FOX 8 legends hunker down at Florida homes in Milton’s path

SARASOTA, Fla. (WJW) – A couple of legendary members of the FOX 8 family, who have homes in Florida, found themselves in the path of Hurricane Milton on Wednesday night.

As the hurricane unleashed its fury, “Cleveland’s Own” Lil’ John Rinaldi and retired anchor Bill Martin and their families decided to ride out the historic storm at their homes in Sarasota County.

Lil’ John and his wife are staying at their villa in Sarasota, and John told us via Zoom, “I am not in an evacuation zone or in a flood zone. My place happens to be the highest elevation in Sarasota, 11 feet.”

Even though John has been making trips to Florida for 25 years, Milton is the first hurricane he has experienced first-hand.

“Well, there’s anxiety in the fact that this is the biggest and the ‘baddest’ and everything that they’re saying. I basically feel that it’s going to hit for sure, but I’m so far away from the water, the storm surge means nothing to me,” he said.

Lil’ John, who decided to wear his “Trust in Dick Goddard” shirt on Wednesday as a good luck charm to ward off the effects of Milton, says he and his wife loaded up on food and other supplies and took steps to protect their home.

“My wife and I put our storm shutters up, or our hurricane shutters up and we couldn’t find anyone to do it so we did it ourselves and they’re good for 150 miles an hour or something coming through. I’m not worried about damage because the house is a concrete bunker,” he said.

Meanwhile, retired FOX 8 anchor Bill Martin, who lives in Lakewood Ranch in Sarasota County, says even though he has covered and lived through 10 hurricanes, the historic nature of Milton’s wrath has his full attention.

“You always get a little nervous with these things because you never know what to expect. Each hurricane kind of is its own animal and so you take these things very seriously. A direct hit is what we’re most nervous about, the high winds for us and hopefully those things will die down and go away quickly. We’ve had a ton of tornado warnings already and some tornadoes on the ground,” Bill told us via FaceTime.

Bill says his home was built to be hurricane safe, and while many Floridians decided to move north, clogging the highways with traffic, he and his wife elected to weather the storm at home.

“I’m not too worried about it, another one coming by here, but if you live in Florida, hurricanes are a part of life here, just like snowstorms, blizzards, you know a nor’easter up in Cleveland, so if you don’t like hurricanes and you don’t like 100 degree temperatures in the summer, Florida is not your place. You just need to be smart and safe. If you need to evacuate, you evacuate,” he said.

While they were confident that their homes would withstand the hurricane winds, they each expressed concern about the possibility of losing power for an extended period of time.

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