Winter storm also closes portions of interstate highway
This article was written by Nathan Bawaan and was published in the Toronto Star on January 23, 2025.
Heavy snow falls outside a welcome centre in Pensacola, Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency earlier in the week ahead of the snow, joining other governors from southern states in preparation for the cold snap.
Parts of America’s Sunshine State saw snow for the first time in years as a major winter storm across the southern U.S. descended on Florida Tuesday and Wednesday.
The panhandle region of Florida is one of many places in the American South to see recordbreaking snow this week due to the storm, with the U.S. National Weather Service issuing a weather warning for parts of the state.
On Tuesday, parts of Texas saw five to 10 centimetres of snow before midday, while Lafayette, La., saw 26.7 by the afternoon, in what a meteorologist told the Associated Press was a “onceinalifetime event.”
Florida’s capital, Tallahassee, last saw snow in 2018.
In Jacksonville, officials shut down the airport Tuesday evening and schools and government offices were closed Wednesday. Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, residents woke up to snowdusted palm trees.
The snow and ice also shut down significant portions of highways, including more than 160 kilometres of I10, America’s southernmost interstate, in Louisiana and Florida.
Many Floridians made the most of the rare weather event, going outside to play in the snow.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency earlier in the week ahead of the snow, joining governors from southern states preparing for the cold snap.
Three people have died in the cold weather, two in Texas and one in Georgia.
The freezing temperatures in America’s south comes as a blast of Arctic air brings bitterly cold winds across the Midwest and East Coast (the same air mass has also plunged Toronto’s temperatures to their lowest since 2023).
This article was written by Ritika Dubey and was published in the Toronto Star on October 15, 2024.
When Julie Riddell and her husband, Gerry, bought their Fort Myers, Fla., vacation property in 2009, it didn’t cross their mind that they might be buying in a hurricane-prone area.
“But for at least eight years, we’ve been seeing a lot more action and more frequency (of storms),” the Toronto resident said.
Riddell’s Florida property, situated inland, has been a winter getaway and spot for family vacations for years.
While she loves heading down south, Riddell said the cost of insurance premiums have drastically gone up over the years, almost quadrupling since they first bought the property as severe storms threaten communities in coastal regions.
Cleanup efforts are continuing on Florida’s west coast after two hurricanes made landfall in recent weeks.
However, it appears Canadian snowbirds are divided on whether they want to stay or rethink their decision to own property in the state as worsening weather and surging property costs become a bigger fact of life.
For Riddell, these issues haven’t yet persuaded her to sell.
She said her Florida neighbours are like her “second family.”
“I see more people when I’m in Florida in the winter than I do here (in Toronto),” Riddell said.
She added, “In Toronto, it’s like, I see my neighbour when he puts out the garbage and then that’s it.”
The Riddells have however had to make investments to secure their property against severe weather, such as by maintaining hurricane shutters.
“I’ll have to spend more money making sure … we have the defences in place for another catastrophic (event),” Julie said.
“I’m going to dig in like a lot of Floridians do,” she added. “We’re not leaving.” Hurricane seasons are getting more intense as oceans get warmer. When Helene plowed through
I’m going to dig in like a lot of Floridians do. We’re not leaving.
JULIE RIDDELL SNOWBIRD
Florida roughly two weeks ago, it was the seventh Category 4 or stronger storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. in eight years. That’s more than triple the average annual rate of such monster landfalls in the U.S. since 1950, according to a data analysis by the Associated Press.
Two years ago, Hurricane Ian caused about $60 billion in insured damages in Florida,where many communities and local businesses are still recovering from the destruction.
Martin Kinal, a Mississauga resident, sold his Venice, Fla., vacation home this year. Though his property is more inland and less susceptible to floods, he had a close encounter with Hurricane Ian.
“Ian was the last one and while our home and city sustained very little wind damage … we did have water reach our front doorstep,” Kinal said in an email.
“One more step and it would have been inside our home.”
Kinal said one of his Florida neighbours decided to move to Arizona the following year because they realized “sooner or later, one will hit our area.”
“We decided to sell in May this year due to costs associated with keeping a vacation home in Florida,” he said. “Since the pandemic hit, cost of everything seems to double.”
As the frequency of storms hitting the coast of Florida increases, some insurance companies have significantly hiked premiums, limited their policy offerings or pulled out of the region all together.
Nine insurers have been declared insolvent or merged into other companies in Florida since 2021. Average annual property insurance premiums jumped 42 per cent last year to $6,000 in Florida, compared with a national average in the U.S. of $1,700, an AP analysis said.
Kris Rossignoli, a cross-border financial planner at Cardinal Point, said owning a second home in Florida requires thinking about more than whether you can afford to buy and pay the mortgage.
