“My name is Valentina Ahumada, I am 25 years old, I am Colombian and I have lived in Tampa, Florida for four years. Before the arrival of Hurricane Milton, I had to leave my home due to an evacuation order and I temporarily reside at my job, a cancer research and treatment center, where I care for patients who were unable to travel. We have heard on the news that Florida has not received a hurricane of this magnitude for 100 years, so we are quite concerned.”
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This is how one of the Colombians residing in the United States the situation that occurs in northwest Florida where Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall this Wednesday night described as “catastrophic and deadly” by the United States authorities.
“We are counting on the support of the authorities and seeing that many have evacuated, we hope that everything happens quickly,” says Ahumada.
It’s literally a matter of life or death.
And, despite the fact that Hurricane Milton lost intensity again this Wednesday and dropped in category, from 4 to 3, with maximum sustained winds of 205 kilometers per hour, on its way to the west coast of Florida, where the first tornadoes and its arrival is expected this Wednesday night, the cyclone has grown in size and its tropical storm force winds extend up to about 400 kilometers from its center, according to an update from the National Hurricane Center (NHC, in English ) from the United States.
Under the uncertain outlook, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, stressed this Wednesday to the population of Florida to take shelter: “It is literally a matter of life or death,” he said, highlighting having spoken with the governor of Florida, the Republican Ron DeSantis, and with other local authorities to show them the support of the federal Executive.
“I have offered them everything they need, everything we have. I made it clear to them that they should communicate if they need anything else. I gave them my personal phone number here at the White House so they can contact me directly if necessary,” he added.
And although the areas most likely to be hit hard by the hurricane had evacuation orders, Many people – like Valentina’s patients – and thousands of others, either due to their advanced age, delicate state of health or their own decision, were unable to do so.
Being locked up, without natural light, also lowers our spirits
In other areas of tampaout to sea, the order was to stay at home and surround the homes with sandbags to protect yourself.
This is the case of Jorge Urrea, a Colombian who has lived in the county for 23 years and who points out “this is the first time he has faced the arrival of a hurricane.”
“Since this Wednesday we have been locked up with my wife, my daughter, the dog and the cat. We already have everything ready for what these days will be like, where we will surely lose electricity and the connection with the outside,” Jorge says in conversation with this newspaper.
For Urrea, the last few weeks have been complex, especially because they have just faced the damage caused by Hurricane Helene.
“It’s a little stressful. The schools closed for an entire week without knowing what will happen next. Being locked up, without natural light, also lowers our spirits. Although we do what we can, we play, we talk to each other and we try to distract ourselves from what is happening outside,” he explains.
You don’t know if there are going to be floods that end up destroying everything. However, the important thing is to get safe first and ensure the most important thing: life
Jorge says that “absolutely everything is closed. There is no one in the streets and no businesses are open,” adding that his greatest fear is that many of the infrastructure objects that were left loose in the streets after Helene passed would become “missiles” that impact houses once they hit land. Hurricane Milton.
Helene left a trail of more than 800 kilometers of devastation across southeastern states, with special intensity in North Carolinaafter entering northwest Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 hurricane. With more than 230 deaths, it is considered the deadliest cyclone in the US since Katrina in 2005.
Finally, there are those who were able to evacuate from the most dangerous areas. This is the case of Sebastián Mejía, a young Colombian who managed to reach Orlando.
“I live in Tampa, but we have followed all the instructions of the authorities. We try to protect our homes as best as possible and we evacuated since Tuesday to stay as far as possible from the path of the hurricane,” he says.
For Mejía, this was not an easy decision. “Even though one evacuates, there is concern about what one leaves at home and about friends. Especially because you don’t know if there are going to be floods that end up destroying everything. However, the important thing is to get safe first and ensure the most important thing: life,” he adds.
The Forecasters expect Milton to remain an “extremely dangerous large magnitude” hurricane. when it reaches Florida’s west-central coast in the evening and remains strong as it moves along that peninsula through Thursday.
The heavy rains that Milton will dump in Florida through Thursday will also carry a risk of catastrophic flash and urban flooding, especially in areas where coastal and land flooding combine, and this Wednesday the agencies involved admitted that those waters will take days to drain.
STEPHANY ECHAVARRÍA NIÑO – INTERNATIONAL EDITOR – EL TIEMPO
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