First, she feared for her sister in Puerto Rico. But on Thursday, this Tampa Bay area woman became the one preparing for a hurricane.
"Thank God everything is fine. They dodged a bullet," Nilsa Henry, a restaurant owner in Tampa, said.
The bullet may have missed Henry's sister and her nieces in Puerto Rico, but the tides may have turned for her family.
"I was worried. I even called her yesterday. I said because, 'it’s going up there,'" Zaida Garcia, Henry’s sister, said during a Facebook Video interview from Puerto Rico.
"We have some sandbags here, right back there from the last hurricane and we gonna put them around [the backdoor of the restaurant]," Henry said. "When it rains a lot, water goes into the kitchen."
So, she plans to wait out the storm at her house. She was making a checklist on Thursday afternoon.
"I’m buying tape to tape the windows, water, bread, crackers, bacon," Henry said.
Jeff Aziz, a Tampa resident, already picked up his supplies from a Home Depot in Tampa.
"I picked up just some beverages, some tarps, some ratchet straps, fasteners; got some plywood and additional 2x material to add to my own personal inventory," Aziz said.
Like Henry, Aziz also planned to stay during the storm; at least for the time being.
"It all depends on where the path is gonna go. We’ll just watch it for the next couple days and make a decision by Saturday," Aziz said. "I mean my house is 75 years old and as much as I think I’ve braced it, I am concerned it may not be able to sustain more than a Cat 2 or Cat 3," Aziz said.