“It’s now, ‘Can I afford the price of the home plus all of the additional insurance that comes with the home, and especially flood insurance,” he said.
Upkeep of vacation homes is also getting more expensive because of the rising price of building materials and property caretakers, as well as more frequent maintenance, Rossignoli said.
“A lot of Canadians couldn’t go down … to prepare their (Florida) homes for this storm,” he said. “You either have to have really good neighbours or you hire third-party services to do that.”
While that’s stretching the financial equation of owning a second home, Rossignoli said it still seems viable when compared with the cost of long-term rentals in Florida.
Ontario resident Ray Ferris, who owns a property in Treasure Island, Fla., says he’s concerned about what he will find when he heads south this winter. But he adds that he’s eager to get down there and help the city rebuild.
Ferris and his wife spend two to three months a year at their vacation condo, which they bought in 2021, to escape the gloomy northern winters. For the rest of the year, they rent it out, but the latest storms could impact that.
Ferris said renting out the condo helps keep up with condo fees, ongoing maintenance and insurance but he’s now worried he won’t be able to find renters.
“We’re now concerned that nobody is going to vacation on Treasure Island,” he said.
Ferris said he has “second guessed” his decision to buy a condo on the beach on the Gulf of Mexico when tracking storms but isn’t convinced that it’s time to sell.
“It’s almost a fact of life you have to accept if you’re going to live on the water,” he said.
Determination to rebuild state follows after back-to-back storms
This article was written by Russ Bynum and Laura Bargfeld, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 14, 2024.
Residents assess the damage Sunday in Englewood, Fla., after Hurricane Milton passed through the area. Around 500,000 homes and businesses in Florida remain without electricity.
When ankle-deep floodwaters from Hurricane Helene bubbled up through the floors of their home, Kat Robinson-Malone and her husband sent a late-night text message to their neighbours two doors down: “Hey, we’re coming.”
The couple waded through the flooded street to the elevated front porch of Chris and Kara Sundar, whose home was built on higher ground, and handed over their eight-year-old daughter and a gas powered generator.
The Sundars’ lime-green house in southern Tampa also became a refuge for Brooke and Adam Carstensen, whose house next door to Robinson-Malone also flooded.
The three families met years earlier when their children became playmates, and the adults’ friendships deepened during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. So when Helene and Hurricane Milton struck Florida within two weeks of each other, the neighbours closed ranks as one big extended family, cooking meals together, taking turns watching children and cleaning out their damaged homes.
And as Milton threatened a direct strike on Tampa last week, the Malones, the Sundars and the Carstensens decided to evacuate together. They drove more than 725 kilometres in a caravan to metro Atlanta — seven adults, six children, four dogs and teenage Max Carstensen’s three pet rats.
“Everyone has, like, the chain saw or a tarp,” Robinson-Malone said Sunday. “But really the most important thing for us was the community we built. And that made all the difference for the hurricane rescue and the recovery. And now, hopefully, the restoration.”
Recovery efforts continued Sunday in storm-battered communities in central Florida, where President Joe Biden surveyed the devastation. Biden said he was thankful the damage from Milton was not as severe as officials had anticipated. But he said it was still a “cataclysmic” event for people caught in the path of the hurricane, which has been blamed for at least 11 deaths.
The number of homes and businesses in Florida still without electricity dropped to about 500,000 on Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us. That was down from more than three million after Milton made landfall Wednesday as a Category 3 storm. Fuel shortages also appeared to be easing as more gas stations opened, and lines at pumps in the Tampa area looked notably shorter. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced nine sites where people can get 38 litres each for free.
While recovery efforts were gaining steam, a full rebound will take far longer.
DeSantis cautioned that debris removal could take up to a year, even as Florida shifts nearly 3,000 workers to the cleanup. He said Biden has approved 100 per cent federal reimbursement for those efforts for 90 days. “The (removal of) debris has to be 24/7 over this 90-day period,” DeSantis said while speaking next to a pile of furniture, lumber and other debris in Treasure Island, an island city near St. Petersburg that has been battered by both recent hurricanes. “That’s the way you get the job done.”
National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Close said rivers will keep rising for the next several days and result in flooding, mostly around Tampa Bay and northward. Those areas got the most rain, which came on top of a wet summer that included several hurricanes.
This article was written by Emily Flitter and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 14, 2024.
Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida’s west coast as a Category 3 storm Wednesday, was not as catastrophic as predicted, but still did plenty of damage, including the above, seen Sunday in Englewood, Fla.
Until late last month, there was optimism in the U.S. insurance industry. Hurricane season had been quiet, and the number of wildfires was still below the yearly average. Insurers were beginning to hope that the cost of reinsurance – that is, insurance for insurers – would only inch up next year, instead of shooting higher as it did the previous two years.
