Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, on Florida’s central West Coast on Oct. 9. Many FGCU students and locations in Florida were affected by the Category 3 storm. The safety of not only the students but also their friends and families was essential.
Several students were able to share their hurricane stories with Eagle News.
Tampa
Sophomore Caleb Miller left FGCU to return to his home in Tampa.
“I went to Tampa, and it got hit pretty hard over there; my friends by the coast lost power until Sunday. So, almost like an entire week, and now we got some flooding. There’s also a flash flood that came by a couple of days after, and it was pretty bad up there,” Miller said.
Miller was fortunate to have not received damage to his home, but he feared for the safety of his friends in the area.
“I had a friend who had to get picked up by the Coast Guard. His house got so much flooding. He lived right by the ocean,” Miller said.
Cape Coral
Kerri Mitchell, a sophomore, stayed at her home in Cape Coral.
“We knew it was mostly going to hit Tampa, and we didn’t really see a lot of damage besides a lot of tree limbs knocked down,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell’s experience with previous storms, like Hurricane Ian that hit Florida in 2022, helped her and her family prepare for the storm.
“There were stores that only had three cases of water. My parents prepared by checking Sam’s Club and Costco before the storm and getting supplies,” Mitchell said.
Bradenton
Junior Alex Bhagwandeen experienced a shortage of supplies and damages to nearby stores when he went home to Bradenton.
“We got pretty lucky, my family, but like the surrounding areas, the Publix and the Wawa, they were all pretty bad,” Bhagwandeen said. “We just got a couple of power surges, but never lost power.”
While he was fortunate enough to avoid any damage to his house and his friends’ and families’ homes, driving around was difficult with all the debris in the road.
“Not really a ton of housing damage. It was just a ton of broken trees and other debris,” Bhagwandeen said. “I feel like this storm could have been a lot worse.”
Alico Arena
Freshman Madisen Grooms from South Dakota had plans to evacuate but unexpected events caused those plans to change.
“So, I had a flight booked for Monday. I drove up to St. Petersburg for my flight, and it got canceled 10 minutes before boarding. I tried heading north on the highway to get up to Tampa, and it took me about an hour and a half to go eight miles. So, I figured that was not going to work, and I had to turn around and come back to the school because that was my only option,” Grooms said.
Because of this turn of events, she stayed at FGCU’s shelter for the hurricane, Alico Arena. It was not just a shelter for students but was open to the public too. According to Grooms, there were more people in the public portion than students.
“They woke us up at seven every morning with the lights being turned on, and then they turned them off at 10 p.m. for quiet hours, and then they fed us three different times throughout the days,” Grooms said.
Englewood/Panama City
Olivia Becker, a sophomore, lives at The Reef while at FGCU but went back to her home in Englewood for the hurricane.
“I live in Englewood, Florida close to the beach. My family and I evacuated to Panama City at 11 p.m. on Tuesday before the storm hit,” Becker said. “My neighborhood flooded and we lost some shingles and a tree. We didn’t have power for three or four days.”
Due to the damage around her and her friend’s houses, she has not returned to campus. She would rather do the right thing and help put her community back together one step at a time.
“We have close friends who live on Manasota Key, which is the beach in my town, so we have been helping them clean up and they have been helping us,” Becker said.
Students and their families still experiencing damage and need help cleaning their area can contact FEMA at 1-800-621-3342 for disaster assistance.
