Worried Pinellas residents take refuge at hotels in Lakeland as Milton bears down

LAKELAND — Ralph Eubanks stood at the opened back hatch of his black Audi on Tuesday morning, reaching in for dog food, ice and other supplies.

Eubanks had traveled from his home in Palm Harbor to Lakeland, where he and his wife, Sandra, and their two dogs spent Monday night at the Hyatt Place on West Orange Street in anticipation of Hurricane Milton’s arrival . They were among the scores of people living in Pinellas and other coastal counties who fled to Lakeland’s hotels to avoid the potentially deadly effects of the storm, forecast to make landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday in the Tampa area.

Eubanks, 80, said that he and his wife evacuated their home for Hurricane Ian in 2022 but not for Hurricane Helene, which passed Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sept. 26.

“We got a lot of water, but we didn't get the wind,” Eubanks said. “So we didn't have to evacuate for Helene.”

Eubanks’ home is in a zone that did not have a mandatory evacuation order as of Tuesday morning. He said that he and his wife opted to leave Monday “to beat the crowd.”

Most of his neighbors seemed intent on remaining in their homes as Hurricane Milton approached, Eubanks said.

“The houses were boarded up and everything,” he said. “Our issue was a lot of trees. And the ground was really soaked already. We thought that we could easily have a tree fall onto the house. We have shutters and everything, but we didn't know is this was going to be a (Category) 4 or 5. … So, we didn't take any chances.”

The couple packed their two dogs, one of them a small poodle that is nearly blind, and headed to Lakeland.

Eubanks worried about the effect Milton might have on Pinellas County, areas of which were ravaged by Hurricane Helene less than two weeks earlier.

“There were, as far as you could drive, thousands of homes had everything they owned piled up in the front yard, and it's coming right back at them even worse,” he said.

More: Polk County hurricane shelters: what to know, what to bring and not bring

Another guest strolled through the parking lot trailing a tan terrier mix on a leash. The woman, who gave only her first name, Sue, had evacuated her home in Pinellas Park on Monday evening, needing 3½ hours for the drive to Lakeland.

Sue, 68, said she and her friend Bill, 88, had planned to continue to Orlando but grew tired of driving. Her dog, Princess Murphy, was 14 years old and blind.

Sue said she lives in a retirement community in one of Pinellas County’s mandatory evacuation zones. But she said some of her neighbors did not intend to heed the government directive.

“I just talked to one of them — he’s 87 — (and said), ‘We don't want to go anywhere,’” Sue said. “People want to stay in their house.”

Sue said that she escaped Hurricane Helene less than two weeks earlier without damage to her home.

“We dodged that one,” she said. “But this one? I said, ‘Holy s---, I hope we have a home to go to.' But we don't know.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Worried Pinellas residents take refuge at hotels in Lakeland as Milton bears down