Former New England resident shares Hurricane Ian experiences

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) -A Man from New England, who now lives in the sunshine state shared with Western Mass News how recent days have been in wake of hurricane Ian.

Cameron Coelho is originally from Litchfield, Connecticut and now lives in Clermont, Florida, west of Orlando. He said while they luckily didn’t experience the brunt of the storm, it was still bad.

“Me and my roommates did not prep as well as we should have, but maybe it was a blessing in disguise because we didn’t really need to,” explained Coelho.

Coelho walled Western Mass News through what this week has been like as the sunshine state braced for and was hit with a powerful Category 4 hurricane.

“The day before the hurricane, kind of a little hectic. Obviously, everyone’s hurricane prepping, so, you know, everyone’s running to the store trying to get last-second, whatever they needed,” he said.

Luckily, as the storm rolled through, he and his roommates weren’t faced with too much devastation.

Up in Clermont, which is still 45 minutes from Orlando, it wasn’t as intense as people might think or might have experienced…The only damage that was done, at least for my house, was one of our trees in our back just broke in half and it was not like a strong tree. it wasn’t like a big oak tree or anything, it was a little bit of a skinny tree,” Coelho said.

But, they did experience some intense conditions.

“Pretty high winds. Some of those trees were almost at a 90 degree angle, so it was a little scary in that regard, but it was really aggressive rain, thunderstorms,” he said.

And crews were still working to pick up the pieces Thursday.

“There definitely is some clean up efforts to make sure some debris from trees were cleaned up,” he said.

Western Mass News also caught up with local organizations to see how they’re helping those hardest hit. A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said it

“continues to monitor the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) Emergency Operations System (EOS) for requests for assistance made by Florida and other states impacted by Hurricane Ian.” Meantime. Salvation Army volunteers in Florida have been hard at work, feeding those in need.

“We’ve been feeding people since about 8:00 in the morning. We are close to a thousand meals right now. There’s still requests coming,” explained Captain Israel Rosen of the Salvation Army.

Western Mass News will continue to bring you the latest updates on the hurricane.

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