TAMPA, Fla. — After parking his car near Tampa International Airport, Bill Brotherton caught a ride to a local high school where he intends to shelter from Hurricane Milton.

With his eclectus parrot Mikey perched atop his shoulder, the 70-year-old said Hurricane Helene inundated his home with 4 feet of seawater, forcing him to sleep in his car for nearly two weeks.

"It’s so overwhelming I can barely speak. I can’t think. I can’t spell. I’m having chest pains,” Brotherton said on Tuesday, tears welling in his eyes. “I go to sleep and I don’t want to wake up but I keep waking up.”

Brotherton is one of many Florida residents who were in the midst of recovering from Helene – removing soaked furniture, tearing down walls, contacting their flood insurance providers – when Hurricane Milton began churning toward the state, forcing them to drop everything and begin fortifying their homes again.

Mountains of debris and household items cleared out of homes, including couches, bedframes and refrigerators, still lined the streets of several coastal communities. And as residents evacuate en masse, many are wondering if they’ll have a home to return to.

“We had 4 feet of flooding from the last one,” said Scott Heidt, a Tampa resident whose mother's home was flooded by Helene. “If we get 12 feet from this one, we’re toast.”

On Monday, Milton exploded into a category 5 hurricane, its winds at one point reaching 180 mph. Though the storm is forecast to lose strength as it approaches the western coast of Florida, Milton is expected to remain a major hurricane when it slams into the state's Gulf Coast. The storm's immense power has prompted urgent and dire warnings from officials.

“I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas you’re gonna die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told CNN on Monday.

From prep to recovery and back to prep: 'We're just exhausted'

The 10 days of Elasa Tiernan's life has been focused on getting her house back in order. That is, until she heard about Milton.

“I was going to squeegee more water out today, but with this all coming again, we pretty much just had to throw in the towel,” said Tiernan, whose home in Crystal Beach, a coastal community in Palm Harbor, was flooded with 2 feet of storm surge from Helene.

After the storm passed to the north and began battering other states in the Southeast, Tiernan’s husband – now bedridden because of breathing problems, possibly from mold exposure – got rid of water-logged furniture and took a sledgehammer to the cabinets and concrete walls. 

Most of her neighbors suffered the same fate during Helene, and now the streets are lined with mounds of debris taller than she is.

On Monday, Tiernan bolted the doors shut, turned off the main breaker and headed for her aunt's house in Tarpon Springs, where she plans to shelter with her husband and daughter.

“I’m going to make sure we have everything we need. I'm a survivalist, I guess,” Tiernan said. “Being a mom of a 14-year-old, you don't really have a lot of time to think otherwise, right?”

In St. Pete Beach, David Green was expecting to meet this week with an electrician for a damage estimate on his home that Hurricane Helene flooded with 3.5 feet of water.

Instead, he rented a truck from Home Depot and loaded it with plywood to cover the windows of his empty house. He plans to wrap up work on the home by Monday night, pack up his fans and dehumidifiers and wait out the storm at his daughter’s home in Ruskin. In the meantime, he’s going to postpone his appointment with his flood insurance company.

“We’re just exhausted,” said Green, 62.

Back-to-back storms leaves Dunedin resident 'completely overwhelmed'

Suzanne Vale and her husband – who own homes in western North Carolina and on the Gulf Coast of Florida – say they feel haunted by storms.

Late last month, they left their home in Burnsville, a mountain town outside Asheville, and drove to their home in Dunedin, Florida, just west of Tampa, to prepare it for Helene. But after Helene made landfall, it was their North Carolina residence that was damaged. A tree had fallen on the roof and a nearby hillside collapsed.

Now, as Hurricane Milton approaches Florida, the couple has had to fortify their home in Dunedin, which sits three blocks from the Gulf of Mexico, and contact geotechnical engineers about damage to their Burnsville home.

“I am completely overwhelmed,” Vale told USA TODAY. “God is testing my patience.”

Much of Dunedin is still littered with debris and furniture from homes flooded by Helene. And as people rush to buy gas, water and other supplies, there is a palpable sense of anxiety and panic in the air, said Vale, a retired nurse.

On Tuesday, the couple intend to finish preparations on their home before fleeing to a friend’s condo in eastern Pinellas County. While they still have power, they’re going to keep making calls to get the foundation of their North Carolina home examined and, hopefully, stabilized.

“That's why we bought the place up there – so we would have a place to go if we lost our place in Florida,” Vale said. “Now we've got two places that are going to be wrecked.”

'If we get 12 feet from this one, we’re toast'

Near the Tampa Bay Marina, Nancy Heidt, 80, watched Tuesday as her son continued clearing debris left by Helene. The storm pushed floodwater into her single-story home fronting the bay, ruining most everything but the tile floor of the kitchen and living room. 

Workers had already cut out several feet of drywall around the entire house to help halt the growth of black mold, which flourishes in humid, post-hurricane conditions. A large rolloff Dumpster sat in the driveway, overflowing with drywall debris, ruined food and broken appliances.

Heidt said she had lived in the house for 50 years and although the area had seen many hurricanes, Helene was the single worst one she’d ever experienced. And the forecasts are for Milton to hit even harder. She said she doesn’t have flood insurance but is thankful her deceased husband had set her up financially so she could weather such storms. Heidt planned to stay with her son in nearby Brandon, sharing a room with her young granddaughter. She hopes Milton would be milder than predicted.“I beat cancer. I beat having a broken hip,” she said. “I’m still fighting.”