Governor Ron DeSantis said he hoped Tampa Bay, once seen as the potential bull’s eye, could dodge major damage and that the worst of the predicted storm surge could be avoided thanks to the landfall coming before the high tide. Forecasters said seawater could still rise as high as four metres.
DeSantis reported Milton had also spawned at least 19 tornadoes that caused damage in numerous counties, destroying around 125 homes, most of them mobile homes.
“At this point, it’s too dangerous to evacuate safely, so you have to shelter in place and just hunker down,” DeSantis said upon confirming the landfall.
The Spanish Lakes Country Club, a retirement village near Fort Pierce on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, was hit particularly hard, with homes destroyed and at least four people killed in tornadoes that stuck the surrounding area, the St Lucie County Sheriff’s Office said.
Bobbie Pecev, 47, who moved to Tampa from Sydney in 2016, sheltered in a storage area in her home with her husband and their 14-year-old son and their daughter, 20, who came home after Hurricane Helene passed through her university town two weeks ago.
Tossing up between staying and leaving, the family booked a hotel in Tallahassee that fell through. When Pecev tried to book another, there weren’t any rooms left.
Bobbie Pecev and her husband in their storage room in Tampa waiting for Hurricane Milton to pass.Credit: Bobbie Pecev
She said they talked to other friends and neighbours and decided to stay and hunker down. “We have a few storage areas which are safe so we knew we could hide there,” she said.
They moved their pool furniture indoors, bought extra drinking water and non-perishable food, filled their bath with water and charged their phones and torches. Even after the hurricane had passed, it remained a waiting game as flash flooding warnings continued.
Pecev’s son, she says, was being a “typical teenager”, playing games until his parents made him move to the storage room, where he’s swapped one screen for another to watch a movie.
Milton was moving north-east at about 30km/h and was expected to continue at that pace before heading towards the Bahamas.
Maximum winds remained at about 140km/h with higher gusts. The hurricane was expected to become an extratropical low by Thursday night (Florida time).
Brandon Marlow walks through surge waters flooding the street after Hurricane Milton came ashore in the Sarasota area in Fort Myers, Florida.Credit: Getty
In a state already battered by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, as many as two million people were ordered to evacuate, and millions more were living in the path of the storm.
Much of the southern US experienced the deadly force of Hurricane Helene as it cut a swath of devastation through Florida and several other states. Both storms were expected to cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
US President Joe Biden was briefed by emergency authorities on the initial impacts of the hurricane, according to a White House statement.
Scenes outside a hotel in Tampa where residents and visitors were taking shelter.Credit: AP
While human evacuees jammed the highways and created petrol shortages, animals including African elephants, Caribbean flamingos and pygmy hippos were riding out the storm at Tampa’s zoo.
Nearly a quarter of Florida’s petrol stations were out of fuel. The NASA base at Cape Canaveral was forced to postpone a joint mission with Space X to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa because of the storm.
The roof of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, was torn off by Milton. Prior to the damage, there had been plans for the stadium to be used as a staging ground for first responders and clean-up teams.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had moved millions of litres of water, millions of meals, plus other supplies and personnel into the area. None of the additional aid would detract from recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene, the agency’s administrator, Deanne Criswell, said.
Trucks had been running 24 hours a day to clear mounds of debris left behind by Helene before Milton threatened to turn them into dangerous projectiles, DeSantis said.
About 9000 National Guard personnel were deployed in Florida, ready to assist recovery efforts, as were 50,000 electricity grid workers in anticipation of widespread power outages, DeSantis said.
Debris covers the ground near a crane that fell onto a building along 1st Avenue South in St Petersburg,Credit: AP
Search-and-rescue teams were prepared to head out as soon as the storm passed, working through the night if needed, DeSantis said.
“It’s going to mean pretty much all the rescues are going to be done in the dark, in the middle of the night, but that’s fine. They’re going to do that,” DeSantis said.
Reuters, AP
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