HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Hillsborough County students were welcomed back to class on Thursday for the first time in over a week after Hurricane Milton.
“It honestly feels kind of weird, but I’m just really glad that we’re getting back into it,” said Leto High School junior Isabella Brito.
Brito and Adelesa Curri, both juniors at Leto High, considered themselves lucky. Their families were spared from the storm.
However, the aftermath of Milton was hard not to notice around the neighborhood.
“Seeing all the furniture destroyed outside of people’s homes, I just feel so bad for our community,” said Curri.
“My own best friend, she doesn’t go here but she goes to a different school, and her house is just completely flooded even from the first storm, so having this next storm was just a whole different thing for her,” said Brito.
Returning to school required round-the-clock work to clear debris and get schools back online. Hillsborough County Schools Superintendent Van Ayres said that 170 schools were without power at one point.
The area around Leto High was also impacted by the storm.
“We’re right here in Town 'n’ Country on Sligh and Manhattan,” said Assistant Principal Drew Gehrke. “It definitely was flooded, like this whole intersection on the corner was pretty much completely flooded.”
Now Leto High School students are gearing up to give back by hosting a hurricane relief drive to help students, their families, and the community recover from recent storms.
They’re asking for items like furniture, gently used clothing, school and cleaning supplies, non-perishable food items, and even homecoming outfits.
“Genuinely anything that you can,” said Brito. “It doesn’t matter even if you’re like oh maybe somebody doesn’t need this. Somebody probably needs it. You never know, there’s so many people here that we all live in different areas. You never know who was affected more than someone else.”
Donations for the relief drive can be dropped off at Leto High School before an event on Saturday, October 26, from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. in Leto’s bus loop.
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Over 500 people were rescued during Hurricane Milton at the Standard Apartments in Clearwater. Now, survivors with no place to go have set up camp in the grass in the Best Buy parking lot across the street.