AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reports from Siesta Key, Florida, where residents are beginning to prepare for Hurricane Milton while still recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane Helene.
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00:00Florida officials are expected to call for mass evacuations along the Gulf Coast over the next 24 hours.
00:06AccuWeather's Bill Waddell is live in Siesta Key, a barrier island just off Sarasota.
00:12Bill, families there are still cleaning up from the storm surge from Haleen,
00:17which we think this storm surge could potentially be two to three times stronger than what they saw with Haleen.
00:26Yeah, Bernie, Ariella, this is not a good situation.
00:29I could tell you there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of nerves just within the past 20 or 30 minutes.
00:34Everybody's phones here went off with another round of alerts, evacuation orders for areas A and B here in the Sarasota area.
00:41That includes this barrier island.
00:43We've been showing you the piles of debris from people's homes out on the streets from the last storm.
00:47And now you could see these are businesses.
00:49People are cleaning up debris from the last storm and frantically trying to clean up, board up and get ready for again.
00:54It's what you said could be even worse, much worse impacts from what we just saw from Haleen.
01:00Now, the crews and officials, so many people around the country who work in these disaster zones,
01:06who respond to weather, major weather emergencies.
01:09What we're all dealing with right now is overlapping disasters.
01:12Haleen's landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida.
01:15Then we look at all of the impacts.
01:17We still have crews up in the southern Appalachians.
01:20They are dealing with the catastrophic flooding.
01:22We know that search, rescue, recovery missions are still undergoing there this morning.
01:27And now here along the Gulf Coast in the Tampa Bay region of Florida,
01:31everyone here is trying to prepare as best as they can for a direct impact from a major hurricane.
01:37You can see in the video from above, this is some of the things folks are dealing with.
01:41Long lines at gas stations, families trying to stock up on food, water and supplies.
01:46I just spoke with one man who told me he went to the beach to shovel his own sandbags.
01:51He cannot afford to lose hours and hours in line waiting at the sand distribution sites.
01:56This is what people are dealing with in Florida, scrambling to get ready.
02:00AccuWeather crews spent the weekend up in western North Carolina.
02:03We were there all of last week alongside neighbors and volunteers who have been helping families
02:08that lost everything to unprecedented flooding from Haleen up in the mountains.
02:12And some of the people here in Florida tell us they are worried that the attention, the donations,
02:17the resources, the volunteers, utility crews, some of them could be pulled out of the southern Appalachians
02:23and will be returning here for the next hurricane landfall in Florida.
02:28It's a madhouse in there right now. They're out of water. They're out of toilet paper, generators.
02:32They have a list at the front what they're out of.
02:34I think that Tampa is probably taking this one pretty serious, being in the cone of uncertainty.
02:38So I would expect to see a lot of people boarding up.
02:41I'm very concerned. I am hoping for the best, but we're preparing for the worst,
02:45which is, you know, what you should always probably do.
02:49Yeah, more than six million homes and businesses lost power during the peak of Haleen.
02:53And, of course, a big damage cleanup underway here in the Tampa Bay region
02:59with people just losing so much of homes now preparing for the possibility of not just a repeat, but even worse impacts.
03:05And again, guys, we have other interviews that you'll be hearing throughout the day right here on the AccuWeather network.
03:10One of the other folks that we spoke with telling us they're doing their best to get ready for this storm,
03:15but they are heartbroken to know that some of the resources trying to help the families up in the southern Appalachians,
03:21the mountains of the Carolinas, if they hadn't been already, some more may be pulled out and deployed here to Florida.
03:26So this is just a really tough situation, being up in the Carolinas all of last week, just hearing that resources were strained.
03:32It was a tough situation. We know there's a lot more help needed up there.
03:35And now we have all of these people here in the Tampa Bay region of Florida and all across central Florida preparing for major impacts.
03:42Guys, this is a really difficult situation, and this is a tough storm path that you do not see, especially this time of year, impacting Florida.
03:50That's why we are so concerned. That's why AccuWeather expert meteorologists are using such strong language.
03:55So concerned about the storm surge right here.
03:58Yeah, I mean, Bill, that perspective and to know that the people of Florida,
04:02we're empathetic to those, of course, in North Carolina and being like, you know, we need the resources, but we hate to take them away.
04:07It's just my heart goes out to everybody.