SALT LAKE CITY — As Hurricane Milton makes landfall in Florida, several people are taking different approaches to how they deal with the storm.
Ava Parker moved to Clearwater from Utah back in 2022.
She told FOX 13 News on Wednesday that she is riding out the hurricane at her fiancée's mom's house.
Parker said she had lost internet a few times and was expecting to lose power as the storm rolled in.
In her time living in Florida, Parker said she has experienced multiple hurricanes, but that Hurricane Milton has been different.
"People lining up to get gas grocery stores, there weren't much water left or toilet paper, like the necessities, it's all low in stock at the store," said Parker. "The lines on the streets even just to leave Florida, like every street, I mean, the traffic was horrible. Driving a drive that only would be two minutes was taking about 20 or 30 minutes just because of how many cars were on the road."
Karl Piessens, the cousin of FOX 13 News reporter Chris Arnold, lives in the Riverview area, which is 25 minutes east of downtown Tampa.
He said as of Tuesday morning, the area he lives in was supposed to receive a direct hit from the storm.
So, Piessens decided to evacuate with six other people, including his two sons and four pets to Milton, Florida, where his mother and stepfather live.
"You see people in some pretty desperate situations when they don't listen to, 'Hey, you need to get out,' and I don't want to be one of those people," said Piessens. "Honestly, I don't want my kids to be in that situation, so I felt it best to leave."
Piessens said his home isn't in a flood zone, but he did take some precautions, like taping up windows before leaving for the northwest part of the state.
Utah Task Force 1 was deployed almost two weeks ago to assist in recovery and clean-up efforts in Tennessee following Hurricane Helene.
On Wednesday, they said they were in Valdosta, Georgia. That is in the southern part of the state.
Special Operations Division Chief Bryan Case said they are on the fringes of where the storm is going to hit. He said they expect to move in typically right behind the storm after it makes landfall.
At FEMA's request, Case said they reached back out to their sponsoring and participating agencies, which are largely fire departments, to provide 35 more people. That would be in addition to the 45-person team that was originally deployed.
He said many of those members flew into Atlanta on Wednesday.
Case spoke about what kind of work they will be doing after Hurricane Milton makes its way through Florida.
"We're going to be the first ones on the ground in many cases in the areas that we're working in, so it is going to be an intense group of people, with very little time for prep," he said. "We'll fall back on our skill sets. We'll be moving in and we'll actually be doing search and rescue versus the recovery phase."
He said they may be doing focused searches in areas where perhaps a lot of people were not able to evacuate or did not choose to evacuate.
Case said these are unprecedented times with back-to-back catastrophic events. With that, he says FEMA is asking them to maybe extend their deployment for up to 10 days.
