CROSS CITY, Fla. – Brothers Trey and Chris Athey plan to ride out Hurricane Idalia in a white Chevrolet pickup truck.
They’re from Texas, and they’re in the crosshairs of Hurricane Idalia as it marches toward the Florida Gulf Coast with projected storm surge and ferocity that weather officials strongly warn will bring deadly consequences. But like many resilient people hunkering down in Florida right now, the Athey brothers aren’t running away.
As of 6 p.m., they were parked in a Cross City gas station, but they’ll move if the hurricane projections do. They want to stay on the worst side of the storm.
“If we have to move, we’ll move in the middle of the night,” Chris said.
The more damage, the more work. Chris owns tree removal company Lonestar Arborists, and Trey owns construction company TKR Outdoor Services. Both are based near Houston.
As of 6 p.m., they were parked in a Cross City gas station, but they’ll move if the hurricane projections do. They want to stay on the worst side of the storm.
“If we can keep breaking even and helping, we’ll be good to stay,” Trey Athey said.
Nodding at his pickup, Chris Athey said this would be the sixth hurricane it’d survived in three years. He’s been working hurricanes longer than that, though. He took a smaller truck out during 2018’s Hurricane Michael.
“It picked the truck up four feet off the ground and ripped the doors open,” he said, shifting in his camouflage Crocs.
“They ratchet-strapped the door shut to keep it going down the road,” Trey added, crossing his cowboy boots.
It’s fitting that he wore those boots. For him and his brother, hurricanes are like rodeos. “It’s like riding a bull,” Trey said. “It’s a thrill.”
The Atheys have plenty of company. Tens of thousands of locals and outsiders alike are sticking around as Idalia roars toward them.
With the hurricane forecast to make landfall early Wednesday, a dangerous storm surge and high winds are threatening vulnerable areas along the Florida coast. At least 28 counties in central and western Florida have issued evacuation orders with local officials strongly urging residents to leave – but many, citing previous encounters with hurricanes in the area, say they want to stay and protect their homes and belongings.
After all, they say, they survived before. Even when state leaders and national weather officials advised against sticking around.
Low-lying coastal areas are at the most risk, according to Ryan Truchelut, chief meteorologist at Florida-based WeatherTiger. Truchelut warned that Idalia will likely bring “catastrophic surge” to a majority of west-central Florida and the Big Bend coastline.
Truchelut called Idalia, which strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane early Tuesday evening, the “hurricane of a generation for the eastern Panhandle.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a widespread state of emergency for the state’s 46 counties, an area that extends across the northern half of the state from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic Coast.
Hurricane Idalia map:Maps show Hurricane Idalia’s path as powerful storm approaches Florida and Georgia
Local authorities say there is one word to follow: Leave
Cedar Key Commissioner Sue Colson, along with other city officials, spent the day storing documents and electronics at City Hall. The island of Cedar Key, which is near the coast of the Big Bend region and has a population of almost 900, was under a mandatory evacuation order.
“One word: Leave,” Colson said. “It’s not something to discuss.”
Despite more than a dozen state troopers going from door to door warning residents of the potentially dangerous impacts, including a storm surge that could reach up to 15 feet, some residents opted to hunker down.
Benjamin Iversen, 40, said he and his girlfriend are going to stay put in their house in downtown Cedar Key.
“It’s high enough up the hill that hopefully it’s out of the storm surge’s range,” he said, adding that they will seek refuge with friends staying nearby on a higher part of the island if the storm is much worse than they anticipated.
Visible within a few steps from his front door is the Gulf of Mexico. But Iversen is also within eye shot of his coffee shop, 1842 Daily Grind and Mercantile, which he does not want to be far from when the island begins to feel the affects of Hurricane Idalia.
Since Sunday, he has made fortifications to the shop, near the bottom of the hill he lives on. Iversen lifted the furniture and refrigerators off the ground with milk crates and put sandbags along the front and side doors.
But most people he knows who live on Cedar Key have left.
Riding out the storm – on deserted territory
By Tuesday afternoon, Cedar Key’s quaint downtown and Dock Street areas, where streets are lined with restaurants and local shops on stilts firm in the Gulf of Mexico, were deserted. Metal and wood boards were nailed overtop windows and doors of beloved eateries. Many streets were empty of vehicles.
Jordan Keeton, 39, owns 83 West, the largest restaurant on the island. It juts out over the Gulf of Mexico and both floors are surrounded by windows. He along with his family and friends were moving out the last of the most valuable items, including a wooden bench shaped like a boat that has been with the restaurant over 50 years, he said.
Keeton, who is also the chef, has owned the restaurant since 2015. Soon after purchasing it, he renovated the place. The next year, however, Hurricane Hermine’s storm surge caused about $750,000 in damages. He and his brother James were upstairs when the storm hit. The downstairs was destroyed, and he found pieces of the deck at a fire station miles away.
Keeton is going to stay through the storm at his nearby Cedar Key home.
“We should be fine at a cat 3. Our house is rated at a 5. I’m not worried about it there,” he said, placing his hand on the second-floor dock of his restaurant, looking at the overcast sky above the Gulf. “We’ll see what happens.”
