Hurricane Milton slams Florida; 12 dead, millions lose power

Oct. 10, 2024 Updated 9 PM PT

Tornadoes ripped through St. Lucie County on Florida’s east coast, killing at least six there.
Milton made landfall near Sarasota and cut a wide path of damage; more than 3 million Floridians were left powerless.
“The storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday morning.

TAMPA, Fla. — Search and rescue teams fanned across Florida on Thursday plucking residents of flooded homes to safety after Hurricane Milton barreled into central-west Florida, striking a densely populated coastline with storm surges up to 10 feet and 120-mph winds and pummeling communities across the state with deadly tornadoes.

After making landfall near Siesta Key, a barrier island near Sarasota, around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, Milton cut a wide path of damage, flooding apartments, upturning mobile homes, downing trees and cutting power to more than 3 million Floridians at one point Thursday. At least 12 people have died during the storm, and authorities are still searching for survivors in the hardest-hit areas.

“This is a very fluid situation,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said Thursday. “It is imperative that everyone continues to follow the direction of local officials. Milton may have passed, but the danger it poses has not.”

Fueled in part by record warmth across the Gulf of Mexico, Milton was one of the most intense hurricanes on record in the region. It was the ninth hurricane of the season in the Atlantic Ocean region, according to the National Weather Service, hitting Florida just two weeks after Hurricane Helene swept through the Southeast, killing hundreds and leaving a mass of destruction in its wake.

Experts say Milton may not be the last hurricane this year.

“We still have to be on alert for storms. They can easily form in the Gulf of Mexico since that water stays warm well into the fall,” said Paul Miller, assistant professor of coastal meteorology at Louisiana State University. “Just because we’ve had sort of this state of storms in the Gulf of Mexico over the last few weeks doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re done for the year.”

More destructive storms could have a devastating economic effect.

While the full extent of the destruction from Milton remains to be seen, early estimates put the cost of the damage and economic loss between $160 billion and $180 billion. Damage amounts for Helene were predicted to be higher, between $225 billion and $250 billion, according to AccuWeather.

Since the GDP of the United States is $26 trillion, the combined loss would be “nearly 2%, mainly focused in the fourth quarter and the first quarter of 2025. That may wipe out all expected growth in the economy over that period,” AccuWeather founder and Executive Chairman Joel Myers said in a statement.

Some of the worst damage inflicted Thursday was on Florida’s east coast, far from where the hurricane made landfall. As if the misery of a hurricane wasn’t enough, the storm spawned dozens of tornadoes across the state.

Six fatalities were confirmed in St. Lucie County in the Spanish Lakes Country Club, a community of modular homes for residents 55 and older near Fort Pierce. St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson said Thursday afternoon that tornadoes spawned by Milton’s storm system left a 100-yard-wide swath of devastation.

“I mean, they don’t look like homes anymore,” Pearson said as rescuers continued to sift through the debris. “These homes are flattened; there’s nothing left. ... It looks like you’re at the dump — just huge piles of rubble.”

Almost 24 hours after the tornado hit, about 25 residents of Spanish Lakes had been rescued or made it to safety, Pearson said. But officials still didn’t have a clear idea of who was missing as some residents left for shelters and other residents were snowbirds who live out of state most of the year.

“We’re asking neighbors, ‘Hey, did anybody live there?’ And a lot of them were like, ‘Yeah, they were there. I don’t know where they are, though,’” Pearson said. “We’re going to double-check, triple-check, and do everything we possibly can to save as many lives as we can.”

At a morning news conference, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Milton moved quickly, bringing “much destruction and damage.” But he also expressed relief that Milton was ultimately not as powerful as many feared.

“The storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario,” DeSantis said. “The hurricane did weaken before landfall, and the storm surge, as initially reported, has not been as significant overall as what was observed for Hurricane Helene.”

Later, DeSantis said at least 999 people and 105 pets had been rescued across the state.

One such rescue happened Thursday afternoon near Longboat Key on the west side of the state, where the Coast Guard found a man drifting about 30 miles from the shore clinging to a cooler. A Coast Guard helicopter crew airlifted the man, who works as a captain on a fishing boat, to Tampa General Hospital.

