Why some Florida residents aren't evacuating ahead of Hurricane Milton

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Isla del Sol, Florida
CNN
—

While the rain was already cutting diagonally into the water off this transformed mangrove island in St. Petersburg, Vivienne Marran stood firm in her choice.

“We can get through it,” she told CNN less than 20 hours before Hurricane Milton was expected to come out of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from here on Florida's west coast.

“The alternatives weren't particularly inviting, you know?” Marran explained it Wednesday morning from the apartment complex right on Tampa Bay, where she weathered Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, which left 20 Florida residents dead and countless others scrambling for shelter left a huge trail of rubble, which Milton now threatened to use as a missile depot.

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“I mean, they tell us we only have to drive 20 miles inland,” she said. “But because of the last storm, there’s actually nowhere to go. I mean, I guess they have evacuation areas, but we've been through a lot of them, and it's a concrete building, and I just feel safer here than anywhere else.”

Nearly 7.3 million Floridians live in 15 counties with mandatory evacuation orders. But even as officials continued to plead with people to leave coastal areas — “You have to help us through the evacuation,” the chief of Tampa Fire Rescue pleaded Wednesday morning, adding, “I've never seen anything like this” — a subset of residents across Florida West Rand remained in place.

Some of their neighbors had already left, packing up bridges and highways to escape storm surge areas, where flooding of up to 15 feet was forecast. But these objectors and others had weighed factors — from the availability of gasoline to the cost and relative safety of inland hotels to the difficulty of returning to potentially overcrowded properties — and decided against evacuating.

Adding to this was Milton's uncertain direction, as forecasters warned that the major hurricane could stagger seemingly without warning, shifting its landfall target and thus its path across the peninsula.

“I can't tell you how many times people have left here because of previous storms and ended up in it,” Marran said.

For others, another evacuation two weeks after Helene – and in the middle of the 2024 hurricane season – was simply too much.

“It's kind of like post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Holly Speckhart, who planned to ride out Milton with Marran in her five-story building while watching Tampa Bay Rays baseball, sipping on a Modelo, lounging on inflatable mattresses in an indoor hallway rested and, if necessary, escaped, worst of all, in an internal stairwell.

“All my friends from Ohio are mad at me,” added Speckhart, a Cincinnati native. “They keep calling me and saying, 'You're going to die.' And then Jane Castor (Mayor of Tampa) said, “If you don’t get out, you’re going to die.”

“But … if Tampa got it, I mean, what would they be, 12 to 15 feet? I mean, that could be two stories,” the fourth-floor resident said of the possible increase. The top floors of their buildings are much higher, she continued, and some units have shutters and windows that are vulnerable to storm damage.

“My biggest thing is: I don’t want to leave,” concluded Speckhart. “I’ll just see what happens in a week. You know, you have mold, you have damage. I think I can be here.”

About 100 miles south on Sanibel Island – which was devastated by Hurricane Ian in 2022 – Bridgit Stone-Budd also didn't want to give up her property and so planned to overtake Milton in the house on raised supports, she told CNN.

“I think the most important thing is that we know we’re not coming back,” she said Wednesday morning. “That’s the main reason.”

In fact, the city of Sanibel has issued an evacuation order and imposed a 24-hour curfew on those staying there.

Also part of Stone-Budd's calculus: Her home hasn't been flooded in previous hurricanes, she said, though she acknowledged that's no guarantee of safety.

“If we lost a pole and the house wasn’t stable,” she said, “that’s what scares me the most.”

Elsewhere on Florida's west coast, neighborhoods were calm until midday Wednesday as inland shelters filled, bridges closed on barrier islands and tornadoes from then-Category 4 Milton began to rage on land.

“It was a ghost town when we just left,” said Anna Maria Island Holmes Beach Police Chief William Tokajer, who the day before had advised anyone who decided to ride out the monster storm on the barrier island to “give their name and to write his social security number on your leg.”

“The island is secured,” he said late Wednesday morning. “We did one last pass and I didn’t see anyone else there.”

“We will remain off the island until the storm passes, so there will be no fire, no police, no EMS, no first responders and no one to respond to emergency calls that come in,” Tokajer continued. “We have sealed off the island and will return after the storm and check security before letting people out.”

Puzzles, books, card games and cold dinner

Marran, for her part, weighed in earlier Wednesday what she believes are the biggest risks of facing Milton on Isla del Sol, about 30 miles north of Holmes Beach, over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

“We will cope with the increase,” concluded the London native, who lives on the second floor and has access to higher floors. “The wind is a problem. I'm worried about the wind, but you know…we have a plan” to get into the interior of the condo tower.

As for the likelihood of a power outage, “we have a lot of doubts,” said Marran, who heads the homeowners association here. “Hopefully the iPads and iPhones stay charged, you know, I have a few puzzles. We have books. “I play cards,” particularly the game “Hand and Foot,” which uses up to six decks – with jokers.

She, Speckhart and a few others also had plenty of food to cook with, including some leftover from evacuated neighbors and “stuff we can eat cold for a few days,” Marran said.

And of course, the residents of Isla del Sol, who, against all official advice, planned to endure Milton's wrath in High Risk Zone A, had each other.

“As soon as you lose the TV,” she said, “you just have to talk.”

CNN's Mary Gilbert, Rebekah Riess, Andy Rose and John Berman contributed to this report.