Woman Attempted to Ride Out Milton from Her Penthouse — and Then She Felt the Building Start to Move (Exclusive)

Allie Rae thought the storm would lead to family time, but the intensity was much more than she expected

• Allie Rae tried to get out of Florida for Hurricane Milton, but a wrench in her plans led her to riding out the storm at home

• The mom of three documented her family’s experience in a high-rise penthouse duplex as windows broke and water leaked in

• The content creator tells PEOPLE about the scariest moment, and what it’s like cleaning up after the storm

A Florida mom found herself making decision after decision to keep her family safe from Hurricane Milton.

Allie Rae documented her experience preparing for the scary storm after her attempts to get her family out of Florida failed.

“Initially, we were in London,” she explains. “My husband I were there with our youngest, who’s 15. We were hearing about it at that point as a tropical storm. We already had plans to come straight back and go to Vegas, so we were like, ‘If the storm comes, that’s fine. We’re going to be in Vegas anyway, so we’ll be fine.’ “

But as they continued their London trip, the outlook on Milton grew worse. Rae’s adult kids were still at their own Florida homes, but planned to meet them in Vegas as well.

“On our way home in our flight, a 10-hour flight, we started to see this is a massive storm. It was really concerning and we got notification that our Vegas flights, that particular flight had been canceled,” she recalls.

“So we were in a panic because we’re in the sky. We’re like, ‘Oh my God, this was our plan.’ So I immediately booked five tickets to Houston for our family. I figured we’d go home, pack and leave. Then, about an hour before we land, we get the notification that they’re shutting the airports first thing in the morning. So we couldn’t get on that flight either,” Rae continues.

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Related: Florida Mom of 6 in Tears as Hurricane Milton Approaches: ‘Where Do We Go?’

The family considered driving out of the state until they assessed the crowded gas station situations and traffic and ultimately decided to ride out the storm as a family at Rae’s penthouse condo, 12 floors up on Clearwater Beach.

“We figured there was no chance the storm surge would get that high. The house our boys are in is a lower lying area that’s a flood zone. So based on what was going on and where we were, we made the best decision. We chose to get whatever water, food, we could from stores. We had DoorDashers going to get stuff and delivering it to the house because we’re trying to make sure we have enough for the storm,” she says.

Rae was documenting the whole process on TikTok, where she regularly shares her days as a content creator. She got some backlash for how she handled her panic, but the mom explains that she was just doing her best with mere hours left until the storm arrived.

At first, Rae and her family thought they wouldn’t experience much of an impact from the storm and would focus on spending quality time together as it blew through.

“It was myself, my husband, and our three children, who are 15, 20 and 21. Our 20-year-old’s girlfriend also stayed with us, so six of us prepared to ride out the storm. And we were at ease,” she says.

“We had gotten everything we could and felt we had enough food and water for 10 days. We had some drinks and listened to music and thought we’d have fun for now. Things were bound to get a little dicey, but we had hurricane shutters and safe rooms to shelter in, so it was very light-hearted at first,” she explains.

The family started noticing the effects of the storm around 3:00 p.m. By 7:30 p.m., things were taking a noticeable turn. The family discussed and decided they’d move up to the primary bedroom if the windows started to blow out.

“We kept a positive mindset. We barricaded the windows, but between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. things got very, very scary quickly,” she recalls. “The master, which we thought would be our safe room, started not to feel safe. We could feel an immense amount of wind in the room and the shutters we did have did not look like they were going to hold. The windows were bowing. It was very uncomfortable.”

At one point, panicked, the six got into the primary bedroom closet. While they still had power, everything else was deteriorating.

“You could feel the walls shaking. The built-ins were pushing against us and we could still feel the wind in the closet. At that point, we could hear that windows shattered downstairs. You felt the pressure shift, you felt wind coming through your closet and it just got really cold all of a sudden.”

When water began dripping in the closet, the family once again had to reassess. They started to worry that the roof above them could collapse, with all of the heavy air conditioning units atop it.

“I think that’s when I got probably the most scared, ’cause now I’m running out of ‘safe rooms,’ places that I at least could feel safe and know that there’s catastrophe happening outside that door, but it was not safe in that room ’cause it was leaking and the built ins were pushing and they were going to break or fall in,” she says.

