Surviving Hurricane Milton: A Floridian's Story Of Preparation And Resilience

Hurricane Milton is set to make landfall in Florida tonight, so I reached out to my good buddy from Lubbock, Carl Styles, to see how his family is doing during the storm.

Carl is a former (forever?) military man, a family man with a wife and two beautiful kids, and a company that does something. (I think it has to do with oil.)

Carl and his family lice in Venice, Florida. which is about an hour from Tampa.

Canva/Google Maps

Anyway, I shot him a few questions via text and here's what he had to say...

Where exactly are you in relation to the storm? Are you in the middle of it?

Right now we are on the south edge know commonly as the dirty side. (About 30 miles from where they expect it to make land fall) We are expecting heavy wind and rain with a very scary amount of storm serge coming in from the gulf. Our home is about 6 miles inland from the gulf. Storm surge would only affect us strongly if we got a lot of rain and it had nowhere to drain.

Carl Styles

What all do you have on hand to ride out the storm? Beer? Snacks? Entertainment?

We prepped planning on 7-10 days with no electricity. We bought enough food, snacks, water and alcohol to last us beyond that time. We do have two small girls so we bought a ton of arts and crafts and science experiments for them to stay entertained. We downloaded endless movies and shows on there iPads as well. We do have a generator with enough fuel and propane that will keep the refrigerators and freezers going as well as fans and lights.

We filled all the bathtubs with water to basically take sponge baths and we have the pool and 5 gallon buckets if we need water to flush toilets. I have a blackstone and grill for cooking and we can still run appliances off the generator. We like to say if we don’t get power back for a few days it will be like camping in a very big tent lol. Also keep In mind that the worst part of a hurricane only lasts 6-8 hours so tomorrow the kids will be able to play outside again.

Carl Styles

Have you lost anything yet? Anything from an umbrella to a roof?

We have everything put up and secure and have not lost anything yet. I’ll circle back to this one tomorrow

Carl Styles

Are your neighbors freaking out or just boozing and waiting for it to pass?

Yes. There are only 3 of us on our block that stayed lol

But just like in the military I am confident in my equipment/home and know we are in a safe place. The aftermath is the easy part. Our home was built to withstand much more than this. That’s because I’m in a newer home and Florida building codes are very strict about this now

I’ll have lots of drone footage and pics for you to use tomorrow