BRANDON, FL (WROC) — Anthony Carusone, a native of Victor and now a Tampa, FL resident was one of the thousands who evacuated from the Florida coast as Hurricane Ian approached.
For him, this is a unique experience, being the first hurricane he’s ever experienced in person. Despite facing the unknown, Western New York’s active weather at least helped to prepare him to act.
“Coming from Western New York, we deal with wind storms, we deal with everything, ice storms, winter storms, so better to be safe than sorry,” said Carusone.
In the days leading up, Carusone made sure he was ready to go in case an evacuation order was issued. That included grabbing essentials such as food, water, and flashlights from the store. As well as finding somewhere to evacuate too. In this case, his roommate’s parent’s house is about 20 miles inland. On Monday, he got the alert that it was time to go.
“On Monday I went to work and we got that evacuation order around 2:00,” said Carusone.
Despite evacuating from the immediate coastline, and the storm making its initial landfall south of the Tampa area, on Cayo Costa Wednesday afternoon, Carusone is still prepared for anything.
“I think the power is going to be out here for sure widespread outages and stuff that’s what we’re expecting,” said Carusone.