AFP
At least 10 people were dead after Hurricane Milton smashed into Florida, US authorities said Thursday, after the monster weather system sent tornados spinning across the state and flooded swaths of the Tampa Bay area.
The major hurricane ripped across the state west to east before roaring into the Atlantic, leaving roads blocked by downed trees and powerlines in its wake. Some three million people are without power.
So far, though, it appears that tornadoes, rather than the floodwaters, have been responsible for the storm’s deaths.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters at least 10 people were dead, with “our understanding that those fatalities were caused by the tornadoes.”
Still, the southeastern US state was able to avoid the level of catastrophic devastation officials had feared.
“The storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told a news conference.
Milton made landfall on the Florida Gulf Coast as a major Category 3 storm, with sustained, powerful winds smashing inland through communities still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which hit only two weeks ago.
The National Weather Service issued 126 tornado warnings across the state Wednesday, “the most ever issued for a single calendar day for the state in records dating back to 1986,” wrote Hurricane expert Michael Lowry.
As of Thursday afternoon, rescue operations continued as workers evacuated residents stranded by floodwaters in the city of Clearwater, near Tampa.
“We don’t know whether we can come back,” Justino Torres, 58, told AFP shortly after rescue crews evacuated him from a building.
“I’m going to leave it in the hands of God.”
In nearby Sarasota Bay, Kristin Joyce, a 72-year-old interior designer who also did not evacuate, took photos of tree branches snapped by the wind.
“There is no question it needs to be a serious wake-up call for everyone in terms of climate change,” she told AFP, surveying the damage.
Scientists say extreme rainfall and destructive storms are occurring with greater severity and frequency as temperatures rise due to climate change. As warmer ocean surfaces release more water vapor, they provide more energy for storms as they form.
A few miles away, wind uprooted large trees and ripped apart the roof at the Tampa Bay Rays’ Tropicana Field baseball stadium in St. Petersburg, and sent a construction crane falling onto a downtown building nearby.
– Biden fury at Trump –
President Joe Biden, who said he spoke with DeSantis Thursday, urged people to stay inside in the aftermath of the storm, with downed power lines and debris “creating dangerous conditions.”
In a video posted on social media, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he and his wife Melania were praying for Florida residents affected by the storm and urged them to vote for him.
“Hopefully, on January 20th you’re going to have somebody that’s really going to help you and help you like never before,” the former president said, referring to the presidential inauguration date.
Hurricane Helene struck the US southeast late last month, and the back-to-back storms have become election fodder as Trump spreads conspiracy theories claiming Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris are abandoning victims.
That prompted a furious response from Biden who on Wednesday called Trump “reckless, irresponsible.”
– ‘Lucky’ –
In Cocoa Beach, on Florida’s east coast, one tornado swept in from the ocean, blowing out almost all the windows of a hair salon and tearing a chunk of roof off a bank.
Katherine and Larry Hingle said they were on their condo porch, watching water from a nearby river rise, when the tornado came through Wednesday evening.
“I said ‘it sounds like a train’s coming,'” Katherine, 53, told AFP while out to walk their dog and survey the damage.
Streets in downtown Orlando, in the interior of the state, were covered in leaves but largely spared from flooding.
Jackie Berrios, 60, told AFP that an oak tree “snapped in half” at her father’s home, “but luckily it didn’t hit his house.”
The cleanup from Milton will be happening as emergency crews are still working to provide relief to victims of Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 237 people.
In Sarasota, resident Carrie Elizabeth expressed the feelings of many — that despite the violent night, Milton was not quite as bad as had been feared.
“I feel that we’re very lucky,” she said. “It’ll take a long time to clean up, but it could have been much worse.”