“I’m afraid that when all this is over, I’ll go home and find nothing”

“In all my years living in Florida, this is the first hurricane that terrifies me because I’m afraid that when all this is over, I’ll return home and not find my house. Since I have three little granddaughters, aged four, three, and one and a half, I’m scared that where we are might flood. I brought their life jackets in case anything happens.” These are the words of Madeline Colón, a Puerto Rican who has lived in Florida for 27 years.

Madeline lives in the Palmetto community on Florida’s west coast. Her son and his family live eight minutes away. That’s where she, her husband, and their pet birds will spend the night because their home isn’t safe. They received a government mandate to leave their house, which is in a flood-prone area. It’s a manufactured home, a prefabricated wooden house with a tin roof, built in the late eighties that doesn’t meet the safety codes to withstand the anticipated damage from Hurricane Milton, which is expected to begin impacting Florida’s west coast this Wednesday with winds up to 130 miles per hour.

Before leaving the house, her husband placed support cables to try to prevent the roof from being blown away by the winds. “It was already raining, and the streets were flooding,” Madeline, 52, recounted about what she saw on the way to her son’s house, which, although a concrete structure, has a wooden roof.

“Inside, I feel devastated. I feel a horrible fear, a horrible sensation, but I have to show calm because I also have to give strength to my husband, and I can’t fall apart because only God knows what will happen, and He is in control,” she said.

“I’ve never been in a shelter”

Faced with the possibility of a window glass breaking in her house in Kissimmee, second-grade teacher Paola Rodríguez Laguerre, 30, decided to move this Wednesday at 5:00 a.m. to Gateway High School in the same city with her seven-month-old daughter Sophia and her partner Christian Duche, 27. She waited with her family for three hours in her car until the shelter opened.

Her house is ten minutes from the shelter, where there were about 50 people on Wednesday afternoon. Her house is also old, she believes it’s about 100 years old. “After Hurricane Maria, you get scared because the house is wooden, has glass, and is elevated with only a few blocks holding it,” she said, describing her home in Kissimmee, in Osceola County, in central Florida, where the hurricane is projected to pass.

Some shelters provided meals, designated nursing areas, and pet-friendly spaces. Photo provided

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Some shelters provided meals, designated nursing areas, and pet-friendly spaces. Photo provided

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Paola, born in Mayagüez, experienced the devastation of Hurricane Maria, which occurred in Puerto Rico in 2017, so her fear is legitimate. Despite having no electricity or water, she completed her university studies in visual arts with a bachelor’s degree in Education in Puerto Rico and moved to Florida about seven years ago to find work, which she did.

This Wednesday, she arrived at the shelter with pillows, blankets, and snacks. She had never been in a shelter before.

“They give us breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack,” she said. Paola explained that they placed her near the medical area and the area for charging electronic devices. Since she is with her newborn daughter, they have asked if she needs a more private place to sleep or nurse.

However, the shelter — at the time of the interview — did not have beds for the sheltered. “We’re on the floor,” she noted without specifying if they were told beds would arrive later. 

“It breaks my heart to leave”

A similar situation occurred Tuesday night when the director of the Hispanic Federation in Florida, Laudi Campo, and representative Johanna López, both of Puerto Rican origin, visited the shelter at Colonial High School in Orlando.

On Tuesday, there were 95 people, according to Campo. By Wednesday morning, there were 176 refugees, the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) learned.

“I think there’s space for 393 people [in the shelter]. It breaks my heart to leave because people are sleeping on the floor because you had to bring your own beds or inflatable mattresses, and well, many of them, if not all of them, were in difficult circumstances,” Campo said.

Campo spoke with a young couple from the town of Carolina, who were in the shelter with a teenager and a baby and had experienced Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The shelter has security and offers meals.

Several officials, such as the commissioner of District 4 of Orange County, Maribel Gómez Cordero, warned since Monday that people should bring their own personal hygiene items, medications, food, and even beds.

“The shelters are not prepared to provide food,” Gómez Cordero said through her Facebook page.

Orlando is one of the cities in Orange County, where about 203,776 Puerto Ricans reside, according to the Census. The largest population of Puerto Ricans in this state.

After her visit to the shelter at Colonial High School, representative Johanna López told the CPI that she saw people from the Latino community there, including Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and whites. She learned of homeless people in the shelter, like a lady who asked for help because she was living in her car with her daughter, who has a mental health condition, and a dog. The pet, which serves as emotional support, was allowed in the shelter.

In Orange County, 11 shelters were opened for the general public, and four for people with special needs. Pets are allowed in eight of them. At the time of publication, the shelter at Colonial High School reached its maximum capacity.

Representative López told the CPI that she knew of some shelters where they were requesting identification from people, but many people with irregular immigration status who arrive at the shelters do not have identification. López expressed concern that they might not be allowed entry to the shelter because they do not have identification. 

“We found people in areas who didn’t even know another hurricane was coming”

Zulma Medina, from the organization Boricuas de Corazón, in the community of Brandon, in Hillsborough County, said that in the last three days, when they visited families in their homes to guide them and give evacuation notices, they encountered people who didn’t know “another hurricane” was coming. At the end of September, Hurricane Helene severely affected part of Florida.

“They are mostly Latin American people. They come home tired from work to sleep,” she said about the people who were unaware of the danger of Hurricane Milton. She also mentioned the language barrier as a possible obstacle to being informed and that many, she said, only watch television programs from their countries.

Medina’s phone interview with the CPI was several times interrupted by alert notifications on her cell phone and the sound of sirens.

In Hillsborough County, where approximately 120,907 Puerto Ricans live, 49 shelters were opened.