BRADENTON, Fla. – Dozens of mobile homes were torn to shreds and their roofs completely peeled off when Hurricane Milton devastated Florida – with the devastation so devastating that some retired snowbirds rummaging through the rubble are reconsidering their annual migration.
Some heartbroken residents even had trouble matching which pieces of debris came from which home when they returned Thursday to inspect what remained of their homes in the riverside city just south of Tampa.
“It’s devastation everywhere,” Cheryl Long, 66, told The Post as she surveyed the damage to her home in the Royal Garden Estates mobile home park in Bradenton.
“I lost my roof, my awning and the carport,” she added. “When I got home, I found my roof at the neighbor’s.”
The harrowing scenes occurred as residents of the Sunshine State began trying to repair the damage caused by Milton after the ferocious hurricane tore through coastal communities, killing at least eight people.
In the hours after Milton tore through Bradenton, residents of two mobile home parks slowly began returning Thursday to find their roofs missing, steel carports twisted and debris strewn everywhere.
Some houses were so badly damaged that the living rooms were completely exposed.
“My shed went through my neighbor’s house,” Dave Kania, 78, said of the damage at the Seabreeze Mobile Estates.
“It just fell apart. I had the shed tied down, you can still see the straps, but you couldn’t stop the wind.”
Kania, a retired snowbird from Akron, NY, said he found his neighbor’s roof in his driveway.
Despite spending every winter in Florida for the past decade, Kania said the damage inflicted by Milton made him – and others – doubt whether he would continue to return.
“I’m having second thoughts about staying in Florida,” Kania said. “We always have to worry about hurricane season. Once you retire, you don’t want all that stress anymore.”
“It’s devastating,” he continued. ‘Look. It will cost tons of money to restore it. I don’t have insurance because hurricane insurance is so expensive here.”
Coworker Ruthie Reynar, who immigrated to Florida from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, about six years ago, said Milton was worse than any New England Nor’easter she had ever experienced.
“I’m from New England and I’ve been through a lot of Nor’easters, but I’ve never seen a storm as intense as this,” the retiree said, noting parts of her roof were torn off. .
“It was so scary. Even the boys were scared. The boys were tight-lipped, but you knew they were scared,” she continued.
“You start to wonder if you should leave Florida. Frankly, I think a lot of older people will leave. I will rebuild.”
Meanwhile, at the Royal Garden Estates, Ohio native Cheryl Long said she felt faint from the fear and physical exhaustion of picking through the rubble under the blazing Florida sun.
Like most of her neighbors, Long weathered the hurricane in a nearby brick apartment building, where the fluctuations in air pressure were so extreme that her ears popped.
“The hurricane was terrible,” she said. “The windows sucked in and out so hard that it made my ears ring.”
“It was very calm and like daylight outside when we were in the eyes, but the wind at the back was the worst,” she added.
“I keep wanting to faint. I’m just very… worried a lot.”
As residents continued to assess damage to their properties, more than 2.5 million customers across the state were without power as of early Friday, according to the site poweroutage.us.