They carefully made their way downstairs to Rae’s office, an interior room which they felt was their next best bet in the two-level penthouse.

“My husband actually ran first down the stairs and as he’s running down, he’s course filming,” she says, explaining that the broken windows led to concerns about glass blowing through their home.

“He’s shielding our youngest to get into my office and we all are carrying as much as we could from the closet in our safe room ’cause we brought all of our lights up there, our phones up there, cases of water,” she recounts. “We planned to ride out the rest in this 10-by-10 room with an attached bathroom. While we’re in there we can hear more windows busting.”

Rae’s husband had to return upstairs for a forgotten item; when he returned, he discovered water throughout their first floor.

“About 10 minutes later, we look under our door here in the office, and this is where I filmed, two inches of water probably had flooded the main level and was making its way in,” she says. “Now at that point, we were not concerned that we were going to get three feet of water in here and flood and all drown, but it was very concerning because the storm was very early. This was at 10:30 p.m. and we were told to expect this to go until 3 or 4:00 a.m.”

As they dealt with the water that was coming into the office, the high-rise started to sway.

“My son was getting a little nauseous because it was making you look a little bit dizzy. You felt unstable, realistically. And I was like, ‘Guys, is there any chance this f—ing building could collapse?’ And here we are on this top floor, we need to start thinking.”

Rae even consulted ChatGPT about what’s the safest place to be in a building in the event of a collapse. While some sway was to be expected, the feeling was scary for the family. They decided to head to the building’s ground floor. That wouldn’t be easy, however, with only external staircases. The family carefully made it down to the ground level, hiding out in the garbage room as they documented what was happening.

“We thought we could open the door and run to the street if this building did start to collapse. I did a video updating people, and I continued to update people throughout the night because honestly it was comforting for people to know what was happening to us and where we were in case something did happen,” she shares.

Commenters urged her to get out of the ground level room, explaining that with the rapid nature of a storm surge, they would be trapped and unable to open any doors. Others noted they were standing in water, which could be carrying an electric current if a wire went down.

“It was like, ‘Good Lord, every fear is unlocked,’ ” Rae shares. “But I was so grateful to have other people playing attention to the things you miss when you’re panicked and stressed.”

Rae’s family decided to go back upstairs 30 minutes after going downstairs. She instructed her kids to go up to the master bedroom and try to get some sleep. Her husband stayed up with her until the winds died down and they felt safe going to sleep. Despite the scary moments, the family was proud at how well they held it together amid the chaos.

“I will say having two adult children plus the girlfriend, these are adults, it’s not like toddlers and even my 15-year-old, very rational age of free thinking and can critically think,” she says. “I think that was great because we were able to bounce ideas off each other. It was really nice having adult children that were able to critically think with us in these moments.”

Rae is happy to have shared her footage online and feels touched by everyone who has reached out to her.

“I wanted to give them a very real first person perspective of how dangerous these storms can be and how quick things can go south. The day before we’re all having some wine and relaxing and then now look at us. So I really wanted people to see that contrast because some people don’t take it seriously and put themselves in dangerous situations. I think just that transparency was important,” she explains. “And then on top of that, I wanted to document what was happening in case something bad happened. I wanted to have a timeline of events.”

When they evaluated the damage the next day, they found they lost about one-third of their windows in the unit, in addition to water damage.

“That’s very extensive damage in itself. I woke up the next morning and I was squeegeeing all the water out of the house off the balcony. It was flooding upstairs in my son’s room from one of the windows that broke up there. And so that came through the sheet rock to the downstairs, so that’s why the roofs were dripping. So there was more damage than we knew that night.”

Related: How to Help the Victims of Hurricane Milton

Next up is working on repairing the damage, which begins with calls to busy insurance companies helping Floridians reclaim their homes for various damage.

“We went to a hotel and we stayed there because we didn’t even have any sewage or power. And then we got back yesterday and today I started making calls. I’m sure it’s going to be a long haul,” Rae shares. “There’s still a lot to work on from Helene the week before, which did more damage in our city than Milton.”

Rae feels lucky to have the means to take care of the repairs to her home. She hopes people understand that she does support evacuating and was just sharing her experience because she wasn’t able to leave.

“I don’t think you should stay behind for a lot of these storms. You just don’t know what the circumstances are,” she shares. “These storms can be very dangerous and people should be aware of that.”

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