SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Clean-up efforts continue in Florida following Hurricane Milton. One of the most affected areas was Sarasota County, which is close to where the storm made landfall. Louise Kennedy Converse owns a cheese shop in downtown Sarasota and joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
LOUISE KENNEDY CONVERSE: Thank you so much, Scott.
SIMON: What have the last few days been like?
CONVERSE: Harrowing, up and down - I went into my shop. The roads were reasonably accessible, and I was able to just get in there and look at it. And lots of tears. And yes, we did not sustain the damage, although we have no power, and it looks like we won't have power possibly for another week.
SIMON: A cheese shop really needs electricity, doesn't it?
CONVERSE: We do. It's perishable. I was very lucky on Sunday night. I went on Instagram and I put out an alert that I needed help, and I needed to find some place to put my cheese. And a person who is on my Instagram list, she saw that, she woke her husband up at midnight and said, we have to help this lady. And the next afternoon, I had packed up all my cheese and taken it to a local college where they had a walk-in and the other half, I went to a restaurant that also had a walk in with power.
SIMON: I'm told you didn't evacuate.
CONVERSE: I did not, no. We had been watching it since the weekend, obviously, along with everybody else, and we assessed whether or not it made sense for us. We had a plan. If there was a tornado, we were actually going to go into our cars. We had bags packed, but the house is pretty solid. And with my mother-in-law - it just made more sense for her to be here. She has dementia, and we made a decision. We had just gone through Helene as well, and so that was almost like a test of the house and it passed.
SIMON: What are you doing now? What's the process of recovery?
CONVERSE: So, you know, for Helene, we were mostly - we were fine in the shop. We went into comfort mode, where many of my customers who are - they're no longer customers. They're my friends now. They lost their homes. They would come in. We had Wi Fi, I fed them, I gave them bread. They would come to my table, and they would cry.
SIMON: It sounds like a lot of your neighbors are in, well, even you would say worse shape.
CONVERSE: Much worse shape, yes. I mean, we helped a friend who has a house and a business on North Longboat, which was just carnage up there. We helped her evacuate on Sunday, and then we shifted into our own focus. But yes, so many people, I would say, 80 to 90% of the homes on the islands had terrible damage.
SIMON: You mentioned, of course, the two hurricanes, Helene and Milton?
CONVERSE: Yes.
SIMON: Do you ever think, I don't know. I just can't stay here in Florida. It's too chancy?
CONVERSE: I mean, that has crossed my mind. And I think that I've heard that from a lot of customers who have come in last week from Helene or they emailed or messaged me. I think you'll see a lot of people leaving. We live in a beautiful area, and our community is so small that it's incredibly networked. And we've been very lucky. But our luck ran out earlier this week. That's for sure. So I mean, the good news is that the hurricane season is almost over, and that gives us a good year or, you know, nine months to assess and either rebuild or go, but I don't want to go. I don't want people to go.
SIMON: Louise Kennedy Converse who owns a cheese shop in Sarasota, Florida. Thank you so much for being with us.
CONVERSE: Thank you so much, Scott. I appreciate it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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