Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

Trinida­di­an na­tion­als liv­ing in Flori­da were last night brac­ing for the ar­rival of Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton.

The hur­ri­cane had al­ready be­gun to lash parts of Flori­da with belt­ing rain­fall as it made its way there yes­ter­day.

On Mon­day, Mil­ton rapid­ly in­ten­si­fied in­to a Cat­e­go­ry Five hur­ri­cane while in the Gulf of Mex­i­co and just skirt­ing the Yu­catan Penin­su­la. Mil­ton de­vel­oped from Trop­i­cal De­pres­sion Four­teen on Sat­ur­day, where it was fore­cast to de­vel­op in­to a ma­jor hur­ri­cane. There were sev­er­al shifts in the fore­cast cone of Mil­ton, but the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter main­tained the fore­cast of it strik­ing the West coast of Flori­da late last evening.

Many T&T na­tion­als were forced to evac­u­ate from their homes for their safe­ty as Mil­ton was clos­er to mak­ing land­fall yes­ter­day, while oth­ers had to al­ter va­ca­tion plans.

One na­tion­al liv­ing in Tar­pon Springs (near Tam­pa, FL), Car­olyn Figgen­er, said they made ex­ten­sive prepa­ra­tions, in­clud­ing board­ing up their win­dows, se­cur­ing loose out­door fur­ni­ture in­side the house, stock­ing up on sup­plies and charg­ing all elec­tron­ics. She al­so said they were ex­pect­ing wide­spread pow­er and In­ter­net/phone out­ages in the area.

Al­though Figgen­er and her fam­i­ly are not lo­cat­ed in the manda­to­ry evac­u­a­tion zone, they de­cid­ed to pack up and head fur­ther north and fur­ther in­land so they would be out­side of the fore­cast cone.

“We hope that we have a home to come back to,” Figgen­er told Guardian Me­dia.

An­oth­er na­tion­al, Vishesh Su­per­sad, in­di­cat­ed that he was on va­ca­tion in Or­lan­do with his fam­i­ly and had to dri­ve south to Fort Laud­erdale on Mon­day to es­cape the most ad­verse ef­fects of Mil­ton.

“It was a bit un­nerv­ing for me. Wal­mart had no bread, wa­ter, and oth­er stuff. Gas was sold out in al­most all the gas sta­tions I checked from Or­lan­do un­til al­most in Fort Laud­erdale,” Su­per­sad said.

Mean­while, com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion with na­tion­als in Flori­da on Tues­day, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Dr Amery Browne, said, "We are in con­stant con­tact with our mis­sions in the USA, with par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on the T&T Con­sulate in Mi­a­mi. They have been ad­vised to re­main in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with mem­bers of the T&T di­as­po­ra in­clud­ing via the var­i­ous di­as­po­ra as­so­ci­a­tions, and to ren­der fa­cil­i­ta­tion and sup­port as nec­es­sary in the cir­cum­stances.”

A pub­lic no­tice is­sued by the Con­sulate Gen­er­al of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go in Mi­a­mi, in­di­cat­ed that the of­fice will be closed to­day, and for emer­gen­cies, na­tion­als could call 786-492-2095.

Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton is al­ready a his­toric storm, the fifth strongest (with a pres­sure of 897 mil­libars) in record­ed his­to­ry for the At­lantic basin, beat­en by the likes of Wilma (2005), Gilbert (1988), ‘Labour Day Hur­ri­cane’ (1935), and Ri­ta (2005). It is al­so one of the few on record to at­tain a Cat­e­go­ry Five sta­tus, weak­en, then re-in­ten­si­fy to Cat­e­go­ry Five. Since Sun­day, the Gov­er­nor of Flori­da, Ron De­San­tis, has de­clared a state of emer­gency for sev­er­al coun­ties in an­tic­i­pa­tion of Mil­ton’s im­pact, with 51 of the 67 coun­ties in Flori­da cov­ered by the ex­ec­u­tive or­der.