A former Manitowoc resident could be dealing with the impacts of Hurricane Idalia in Florida.
Shane Crawford is a 1995 Manitowoc Lutheran graduate and has been living in a small city called Bellair, Florida for the last ten to twelve years.
Crawford says many people, including himself, will have to deal with power outages and storm surges from the hurricane.
“We are going to have super tide for the next 3 to 4 days, which means the tide is as high as it possibly can be,” he explained. “With that storm surge, in our area, they are looking at a storm surge of about seven to nine feet, and I am five feet above (sea level). You can imagine what that would do to the house if I got four feet of water up against it.”
When we spoke with him on Tuesday, Crawford said he was planning to hunker down when the hurricane is expected to pass the panhandle of Florida.
At the time, Idalia was a category 1 hurricane, but it has since been classified as a category 4 hurricane.
Crawford told us he is ready to leave.
“If it’s time to retreat and there is nothing else to do we will grab the dogs and the kids and get out of here, but in the meantime, we will just try to tough it out,” he said. “Hopefully there is some sort of variation. Even a foot or two will make all the difference for me and won’t be shop-vacing water out of my house.”
Idalia gained power as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday and made landfall earlier this morning.
