Notes from an Environmentalist

Hurricane Milton Bursts Florida's Bubble

              Milton Bursts Florida’s Bubble

When Floridians heard the fear and horror in meteorologist Juan Morales’ voice as Milton approached, it convinced thousands to evacuate that would not have done so without his emotional warning.

They joined an estimated 5 million people attempting to run out the storm on a narrow peninsula with only one way out. Many families with young kids spent the night in their cars after they ran out of gas on the dangerously flooding roads.

But the direst predictions never panned out. After surging three times to a Cat-5 hurricane over the boiling incubator waters of the Gulf of Mexico Milton had dissipated rapidly to a Cat-3 storm before slamming into Tampa.  

The expected 20-foot storm surge had never materialized. Instead, counterclockwise winds on the left side of the storm had blown several feet of water out of Tampa Bay.

The unprecedented 130 plus tornadoes sightings and verified tornadoes had killed at least six people in a nursing home, but the overall death toll of the storm, estimated to be over a dozen, was far lower than expected.

But the psychological toll was immense. Floridians already exhausted and dispirited from cleaning up the remains their houses destroyed by Hurricane Helene were at their wits end.

Dead trees and aluminum siding lay in great depressing piles along the streets. Tattered shreds of St. Petersburg’s iconic Tropicana Stadium fluttered in the wind.

Television viewers e-mailed CNN demanding executives remove Anderson Cooper from a dangerous shaking pier after he got winged by a piece of flying Styrofoam. But he appeared to be enjoying the adrenaline rush.

But for many people Milton was the last straw. They resigned themselves to selling modest old Florida homes that had been in their families for generations or they gave up on lifelong dreams of owning opulent shorefront Mac-Mansions.  

Taxes, insurance and mortgage rates had all been rising. It would be difficult to sell in a market overflowing with stock. Many home-sellers had already reduced the asking price of their homes several times even before Milton arrived. The storm had robbed Floridians of their life’s savings with little prospect of being able to recoup.

Helene and Milton had burst Florida’s once envied real estate bubble.