At least four people were confirmed killed on Thursday as Florida began to assess the damage from Hurricane Milton, a category 3 storm that caused extensive property damage across the state and left more than 3.4m homes and businesses without power.
Authorities said the fatalities were in a senior community in St Lucie county that was struck by a tornado formed in Milton’s outer bands. The tornado happened before the hurricane made landfall near Sarasota on Florida’s western coast on Wednesday evening.
Parts of Sarasota, Fort Myers, Venice and other Gulf coast cities were inundated by up to 10ft of storm surge while tornadoes wrecked buildings, including a sheriff’s department facility, the skies turned purple and winds as high as 120mph (193km/h) turned cars, trees and debris into projectiles.
At a Thursday morning press briefing, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said more than 40 rescues had taken place in several counties, search-and-rescue operations were ongoing, and that “it was too soon to tell” how many had people had died.
The Tampa police department released video of officers rescuing multiple children from a house that was partially destroyed by a fallen tree.
DeSantis, however, said forecasters’ worst fears of a storm surge up to 15ft in the densely populated cities of Tampa and St Petersburg had not been realized. The worst-hit county, Sarasota, he said, saw an 8-10ft wall of seawater from the Gulf of Mexico.
“Thankfully it was not the worst-case scenario. The storm did weaken before landfall, and the storm surge has not been as significant overall as what was observed for Hurricane Helene,” he said, referring to the category 4 storm that struck Florida 12 days previously, and which caused at least 232 deaths in six states.
“We will better understand the extent of the damage as the day progresses,” the governor added.
Milton made landfall on Siesta Key south of St Petersburg around 8.30pm on Wednesday. Eight hours later it moved offshore just north of Cape Canaveral as a category 1 hurricane with winds of 85mph, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
Although the core of Milton had moved into the Atlantic, the NHC warned of significant ongoing hazards.
“Heavy rainfall across the central to northern Florida peninsula through this morning continues to bring the risk of considerable flash and urban flooding along with moderate to major river flooding,” it said in a Thursday morning advisory.
Floridians awoke on Thursday to scenes of devastation in a number of counties. A crane collapsed in downtown St Petersburg leaving a gash in an office building, blocking a street, the water supply was cut, and the roof of a Major League Baseball stadium was ripped off.
It will take days for the damage to be assessed, but insurers have warned that losses could reach $60bn. Tornadoes that accompanied the approach of the storm may prove as damaging as the hurricane itself: at least 116 tornado warnings were issued across Florida, DeSantis said on Wednesday evening.
The four deaths in St Lucie county were at the Spanish Lakes Country Club in Fort Pierce, WQCS reported. Kevin Guthrie, director for the Florida division of emergency management, said that early reports indicated about 125 homes were destroyed, mostly mobile homes in senior communities.
Inland, about 11 million people are at risk of flash and river flooding after some parts of the state received one-in-1,000-year amounts of rain.
In Bradenton, north of Sarasota, the police chief said “probably” more than 60% of the city had no electricity. In Hillsborough county, which includes Tampa, the sheriff’s office said there were “downed power lines and trees everywhere”.
According to poweroutage.us, more than 3.4m homes and businesses in Florida were without power at 10am ET on Thursday.
But the powerful storm surge that authorities predicted ahead of Milton’s arrival may not have been as bad as projected. Communities to the north of Siesta Key were hit by heavy rain, predicted to be up to 18in, while areas to the south, including Fort Myers Beach and Naples, were hit by the storm’s sea-surge.
Some forecast models had predicted that Milton would hit squarely on Tampa Bay’s inlet, creating a 15ft storm surge, but the storm’s path wobbled, directing it about about 70 miles south to hit the beaches.
Still, just inland from Tampa, the flooding in Plant City was “absolutely staggering”, according the city manager, Bill McDaniel. Emergency crews rescued 35 people overnight, said McDaniel, who estimated the city had received 13.5in of rain.
“We have flooding in places and to levels that I’ve never seen, and I’ve lived in this community for my entire life,” he said on Thursday morning.
Milton, which formed close to Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula earlier in the week, at times reached maximum category 5 status with winds of 200mph as it crossed the Gulf towards Florida.
Ahead of the storm’s arrival, the state issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties with a total population of about 7.2 million people. Anyone who stayed behind was warned they would have to fend for themselves until the hurricane passed over.
Among some who stayed were 12 workers at Tampa’s zoo, located in the evacuation zone, where they made sure orangutans had blankets, manatees had supplies of lettuce and rhinoceroses had bamboo.
Now, Florida is faced with a huge cleanup. In Orlando, Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and Sea World remained closed on Thursday. At the news conference, DeSantis said 9,000 national guard members were ready to step in, as well as 50,000 utility workers from as far as California.
“Unfortunately, there will be fatalities. I don’t think there’s any way around that,” DeSantis said.
