Billings Couple Stranded with Family in Florida

A Billings couple, visiting family in Florida, got caught up in one of the most powerful hurricanes on record.  The Billings Gazette reports that after her flights out of Florida were cancelled, 65-year-old Billings resident Jan Smith said she would try to ride out Hurricane Irma with several other family members in her 94-year-old father-in-law’s high-rise Florida condominium.

Jan and her husband Spencer Smith, his brother Jesse and his wife Katy, were preparing the top-floor condominium in the Mastique Beach building for days, filling the bathtub with water, accumulating extra medicine, stockpiling non-perishable foods, collecting batteries and creating emergency kits.  Smith said she planned to participate in the Montana Governor’s 49th Annual Conference on Aging, which is scheduled to take place this week.  But her flight out of Fort Myers was delayed, then Saturday it was finally cancelled.