Hurricane Milton plowed into the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday after cutting a destructive path across Florida that spawned more than a dozen tornados, destroyed homes and killed at least four people, but the storm did not trigger the catastrophic storm surge that was feared.
Governor Ron DeSantis said at a morning briefing that the state had avoided the worst-case scenario, though he cautioned the damage was still significant. The Tampa Bay area appeared to have escaped the deadly surge of seawater that had prompted the direst warnings.
The four deaths occurred in St. Lucie on Florida’s east coast, with at least two of those in the Spanish Lakes Communities, a set of seniors’ neighborhoods, when multiple twisters touched down on Wednesday afternoon, said county spokesperson Erick Gill. He said it was unclear whether the other two fatalities were at Spanish Lakes.
There were 19 confirmed tornados in Florida as of 8 p.m. Wednesday, about the time Milton made landfall, DeSantis said.
More than 3 million homes and businesses in Florida were without power on Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us. At least some of them had been waiting for days for power to be restored after Hurricane Helene hit the area nearly two weeks ago.
The hurricane tore a gaping hole in the fabric roof of Tropicana Field, the stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team in St. Petersburg, but there were no reports of injuries. The ballpark was a staging area for responders, with thousands of cots set up on the field.
“One of the blessings for us is that we did not see that predicted storm surge. That saved a lot,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said during an early morning press conference.
In the Tampa area, the storm toppled trees and threw debris across roadways and downed power lines, video footage from local news showed. Some neighborhoods were flooded, but the extent of the damage will not be known until crews can assess the destruction, Castor said.
Emergency crews responded overnight to dozens of calls for help, including one in which a tree fell on a house with 15 people inside, including children, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw said. All 15 people were taken to a shelter.
The winds toppled a large construction crane in St. Petersburg, sending it crashing onto a deserted street.
The state was still in danger of river flooding after up to 18 inches (457 mm) of rain fell. Authorities were waiting for rivers to crest, but so far water levels were at or below their levels after Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, Castor said on Thursday morning.
‘INSTANTANEOUSLY’
In Fort Myers on the southwest coast, resident Connor Ferin surveyed the wreckage of his home, which had lost its roof and was full of debris and rainwater after a tornado hit.
“All this happened instantaneous, like these windows blew out,” he said. “I grabbed the two dogs and run under my bed and that was it. Probably one minute total.”
The storm hit Florida’s west coast on Wednesday night as a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, with top sustained winds of 120 mph (205 kph). While still a dangerous storm, Milton arrived less violently than the rare Category 5 hurricane that had threatened the state as it trekked over the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.
Milton weakened further as it crossed land, dropping to a Category 1 hurricane with top sustained winds of 85 mph (145 kph) as it reached the peninsula’s east coast, the National Hurricane Center said. By Thursday morning, the storm was moving away from the Florida Atlantic coast after lashing communities on the eastern shoreline.
The eye of the storm hit land in Siesta Key, a barrier island town of some 5,400 people off Sarasota about 60 miles (100 km) south of Tampa Bay.
DeSantis said crews across the state spent the night clearing debris. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration had agreed to all of Florida’s requests for emergency assistance, he told CNBC.
“Our state is a peninsula in the middle of a tropical environment. We are just built to be able to respond to hurricanes,” DeSantis said. “We’ll survey the damage and get people on their feet. We’ll get through this.”
Tornados caused damage in numerous counties and destroyed around 125 homes, mostly mobile homes, the governor said.
St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson estimated 100 homes were destroyed in the county where some 17 tornadoes touched down, NBC reported.
In a state already battered by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, as many as 2 million people had been ordered to evacuate ahead of Milton’s arrival, and millions more live in the storm’s path.
Much of the southern U.S. experienced the deadly force of Helene as it ripped through Florida and several other states. Both storms are expected to cause billions of dollars in damage.
As of Thursday morning, 2,209 U.S. flights had been canceled, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware, with the highest number of cancellations from Orlando, Tampa and southwest Florida.
Florida airports remained closed on Thursday, including Tampa, Palm Beach and St. Pete-Clearwater, with exceptions for emergency aircraft, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
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