Florida mobile homes torn apart like sardine cans in Hurricane Milton: Its just devastation everywhere

BRADENTON, Florida — Dozens of mobile homes were torn to shreds and roofs peeled off entirely when Hurricane Milton ravaged Florida — with the destruction so devastating, some snowbird retirees left picking through the rubble are reconsidering their annual migration. Some heartbroken residents even struggled to match what pieces of debris came from which home when they returned to inspect what remained of their dwellings in the riverside city, just south of Tampa, on Thursday.“It’s just devastation everywhere,” Cheryl Long, 66, told The Post as she surveyed the damage to her home at the Royal Garden Estates mobile home park in Bradenton.“I lost my roof, my front awning and the carport,” she added. “When I got home, I found my roof at my neighbor’s.” The harrowing scenes came as residents across the Sunshine State began trying to repair the damage inflicted by Milton after the ferocious hurricane smashed through coastal communities — leaving at least eight people dead.In the hours after Milton churned through Bradenton, the residents of two mobile home parks slowly started returning through Thursday to find their roofs missing, steel carports contorted and debris strewn everywhere.Some homes were so badly damaged that the living rooms were left totally exposed.

“My shed went through my neighbor’s house,” Dave Kania, 78, said of the damage at the Seabreeze Mobile Estates.“It just broke apart.I had the shed strapped down, you can still see the straps, but you couldn’t stop the wind.” Kania, a snowbird retiree from Akron, NY, said he found his neighbor’s roof in his driveway.

Despite spending every winter in Florida for the past decade, Kania said the damage inflicted by Milton had him — and others — questioning whether to keep returning altogether.“I’m having second thoughts about staying in Florida,” Kania said. “We always have to worry about hurricane season.

Once you’re retired, you don’t want all that stres...