VIDEO | 00:41

Coast Guard rescues man off Longboat Key following Hurricane Milton

According to the Coast Guard, the man had gone out to the boat where he works early Wednesday. The vessel had been left adrift days earlier and he was attempting to make repairs, but he became stranded as the hurricane approached. The Coast Guard lost communication with him Wednesday evening, officials said.

“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” said Lt. Cmdr. Dana Grady, the St. Petersburg sector’s command center chief. Grady said the Coast Guard estimated that the man, whose name was not released, endured winds of 75 to 90 mph and 20- to 25-foot seas for hours, including overnight. “He survived,” Grady said, “because of a life jacket, his emergency position indicating locator beacon, and a cooler.”

Speaking from the White House, President Biden said Americans working with federal, state and local agencies were “putting their lives on the line to do dangerous work.” He condemned those who, weeks before the Nov. 5 presidential election, were politicizing the issue of hurricane response and spreading rumors and misinformation on social media about last month’s Hurricane Helene and the response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Those who engage in such lies are undermining confidence in the rescue and recovery work that’s ongoing,” Biden said. “These lies are also harmful to those who most need help. Lives are on the line. People are in desperate situations; have the decency to tell them the truth.”

Biden said that rebuilding after the storms would be a long haul that would cost several billion dollars. He singled out former President Trump for spreading false claims that Americans would get just $750 from FEMA.

“It’s not going to be a matter of just a little bit, but we’re providing now to make sure people have the emergency relief they need: the dollars just to be able to get a prescription filled, to get a baby formula done,” Biden said. “Mr. Trump and all those other people know it’s a lie to suggest [$750 is] all they’re going to get. ... They got to stop this. I mean, they’ve been so damn un-American with the way they’re talking about this stuff.”

More than 100 miles north of St. Lucie County, authorities confirmed two storm-related fatalities in Volusia County: A 79-year-old woman in Ormond Beach and a 54-year-old woman in Port Orange were killed after trees fell on their homes, according to a spokesperson with Volusia County Sheriff’s Department. A third death was possibly medical, and its connection to the storm remains unconfirmed.

In Tampa, a woman in her early 70s was found dead Thursday morning underneath a collapsed tree branch. In Polk County, a 68-year-old county worker was helping to cut down a tree Thursday to clear a roadway when he was fatally struck by a car.

Two people also died in St. Petersburg during the storm, according to Police Chief Anthony Holloway. But it was not clear what role the storm may have played in the fatalities; one was medical, he said, and the other person’s body was found in a park.

In St. Petersburg, Milton tore the roof off Tropicana Field, the Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium that served as a “base camp” for thousands of emergency workers and first responders, and hurled a construction crane near a luxury high-rise onto an office building that houses the offices of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper.

“While we were spared the brunt of the storm surge … we still have serious issues that we’re working to address,” St. Petersburg Mayor Kenneth T. Welch said in a news conference. “The storm still brought approximately 18 inches of rain and some localized flooding. The storm also caused damage to our potable water system, our drinking water systems, infrastructure and power.”

At least 30 water lines were broken in St. Petersburg during the storm, primarily due to falling trees, according to a statement by the city. By Thursday afternoon the city had restored access to drinking water, but residents remain under a boil-water notice until Monday.

In Clearwater, hundreds of people were trapped overnight as water engulfed their apartment complex, rising to waist level inside the first floor. As some residents looked on from their second-floor balconies, emergency workers worked through the early morning, carrying children on their backs to safety and loading residents in orange life jackets — and their dogs — onto boats and high-water rescue vehicles.

By noon, yellow caution tape surrounded the complex and some apartment doors were marked with red crosses and circles. But not everyone wanted to leave.

“I’m not going!” a woman yelled down to rescuers in a motorboat.

“You need to come with us now!” a man shouted back. “If you’re not leaving today, no one’s coming back.”

Michael M., a resident of the apartment complex who would not give his full last name or age, said he left his first-floor apartment around 1 a.m. Thursday as water began to seep in.

“It was coming in from every direction — the kitchen, the bedroom,” he said. “It was rushing in and it was time to go.”

He said the area, which was not under a mandatory evacuation order, was prone to flooding, but he had never seen anything like this. When asked what his plan was or if he had a place to stay, he shrugged. “Figuring it out piece by piece,” he said, “because that’s all I can do.”

