In a corner of Florida, a gathering storm stirs familiar feelings

As Tropical Storm Debby churned through the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, Lucia Trapani was securing patio furniture and offering refunds to people who had booked stays at the motel she manages on an island off Florida’s northwestern coast.

Trapani had been through this before. Less than a year ago, as Hurricane Idalia approached, she shut off the water and electricity at the Sunset Isle RV Resort, where she worked at the time, and moved campers off the property. The Category 3 storm did so much damage to the resort that it still has not reopened.

Trapani and Brooke Matthews — another manager of the motel, Park Place in Cedar Key — described Idalia with one word, in unison: “traumatizing.”

Almost a year after Idalia became the strongest storm to hit the sparsely populated Big Bend region, known for manatees and marshlands, residents are bracing for Debby, which is expected to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday. Storm surge of up to 10 feet was expected in some areas, and mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for parts of Levy County, including Cedar Key, as well as Franklin and Citrus counties.

By midday Sunday, Debby was still a tropical storm, with winds of 65 mph. But it was expected to strengthen rapidly over the gulf before making landfall as a hurricane, with winds of at least 74 mph.

At a news conference Sunday afternoon, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Debby was following a path like Idalia’s last year, but with a key difference: lower winds and a lot more rain are expected. Other states in the Southeast could also see heavy rain in the coming days, including Georgia and the Carolinas.

“We’re going to see much more inundation,” DeSantis said.

Before the storm, emergency officials in several counties were making preparations to warn residents and to ensure that the most vulnerable ones would be protected.

Officials in Franklin County were making calls over the weekend to those residents, including people with special health needs who may require moving to a shelter, according to Jennifer Daniels, director of emergency management for the county.

“We do preach on a regular basis: A shelter is a place of last resort, because when you go to a shelter you are not going to be comfortable,” she said.

In Citrus County, Sheriff Mike Prendergast said there were about 20,000 residents in mandatory evacuation zones, but he expected many of them to stay put. While those who live in homes designed to withstand storm surge may be better prepared, Prendergast was concerned about those in more standard houses.

“Those will be the ones that we will be getting calls from later tonight to do high-water rescue,” he said.

Amy Winter, 56, and her husband were hit hard last year by Idalia, which damaged their home in Perry. After losing power for over week, the couple — who moved there just two years ago and are now trying to move again — made sure their generator was fueled and their pool drained before Debby’s arrival.

“I’m a little frazzled,” Winter said. “We haven’t even finished fixing everything yet, and here we go again.”

Others along the storm’s path were making different kinds of preparations Sunday.

In downtown Perry, a town of about 7,000 people, volunteers at the Taylor County Historical Society were working to protect old artifacts, newspapers, photographs and documents to preserve the region’s history.

J.T. Davis, vice president of the historical society, gathered photographs and put them in a concrete vault, where he also planned to store a mammoth hip bone and an early 20th-century medicine bag. Davis, 39, said he and other volunteers will cover everything with plastic before the storm hits. But he’s still concerned about flooding and rain leaking into the building, which was built in 1915 and still has water damage from Idalia.

“It’s terrifying every time we have a storm,” he said. “A lot of this is irreplaceable.”

But in other parts along Debby’s path, there were few signs of panic.

On Sunday morning, traffic was steady along South Jefferson Street in Perry, where several grocery stores and fast-food restaurants were operating business as usual. Some shoppers at a Walmart Supercenter said that after riding out Idalia, they were not too worried about Debby.

“I’m a little anxious about the rain that we’re going to be getting, but other than that I’m OK,” said Dorrie Sapone, a 54-year-old life insurance agent. Sapone and her partner filled up two 5-gallon containers of water and bought about 12 cans of pasta.

Dawn Kosterlitz, a 54-year-old property manager living in Tarpon Springs, northwest of Tampa, appeared to be even less bothered by the storm.

Outside her waterfront home that juts out into the Gulf of Mexico, pounding rain was obscuring nearby islands and covering her deck. But instead of scrambling to make preparations, Kosterlitz set up a time-lapse camera on her deck and went out with her grandsons, hoping to add to her collection of storm photos and teach the boys a “healthy respect” for storms.

“I literally feel high as a kite when storms are approaching,” she said.

Joy McDonald, 28, and Jorge Velarde, 32, also live in a waterfront home in Tarpon Springs. The couple, both accountants, moved from the suburbs of Atlanta last year, and they were about to ride out their first hurricane as Florida residents.

They said they had no regrets about moving to hurricane territory.

“I will take the risks,” McDonald said. “If one day we lose everything, it will be worth it to me. We love to be on the water.”

On Cedar Key, the sky and the sea had turned the same shade of iridescent gray on Sunday. Palm trees swayed over the empty parking lot at the Park Place motel. Trapani and Matthews checked on the rooms that were reserved for a local news crew, which planned to ride out the storm, and left the members good luck notes.

Then they left the island.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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