Giving Compass' Take:
- Joseph Winters reports on the devastating impacts of back-to-back hurricanes in Florida as Milton strikes just weeks after Helene.
- What is the responsibility of donors and funders to support short-term relief for Florida residents impacted by Helene and Milton as well as long-term recovery and resilience efforts?
- Learn more about disaster relief and recovery and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on disaster philanthropy.
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Less than two weeks ago, Val Stunja was frantically stacking furniture and belongings on her kitchen countertop. Hurricane Helene was bearing down on the west coast of Florida, and she was preparing her first-floor condominium in St. Petersburg, a Tampa Bay city that sits on a barrier island just a few hundred feet from the Gulf of Mexico. Now, just weeks after, another hurricane is threatening to wreak further devastation. These back-to-back hurricanes in Florida will strain the state's ability to recover.
Stunja, who works as an airline dispatcher, rode out the storm with a friend on the second floor and watched in horror as the storm surge inundated the streets around her. A wall of water several feet deep destroyed almost everything she owns; outside, it pushed cars and boats around like toys. Stunja thought she could save her own vehicle by parking it on higher ground a few miles inland, but the storm surge flooded it as well.
Crews had only just begun the arduous task of clearing shattered homes, ruined cars, and unfathomable amounts of debris from the neighborhoods around Stunja’s condo when she started to hear about another major storm: Milton, a tropical storm which formed in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend and grew with stunning ferocity into a Category 5 hurricane over the course of less than a day on Monday. Stunja was already headed toward a friend’s home in Sarasota, an hour south of Tampa, when she learned that the storm was headed right for her. She turned around and tried to fly to her hometown in Texas. When that failed, she got into a car loaned by her insurance company on Monday afternoon and made for her son’s house in Jacksonville, spending hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic headed north and east.
Back-to-Back Hurricanes in Florida Strain Relief and Recovery Efforts
“I can’t think straight,” she said. “I’m very confused. I haven’t even filed a claim yet on my house.”
Stunja is among hundreds of thousands of residents staring down a direct hit from a second major hurricane in Florida — even before they’ve come anywhere close to reckoning with the damage from Hurricane Helene. The quick turnaround has given Florida residents little time to find, let alone regain, their footing. The unfinished cleanup of the mess Helene created could compound the devastation to come from Hurricane Milton, and the one-two punch of these hurricanes in Florida could have a devastating impact on the state’s ability to recover.
Read the full article about back-to-back hurricanes in Florida by Joseph Winters at Grist.