Monster storm intensifies back to Category 5 as Florida braces for direct hit
Preparations and evacuations are underway in Florida, where Milton is expected to make landfall tomorrow or early Thursday. After parking his car near Tampa International Airport, Bill Brotherton took a cab to a local high school where he plans to take refuge from Hurricane Milton. With his Eclectus parrot Mikey resting on his shoulder, the 70-year-old said Hurricane Helene flooded his home with 4 meters of seawater, forcing him to sleep in his car for almost two weeks. “It’s so overwhelming I can barely speak. I can’t think. I can’t spell. I have chest pains,” Brotherton said Tuesday, with tears in his eyes. “I go to bed and I don’t want to wake up, but I keep waking up.”
Brotherton is one of many Floridians who were recovering from Hurricane Helene — removing wet furniture, tearing down walls, contacting their flood insurers — when Hurricane Milton began barreling toward the state, forcing them to abandon everything and to begin to fortify their houses again. Earlier, President Joe Biden urged those in Milton’s path to evacuate and warned it was a matter of “life and death.”
This comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit the Gulf Coast as a category four storm – killing at least 225 people in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina.
