To the Editor:
Congratulations to the Sarasota News Leader on an excellent article on Hurricane Milton.
Since my return from evacuation to Georgia I have been driving the county documenting the destruction.
From a naturalist’s perspective, the damage to our area is horrific. Trees down, shrubs shocked, wildlife much diminished. I have yet to see one butterfly.
There are lessons to be learned from this storm. The trees that best survived are the slash pines, saw palmetto and cabbage palms. These are our native plants which, over thousands of years, have adapted to these storms so they are able to withstand the effects. It is regrettable that most landscapers avoid planting them, and most people who live here don’t want them in their yards.
There are health concerns about sewage backing up into people’s homes. Another concern is salt water getting into the aquifer from which we get our drinking water.
How did this happen? I have been walking Florida for 75 years now, having arrived as a 9-year-old in 1950. What is most noticeable to me is loss of piney woods. In the 1960s, there were plenty of them.
Trees clean and cool the air. In the past 10 years, I have noticed an increase of about 8 degrees. It is so hot in summer now that it is very unhealthy to go out in the heat of the day.
The water in the Gulf of Mexico has gotten much warmer. When hurricane Milton was forming, the Gulf was close to 90 degrees, which fueled this storm and Hurricane Helene before it.
The long and short of it is that if we and our children and grandchildren are to prosper, we must take steps now to slow this warming that is fueling these storms. National, state, and local governance must help us do that. Citizens groups are working on their own, but it would be an enormous boost to what we as individuals are doing to have our government, at all levels, to recognize the dire situation that we are in and act to address the problems.
Fran Palmeri
Venice