Lilly Torres has been living out of a small suitcase in her older sibling’s Allston apartment since Tuesday night, when she narrowly escaped Hurricane Milton before flights out of Florida were canceled across the board.
“I didn’t feel stressed until I was there [Orlando International Airport],” she said. “It was very hectic in the airport and people were freaking out, people were just like, we have to leave, we have to get out. That’s when I started to get stressed out … but it’s not my first hurricane.”
Torres, 27, who lives at home with her family in the Orlando area, was planning to hunker down and wait out the storm until her parents called in a panic. Authorities had started to issue formal evacuation warnings by zones, and they worried she wouldn’t make it out on time.
“The warnings came kind of late, like okay these people should leave, and then okay these people can leave,” she said, “So, you wouldn’t know until it was kind of too late.”
Her first flight was canceled and prices started to spike. Torres resisted buying a ticket at triple the normal price, but her parents insisted.
“They were just so desperate to get me out that they were like, ‘It doesn’t matter. we’re just going to send you,’” she said.
Torres conceded, standing in security for two hours to board the flight with her one-way ticket, a small suitcase and the family pet, a white cat named Scarlet stowed in a cat carrier.
There was no question of leaving Scarlet behind, Torres said. “Not her,” she said. “My mom would kill me.”
Her family home ended with little damage from Milton, but she considers herself lucky. Torres set up a camera near a window and watched as multiple tornadoes touched down nearby, just missing the house.
According to authorities, 16 people have died and as many as 2 million are without power.
Torres was home during Helene, in the week prior, which downed some trees and added damage to the roof of her parents house. In 2023, Hurricane Idalia ripped holes in the structure of their home and caused a massive leak – and an ongoing battle with the insurance company.
Torres says hurricanes are just a part of life.
“I don’t freak out over hurricanes,” Torres said, remembering nights when she was a child camping out on mattresses in her mother’s room, joking with her two sisters about which one of them would be taken out by a tornado.
“It’s still serious – it’s really serious – but I also grew up with it, so it’s normal,” she said. “For a lot of people, it’s very different.”
That includes Carrie Burnett, who grew up in New England and moved to Clearwater, Florida, a few years ago to be closer to her sister and her mother. Since then she’s come to embrace the “Floridian attitudes” around hurricanes, but it’s something that still terrifies her.
“I thought it was nuts when I first heard about the famous Floridian hurricane parties,” Burnett said. “That’s when the people that decide not to evacuate go over to each other’s houses, you bring over beer and Doritos and margarita mix and just watch the wind blow.”
Burnett traveled to New Hampshire to attend her daughter’s wedding last weekend and now finds herself stuck.
During Helene, her 82-year-old mother, who has dementia, fell and hurt her wrist. The plan was for Burnett to return to Florida and evacuate with her mom, but her flight was canceled. Instead, she found herself sitting in her daughter’s kitchen in Reading, Mass., watching Milton unfold.
“I was not feeling happy about being up here,” she said. “I wanted to be back there getting washed away. I would rather have been down there with the power off and just suffering with people than sitting up here, safe and warm, having ditched my poor mother.”
Burnett’s mother made it safely through Milton at a rehab facility in Clearwater, and Burnett has a flight booked to return next week. But, she said the one-two punch of Helene and Milton is making her reconsider her future in Florida.
“This is my first back to back hurricanes ... if it happens again, that’s enough to make me move out of state,” she said.
Torres says she never plans on leaving Florida. The ever-rising risk of natural disasters is scary, she said, but it’s a good trade-off for beautiful days and a community she’s proud to call home.
“It is a really big deal, because some people don’t leave, and some people have things destroyed. But most things are replaceable,” she said. “And that’s the nice thing about Florida, people come together to clean up.”
Torres plans to return on Sunday and get to work helping her parents and neighbors clean up, repairing material things and starting again.
