Ten days after moving from Boston to Sarasota, Florida, Mike Cahill’s family had to prepare for catastrophic hurricane conditions for the first time in their lives.
“We’ve literally dropped … and we have the worst hurricane that Sarasota has had in 100 years,” Cahill said.
The data shows that the Cahills are not alone. In the past 10 years, nearly 3 million people have moved to Florida, meaning more people than ever before are at risk when a hurricane or tropical storm hits the state.
When Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992 as a monster Category 5 storm, the state’s population was about 13 million. Since then, it has soared to 21.5 million.
Researchers estimated this week that Hurricane Ian will cause between $20 billion and $70 billion in damage.
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Florida is known for its coastal views, and that’s where much of the population growth is happening, said Stephen Strader, a geography professor at Villanova who studies the effects of natural disasters. But the state’s ocean sunsets come at a price, he said.
“In Florida, this growing and spreading means … we’re putting more people in the path of these tropical storms,” Strader said.
Huge population growth in Florida
The massive population growth in the Sunshine State has few rivals in the U.S., Strader said, aside from western boomtowns like Phoenix and Las Vegas.
“It’s its own animal in terms of how it’s grown over the last 30 years, really since after Hurricane Andrew,” Strader said.
When Hurricane Ian made landfall near Cayo Costa, Fla., on Wednesday afternoon as a near-Category 5 storm, about 2.5 million Floridians were under mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders and millions more lost power since then.
Census data shows that three of the coastal counties that felt the full effect of Ian’s landfall are among Florida’s most populous.
Who is moving to Florida?
Florida’s warm climate, beautiful beaches and absence of state income taxes have long been a draw for a wide variety of newcomers, although it is commonly considered a retirement haven.
Coastal counties like Sarasota, where Cahill just moved with his wife and 26-year-old son, have seen retirement-driven growth.
But growth in Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, is driven in part by young people looking for work, Baker said.
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“It’s almost two different worlds, as far as what’s going on down there,” Baker said.
Booming Citrus, Pinellas and Sarasota counties actually lost population among those under 18, according to census data.
The state also became home to hundreds of thousands of refugees who escaped Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in September 2017.
Where do people move to in Florida?
Wherever people settle, they are at high risk of being affected by a wide variety of hurricane impacts such as storm surge, inland flooding and rainfall, as is the case with the effects of Hurricane Ian in much of the state.
But certain parts of Florida that were directly in Ian’s path have seen tremendous growth in just the past decade.
The Villages, a Central Florida community east of Tampa, grew 38.9% since 2010. The Orlando metro area grew 25.3% and the Fort Myers-Cape area Coral grew by 23%, according to the US Census Bureau.
“Think of it this way, if you’re moving to Florida, you want beachfront property, right? You want to be near the water, you want to see the sunsets, the sunrises,” Strader said . “People will go to the coast.”
From 1990 to 2020, the number of homes in Florida rose from about 6 million to 10 million, federal data show.
“That means more people than ever before are getting hit by these hurricanes,” Strader said.
Contributing: Terry Collins, Janna Herron, USA TODAY.
