TAMPA, Fla. (NewsNation) — Morgan Roos, a Tampa resident who has decided not to evacuate the area ahead of Hurricane Milton, tells NewsNation she is having second thoughts about staying.
Roos, who has 650,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 10,000 on Instagram, said she’s only recently moved to the area from Colorado.
“I am directly on the riverfront,” Roos told NewsNation. “I am standing in front of my windows right now, and I would say, maybe 200 feet away is the Hillsborough River. I was here during Helene. I decided to wait that one out, and I watched the water rise, but it only came up on the Riverwalk. And now I am not feeling so confident in my decision.”
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Roos said she’s not currently looking for a shelter for a variety of reasons.
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“Truthfully, no,” she said. “And the reason I say no is because I’ve got two dogs with me; got my mom here. The only sense of community I have here in Florida are people who live in my building, and they’re all hunkering in together. So we’re going to pull resources and go that way.”
Roos said while she believes the city is prepared and that Gov. Ron DeSantis has been doing a “great job,” she’s concerned about how the community will fare following back-to-back crises with Helene and Milton.
“The thing that scares me the most is just the fact that Helene hit two weeks ago,” she said. “When I’ve been driving like, up and down the residential neighborhoods, there’s debris stacked like eight feet high. I know that the governor has been doing a great job … but it does scare me.”
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Despite not being a native Floridian, Roos thinks she’s as prepared as can be expected.
“I think I really, really, really underestimated this,” she said. “But I have four cases of water. My neighbors told me they have a bunch of flashlights. I have food, I’ve got a propane tank. I did everything that the internet told me to do. I just didn’t get a flashlight in time.”