As Hurricane Milton barrels toward the west coast of Florida, residents in Siesta Key are dealing with back-to-back storms after 45 years of “good luck.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Milton was a Category 3 storm and was expected to make landfall late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning near Tampa, Florida.
Hurricane Helene battered the area late last month, and many residents were beginning to pick up the remaining pieces of their lives when Milton formed in the Gulf of Mexico.
FOX 13 in Tampa spoke with Fred Schuh, who, along with his wife, built a home on Siesta Key, where they raised their kids and created a life of memories.
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Fred Schuh of Siesta Key, Fla., is getting ready for a second hurricane in two weeks as Milton aims for the west coast of Florida. (FOX 13 in Tampa)
Schuh’s home was nearly destroyed during Helene, and images shot by the station showed the water level outside the home had reached about a third of the way up the front door, just below the door knob.
A line along the perimeter of the home roughly knee-high left a reminder of how high the water level was inside.
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A water line around the perimeter of the inside of Fred Schuh’s Siesta Key, Florida, home shows how high the surge reached during Hurricane Helene. (FOX 13 in Tampa)
While a dumpster sits in the front yard of Schuh’s home for destroyed possessions and memories, a new storm is approaching and expected to cause even more damage.
With so many unknowns, Schuh is not sure what will happen to his home during Hurricane Milton. A tree could fall on his house, or he could get 5-6 feet of water inside.
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The water rose so high during Hurricane Helene in late September it reached about a third of the way up Fred Schuh’s front door. (FOX 13 in Tampa)
“We only had three the first time, but probably, I expect because of this surge in the way it’s coming in to be higher,” he told the station.
As Fred grabbed a few of his belongings and secured the house for round two, he also put the process of recovering from the first round on hold.
“What are you going to do? It’s Mother Nature,” he said. “We had 45-plus years of good luck. I never would have thought it would go away in two weeks after all that time. But that’s just the way it goes.”
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Fred Schuh of Siesta Key, Florida, is getting ready for a second hurricane in two weeks as Milton approaches the west coast of Florida. (FOX 13 in Tampa)
Venice Police Chief Charlie Thorpe warned residents in his community south of Sarasota to prepare now.
“This is going to be a significant, significant storm,” the chief said. “I’ve told people many times in many meetings. We were hit by Ian, not hammered. This will be a hammer, I feel like, in this circumstance.”
Thorpe told FOX 13 he worries some people may not take the warning seriously, like when Helene hit the area two weeks ago and officers were called to rescue people who did not evacuate.
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“I’m really concerned that some people that are in mobile home parks that may have felt like, ‘Hey, we got through Ian,’ are not going to be the same in my mind, in this case, and especially close to the shoreline.”
