TAMPA, Fla. — Residents on Davis Islands are shifting from cleaning up from Helene to preparing for the potential impacts of Hurricane Milton.

They aren’t taking any chances at the Seaborn Day School because, during Hurricane Helene, Michael O’Brien saw what a powerful storm could do.

What You Need To Know

  •  Residents on Davis Islands are shifting from cleaning up from Helene to preparing for the potential impacts of Hurricane Milton

  •  The biggest concern for some people on the island with a new storm coming is all the debris on the curbs that haven't been picked up

  •  As a result, folks are putting plywood and sandbags throughout the area to try and limit any damage from the storm

“We weren’t expecting this storm surge that came in, and it came in with fury,” he said.

O’Brien is one of the owners of the day school on the Davis Islands.

While the building has been on the Davis Islands for about 100 years, two weeks ago, two to three feet of water filled the inside.

“It really does bring me to tears,” O’Brien said. “It’s crushing to see, you know, the devastation that’s really happened here.”

It’s an eerie sight, with empty chairs outside and a playground removed of mulch after the storm surge contaminated the whole area.

Work has already begun on replacing what was lost, but now, with Milton, progress is on hold for protection.

“We’re boarding up. We’re trying to save what we’ve already done,” O’Brien said. “And that was a tremendous amount of work in a week.”

That’s what other businesses and homes are doing on the island to prepare.

We saw one family using bags of mulch to block any storm surge after seeing water fill up both their cars and go halfway up their garage.

Even though crews are working hard to remove debris, it still is all over the place, and that’s Michael’s biggest worry and frustration.

“That’s been there for three days now,” he said. “I mean, it’s been there even longer, but the trash cans ready to be picked up and I don’t see a trash truck, you know what I mean?”

With all this garbage and waterlogged furniture outside his school, O’Brien’s worried some of this will go flying when the wind really picks up.

“We’re talking about heavy debris and 145 miles an hour,” he said. “That becomes an object. Right?”

In the meantime, he’s just thankful Youl Alva and his team at Alcar All Services were able to come by and board everything up to try to protect the thousands of dollars of work going on inside after Helene.

“I’m going to save this job and what we’ve done,” Alva said. “We don’t want to destroy what we already accomplished.”