Irish expats living in Florida hardly slept throughout Wednesday night, with some considering themselves fortunate to be alive as Hurricane Milton, described as potentially “the worst storm to hit Florida in over a century”, carved its way across the state.
Karen Catterson Lapierre, originally from Ballybofey, Co Donegal, said she was “lucky” to wake up on Thursday morning.
Despite being situated within Hernando County, which is under a mandatory evacuation order, the 48-year-old nurse, her partner Mike and their dog Spencer stayed in their home in Brooksville, a city on the west coast just north of Tampa as it was “too late” to leave before the storm.
Ms Catterson Lapierre was working late on Tuesday night when the local fire service drove through her neighbourhood alerting residents to leave immediately. She said a flat tyre, “completely backlogged” roads out of her area, sold-out petrol, and the potential looting of evacuated houses meant “the decision was kind of made for me”.
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Her power went off at about 10.30pm on Wednesday, and she doesn’t expect it to return for days if not weeks. “I’m relieved to wake up this morning, there’s no damage to the house and we can get a generator. I’m just glad there was no loss of life in this neighbourhood. The personal possessions can all be replaced but human life can’t,” she said.
Throughout the night, Ms Catterson Lapierre, who has lived in Florida for some 15 years, heard the crashing of trees and debris hitting her roof and windows, though her house, a newer build deemed to be hurricane-proof, received little to no damage.
“Some of the neighbours lost roofs, some of them lost carports and some of them have trees that fell on to their houses, so we’re lucky,” she said, counting about 12 neighbours who had received such damage.
Ann Dillon, meanwhile, a 62-year-old retired nurse from Mullingar who has lived in Florida for 30 years, was awake “all night”, keeping in touch with other Irish expats across the state.
“How could you sleep with it? It’s unbelievable,” she said at about 6am local time.
“This is the worst night they’ve ever had, because people have experienced other hurricanes here but this one was the worst, it really was,” she said.
She said three separate tornadoes were reported in her area on Wednesday afternoon before Hurricane Milton’s arrival while, a 40-minute drive away, “multiple” deaths within an older community were reported following several tornadoes in Fort Pierce.
A sheriff’s office was also destroyed in the area.
“There were three in this little town of Vero Beach. I’m feeling like the luckiest person to be alive,” said Ms Dillon.
She believes Hurricane Milton, which occurred just two weeks after Helene, “will change a lot of people’s minds on Florida because it’s very risky here”.
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