Storm-weary Floridians prepare for next storm

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reports from Siesta Key, Florida, where residents are beginning to prepare for Hurricane Milton while still recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane Helene.

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00:00Florida officials are expected to call for mass evacuations along the Gulf Coast over the next 24 hours.

00:06AccuWeather's Bill Waddell is live in Siesta Key, a barrier island just off Sarasota.

00:12Bill, families there are still cleaning up from the storm surge from Haleen,

00:17which we think this storm surge could potentially be two to three times stronger than what they saw with Haleen.

00:26Yeah, Bernie, Ariella, this is not a good situation.

00:29I could tell you there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of nerves just within the past 20 or 30 minutes.

00:34Everybody's phones here went off with another round of alerts, evacuation orders for areas A and B here in the Sarasota area.

00:41That includes this barrier island.

00:43We've been showing you the piles of debris from people's homes out on the streets from the last storm.

00:47And now you could see these are businesses.

00:49People are cleaning up debris from the last storm and frantically trying to clean up, board up and get ready for again.

00:54It's what you said could be even worse, much worse impacts from what we just saw from Haleen.

01:00Now, the crews and officials, so many people around the country who work in these disaster zones,

01:06who respond to weather, major weather emergencies.

01:09What we're all dealing with right now is overlapping disasters.

01:12Haleen's landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida.

01:15Then we look at all of the impacts.

01:17We still have crews up in the southern Appalachians.

01:20They are dealing with the catastrophic flooding.

01:22We know that search, rescue, recovery missions are still undergoing there this morning.

01:27And now here along the Gulf Coast in the Tampa Bay region of Florida,

01:31everyone here is trying to prepare as best as they can for a direct impact from a major hurricane.

01:37You can see in the video from above, this is some of the things folks are dealing with.

01:41Long lines at gas stations, families trying to stock up on food, water and supplies.

01:46I just spoke with one man who told me he went to the beach to shovel his own sandbags.

01:51He cannot afford to lose hours and hours in line waiting at the sand distribution sites.

01:56This is what people are dealing with in Florida, scrambling to get ready.

02:00AccuWeather crews spent the weekend up in western North Carolina.

02:03We were there all of last week alongside neighbors and volunteers who have been helping families

02:08that lost everything to unprecedented flooding from Haleen up in the mountains.

02:12And some of the people here in Florida tell us they are worried that the attention, the donations,

02:17the resources, the volunteers, utility crews, some of them could be pulled out of the southern Appalachians

02:23and will be returning here for the next hurricane landfall in Florida.

02:28It's a madhouse in there right now. They're out of water. They're out of toilet paper, generators.

02:32They have a list at the front what they're out of.

02:34I think that Tampa is probably taking this one pretty serious, being in the cone of uncertainty.

02:38So I would expect to see a lot of people boarding up.

02:41I'm very concerned. I am hoping for the best, but we're preparing for the worst,

02:45which is, you know, what you should always probably do.

02:49Yeah, more than six million homes and businesses lost power during the peak of Haleen.

02:53And, of course, a big damage cleanup underway here in the Tampa Bay region

02:59with people just losing so much of homes now preparing for the possibility of not just a repeat, but even worse impacts.

03:05And again, guys, we have other interviews that you'll be hearing throughout the day right here on the AccuWeather network.

03:10One of the other folks that we spoke with telling us they're doing their best to get ready for this storm,

03:15but they are heartbroken to know that some of the resources trying to help the families up in the southern Appalachians,

03:21the mountains of the Carolinas, if they hadn't been already, some more may be pulled out and deployed here to Florida.

03:26So this is just a really tough situation, being up in the Carolinas all of last week, just hearing that resources were strained.

03:32It was a tough situation. We know there's a lot more help needed up there.

03:35And now we have all of these people here in the Tampa Bay region of Florida and all across central Florida preparing for major impacts.

03:42Guys, this is a really difficult situation, and this is a tough storm path that you do not see, especially this time of year, impacting Florida.

03:50That's why we are so concerned. That's why AccuWeather expert meteorologists are using such strong language.

03:55So concerned about the storm surge right here.

03:58Yeah, I mean, Bill, that perspective and to know that the people of Florida,

04:02we're empathetic to those, of course, in North Carolina and being like, you know, we need the resources, but we hate to take them away.

04:07It's just my heart goes out to everybody.

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