Despite threat, some choose to ride out Irma at home

Associated Press

REDINGTON SHORES, Fla.

Carl Roberts has a stash of Chinese food, a case of water and a million-dollar view in his 17th floor Gulf front condo.

And that, he says, is all he needs to hunker down through a massive storm coming straight at him.

Authorities have beseeched more than 6 million people in Florida and Georgia to evacuate before Hurricane Irma’s storm surge and fierce winds make leaving – or rescuing – impossible. But some around Florida are choosing to stay, a rite of passage for many in the state who boast about the storms they weathered: Camille, Andrew, Katrina and others.

“No. 1, I don’t have anywhere to go,” said Roberts, an attorney. “Hurricane damage is primarily water rising. And I’m on the 17th floor. I have security shutters, so I should be quite safe here.”

All residents of Pinellas County’s barrier islands, where Roberts lives in Redington Shores, are under a mandatory evacuation order. But Roberts thinks he’ll only lose power for a day or two.

And he’s clearly not alone in not heeding the call.

In the elevator, another resident of the condo tower was toting a 12-pack. He told Roberts that he wasn’t leaving, either.

“Where ya gonna go?” the man asked, then got out on the 15th floor.

Hunkering down isn’t just happening on Florida’s west coast.

As Hurricane Irma threatened catastrophic damage to Florida, patrons at the most infamous South Beach dive bar tossed back drinks, shot pool and played the jukebox loud.

Clouds of cigarette smoke floated in the air at Mac’s Club Deuce where Miami Beach resident Kathleen Paca, 56, was perched on a stool. She’d just finished spray painting “We’re Open Irma” on the bar’s plywood window protections. The word “Irma” covered “Wilma,” the 2005 hurricane when the plywood last was used.

Paca and other regulars at the Deuce, as it’s known to locals, had no qualms about staying home as Irma approached, even with the storm projected to be one of the strongest to ever make landfall in Florida.

“Where am I going to go?” Paca said. “It’s not going to be that bad. I’m on the second floor and have impact windows. I’ve thrown coconuts at my windows, and they don’t break.”

Others riding out the storm said they waited too long, and now can’t leave.

At first, Carol Walterson Stroud figured Irma would turn elsewhere before hitting Key West. When it became clear that the Florida Keys would be slammed, she didn’t evacuate because she’s a nervous wreck while driving, and didn’t want to leave her husband – “a hard-headed conch.” Getting back would be as difficult as getting out, she said, since U.S. 1 is the island chain’s only link to the mainland.

“I can’t go and not get back,” she said. “I don’t have money for that. We live paycheck to paycheck, pretty much.”

So as Irma’s winds and rain began to lash Florida’s southernmost city, she hunkered in an apartment at the senior center where her husband, Tim Stroud, works, with their 12-year-old granddaughter Sierra Costello, and dog Rocky. Her daughter, Breanna Vaughn, was a few blocks away in her own home, which she refused to leave because she’s staying with her animals. Both their houses were boarded up, and the senior center was built to withstand hurricanes.

“I’m afraid,” Stroud acknowledged. “Tonight, I’m sweating. Tonight, I’m scared to death.”

While many of the state’s poor have little choice but to stay put at home or head to a shelter, some people who can choose are opting to ride the storm out rather than risk driving hundreds of miles north with no sure source of gasoline or accommodations.

“I have two choices, stay or run north, a bad idea” said Michel Polette, 31, who lives a couple of blocks from the Atlantic Ocean in South Beach. “If you drive to Atlanta or Tallahassee, you’re risking running out of gas and being in your car in a Category 4 hurricane.”