Hurricane chases away a few trailer dwellers while others hunker down
ORLANDO, Fla.—Hurricane Irma be damned, Melody Lowe isn’t leaving her trailer at the Holiday Mobile Home Park in Tavares.
But at El Red Mobile Manor, the trailer park next door, Ronald Simoneau was getting ready Friday to pull out for Kentucky, a 750-mile trip. Simoneau, 57, figures he and his girlfriend, Karen Kobous, 62, will be back in about seven days.
“That’s if there’s even anything to come back to,” he said, standing shirtless in front of the aluminum structure he shares with Kobous near Lake Eustis.
Thousands of people live in relatively flimsy manufactured homes in Central Florida that aren’t likely to withstand storms like Hurricane Irma, which may pack 100 mph winds late Sunday. Emergency management officials in Orange, Marion and Seminole counties ordered residents in trailers to leave for shelters before the storm hits.
“These structures are particularly high risk for storm-related damage and the order has been issued in an effort to preserve the safety of those residents,” Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs said. “Upon notice to evacuate, residents are expected to make final preparations and plans to seek shelter prior to the onset of Hurricane Irma, which is anticipated to affect Central Florida beginning Sunday morning.”
Firefighters began going doorto-door in various communities to deliver the evacuation notice.
High winds can be devastating to mobile homes. Tornadoes with winds that reached 165 mph struck that struck Lake in 2007 killed 21 people—all of whom lived in mobile homes.
Osceola County spokesman Mark Pino said emergency officials have advised people living “in housing that might be at risk consider seeking shelter,” but the county hasn’t mandated evacuation.
Lowe, 62, watched some neighbors at Holiday Park pack up and hit the highway for Ohio and other northern places away from the storm’s path.
“I’ll go to the clubhouse,” she said while hanging lattice sheets to protect her trailer’s windows. “I’ll be fine. I hope.”
Most mobile-home parks have concrete-block community centers that offer more protection from high winds and heavy rains than a thin, aluminum-sided trailer’s plywood frame.
Trailer-park residents often are old. Many are poor. In Central Florida, many parks also are half full now because snowbirds haven’t come back yet.
At Lake Frances Estates, another 55-and-older community of manufactured homes in Tavares, Susan and John Truax had not yet decided what to do.
They clicked on Florida’s Turnpike, cameras available, saw heavy traffic and decided against making a run for it.
But they don’t like the odds of trailer vs. Irma.
They had planned to paint the trailer but then told the painters not to bother.
“I don’t want to pay to paint a home that’s going to get blown off the block,” Susan Truax said.
John Truax spent the afternoon adjusting the trailer’s aluminum shade shutters to act as window protectors.
The couple moved into the community in May and, though they’ve weathered other tropical storms, Irma looks bigger and potentially more dangerous.