In Tampa, more than 130 people — many of them seniors — were rescued from the Great American Assisted Living Facility after water flooded the building, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Ahead of Milton’s arrival, FEMA said it had more than 1,000 responders on the ground in Florida to conduct search and rescue and support hurricane response efforts. The federal agency also had meals and water ready to deploy to feed millions.

As dawn broke Thursday and Milton pulled offshore from Florida and over the Atlantic Ocean as a weakened Category 1 hurricane, officials warned that a large swath of the East Coast was still under threat.

“There is a danger of life-threatening storm surge from #Milton along the coast from east-central Florida northward to southern Georgia, “ the National Hurricane Center warned.

By 4 p.m., fewer than 16,000 people up and down the East Coast were under hurricane warnings, but more than 1.3 million were under a storm surge warning, according to the National Weather Service.

More than 2.6 million Florida customers were without power Thursday afternoon — down from 3.3 million Thursday morning, according to Poweroutage.us, which tracks national power outages.

“With the full support of the state, and the pre-staging of over 50,000 linemen, utility companies and telecommunications providers are working hard to restore power and connectivity to these communities as quickly as possible,” DeSantis said in a Thursday night statement on X.

Officials in St. Petersburg, Tampa and Sarasota urged residents to stay home Thursday morning, warning of downed power lines and flooding.

In Tampa, many side roads were flooded Thursday morning, with law enforcement officers directing traffic through 2 feet or more of water. Traffic lights throughout Tampa were out and, in at least one case, hanging down onto the road.

“Please, please stay inside,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor urged residents at a morning news conference.

Castor said one of the blessings for her community was that Milton did not bring the level of storm surge meteorologists had predicted.

“But it’s not over,” she added. “At 7 o’clock this morning, when high tides come in, rivers are going to flood all over Hillsborough County, not just in the city of Tampa.”

The third hurricane to make landfall in Florida this year, Milton came less than two weeks after Helene barreled into Florida’s rural Big Bend region, killing more than 230 people in multiple states. It cut a path of destruction across the Southeast, including the portion of west-central Florida now hit by Milton.

Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, called the effect of climate change on the back-to-back hurricanes “unmistakable.”

Record-warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have provided fuel for stronger storms and more intense flooding, she said.

“We must face the reality of climate change, and the only way to reduce the threats and prevent further harm is by taking action now — to prepare for even greater extremes to come and to advance the policy and climate solutions necessary to cut global emissions,” she said.

Warming water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, driven by climate change, increase the available water vapor and energy for a hurricane. This translates into more rain and stronger winds, said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist in the Applied Mathematics and Computational Research Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“When the winds are a little stronger, that means that the vertical motions in the middle of the storm are quite a bit larger, so the storm is more efficient at raining out the available water,” he said. “It’s sort of a double whammy. You’ve got more water, more energy, and that makes it more efficient.”

Climate change has increased rainfall in recent major hurricanes by at least 20%, Wehner said.

This is not the first time Florida has been pummeled by a succession of hurricanes.

In 2004, four back-to-back hurricanes — Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne — barreled through the state in six weeks. Those storms, ranging from a Category 4 to a Category 2 hurricane, displaced millions of residents and represented the most active hurricane season since Texas saw four hurricanes in 1886, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report.

In the northern part of Siesta Key, close to where the storm made landfall, most roads were impassable Thursday because of debris, floodwaters or both. Residents walked barefoot in ankle-deep water, looking around at the damage to their homes as National Guardsmen went door to door to check if residents needed urgent medical attention.

AJ Hershman and his wife, Chrissy, said that as Milton approached, they had made peace with the thought of losing their sprawling ranch home with a two-story add-on.

The home’s interior was already bare; they had emptied it after Helene brought in 8 to 10 inches of floodwater. Their yard was littered with the gutted cabinets, doors and other wooden innards that couldn’t be disposed of between storms.

“An impossible task,” her husband said of removing the debris.

But their home was still standing Thursday, the pile of debris mostly untouched.

They said it was a miracle.

Still, most of their neighbors weren’t home, and the couple looked worried as two men representing a screen replacement and repair company put business fliers into damaged homes’ mailboxes. They feared burglars and vandals.

“It’s hard when you’re not here to watch your house,” Chrissy explained.

But it was still light outside. Joked her husband, “It’s a bit early for that, no?”

Times staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.