An Irish woman living in a mandatory evacuation zone in Florida has said it is “too late” for her to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Milton, potentially one of the most destructive ever to hit the Gulf Coast of the state.
Karen Catterson Lapierre from Ballybofey, Co Donegal, moved to Florida some 15 years ago, where she lives and works as a nurse at Oak Hill Hospital in Brooksville, a city just north of Tampa.
Despite being situated within Hernando County, which is under a mandatory evacuation order since Tuesday, the 48-year-old, her partner Mike and their dog Spencer, are staying put.
“The decision was kind of made for me, I can’t leave now so we’re just going to ride it out,” she said.
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The Category 5 hurricane is currently due to make landfall early on Thursday morning with sustained wind speeds of nearly 210km/h predicted, just two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused severe damage. US president Joe Biden told reporters on Tuesday it could be “the worst storm to hit Florida in over a century”.
“The fire service came through the area yesterday with their loudspeaker and told us that we’re in a mandatory evacuation zone and that we needed to get out of the area. I was working and now it’s too late to leave, the roads are backlogged and the gas stations are out of petrol,” Ms Catterson Lapierre said on Wednesday.
As well as working late on Tuesday night, she got a flat tyre, which she says she cannot get fixed as mechanics, like other businesses, are now closed in preparation for the hurricane.
She said the I-75, the main interstate highway running through Florida, has been “bumper-to-bumper” for the last number of days, explaining that a normal trip to Georgia would usually take six hours, but since evacuation orders have been announced, the journey time has at least doubled.
“The interstate is completely backlogged and we really didn’t want to just go away and abandon our house,” she says, adding that evacuated houses are often targeted during extreme weather events.
“It’s a common thing for this kind of a situation and especially if your house has been impacted, people will loot.”
Ms Catterson Lapierre estimates that about 50 per cent of her local community in Brooksville has chosen not to evacuate ahead of the hurricane’s landfall, despite being a mandatory evacuation zone.
“Everyone’s pretty on edge but everybody had the choice to leave. A lot of people couldn’t leave financially,” she said, explaining that some travel to stay in hotels in Miami or the panhandle in the northwest.
“Some people just don’t have the money to get there, the community I live in is mostly retired people and they’re on a fixed income and some of them just can’t leave,” she says.
Those who remain will rely on generators and non-perishable food, she says.
Having returned to Brooksville on Sunday from a break away, Ms Catterson Lapierre and her partner stopped in Georgia to buy water and supplies, knowing none would be available in Florida due to stockpiling.
While some hospitals will remain open to take ambulances, after the hurricane makes landfall, others like hers have been in lockdown since Tuesday night with a “hurricane team” mandated to stay in place for the next two days.
These hospitals will only accept the most critical patients throughout the hurricane, she says.
Noting that her home is a newer build with hurricane-grade windows, she said they are “prepared for the worst and hoping for the best”.
“I worked hard for everything that I have and I would really, really hate to lose it all. I wouldn’t say I’m scared now, I’m more worried for my house,” she says.
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