blow-up mattress

While millions of people in Florida fled Hurricane Milton, Mike Smalls Jr ventured into the violent winds in Tampa, Florida, holding a blow-up mattress, an umbrella and a pack of ramen noodles.

"I was sleeping on a blow-up mattress with my son in my boss's lounge room for six months living out of suitcases," she says.

They have been sleeping on a blow-up mattress on top of folded up cardboard boxes so they don’t get soaked when rain enters through the gaps in the shelter’s flimsy roof and soaks the floor.

Everything was gone: the tent with built-in lights, a blow-up mattress, a new laptop, her birth certificate, housing papers and prenatal vitamins.

Danielle Spencer, 41, from Preston, said it was "heartbreaking" to sleep on a blow-up mattress on concrete and she was struggling to keep warm.