Deaths expected to rise as Florida begins to assess Hurricane Milton destruction

The death toll from Hurricane Milton rose to at least 10 on Thursday as Florida continued to assess the damage from the category 3 storm that caused extensive property damage across the state and left more than 3.5m homes and businesses without power.

Five fatalities were in a senior community in St Lucie county that was struck by a tornado formed in Milton’s outer bands, authorities there said. The tornado happened before the hurricane made landfall near Sarasota on Florida’s western coast on Wednesday evening.

The Volusia county sheriff, Michael Chitwood, said three people died in his county, and police in St Petersburg confirmed two storm-related deaths there.

Parts of Sarasota, Fort Myers, Venice and other Gulf coast cities were inundated by up to 10ft (3 metres) 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.

“Our hearts break for the Floridians who have lost so much,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said in an afternoon briefing from the White House.

Rescue operations were still under way into Thursday afternoon, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said at a press briefing. Authorities had already rescued at least 340 people and 49 pets, DeSantis said, including a 14-year-old boy found floating in floodwaters on a piece of fence.

A US Coast Guard crew rescued a man who was clinging to an ice chest in the Gulf of Mexico, about 30 miles (50km) off the coast, after his boat broke down before Milton made landfall.

In Tampa, 135 people were rescued from an assisted living facility. The city’s police department also released video of officers rescuing multiple children from a house that was partially destroyed by a fallen tree.

Joe Biden addressed the disaster from Washington DC, telling reporters he had spoken to DeSantis and local officials and promised his administration would ensure “they have everything they need” to respond to the disaster.

“This is a whole of government effort,” the US president said, naming multiple departments and promising that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would open disaster recovery centers in impacted areas “right away”.

Biden praised efforts of US Coast Guard personnel and urban search and rescue teams, and local officials whose early evacuation orders allowed hundreds of thousands of people to escape the path of the storm, and tens of thousands more to ride out the storm in emergency shelters.

“It’s too early to know the full account of the damage, but we know lifesaving measures did make a difference. More than 80,000 people followed orders to safely shelter last night,” he said.

DeSantis 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. State crews, he said, rescued 108 individuals and 18 animals.

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).

By mid-afternoon Thursday, the NHC downgraded a fast-weakening Milton to a post-tropical cyclone as it moved further away from Florida in the Atlantic, but warned there were still significant ongoing hazards.

“We still have on the backside of Milton strong winds, heavy rainfall and storm surge affecting portions of the east coast of Florida, with tropical storm conditions and storm surge affecting the Georgia coast, and even some strong winds up into the South Carolina coast,” Michael Brennan, the NHC director, said in a video briefing.

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 five deaths in St Lucie county were at the Spanish Lakes Country Club in Fort Pierce, WPBF 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 11m people were 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 3.1m homes and businesses in Florida were still without power at 3.30pm ET on Thursday, down from a peak of more than 3.5m.

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.

In Orlando, Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and Sea World said theme parks would reopen on Friday.

Now, Florida is faced with a huge cleanup. At the news conference, DeSantis said 9,000 national guard members were deployed, as well as 50,000 utility workers from as far as California.