CRYSTAL RIVER Fla. - Only ten days into this year's hurricane season and some people are just starting to recover from hurricanes Irma and Hermine.

  • Islands Condominium residents just now able to return home
  • Emergency officials urge people to get prepared now
  • Talk to your healthcare provider, have a disaster plan ready

Many of the units at the Islands Condominium Association complex in Crystal River were badly damaged by flood waters after Hurricane Hermine.

The cleanup effort is still underway.

Some residents we talked to said that they just got back into their homes a few months ago.

"(I was) unaware that it was going to take the toll that it did," Karen Devars said.

That's the way a lot of people here felt when their condos flooded. Never imagining they'd be out of their home for over a year. Some are still waiting to get back in.

"We dealt with a renovation company because this is a condominium association so I wasn't like working directly with contractors that you hire so that made the process very slow," Gale Grimm said.

Hermine was the second time Grimm's condo flooded. The first was after the No Name Storm back in 1993.

"This was a lot more difficult to go through because FEMA had a lot more requirements as far as how they had to measure the air quality. They brought in great big fans and probably for about six weeks they were just cleaning the air. And back in '93 it wasn't like that," Grimm said.

Grimm used money from FEMA and her insurance company which helped her get back into her home a couple of months ago. Going into this hurricane season she's hopeful it won't happen again.

"Cautiously optimistic Alberto didn't get here so that was a good sign," she said.

Emergency officials in Citrus County are encouraging everyone to get prepared now. They say you should be prepared for the possibility of at least seven days without power should a storm hit. They stress it's important to protect your home now and stock up on essentials like food, water, medicines, and cash.

They also encourage you to make sure you have an emergency plan with your care provider if there are medical treatments, such as dialysis, that you would still need to get following a storm.

"Dialysis facilities are required to have a disaster plan so if you are a patient and get dialysis again with your treatment provider and find out what that disaster plan is. They should be sharing that information with their patients so in case they do lose power they know where to go," Emergency Management Director David M. DeCarlo said.

He also said they are making changes to their special needs and pet shelters to better accommodate everyone because they reached capacity during Hurricane Irma.