‘A little freaked out’: Hurricane Milton spurs Orlando run on bottled water, plywood

Anthony Doyle tightened straps he hoped would hold five four-by-eight-foot plywood panels on the roof of his sister’s Ford Fusion.

The siblings had windows to cover before Hurricane Milton arrived in Central Florida.

Home was a mile from the Home Depot on Lee Road and Milton was about a day away.

Asked if he was worried about the swirling behemoth headed in their direction, Doyle, 28, a Florida resident most of his life, announced semi-confidently, “Naw, been through worse. But you can’t not prepare. It’s Florida so who knows? Cat 3 then a Cat 5 back to a 4?”

Doyle and his sister Tierney, 29, were part of a parade of plywood purchasers Tuesday at the building supply store, hustling to make last-minute preparation for a storm forecast to be one of the most powerful hurricanes on record when it makes landfall Wednesday. Across the region, residents gathered food, hunted for scarce emergency supplies, and sought to determine the appropriate level of anxiety for a rapidly changing — but, for days now, consistently alarming — forecast.

At a Walmart Neighborhood Market nearby, shelves were picked bare of bottled water, peanut butter and other valuable non-perishables, leaving people like Vince Majakowski to weigh baked bean options. “Honey Sweet or Barbecue?” he asked aloud, a can in each hand.

“Both,” he decided.

Some folks, especially longtime residents, are wary of what may come.

Some remember 2004 and Charley, Frances and Jeanne, hurricanes that soaked and tormented the Orlando areas.

Christina Hollerbach, owner of Hollerbach’s German Restaurant in downtown Sanford, said she’s bracing for a hurricane punch  because her customers seem a little uneasy. They filled about 50 tables during lunch hours Monday, down from the usual 200 to 300.

She didn’t open Tuesday after noticing that a bar, where locals often gather before a storm, had few patrons Monday night.

“I can definitely tell, based on the dive bar experience, that the real Floridians are a little freaked out,” Hollerbach said. “Instead of having hurricane parties, we’re getting ready for a major impact.”

Others didn’t have to think back 20 years.

Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022 deluged Ronnie Circle in Orlo Vista, a neighborhood where Orange County has invested $23 million, some of it from federal and state sources, into a flood mitigation project designed to weather a 100-year storm.

Cris Gonzalez, 29, said he was on a video call with his girlfriend two years ago as her home on the residential street near Pine Hills Road filled with water, destroying most of her furniture and belongings. Renter’s insurance covered losses but Gonzalez said he hoped to prevent the concrete home from flooding again.

He bought water barriers for the doors and he was outside Tuesday covering the windows with plywood.

“It comes with living in Florida,” he said. “Hurricanes happen.”

Nearby on John Street, Quyen Le covered the windows of her home with help from her brother and son.

Le, 53, said the home hasn’t flooded during previous storms, but she’s concerned about branches flying from trees in her yard and damaging her house, to which she added a new roof last month. In 2017, a tree limb hit the front window as her son slept inside.

The window, which was boarded, did not break.

At a Winn-Dixie store in MetroWest, Dan Johnson loaded six bags of cat litter into his SUV.

Johnson, 52, who has no cats, said he’s hoping the absorbent material will stop water from seeping into his first-floor condo.

“My mom was telling me kitty litter would probably be better than sand,” Johnson said. “My mom’s never wrong.”

shudak@orlandosentinel