Hurricane Milton leaves Florida without causing the damage that was feared
Thursday, Hurricane Milton moved across Florida, causing tornadoes, destroying houses, and cutting power to millions of people before it went out into the Atlantic.
But it looked like the Tampa Bay area didn’t have to deal with the terrible floods that was expected.
Local news outlets and county officials said that an unconfirmed storm destroyed a retirement community in St. Lucie County on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, killing at least four people. Reuters could not confirm the story right away.
On Thursday morning, PowerOutage.us said that more than 3 million houses and businesses in Florida were without power. The power had been out for days after Hurricane Helene hit the area almost two weeks ago. At least some of them had been waiting for days.
At Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, the storm tore a huge hole in the fabric that covers the roof. No one was hurt, though.
“One good thing is that we didn’t see that storm surge that was coming.” In the early morning, Mayor Jane Castor of Tampa said, “That saved a lot.”
Local news video showed that the storm in the Tampa area knocked over trees, threw debris across the roads, and brought down power lines. Some neighborhoods were flooded, but Castor said that the full damage won’t be known until workers can get out and look at it.
Overnight, there were dozens of calls for help in the area. One was about a tree falling on a house with 15 people inside, including children, told Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw. He said that all 15 of them were taken to a shelter.
In St. Petersburg, the winds also knocked over a big building crane, sending it tumbling down onto an empty street.
Rivers could still flood in the state after up to 18 inches of rain. The government was still waiting for rivers to rise, but Castor said on Thursday morning that the water levels were at or below what they were during Hurricane Helene two weeks ago.
In Fort Myers, on the southwest coast, Connor Ferin looked at the damage to his house caused by a storm. The roof had been ripped off, and the house was full of broken glass and rainwater.
“All this happened instantaneous, like these windows blew out,” he told me. “That was it. I grabbed the two dogs and ran under my bed.” Probably all of one minute.”
The hurricane hit the west coast of Florida on Wednesday night. It was a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, and its top steady winds were 120 mph (205 kph). There was still a lot of danger, but this storm wasn’t as bad as the rare Category 5 hurricane that had been heading toward Florida from the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Hurricane Center said Milton got weaker as it went over land. By the time it hit the east coast of the peninsula, it was a Category 1 hurricane with top sustained winds of 85 mph (145 kph). By Thursday morning, the storm was moving away from the Atlantic coast of Florida. It had hit towns on the eastern shoreline hard earlier.
Around 5,400 people live on Siesta Key, a barrier island town off of Sarasota that is about 60 miles (100 km) south of Tampa Bay. This is where the storm’s eye hit land.
Thursday morning, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that teams all over the state had been cleaning up after the storm. The government of U.S. President Joe Biden told CNBC that all of Florida’s requests for emergency help had been granted.
The state we live in is a point in the middle of a tropical area. He said, “I mean, we’re just built to be able to handle hurricanes.” “We’ll look at the damage and help people get back on their feet.” We’ll make it through this.
The governor also said that Milton was the source of at least 19 tornadoes that damaged many counties and destroyed about 125 homes, most of which were mobile homes.
NBC said that 17 tornadoes hit St. Lucie County, and Sheriff Keith Pearson said that about 100 houses were destroyed in the county.
As many as two million people were told to leave a state that had just been hit by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago before Milton arrived, and millions more live in the storm’s path.
Helene was very strong and killed many people as it ripped through Florida and several other states in the south of the United States. Millions of dollars worth of damage will be done by both storms.
FlightAware, a website that tracks flights, says that as of Thursday morning, 2,209 U.S. flights had been delayed. The most cancellations came from Orlando, Tampa, and southwest Florida.
