For some riding out Milton along Florida’s west coast, ‘the alternatives weren’t too inviting’

With the rain already slicing diagonals into the water off this transformed mangrove island in St. Petersburg, Vivienne Marran stood firm in her choice.

With the rain already slicing diagonals into the water off this transformed mangrove island in St. Petersburg, Vivienne Marran stood firm in her choice. “We can ride it out,” she told CNN less than 20 hours before Hurricane Milton was due to smash in from the Gulf of Mexico not too far from here down Florida’s western shore. “The alternatives weren’t too inviting, you know?” Marran explained Wednesday morning from the condo complex just off Tampa Bay where two weeks ago she rode out Hurricane Helene as it left 20 Floridians dead, countless others scrambling for shelter and a vast trail of debris Milton now threatened to use as a missile depot. FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES “I mean, they tell us we’ve only got to go 20 miles” inland, she said. “But because of the last storm, there’s nowhere to go, really. I mean, I guess they’ve got evacuation places, but we’ve been through a lot of these, and it’s a concrete building, and I just feel safer here than elsewhere.” Nearly 7.3 million Floridians live in 15 counties with mandatory evacuation orders. But even as officials kept begging people to leave coastal areas – “You need to help us by evacuating,” Tampa Fire Rescue’s chief pleaded Wednesday morning, adding, “I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude” – a subset of residents across Florida’s western edge were staying put.