‘We could lose everything’ Florida family flees to the desert to escape Hurricane Ian
Many Floridians have been forced to leave their homes, as Hurricane Ian batters parts of the state.
News Channel 3 spoke with a Florida family who came here to the valley to escape the storm before it reached their home.
Stephanie Stanton, a California native, and her family who moved to Florida about a year and a half ago. When Hurricane Ian made landfall, it was on path to strike her home. “There is a chance we could lose everything,” Stanton said.
She recalls the moment when her and her family had to pack up and prep their home. “It was very traumatic, it was very stressful, I had a lot of anxiety, I was breaking down crying, I have never been through this.”
They stacked their furniture on top of each other, enough to elevate it several inches above the ground in case of a flood. “Raised all the furniture, put everything on bricks. Putting furniture on top of furniture. So anything we could get off the floor,” said Mark Sarsha, Stanton's husband.
Living on the bay in St. Petersburg, they were ready for a wave of flood waters. But instead, water in the canal by their home receded completely. “Our canal is way way way down, which is actually a blessing. Instead of having all that water surge come at us like they were predicting, it actually got sucked away,” Stanton explained.
Stanton, Sarsha and their kids already had plans to vacation in California later this week. But because of the storm, the trip went from vacation to evacuation. “At the end of the day, you have to come to this point of surrender where you’re like okay, It’s just stuff. I have my life, I have my family and that’s it.”
Since moving to Florida just 18-months-ago. this is the first hurricane their family has experienced firsthand.
As a former reporter in Los Angeles, Stanton has covered several natural disasters ranging from wildfires, to mudslides, to earthquakes. She tells me none of those experiences prepared her for Hurricane Ian. “I’ve interviewed people who've lost everything. And you know, when you’re there interviewing them they’re upset and you’re feeling what they’re feeling. But you really don’t know what that feels like and I can say now, being on the other side of it… I actually was in their position.”
Although her home and family are safe from the storm, it hasn’t stopped her from worrying about the millions of other people that are suffering through it. “All those people down there, they’re facing that devastation that you could’ve had. So it’s a horrible, awful place to be. It’s really a no win.”
