American with Tyrone roots describes Hurricane Milton chaos

An American author with roots in Tyrone has shared his harrowing experience of returning home to Florida just as Hurricane Milton unleashed its fury on the state.

John Heagney, who recently spent 11 days in Ireland with his wife, Linda, returned to a drastically different environment than the one he left.

“When we left Ireland, it was raining, but we really didn’t expect it to be raining as we flew into Tampa; it was like we never left Ireland,” explained John.

“The hurricane wasn’t on our radar at that point, but as we were getting off the plane, a woman tapped me on the shoulder and showed me the news on her phone that a hurricane was on its way.”

John and Linda then made the 25 mile journey from Tampa to their home in Tarpon Springs where they prepared for the worst.

“We were keeping an eye on updates and suddenly it was announced that the hurricane was category five, which is the worst rating of all,” he continued.

“In preparation, we pulled furniture and any loose debris off the patio, got our generator ready, and we had to install hurricane bars on our garage door as a measure of preventing our roof from falling off.

“We have what is known as a ‘water bladder’ which we put to good use. This is essentially a plastic lining for the bath tub that we can fill with fresh drinking water in case we lose our water supply.

“We then charged our phones, stocked up food and made sure to have flash lights at hand in case of a power cut.”

John estimated that the gusts of wind may have reached up to 100mph, with an additional 12 to 15 inches of rain.

“We drew the pool in our yard down by about 10 inches to allow for extra water and by the time we went to bed it was full again,” John remarked.

“Our main priority was to stay safe and dry and we were lucky enough to avoid a power outage, although we did experience a few minor blinks with our lights.”

Having survived the worst of Hurricane Milton, it wasn’t until the following morning that John and Linda were able to observe the aftermath.

“We always wondered what it would be like to have waterfront property,” laughed John.

“Well, we finally got it. Our whole street was essentially turned into a river with rapids at the end of the block.”

Aside from the flooding, John said that his street is now cluttered with debris and branches, a mess which will take a lot of effort to clean up.

“What really concerned me was that the storm blew the roof off of the Tropicana Baseball Stadium in St Petersburg which was filled with people as it was being used as an evacuation centre,” John said.

“The people of Sarasota have also been hit badly which is a tragedy as they have had barely enough time to catch their breath from Hurricane Helene which only struck a couple of weeks ago.”

In the wake of Hurricane Milton, it is believed that at least 16 people have died in the storm and more than 2.5 million people have been left without power throughout the state of Florida.

Before Milton even made landfall, there were 45 tornado reports and a total of 126 tornado warnings, which is a new record for Florida.