blessing.”

Linda Husz, a retail worker in downtown Fort Myers, said it seems people in her town have listened to the mayor’s words.

“I know more people leaving this time than ever left,” Husz told NPR. But she’s not leaving. “This is home and I want to guard the fort,” Husz said, adding she had hurricane shutters and a generator. “So I’ve given myself some degree — whether it’s false or not — a sense of security, and I’ve done all I know to do.”

Jaclyn Diaz reported from Sarasota and Sergio Martínez-Beltrán from Fort Myers, Fla.