Waiting, anticipating, stressing: Minnesotans with Florida ties brace for Hurricane Ian
FARIBAULT, Minn. – Steve Peters sits on the couch in his Faribault home along Circle Lake, anxiously watching television.
"I've been glued to the weather station," Peters said. "Watching that and the updates, and they're very scary."
Peters main concern – his home in Fort Myers, a place he and his family have owned as a winter retreat for the past several years. On the opposite side of the state, his daughter braces for the worst.
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"We've never seen anything like this on either side since we've been there," Peters said. "My biggest concern is that we'll have no place to go to. That these homes could be leveled."
Friends in Florida have helped Peters take care of patio furniture and other preparations. Still, he's worried his home, which is just shy of 9 feet above sea level, could be lost.
"This is our haven, this is where we get away, and there may not be a house to go back to. There may not be a roof on the house," he said.
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While he watches coverage from 1,500 miles away, others with Minnesota ties are face to face with the storm. Amber and Adam Hlavac moved to Fort Myers from Apple Valley just four months ago. By Wednesday afternoon, they were awaiting the arrival of their first hurricane.
"I would have loved to have gone back to Minnesota [laughs], got out of here, honestly!" Adam Hlavac said. "We thought about maybe just driving up to Tennessee or something, but we decided to hunker down."
"He was the first one to say we should go," Amber said. "Then it got to a point we couldn't leave anymore."
The Hlavac family says they're prepared, with a bathtub full of water and other supplies on deck.
"It's been a lot of waiting, anticipating and prepping," Amber Hlavac said. "And stressing, a lot of stressing.
Tom Roberts, who's from Bloomington, lives near Sarasota now. He says the uncertainty of hurricanes is just part of being in Florida.
"We're prepared. We have food, we cooked food today," Roberts said. "We know we're probably going to lose power. We've lost it for a few minutes each time."
Roberts rode out the storm at a friend's house behind hurricane shuttered windows after evacuating his own home. He has no idea what condition his home will be in when it's safe to check it out.
If there's damage, his friend, Susan Sparling-Micks, might be the one taking stock of it for the Red Cross. Sparling-Micks is a Red Cross volunteer from Plymouth who's on standby to head down later this week.
"We go to the house, stand right in front of it, and you can mark it on your app on the map, satellite imaging and all," Sparling-Micks said.
Roberts also volunteers for the Red Cross, and he's already thinking about what he's going to do to help.
"I'm going to ask, as soon as we're ready, to go drive one of the emergency response vehicles, or, as Susan does, do disaster assessment," he said.
Other Red Cross teams from the Twin Cities are already on their way.
"We want to get there as soon after as we can so we can start helping the people," Sparling-Micks said. "We might just start driving around with our suitcases in the trunk and start pinning."
