1 year after hurricanes Helene and Milton, Minnesota transplants rebuild in Florida
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Thursday marked one year since Hurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on Florida’s west coast, near Siesta Key. The National Weather Service says it was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, reaching Category 5 out in the ocean.
Many Florida residents were still dealing with damage from an earlier storm: Hurricane Helene, which had slammed into the Big Bend region less than two weeks before. That storm that spun northward into Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Kentucky, causing catastrophic flooding. Forty-two people died in Asheville, N.C.
Former Minnesotans in Florida
Minneapolis-native Heather Forness has lived in Florida since 2016 and has weathered several storms. Her neighborhood in Dunedin suffered mostly wind damage from Helene. MPR News called her up last year when it became clear Hurricane Milton was on the way to the same area. She said preparing for another storm felt like Groundhog Day.
“Like the movie. Like we just did it, and now we've put everything back. Our yard's all pretty and nice, and now here we go again, pack it all back up and fingers crossed,” Forness said.
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While she didn't evacuate during Helene, she thought about leaving during Milton.
However, within a roughly 100-mile radius, there wasn’t anywhere to go. Hotels and Airbnbs were booked and full of other evacuees and those displaced because of Hurricane Helene’s damage.
“You basically have to get out of Florida,” Forness said. “Plus, there's the whole, you run out of gas on the interstate, you're just stuck in a parking lot in your car basically, just riding out a storm... If it's going to be the end of days for us, I'd rather have my house blow away with me in it than my car blow away with me in it.”
Andria Nicholson is another former Minnesotan — from Deephaven, just west of the Twin Cities metro — who lives in Florida. She moved south with her husband in November 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She fled her home in St. Pete Beach during both storms. Helene completely gutted her bungalow, flooding the house with more than 2 feet of water. MPR News’ Cathy Wurzer talked with her when she returned home from the second evacuation.
“The drive down, just going south, the carnage and the destruction was just worse and worse and worse every mile. And so I was just getting sick to my stomach,” Nicholson said last year. “And then when I turned onto my road —my house is painted very bright colors — and I could see the glow of the colors, and they were still standing, and my heart just soared.
“It was the most beautiful sight I've ever seen in my life. My little baby bungalow was still standing strong and cute and had her four walls up. Relief just flooded both me and my husband at that moment,” she said.
Dozens of Minnesotans from the National Guard, Red Cross and utility companies made their way to the region to help with relief and recovery after the one-two punch of hurricanes at this time last year.
The decision to stay
MPR News checked back in with those two former Minnesotans this week. Forness says her massage therapy business is still up and running in Dunedin.
“Business is great. I have moved my practice to my home so that has been amazing,” she said via text. “We are still here and very grateful that it’s been a boring season thus far!”
Nicholson says she's still rebuilding. In the interim, the couple has lived in nine different places. They got money quickly from insurance and FEMA, but it took until January to get a permit from the city to start rebuilding, and some subcontractors’ progress has been near-glacial.
Considered a critical worker for the City of St. Pete Beach, Nicholson’s role as director of child care and being responsible for driving a school bus meant she was back at work two days after Helene wrecked her home.
Between the two storms, her husband fell ill, but Nicholson still needed to batten down the proverbial and literal hatches ahead of Milton and preserve the bones of her house. A friend from Minnesota came down to help, directing workers to put up plywood and save Nicholson’s beloved flamingo and floral stained glass windows. The moral support alone was invaluable.
“Other than that, we had friends sending us Uber gift cards and money and care packages and love,” she told MPR News Wednesday afternoon. “It was amazing, the love and care that came from up in Minnesota down to us. And I'm not a person who's real good at asking for help. I give help. So this was just a real eye-opener for me, and it was absolutely earth-moving, how wonderful our network up there is.”
Andria is hoping she and her husband will finally be back in their home next month.
Luckily, no hurricanes have hit Florida so far this year. Hurricane season ends on Nov. 30.
