BRADENTON, Florida — Hurricane Milton wreaked havoc across Florida, shredding dozens of mobile homes and ripping roofs off entirely. The storm’s destruction has left many snowbird retirees reconsidering their seasonal migration plans as they sift through rubble in the aftermath.
Amidst the devastation, some residents struggled to identify which debris belonged to their homes when they returned on Thursday to assess the damage in the riverside city south of Tampa. “It’s just devastation everywhere,” said Cheryl Long, 66, who surveyed the destruction at the Royal Garden Estates mobile home park.
“I lost my roof, my front awning and the carport,” she added. “When I got home, I found my roof at my neighbor’s.”
The heart-wrenching scenes unfolded as residents across Florida began their recovery process after Milton’s ferocious winds left at least eight people dead. Following the storm’s passage, residents of two mobile home parks in Bradenton returned to find roofs missing, steel carports mangled, and debris scattered throughout the area.
Some homes suffered such severe damage that living rooms were left completely exposed. Dave Kania, 78, reported that his shed had crashed into his neighbor’s house. “It just broke apart. I had the shed strapped down, you can still see the straps, but you couldn’t stop the wind,” he explained. Kania, a snowbird retiree from Akron, NY, discovered his neighbor’s roof in his driveway.
Despite enjoying Florida winters for the past decade, Kania expressed doubts about returning. “I’m having second thoughts about staying in Florida,” he admitted. “We always have to worry about hurricane season. Once you’re retired, you don’t want all that stress.”
“It’s devastating,” he added. “Look at it. It costs tons of money to get fixed back up. I don’t have insurance because hurricane insurance is so expensive down here.”
Ruthie Reynar, who moved from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, six years ago, noted that Milton exceeded any nor’easter she had encountered. “I’ve been through a lot of nor’easters but I’ve never experienced a storm as ferocious as this one, truly,” she said, recounting the parts of her roof that had been torn away.
“It was so frightening. Even the guys were scared. The fellas were tight-lipped but you knew they were frightened,” she shared. Reynar reflected on her future plans: “You start questioning whether to leave Florida. Truthfully, I think a lot of older people will leave. I will rebuild.”
At Royal Garden Estates, Cheryl Long, who is from Ohio, was overwhelmed by both anxiety and fatigue as she picked through the wreckage under the scorching sun. Like many of her neighbors, she spent the hurricane in a nearby brick condo, where the dramatic shift in air pressure caused her ears to pop.
“The hurricane was awful,” she described. “The windows were sucking in and out so hard it was making my ears pop. It was real calm and like daylight outside when we were in the eye, but the winds on the backside were the worst,” she recounted.
“I keep wanting to pass out. I’m just very … lots of anxiety,” Long said. As assessment of the damage continued, over 2.5 million customers across Florida remained without power as of early Friday, according to the poweroutage.us site.
