Florida woman Allie Rae is opening up about a scary experience during Hurricane Milton. She and her family failed to evacuate the storm after their flights got canceled and the roads got backed up.
Instead, Rae and her family decided to hunker down at their Florida condo. They lived in the penthouse in a 12-story condo on Clearwater Beach.
She told People, "We figured there was no chance the storm surge would get that high. The house our boys are in is a lower lying area that's a flood zone. So based on what was going on and where we were, we made the best decision. We chose to get whatever water, food, we could from stores. We had DoorDashers going to get stuff and delivering it to the house because we're trying to make sure we have enough for the storm."
The Florida mom thought Hurricane Milton would blow on by without any trouble.
"It was myself, my husband, and our three children, who are 15, 20 and 21. Our 20-year-old's girlfriend also stayed with us, so six of us prepared to ride out the storm. And we were at ease," she said. However, things got scary very quickly
She explained, "The master, which we thought would be our safe room, started not to feel safe. We could feel an immense amount of wind in the room and the shutters we did have did not look like they were going to hold. The windows were bowing. It was very uncomfortable."
All of a sudden the walls started shaking, and the building started moving during Hurricane Milton.
She said, "You could feel the walls shaking. The built-ins were pushing against us and we could still feel the wind in the closet. At that point, we could hear that windows shattered downstairs. You felt the pressure shift, you felt wind coming through your closet and it just got really cold all of a sudden."
Hurricane Milton Fears
The family became scared that the entire building might collapse on top of them.
She said, "I think that's when I got probably the most scared, 'cause now I'm running out of 'safe rooms,' places that I at least could feel safe and know that there's catastrophe happening outside that door, but it was not safe in that room 'cause it was leaking and the built ins were pushing and they were going to break or fall in," she says.
The house started taking on several inches of water on the main area.
"About 10 minutes later, we look under our door here in the office, and this is where I filmed, two inches of water probably had flooded the main level and was making its way in," she said. "Now at that point, we were not concerned that we were going to get three feet of water in here and flood and all drown, but it was very concerning because the storm was very early. This was at 10:30 p.m. and we were told to expect this to go until 3 or 4:00 a.m."
Ultimately, the family managed to ride out Hurricane Milton without losing their lives.
"That's very extensive damage in itself. I woke up the next morning and I was squeegeeing all the water out of the house off the balcony. It was flooding upstairs in my son's room from one of the windows that broke up there. And so that came through the sheet rock to the downstairs, so that's why the roofs were dripping. So there was more damage than we knew that night."
