Hurricane Ian: Residents of Ohio in Florida are preparing for a hit

COLUMBUS, OH – Hurricane Jan made landfall Wednesday night, battering the state of Florida with strong winds and powerful waves.

About 2.5 million people were ordered to evacuate southwest Florida before Ian hit.

Just 26 miles from Orlando lives David Bynum, who just moved to Florida from Columbus three months ago.

He said the storm intensified into the evening. The wind was so strong that his house shook.

“It’s a bit of a cause for concern, considering I’ve never experienced anything like this,” Bynam said. “You kind of don’t know what to expect, you hear the stories, you hear all the warnings you hear on the news trying to prepare.”

Bynam said grocery stores have been crowded since Saturday. “The shelves were empty, not a lot of water, not a lot of stuff,” he said. He told 10TV the stores closed Tuesday night before Ian arrived.

Bynam decided to hunker down and prepare for the storm, but other Ohioans didn’t have that choice.

Alyssa Gertz lives in Ohio but has been in Tampa for work for the past few weeks. At first, she said her work allowed them to return home and prepare for the storm.

Then suddenly they were told to pack up and moved to Orlando.

“There was nothing like it, I feel that this death is coming towards me. Just because we don’t get storms like this,” Hertz said.

She said traffic was held up for longer than usual as they tried to escape the storm.

“Normally it would take an hour, an hour and a half to get to Orlando from our apartment complex in Tampa, but it took about four hours because of a lot of people trying to get out of the Tampa area because we were under mandatory evacuation,” she said. she

Orlando is next in the storm’s path.

Bynam accepts it as part of Florida life and doesn’t second-guess his decision to move.

“So there’s going to be something to deal with no matter where you’re at, so I’m ready. I’m going to take the good with the bad. Because when everybody’s shoveling snow, I’m going to be on the beach,” Bynum said.

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