‘Time to start over’: Milton’s disastrous slam on Florida’s battered barrier islands

Image via Kaley Mantz.

Dressers, couches and mattresses littered the streets of St. Petersburg and nearby North Redington Beach after two major hurricanes hit Florida’s Gulf Coast in just over two weeks. Now, residents are returning from Hurricane Milton after evacuation orders, hoping to have a home to return to at all.

Martha Steinway, 73, returned to her mobile home park in St. Petersburg on Thursday after evacuating to Tampa. She found complete destruction.

St. Petersburg, south of Tampa, is supposed to be sacred ground, she said. “We just thought ‘Oh yeah, another hurricane’… I was one of those Floridians saying, ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine.”

She was fine, but her home of five years wasn’t.

Steinway returned to an overwhelming stench of mold — caused from storm surges and mass amounts of water brought both Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Their belongings are out on the street, damaged and unsalvageable.

“Thank God that we’re alive,” she said.

She and her husband, who are both retired, will have to find a place to start over, amid what she described as high prices in St. Petersburg, she said.

While Milton brought further damage, the earlier hurricane helped Janice Hoyle, 82, and her husband, Harry, 80, better prepare their home in North Redington Beach for another major storm after their boat and jet ski were slammed into a neighboring kitchen.

“You get smarter every time. We learned to do something,” she said.

Ahead of Hurricane Milton, the couple applied over 6 feet of tape on their windows to protect against the storm surge they saw during Helene.

Even sheltering at Morton Plant hospital after Janice Hoyle underwent a surgery, the two were scared senseless.

“I was so afraid the surge was going to take our car and do the same thing it did to the boat,” he said. “We were so unbelievably worried.”

Helene’s impact, while unexpected for these communities, didn’t just help residents prepare, but also helped persuade residents of Florida’s barrier islands to heed evacuation orders in anticipation of Hurricane Milton, Lt. Chris Wilfong of Pinellas Suncoast Fire & Rescue said.

“Not many people evacuated for Helene,” he said. “I think they saw what happened and they were afraid of that happening again.”

Roberts Rivera, 68, of Redington Beach didn’t evacuate for Hurricane Helene but did for Hurricane Milton. Rivera has only ever previously evacuated for Hurricane Ian in his eight years of living in Florida.

“I didn’t want to put myself in danger or my girlfriend or first responders or anyone else,” he said.

His house has power but not much else. During Hurricane Helene, he climbed out of his first-story window and watched from his neighbors as his house flooded, destroying everything in it.

He lost both his vehicles and two Harley Davidson motorcycles — his only forms of transportation.

“Time to start over,” he said.

Hurricane Milton made landfall further south from the coastal communities of Redington Beach and St. Petersburg, but both experienced tornadoes and high winds, compared to Hurricane Helene which brought high storm surges.

___

This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at [email protected]. You can donate to support our students here.