(ABC 6 News) – Ahead of Hurricane Milton making landfall, a native Minnesotan is on his way home after a 24-hour turnaround to help a friend, and he says the situation is bad.

Grant Rubin got the message late Sunday night.

“We were doing an e-commerce show on Sunday evening here at the warehouse and Grant got a text from a good friend of his asking if he’d be willing to fly down and drive a bunch of vehicles home to get them out of the eye of the storm,” said Heidi Rubin, Grant’s mother.

For Grant, it was barely something to consider.

“Being the good man that he is, (he) decided, ‘Yes, I’ll jump at the opportunity to help another friend,” she said.

Grant arrived early Monday morning, spending the day organizing with his friend, delivering a disability van, and helping board up homes, before prepping for the long drive back.

He says while he was down there, the situation wasn’t good.

“We went out on our balcony from our hotel, and there was just a fleet of dump trucks with escorts,” he said. “We counted 38 dump trucks just hauling out garbage and sand, just trying to clean up from Helene.”

That was in Madeira Beach, a tiny city outside St. Petersburg that was barely scratched by Helene.

Now, Hurricane Milton, shaping up to what could be one of the most destructive storms to hit that side of Florida in a century, is headed right for it.

Grant and his parents, local business owners in Elgin, have family ties to Florida.

They say the past couple days have left them very anxious.

“I can tell you I haven’t slept in two days,” said Mike LaVigne, Grant’s stepfather. “All I’ve been doing is watching the news, and I told him, ‘If you go, you make sure you’re out of there by Tuesday morning at the latest, because otherwise you’re not going to get out.'”

Getting out has been hard enough.

One of the biggest issues is a lack of fuel.

“Every normal size gas station that’s not a truck stop, they were out of fuel,” Grant said. “And we stopped at probably eight to 10 of them. We finally found a truck gas stop and we were able to barely fill up but they were running low.”

Luckily, Grant will be home before the worst of the storm hits.

The rest will just be a matter of waiting.

While the people of Florida prepare for the destruction headed their way, here in Minnesota people are preparing to help out or are looking for ways to do so.

FEMA recommends people visit the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster website, which provides information on what kind of donations are helpful and who those donations can be made to.