It’s been nearly a week since Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key and ripped through the Tampa Bay region and across Central Florida, just as people were beginning to pick up their lives after Hurricane Helene.
For many Floridians, it’s been a tough stretch having to deal with damage to homes, flooding, boil water notices and power outages, on top of the frantic search for gas.
Some people like Anita Doering, waited more than three hours over the weekend to refuel her SUV.
"Let's say it's been the worst experience of my life. If I maintain my sanity after I get gas, it'll be a miracle. The advice I give, don't drink anything," she said.
Milton knocked out power to more than three million customers statewide. By midday Tuesday, just over 180,000 people were still without power, most of them in the Tampa Bay region.
Tampa Electric said its goal was to get the power back on for its Hillsborough and Pinellas County customers by end-of-day Thursday. CEO Archie Collins explained in a video on TECO’s YouTube channel how the company prioritizes the work of getting people reconnected.
“It’s really an assessment of impact versus effort. If we just need to replace one pole or one wire, and we can get 2,000 customers up, we'll go there first,” Collins said. “If it's a whole lot of work and a whole lot of trucks and it's only five customers, unfortunately, that lands a little bit lower in the prioritization list.”
Flooding continues to be a problem in parts of the Tampa Bay region, with residents of some Pasco County neighborhoods likely to be battling river flooding through the middle of the week.
Life is starting to return to some semblance of normal after back-to-back hurricanes. And that includes getting back to school.
Manatee and Hernando County schools were back today. Pinellas, Pasco, Sarasota, and Polk County Schools are set to reopen Wednesday. Hillsborough County schools will reopen Thursday.
Tampa Bay Times education reporter, Jeff Solochek, joins Florida Matters to talk about the reopening of schools.
He says getting power back on is the first step in schools opening back up.
Although the Tampa Bay area is recovering from and rebuilding after two major hurricanes, Election Day is just weeks away. Mail-in ballots are in hand and early voting is about to start.
If you’re a voter in communities affected by hurricanes, Craig Latimer has some advice. He’s the supervisor of Elections in Hillsborough County and a former president of the state supervisor’s organization and he joins Florida Matters to talk about how residents can make sure their vote is counted after a storm turns the state upside down.
You can also find more insights on the 2024 presidential election by downloading the Our Changing State Vote 2024 podcast or watching on YouTube.
Finally, as communities rebuild from Hurricane Milton, John Renne joins the show to talk about how adaptation and resilient design can make a difference in preparing for future storms.
He’s an urban and environmental solutions professor at Florida Atlantic University, whose job is to look at long-term solutions to disasters.
He says while we’re just days out from Hurricane Milton, it’s important to think about how we can make our communities more resilient.
Renne also explains how resiliency can be part of the rebuilding process, and remembers some lessons he learned from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans 19 years ago.
The latest on hurricane recovery can be found on the WUSF website. The episode can be heard on the media player above.
