On Sep. 24, Florida began to brace for impact as a Tropical Storm Warning was issued for Helene. Helene became a Category 3 hurricane by Sep. 25 and hit the evacuated Bay Area as a Category 4 hurricane on the 26. For decades, Florida has been ravaged by hurricanes to the point where the residents are not even concerned anymore. Damage is minimal by the average hurricane.
Panic and concern for Florida only kicks into gear around the area that is to be targeted. The targeted area seemed to be almost all of Florida with a few counties as an exception. With category four ramping up speed, a catastrophe seemed to be on the way and yet the predicted occurrence of Helene was much worse than the actual damage to Florida.
“I thought (Helene) was going to be kind of weak,” sophomore Michael Womack said. “And it was, I mean didn’t we just get outer bands of two inch rain and stuff like that?”
The Tampa Bay area was prone to flooding during the hurricane and this resulted in the deaths of 11 residents.. After passing through Florida, Helene made her way up the US hitting Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina and ending in North Carolina where she created the most devastation. Mass amounts of flooding tore through the state with entire roads being ripped clean off. And yet Florida seemed to remain untouched.
“I never saw a lot of flooding, because my internet was down for like a day or two so I didn’t have any news or anything,” Womack said.
Residents of Florida believed Helene to be the worst hurricane of the year until Oct. 10 rolled around and it was announced that Hurricane Milton was headed straight towards Florida. In response, the school districts of Central Florida were given three days off of school in order to prepare for the Category 5 that was barreling toward them. Most students were happy with the arrangement as it had been exam week and an extra three days off gave them their own fall break.
“I wasn’t very concerned about the hurricane because, well, it’s Florida,” sophomore Vaughn Vandyke said.“Living here guarantees a hurricane once a year, I was just happy about the insane amount of time we had off from school.”
When Milton struck, everyone began to rethink that previous joy. Milton flooded and destroyed most of downtown Florida resulting in 24 deaths across the state. Most neighborhoods in the area lost both power and internet. Timing of when power would be regained varied from late afternoon after Milton to the day before school would be back in session.
“After the storm, around Rainfly Road, there was a downed powerline and some kid was walking his dog and either him or the dog stepped in a puddle and there was so much electricity that the dog died instantly and either killed the kid hours after or he is still in the hospital,” Vandyke said.
Milton and Helene all happened within a span of a week. Within another week, there are reports of a new hurricane forming along the Gulf with the trajectory of hitting Florida. While the reports are not yet solidified, the prospect of it is remote and likely to occur around Oct. 29. The only damage that most students are concerned with is the damage to the school schedule that this one hurricane a week policy is constructing.
“At first it was great, then I started to think ‘oh wait this is going to extend our year’ which is not so great in retrospect,” Womack said.
