Aussie expats describe horror of Hurricane Milton
A Sydney man is among Aussies that survived the brute force of Hurricane Milton after it ripped through Florida.
Exclusive: An Australian expat and his family are among those counting the cost of Hurricane Milton as Florida residents assess the damage.
Matthew Leyshon, from Sydney, had evacuated from his Tampa home with his wife and two children before the horrific storm made landfall.
He returned on Thursday (local time) to discover that his backyard had flooded and the water had risen up to 15cm in the back room of his house.
A huge branch had also snapped off a tree in his backyard, damaging a fence but narrowly avoiding the house.
“These things are brutal,” Mr Leyshon said as the clean-up job began.
Deborah Belcher had bunkered down in Clearwater on Florida’s west coast, where the wind hit 144km/h at the peak of the hurricane.
The beauty salon owner – originally from Perth – lost power for about 12 hours and said sirens were “going almost non-stop around here” the day after Milton made landfall.
While several big trees came down in her area, her home escaped relatively unscathed.
“I never want to live through anything like that again … Worst experience of my life,” she said.
Earlier, as Milton crashed into Florida, Mr Leyshon said it had “spooked most people”.
“A lot of people have evacuated. I usually stay home,” he said, having experienced four major hurricanes in his first year in Florida in 2004.
“We’re hardly livin la vida loca, but we’ve got our food and everything like that. We’ve just lost power but we had a tonne of torches and lanterns … Hopefully the power will come back on pretty soon, but so far we’re okay.”
Milton had initially been set to make landfall in Tampa but shifted south as it neared the coastline, sparing the city a storm surge of up to 4.5m.
“Now it’s only going to be about six feet (1.8m),” Mr Leyshon said.
But he worried his community was “basically screwed” because of the debris that collected in the wake of Hurricane Helene a fortnight ago.
“Usually it’s just trees and branches … but you drive a few blocks from our house, and people have got a quarter of their house on their front yard, ruined furniture and stuff like that,” he said.
“Because it hasn’t been collected, s**t is going to be blown everywhere. Some of the streets are going to look like armageddon.”
As the storm passed, Ms Belcher had said it was “terrifying”.
“There’s trees down in the backyard, there’s huge branches down. I don’t even want to go out in the front yard … I’m too scared to even go out there for fear that the road is flooded,” Ms Belcher she said.
The beauty salon owner – who moved to Florida in 1984 – said she decided to stay put with her three dogs as the hurricane roared towards her home about 2.8km from the Gulf of Mexico.
“I’m scared stiff at this point,” Ms Belcher said.
“I’ve been in this house for less than a year. I’m as protected as what I think I can be. I know I’m not in an evacuation zone. If the water comes up more than 15 feet (4.5m), then I’m screwed.”
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Originally published as Aussie expats describe horror of Hurricane Milton