How should Florida prep for storms? These top 2025 grads have ideas

Yahoo

16-05-2025

As the region continues to recover from back-to-back hurricanes, some of Tampa Bay's graduating high schoolers have insights on where to go from here.
The top 3% of Hillsborough County's graduating class were named R.F. 'Red' Pittman Tribune Scholars, named after a publisher of the former Tampa Tribune newspaper and now sponsored by the Tampa Bay Times.
Those 455 students with the highest grade point averages were invited to participate in a 300-word essay contest for one of three $1,150 scholarships.
This year, 153 students responded to the following prompt: Last year's hurricanes devastated parts of the Tampa Bay community. How have storms affected you personally, and what could we do differently as a community ahead of another hurricane season?
Serving as judges this year were Stephen Lambert, quality enhancement plan director at Hillsborough Community College; Yulie Restrepo, assistant professor of English at the University of Tampa, and Jim Verhulst, former deputy editor of editorials at the Tampa Bay Times.
The winners, honored at a ceremony Thursday in Tampa, were Calleigh Eakle, of Bloomingdale High School; Julianna Grossglass also from Bloomingdale High School; and Rudra Patel, from Middleton High School.
These are their essays.
Calleigh Eakle plans to study mechanical engineering at the University of South Florida.
Last year's hurricanes left our streets littered with debris from unsecured projectiles, such as trampolines, poorly installed roofing tiles, and outdoor furniture, creating hazardous conditions for residents and emergency responders. Severe flooding compounded the damage, making roads impassable and leaving families stranded. The aftermath highlighted the urgent need for stronger home protection and disaster preparedness measures.
Expanding the My Safe Florida Home (MSFH) program would offer critical support to families and communities recovering from these hurricanes. By proposing an initiative to increase funding limits to $2.50 for every $1 spent by homeowners, we can encourage investments in certified, impact-resistant roofing systems, which are often too expensive for lower-income households. This approach could reduce recovery service costs in neighborhoods most impacted by hurricanes — areas that lack resources to properly secure their homes.
In addition to MSFH's expansion, the creation of a Storm Awareness and Fortification Education (SAFE) program would help homeowners prepare before severe storms. This program would offer in-depth training workshops focused on securing potential projectiles during hurricanes, such as outdoor furniture and smaller storage units, and providing guidance on proper anchoring techniques to prevent dangerous debris. An educational component would foster best practices across communities, ensuring long-term protection for all homes, not just those designed to withstand hurricanes.
Such comprehensive measures would reduce property damage and environmental degradation while laying the groundwork for Florida's recovery and preparedness in future hurricanes. Expanding MSFH and creating SAFE would enhance community safety and confidence, ensuring that more families benefit from advanced storm protection and proactive disaster planning.
Julianna Grosslass plans to study health science at the University of South Florida.
Last year's hurricanes were horrific events that caused extensive devastation. My loved ones and I were fortunate enough to emerge from these disasters with only fallen tree limbs and a few broken fences. I cannot pretend to understand others' suffering caused by these hurricanes. The storms impacted people's livelihoods through the destruction of homes, businesses, and entire economies. Natural disasters are unavoidable, and the consequences of these events are, frankly, unfair and nonsensical. No amount of preparation, worry, or research can ensure safety as nature cannot be controlled. Many experienced great tragedy, with widespread destruction caused by Hurricane Helene, followed shortly by Hurricane Milton. Everyone copes with disasters differently, but for me, the most profound takeaway was the optimism and sense of community found after the storms.
Days after Milton hit, my family and I returned to Tampa to feed the homeless with Thorne Ministries. As we spoke with others, phrases like 'I'm so grateful' and 'It could've been a lot worse' echoed throughout conversations. Despite the damage to homes, flooding, and power outages, people were thankful for their safety above all. The ability to find a silver lining in a tragedy is a remarkable aspect of human nature, one that should never be taken for granted.
It's natural — and almost healthy — to expect the worst when facing natural disasters like these hurricanes. By doing so, you will either be grateful you prepared or grateful things were better than expected. This gratitude is a defining characteristic of humanity: after the storm passes, everything seems smaller allowing us to see the positives we normally overlook. Negative events in general, help put life into perspective. They serve as a reminder that tomorrow is never guaranteed and that storms — both literal and metaphorical — are an inevitable part of life. The important thing to remember is that the storms will always pass, one way or another.
Rudra Patel plans to study neuroscience at Princeton University.
I watched our familiar coastline transform into something alien last year — palm trees genuflecting to winds they couldn't resist, streets becoming tributaries of an angry ocean that had forgotten its boundaries. For me, hurricanes have always been exercises in humility.
Helene's surge tore through my childhood home in Keaton Beach, Florida like an ancient leviathan, its foundation cracking like the spine of a drowned god. The walls, once shelter, lay flattened like discarded matchsticks, the roof twisted into abstract art. When Milton followed three weeks later, its winds howled a cruel punchline: You thought it was over?
While Tampa was saved from the brunt of the storms' wrath, its $5 billion scars hide quieter wounds. We rebuilt roofs faster than psyches, ignoring how 41% of survivors now startle at rain pattering gutters. Our communal trauma unfolded in supermarket aisles — neighbors wordlessly stockpiling batteries, their eyes haunted by 2024's bread shortages. The storms exposed our fragility theater: seawalls high enough to impress voters, but too low to block the existential tide of our climate denial.
Yet in the debris, I found perverse grace. Hurricanes are democracy's equalizers — billion-dollar mansions and fish-shack rentals equally kneel before Nature's fury. We've since weaponized this ephemeral kinship into the Tampa Bay Resiliency Fund, channeling $430,000 toward housing the still-homeless — a down payment to our collective conscience.
As the 2025 season looms, preparation demands more than hurricane shutters. We need vulnerability drills — practicing how to say 'I'm not okay' as fluently as we track cone maps. Let's retrofit community centers into mental health bunkers, staffed by veterans of last year's storms. Replace FEMA paperwork with potluck exorcisms — contractors and CEOs trading storm sagas between bites of pub subs. When the next storm comes, may it find us not just storm-proofed, but soul-forged — a community built on shared scars and unshakable bonds.