When Grace Klein made the decision to evacuate from her Tampa home as the powerful Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida, she only had about an hour to get ready for the airport.
The city was basically in “full panic” by that point Monday, the 25-year-old said. Police cars cruised the streets with their sirens on, warning people through speakers to evacuate. Roads and bridges began shutting down near her apartment, and gas was in short supply at stations.
With the airport set to close in the morning, Klein packed a carry-on and her gray cat, Gigi, and booked a $800 one-way flight to Chicago. She’s now waiting out the storm at her parents’ house in Aurora, watching her apartment on a Ring camera, praying that she’ll have a home and job to return to.
“I’m not an emotional person, but I cannot stop crying,” said Klein, who works as a server at a beachfront restaurant. “My anxiety is off the roof because I can’t control anything — that’s just the worst part. The only thing I could do is just get out of there, and I just have to wait and see.”
Milton has fluctuated in intensity as it approaches Florida and became a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday afternoon. It’s threatening the Tampa Bay area, a major population center that is home to more than 3.3 million people and has managed to evade a direct hit from a major hurricane for over 100 years.
Within the millions ordered to evacuate, some with ties to Chicago made their way to the city. Meanwhile, volunteers and groups from the Chicago area are sending in aid to help recovery efforts for what National Hurricane Center forecasters warn is “expected to remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane” when it reaches Florida’s coast, likely late Wednesday.
Klein moved to Tampa three years ago for a job opportunity after graduating from Illinois State University. In that time, she lived through other hurricanes, including Hurricane Ian in 2022, and only recently returned home after evacuating to her family’s home in Palm Coast, Florida, during Hurricane Helene just two weeks ago.
Milton, which had already brought rain, winds and tornadoes on Wednesday, is menacing communities already battered by deadly Helene. Klein said while her apartment complex remained intact during Helene, the houses around her looked like a “bomb went off.” Furniture and totaled cars were piled up along the roads, she said. But even that didn’t touch the alarm in the lead-up to Milton, she said.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like that, especially the panic,” she said.
Florida is a top destination when moving out of Illinois
Sharon Mehalek lives in Burr Ridge, but her heart is in Florida, where her home was destroyed by one hurricane, and now is in the path of another. Mehalek and her husband bought a waterfront house in Bonita Springs on Florida’s Gulf Coast, but that home was destroyed by Ian two years ago. Last month, their property was again submerged by the storm surge of Helene, which left behind a foot-deep layer of sand covering their empty lot.
Now, the couple shudder to think what damage could come from Hurricane Milton hitting the area. Their thoughts are with neighbors there who rebuilt and were hit again, only to face another evacuation. Yet they plan to rebuild on the site.
“It’s an absolutely beautiful area,” she said. “Our heart goes out to all those who are dealing with it.”
Florida is the top destination for people moving out of Illinois. More than 35,000 Illinoisans moved to the Sunshine State in 2022 alone, the U.S. census reported. After fleeing winter’s icy embrace, many snowbirds are finding record warm temperatures in the Gulf and the Atlantic Ocean are feeding a string of monster hurricanes. Repeated damage and rising costs of insurance, which can exceed $40,000 a year, are real concerns.
But Chicago has its own problems, with flooding and snowstorms, Mehalek noted.
“The weather is unpredictable no matter where you are,” she said. “You may have tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes in the mountains of North Carolina. I don’t think you run and hide. You try to move forward with your dreams.”
Some Chicago-area groups and companies are stepping up to help those in need. ComEd sent about 60 employees to Tampa to work on the city’s underground system, which involves replacing cables or equipment from flooding, a spokesperson said. Another 200 workers who are currently working on cleanup in South Carolina and Georgia from Helene will soon head to Florida, the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, the American Red Cross is encouraging Chicagoans to donate blood to make up for a depleted supply. A spokesperson said people can also text the word HURRICANES to 90999 to make a financial donation to the Red Cross. PAWS Chicago is also planning to receive pets as early as this weekend from impacted Florida shelters after Hurricane Milton strikes
Evacuating to Chicago
At O’Hare International Airport on Wednesday, Florida residents on last-minute flights touched down in Chicago. Jamie Wallin, from South Tampa, arrived about 11 a.m. with her husband and two young children.
The foursome tried to get out of Milton’s path Monday night, booking a flight out of St. Petersburg that got canceled. Monday night, they drove to Fort Lauderdale, spending two nights at a hotel trying to book plane tickets. Eventually, in the middle of the night, four tickets to Chicago from Miami popped up, Wallin said. They left the hotel at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday to make it to Miami’s airport in time.
They plan to stay with family near Rockford during the storm. She said they might have been safe from the hurricane in Miami, but didn’t want to take any risks with young children. They’re also worried about the businesses they own and might lose in downtown Tampa, saying the $4,000 they’ve already spent avoiding Milton will be “peanuts” in comparison.
“We’re both going to lose our income, both going to lose our businesses that we’ve had for years,” Wallin, 39, said. “And we’re going to probably lose our house.”
Ruth Vaughan managed to catch one of the last planes at the Tampa airport before it closed Tuesday morning. Originally, the 66-year-old realtor planned to hunker down in her condo in Largo — a city in the Tampa Bay area — during the hurricane, saying she felt relatively safe with hurricane windows and doors.
But she eventually decided she had too much to live for and didn’t think the risk was worth it. Before she left, she packed up her family photos in Rubbermaid containers and stored them in her laundry room.
Vaughan has no family in Chicago, but it was one of the few remaining flights and she didn’t want to be stranded. She said she checked and rechecked the United app constantly on the way to the airport, hoping her flight wasn’t canceled.
“I think I got the last seat, because when I went to pick your seat, I was in row 35 and I think there are only 37 rows,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. You know, book, book, get it before somebody else does.’ I mean, I feel very lucky to have gotten out of there.”
“It’s just so nerve-wracking and heartbreaking and anxiety ridden,” she added.
Despite constantly thinking of her “beloved Florida,” Vaughan said she’s making the most of her short time in Chicago. She’s staying at the Palmer House downtown, before flying to her son’s house in Arizona in a few days. She even went on the Chicago River Architecture Tour Wednesday.
For Eli Eppel, a 20-year-old college student at the University of Tampa, it was his mom who eventually convinced him to leave the city and come home to Fox Lake in the north suburbs. He managed to book a Monday flight for about $900, although he didn’t make it home until Tuesday after missing a connection in North Carolina due to delays. He was able to take with him important belongings, such as his computer and clothes.
“She was saying, ‘You’re not staying there. You’re getting out of there.’ So she did a lot of research on flights. We actually bought multiple (tickets) just in case the airport closed. It was just like this one is going to be bad, this is the one to leave for, so we’re getting you out of there.”
In the meantime, Eppel said his college classes are canceled and he’s waiting at home for more news of damage.
“It’s terrifying,” he said. “I mean, not knowing what’s going to happen, when I’m going to be able to go back. Even if I’ll resume classes or not.”
The Associated Press contributed.
