The Press in Florida | Hard awakening in Tampa

(Tampa) L’ouragan Milton will have finally hit less hard than expected in Florida, but in the Tampa region, shaken just two weeks ago by the hurricane Helenit was fatigue that was felt on Thursday. Getting up once, okay, but twice…

Already affected by the hurricane Helenewho visited the region at the end of September, Bill Didesch, who lives in Town ‘n’ Country, a suburb of Tampa, is starting to have enough.

“That’s not how I want to live: to be afraid every two weeks that everything I own will be demolished. No one can live like that,” says the man who has lived in Florida for more than 20 years.

Was he afraid of losing everything with Milton ? “I had already lost half the house with Helene. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal to lose everything. Let’s end it! “, he said, laughing.

His humor hides questions. What to do now? Renovate the house and build it higher, to protect it from water? To relocate ? But who will want to buy? “Maybe someone from Ohio who hasn’t heard about the hurricane,” jokes Mr. Didesch.

Then, he concedes that “it’s mentally tough”.

“We haven’t had time to recover from what happened two weeks ago. It’s scary, wondering each time if it’s our turn to taste it. It’s crazy,” said Mr. Didesch, met while walking his two dogs in a neighborhood littered with furniture and debris, remnants of the cleaning done after the hurricane. Helene.

Like many others, due to lack of electricity, he resigns himself to sleeping in a hotel.

A few kilometers away, Jenny Arias, her parents and her 9-year-old daughter are in a similar situation. They were already living in the hotel, but the arrival of a new hurricane thwarted all their plans to return home.

” When Helene passed, the water rose three or four feet,” relates M^me Arias. As we approach Miltonshe believed that the house would be lost forever.

“We didn’t get any rest,” Jenny Arias said. It was her work colleagues who pushed her to stop working for a few days to take care of the work that would have to be done in her house.

The house is due to be renovated soon. Can it be insured again, after two successive hurricanes?

” I hope. We’ll see,” says Jenny Arias.

On the verge of staying there

There will be damage to pick up following the passage of Miltonbut also humans to repair. Thursday morning, Sharon Hopkins was crying in the median of a flooded road.

When the hurricane hit Tampa, during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, she panicked and tried to find shelter with a friend. She almost lost her skin there.

“There was no one on the road. It was raining so hard, the traffic lights were flashing. I was alone, the hurricane was there…” she said, before bursting into tears again.

“I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen the wind and water come so quickly,” said the Town ‘n’ Country resident.

She was trapped in her car. The water was rising, she said, without her being able to do anything about it. Had it not been for a good Samaritan passing by with his truck, she believes she would no longer be alive.

“He got me out of there. His first name is Roy, and I will be grateful to him for the rest of my life. He comes from Cuba, his family lives there. He took me to his house, let me take a shower and gave me dry clothes,” Ms.^me Hopkins.

She also suffered the horrors of two hurricanes in quick succession. At the end of September, his house was flooded by Helene. Thursday morning, she had to wait for the water level to drop before returning to it.

The city center comes back to life

A large part of the city of Tampa has been without power since the hurricane, so that open businesses are rare. But in downtown Tampa, where the electricity has never failed, life is slowly returning.

“People have survived, they say to themselves: let’s drink! » Thursday afternoon, Robert Neamtu, owner of Dracula’s Legacy Wine Bar, was counting on the fact that after the hurricane passed, people would want to unwind with a beer.

Stephen Dohack, who owns a Thai restaurant with his wife, planned to reopen this Friday, and he believes that most businesses in the city center will do the same.

“The first thing people do is clean up their own yards. That’s what I did today, picking up the broken branches,” he said.

At the start of the evening on Thursday, Robert Neamtu’s bar was certainly not full, but there was no shortage of customers. With the sun setting on the terrace, it was hard to believe that just the day before, Tampa was expecting a devastating hurricane that would leave its mark.