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Irma has Massachusetts transplants rethinking retirement plan

 
Lise Fournier, left, and daughter-in-law, Alica Ward with Alica's two dogs after they evacuated their mobile homes to go to Oak Grove Middle School.Tracey McManus / Times
Lise Fournier, left, and daughter-in-law, Alica Ward with Alica's two dogs after they evacuated their mobile homes to go to Oak Grove Middle School.Tracey McManus / Times
Published Sept. 8, 2017

There are few hurricanes in Boston, where Lise Fournier is from, so when she got orders to evacuate her mobile home in Largo on Friday, she wasn't going to take a chance.

"I moved here three years ago because I wanted to live where I was going to retire, but this has really scared the heck out of me," Fournier, 59, said.

Fournier packed her car with blankets, clothes and a cooler of food (she didn't know the emergency shelters provided meals) and locked her door about 11 a.m. Friday.

Because she uses an oxygen tank, she was assigned to Oak Grove Middle School in Clearwater, the designated shelter for special needs people and the general public with pets. Her son, Steven Dickinson, 33, and his wife, Alica Ward, 21, met her there after leaving their mobile home with their two dogs.

The family settled into the school's gymnasium, found a spot on the tarp-covered floor and watched people filing through the doors.

Ward clung to the leash of Loki, a 2-year-old cur, and Isis, a 9-year-old beagle, and worried about what she'd find when they returned home in a few days.

"Mobile homes are the first things to go in a storm," Ward said. "I'm afraid there will be a hole in the roof or no trailer at all."