'The roof is leaking and my shed is somewhere'

Families from across the West Midlands region who are visiting or living in Florida have spoken to the BBC about their experiences of being caught in Hurricane Milton.

More than three million homes and businesses are without power, and there have been "a number of deaths" reported on the Atlantic coast.

Steven Hartill, who is originally from Wolverhampton but has lived in the Orlando area for about 30 years, said his roof was leaking from relentless rain and his shed had blown away.

Louise Walker, originally from Staffordshire but now living in Tampa, said her family decided to evacuate a few miles inland to an area that was not a flood zone.

Communicating with BBC Radio Stoke via email, Ms Walker said she lived on Clearwater Beach in an elevated 11ft (3.3m) home.

At just before 21:00 EST in Florida on Wednesday (02:00 BST), she said she was about 30 miles from the eye of Hurricane Milton and they had lost power.

“We have the strongest winds currently over us, on the north side of the storm,” she said at the time.

Her father Bob Hart, from Biddulph, said he was in touch with his daughter but he felt sorry for businesses and homes there as they were just recovering from a tornado two weeks ago.

“It’s just horrendous for everyone out there," he said.

Mr Hartill, who works at Universal Studios, said heavy rain and wind was continuing to batter their home.

“We’ve got a leak in the roof... half my fence is down and my shed is somewhere," he said.

“In the central area, we’re not used to this. They normally don’t come this far in... it’s normally coastal thing."

He said in the daylight they would be able to get a clearer picture and then "figure out what we're going to do after that".

Michael Long, who is also from Wolverhampton and now lives in Florida, has returned to Tettenhall on a long-planned trip with other family members, but has left his wife Lyndi behind at their home in Plant City.

Ms Long said what she had seen "felt like something out of a movie".

“We’re hanging in there," she said.

"The last few days have been incredibly stressful.

"There was a meteorologist crying on the news because he was so worried about this being a category five and hitting us, but fortunately it veered and didn’t come directly at us and was downgraded to a category three.

“When you see a meteorologist crying on the news, you think: 'Wow, this could be really, really bad.'"

Ms Long said they had experienced sideways rain and "nothing but darkness, rain and wind whipping" while they stayed inside their home.

Hurricane Milton made landfall as a category three storm, with warnings of extreme winds and flash flooding.

Some parts of the state are having 1-in-1,000 year amounts of rain.

Melissa Rutter from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, is on holiday in Florida with her partner Daniel King.

They were due to fly back on Thursday, but are still stuck in their hotel and now hope to return on Saturday.

The couple spoke to BBC Hereford and Worcester at about 06:00 BST (01:00 EST) when they were about an hour away from the hurricane arriving.

“We’ve got some glow sticks that the hotel have provided in case the power goes out, but all we can do is go into the bathroom because at least there’s no windows in there and we can be protected," Ms Rutter said.

"We’ve never seen anything like this it’s another level," Mr King said.

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