Another danger Idalia will bring:Tornadoes. Here’s what to know.
A giant schnauzer, miniature yorkies, and a lot of hope
Stephanie Walker is worried about her house and her dogs.
Beca, her giant schnauzer, and her miniature yorkies Marlow and Georgia are riding out the storm with her in a camper in Cross City.
“Just to get further away from the water, because I live on the water,” Walker said. “I am completely terrified.”
Her house is on the river in nearby Steinhatchee. She’s remodeling it, and she’s worried about the classic car and construction materials beneath. While she doesn’t think the waters will reach the house itself, there’s also the winds to worry about.
“It’s very emotionally stressful,” she said, wiping away tears. She sat in her Jeep Wrangler at a gas station, rain pattering her windshield. She had can of gasoline in the back for her camper’s generator.
“I put a camera out to watch it, but not being able to do anything, not being able to be there… If my house had been done, I would have stayed,” she said.
Then she has a Steinhatchee storage unit to worry about, too.
She only moved to Florida last year, after her son died.
“I was looking for a place to start over,” Walker said. “I’m devastated. It seems anything I love I keep losing.”
Quiet scene around the water and marinas
Most of the only people outside in the small coastal town of Steinhatchee could be seen at marinas and boat ramps, removing watercraft from a river expected to rapidly rise in mere hours.
The town has a population of more than 500 people on Florida’s Big Bend. But there were far less people in town Tuesday afternoon.
A little after 3 p.m., there was little indication of the storm to come.
The water around the docks of Steinhatchee River Inn and Marina reflected the fluffy, white clouds above. It rippled as Natalie Futch and her boyfriend Matt Alexander removed one of the dock’s last remaining vessels.
Futch works for the business, and it was her boyfriend’s boat. She had been busy over the last couple days, as workers removed other boats and cleared merchandise out of the store.
Only a few boats remained at the docks once Alexander’s was safely hitched to a red pickup truck.
“Those are our rental boats,” Futch said. “We don’t have enough storage for them anywhere on land, so we’re just going to leave them in there, tie them up real tight and hope for the best.”
Her boyfriend’s boat is going back home with them in nearby Cross City, where they’re hunkering down for the storm.
Why is she staying put?
“Not wanting to get bothered in all the traffic,” she said. “I’ve been through a lot of them. It happens pretty much every year. Kind of used to it by now.”
‘There’s a handful of old people who refuse to leave’
Just after 6:30 p.m., as the first winds from Hurricane Idalia began to hit Cedar Key, a group of men four men were installing wood boards over the windows of a house that sits on stilts at tip of the island.
Overlooking the Gulf from the deck, the owner of the house, Jeff Oody, said after the boards were up, he’s heading to his home in Starke, a small town between Gainesville and Jacksonville, to wait through the storm.
“I hope it doesn’t all go down,” Oody, 54, said. “I love this place.”
Helping with install the boards was Michael Bobbitt, a local real estate appraiser, who has written serval plays and novels set in Florida and is the self-described “Clambassador” of Cedar Key.
Bobbitt, 47, said he is staying in Cedar Key through the night, at his house and at the Christ Episcopal Church, both of which are on the island.
His mother, who owns a home on Cedar Key and his girlfriend have left, Bobbitt said, adding, “Anybody that has any sense has left.”
Bobbitt said he has a little skiff boat and a couple of kayaks staged at his home, which he plans to use in a rescue effort.
“There’s a handful of old people who refuse to leave and at some point, they’re going to need rescuing,” he said. “To the extent that we can get to them, we’re going to be out in it trying to help them.”
Sarasota-Manatee communities look for a peace of mind
As dark clouds moved over Sarasota and Manatee counties, community members began to seek shelter ahead of Idalia’s expected landfall. Several elementary schools were open as school administration, county volunteers, law enforcement, and medical personnel waited inside to care for those looking for shelter.
Jackie Serrano, 55, sought shelter in an upstairs classroom of Southside Elementary School in Sarasota with four other people. Serrano didn’t evacuate or go to a shelter for Hurricane Ian last year, but felt the storm surge warnings ahead of Idalia warranted leaving her home off near downtown, a level A evacuation zone.
She said a background in the military gave her a “prepared mindset” for situations like hurricanes. But there’s still anxiety surrounding how catastrophic Idalia could be.
“I think it’s I think it’s the thing about not knowing that scares everybody,” Serrano said.
At Virgil Mills Elementary School in Palmetto, the hallways on the first floor had people lined along the walls — some sitting in lawn chairs; others sleeping on cots or air mattresses; and various dogs and cats either sitting in laps or in cages next to their owners.
About 50 people were already at the school Tuesday morning, with some 65 people registered on the shelter’s list, said Principal Jim Mennes.
“What we are, we’re a lifeboat, we are not a cruise ship,” Mennes said, describing the shelter.
Contributing: Gabriela Szymanowska and Steven Walker, Sarasota Herald-Tribune; The Associated Press
