FORT MYERS, FLORIDA: Hurricane Idalia has made landfall in Florida and Georgia. It is going to the Southeast with heavy rain while maintaining winds of 85 mph, as per recent reports.
The impact of the storm is quite massive, as per The Federal administration updated agencies who are closely observing it's unfolding.
“The Biden administration has mobilized more than 1,500 federal personnel and more than 540 urban search and rescue team personnel who are on the ground," according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“The US Coast Guard is supporting search and rescue, and there are three disaster survivor assistance teams deployed in Florida,” it added.
When did Hurricane Ian hit Florida?
Survivors of Hurricane Ian were still reeling from the devastation caused by the storm last year. It was a Category 4, and severely impacted the residents of Florida.
Mallie Critser shared how she dealt with flooding in her family’s Fort Myers Beach home.
Critser's siblings decided to evacuate, but she stayed behind with her parents and grandparents. "I've lived on Fort Myers Beach my entire life, and we've had hurricanes hit us dead on before and we've been fine," she said earlier.
"We knew we were gonna to get a little bit of storm surge. By then it was too late to evacuate. We were hours from it," she shared.
This year, the Critser, a 22-year-old assistant pastor at Beach Baptist Church told People, "We've lived through the worst.”
"It was really rough," Critser continues. "But we calmed ourselves down, and we're like, ‘Okay, it's not hitting us. We're okay.’"
"We were like, 'Nah, we'll be okay.'" She woke me up at about three o'clock and was like, 'I told you, high tide's here.' There's about six inches of water in our downstairs, and I don't even know how much was outside, but enough that a spare tire floated past," she shared her sister-in-law warned her that high tide was on its way.
"It seems like I'm the stupid one for living here. This makes me think, 'Why? Is it worth it? Is Florida really worth it?'"
Since Hurricane Ian, Critser said that she's run a food pantry that serves 1,300 people a month.
"That got ruined as well. I’m trying not to freak out about all the work that has to be done, because if I start freaking out, I won’t stop."
How does Hurricanes impact people mentally?
Stan Pence, a 70-year-old resident shared that he couldn’t take it anymore and turned off the TV since it reminded him of last year’s horror.
There's this underlying feeling of anxiety, and I think it's forever changed us," said his daughter, Stephanie Downing, a 33-year-old physical therapist.
"My anxiety's a lot higher, and my husband, he's native Floridian, so he's like, 'Oh, we're fine. We're fine.' But I'm like, there's something that changed in me. My friend was saying, 'If we see our phones have no service again, I think I might have a panic attack.' Because we watched our friend's roofs being ripped off, and we had no cell phones to call anybody. I think everyone here in this area is just pretty damaged inside."
