Less than two weeks ago, Val Stunja was frantically stacking furniture and belongings on her kitchen counter. Hurricane Helene hit the west coast of Florida and she was busy cleaning her first floor apartment in St. Petersburg, a city in Tampa Bay that sits on a barrier island just a few hundred feet from the Gulf of Mexico.
Stunja, who works as an airline dispatcher, rode out the storm with a friend on the second floor and watched in horror as the storm surge flooded the streets around her. A wall of water several feet deep destroyed almost everything he owned; outside it pushed cars and boats around like toys. Stunja thought she could save her own vehicle by parking it a few kilometers inland on higher ground, but the storm surge also flooded it.
Crews had just begun the difficult task of clearing broken houses, wrecked cars and unfathomable amounts of trash from the neighborhoods surrounding Stunja’s apartment when she began hearing about another major storm: Milton, a tropical storm moving into the Gulf. of Mexico formed over the weekend and grew with astonishing ferocity into a Category 5 hurricane over the course of less than a day on Monday. Stunja was already on her way to a friend’s house in Sarasota, an hour south of Tampa, when she learned that the storm was heading straight for her. She turned around and tried to fly to her hometown in Texas. When that failed, she got into a car loaned by her insurance company and headed to her son’s home in Jacksonville on Monday afternoon, spending hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic north and east.
“I can’t think straight,” she said. “I am very confused. I haven’t even filed a claim on my house yet.”
Stunja is among hundreds of thousands of Floridians staring down a direct hit from a second major hurricane — even before they’ve gotten anywhere near the reckoning. damage from Hurricane Helene. The rapid turnaround gave Florida residents little time to find their feet, let alone recover. The unfinished cleanup of the mess Helene created could compound the devastation of Hurricane Milton, and the one-two punch could have a devastating impact on the state’s ability to recover.
After Milton exploded in intensity and became a worst Category 5 hurricane within 24 hours, its wind speeds increased to almost 180 mph. Meteorologists attribute the rapid intensification to record warm sea surface temperatures made 400 to 800 times more likely due to climate change. Forecasters say Hurricane Milton could panhandle Florida with storm surges reaching 12 feet and bring as much as 15 inches of rain, potentially causing flash flooding. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for more than 50 counties as of Monday, and several were under evacuation orders — including many said just 14 days ago to evacuate before Helene.
Wreckage from Hurricane Helene remains strewn across the street in Clearwater, Florida in the days leading up to Hurricane Milton. Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist
“A lot of the damage that happened with Helene is going to get worse,” said Carlos Martin, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Wreckage from Helene may be blown into the air by Hurricane Milton. In the Tampa Bay area, more than 300 vehicles Broken furniture and other trash was carted off to a landfill on Sundaywhile lifeguards removed chairs and other items from beaches. Sarasota County, just south of Tampa, said it is focusing “all efforts to remove Hurricane Helene debris” in the most vulnerable places, and the country lifted landfills for people living in unincorporated areas.
However, progress was extremely slow; the mayor of Clearwater, a city just north of St. Petersburg, said Sunday only 5 percent of the debris cleared on Clearwater Beach. Some residents don’t think the city and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are doing enough to clean up the wreckage ahead of the approaching storm.
“It’s all going to be weapons,” said Clearwater resident Monika Spaldo, referring to the waterlogged furniture and trash surrounding her. “The debris from all these things is going to hit windows, roofs, cars, people. … It’s going to fly and destroy everything.”
Spaldo is a property manager at Coconut Grove, a beachside apartment complex damaged by the storm surge from Hurricane Helene. In the days after the storm, she felt so sick from exposure to dirty flood water and refused that she almost went to the hospital. With Hurricane Milton fast approaching, she is terrified of all the debris lying in the streets – and what the coming storm will mean for the town’s future.
“I don’t know how we’re ever going to recover,” she said. “Everything on the island is going to be destroyed.”
Meanwhile, experts worry that the two disasters in quick succession will complicate the essential process of filing insurance claims to make victims whole for the financial damage they have suffered. Those who experienced losses during Helene are supposed to document them before evacuating before Milton, so claims adjusters can distinguish the damage caused by the two events. Lisa Miller, a former deputy insurance commissioner for Florida, called the situation “unprecedented.”
“All bets are off,” she added.
AP Photo / Mike Carlson
For many victims, filing insurance claims so quickly may be impossible given the rapid sequence of events and the urgency of current evacuation orders. In Sarasota County, residents were urged to leave immediately on Monday. “If you wait, you’ll be stuck in traffic,” a government website warned.
Some people, like Stunja, may go to relatives’ homes in safer areas. But because Helene to 500 miles inland in some parts of Florida, they may have to travel much further than that to find suitable accommodation. Others may need to seek shelter in schools or athletic facilities, which are listed in a country-by-country guide compiled by the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency often steps in to manage shelters during major emergencies, but its capacity can be limited by a large staff shortage as it continues to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene – along with fires, flooding, landslides and tornadoes in several other states.
In the longer term, the storms may intensify Florida’s insurance crisis. “People’s premiums are going to go through the roof,” says Martin of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The state is already the most expensive in the country for home insurance, according to a 2024 report by Insurify, a digital insurance agent. Helene and Milton can increase the cost of housing in other ways as well. Buildings damaged during Helene may become beyond repair after Milton, making it harder for people to return.
Sara McTarnaghan, a principal research fellow at the nonprofit policy research organization the Urban Institute, said Florida has not even recovered from vulnerabilities in its housing stock created by storms that hit years ago, including Idalia, Ianand Michael.
“Many parts of Florida have experienced multiple events over the past five to 10 years, which is the timeline for repair and restoration of existing housing,” she said. “Depending on the trajectory of Hurricane Milton, it could hit a vulnerable housing stock and we could see more loss of units, more expensive repairs.”
As Stunja prepares to ride out Hurricane Milton in Jacksonville, she still doesn’t know what she’ll do after the storm passes. She has just begun processing her flood insurance claim with FEMA, but the Milton surge could flood both floors of her apartment building. If that happens, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to stay.
“If the second floor gets water on this one, the building is probably a teardown,” she said. “If that happens, I will go off the island. I love Florida, but I don’t need to be on the beach.”
Jake Bittle and Ayurella Horn-Muller contributed reporting to this story.