Two major hurricanes have upended their calculations.
Total economic losses from Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene could soar over US $200billion, according to early estimates. While it’s far too soon to know exactly what portion will be covered by insurance companies, some consumer groups, lawmakers and analysts are already worried about a big hit to insurers’ finances that could ultimately affect millions of people living in the most vulnerable areas of the United States.
As climate change increases the intensity of natural disasters, insurance companies have pulled back from many high-risk areas by raising premiums or ending some types of coverage. The fallout from the two hurricanes, which landed within the span of two weeks, could accelerate that retreat. It could also further strain an already feeble federal flood insurance program that has filled in gaps for homeowners living in areas where private insurance companies no longer offer flood coverage.
Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida’s west coast as a Category 3 storm Wednesday, did not ultimately cause the catastrophe that had been predicted for the Tampa Bay area. But it still did plenty of damage.
Sridhar Manyem, an analyst for the insurance industry ratings agency AM Best, said that while it was too early to estimate insurers’ obligations, industry insiders were already beginning to compare Milton with Hurricane Ian, which caused more than US$55billion of insured losses in 2022 when it hit the same area.
“Because of lack of information at first blush, usually people do this,” Mr. Manyem said. “This storm is pretty comparable to another storm in terms of size and path and intensity, so we can try to figure out what an inflation-adjusted loss would be.”
If the storm is that expensive for insurers, it will have a knockon effect for customers. It will give insurance companies another reason to either raise premiums or stop selling policies to people living and working in certain areas. It could even drive some insurers out of business, as Ian did. Since 2021, nine property and casualty insurers have gone bankrupt in Florida.
Insurance companies will most likely have to cover more damage from Milton than from Helene, because its major destructive force was windstorms, not floods, which private insurers do not frequently cover.
Helene, which landed before Milton, also caused considerable damage. But the cost of repairing that damage, mostly caused by flooding, is more likely to fall on the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides more than two-thirds of all flood insurance coverage in the United States.
Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are wondering whether that program will have enough money to pay flood claims without more funding from Congress. It could draw on about US$15-billion before a new reauthorization bill would be necessary.
“Hurricane Milton may blow through the NFIP’s remaining resources,” Representative Maxine Waters of California, the highestranking Democrat on the House financial services committee, which oversees the program, said in a statement to The New York Times. “Even just one more storm could bankrupt the entire NFIP and prevent future claims payments to devastated communities.”
The program is plagued with problems. It is in debt to the Treasury Department for US$20-billion already, with interest payments piling up.
Ms. Waters said Congress should pass legislation that would forgive the flood program’s debt.
The program also threatens to become unaffordable to people living in flood-prone areas who are required by their mortgage lenders to buy its policies. Lawmakers want to pass changes to the program, including a needbased plan that would help its poorest customers.
Consumer groups are worried that private insurers will continue to pull back from areas where people are in grave danger of damage from big storms but cannot afford to move. The Greenlining Institute, a consumer group based in California, is beginning to pressure insurers to write affordable policies for low-income homeowners.
Until recently, Greenlining focused its work on urging banks to do business with people who had been historically shut out of the banking system by redlining and other discriminatory policies. It expanded its mission when it realized that difficulties getting insurance were also taking a toll on poor and minority areas, said Monica Palmeira, the group’s climate finance strategist. Insurance companies are “allowed to essentially discriminate against climate-vulnerable communities,” she said.
On Friday, Daniel Schwarcz, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, proposed a federally administrated marketplace for homeowners’ insurance modelled after Obamacare.
Smaller insurers will have other things to think about first. If they have been poorly managed or have concentrated business too narrowly, they could collapse under the weight of claims from the storms.
“Florida-focused property insurers, they are really at the highest level of danger,” Mr. Manyem said. Those companies, he said, are likely to have the hardest time getting new reinsurance policies, too.
Total economic losses from Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene could soar over US$200-billion, according to early estimates.
This article was written by Ritika Dubey and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 14, 2024.
Julie Riddell, shown in this handout photo with her husband Gerry, is a Canadian snowbird who owns a vacation property in Fort Myers, Fla. She is not yet looking to sell her property despite the recent severe storms, she says.
When Julie Riddell and her husband, Gerry, bought their Fort Myers, Fla., vacation property in 2009, it didn’t cross their mind that they might be buying in a hurricane-prone area.
“But for at least eight years, we’ve been seeing a lot more action and more frequency (of storms),” the Toronto resident said.
Ms. Riddell’s Florida property, situated inland, has been a winter getaway and spot for family vacations for years.
While she loves heading down south, Ms. Riddell said the cost of insurance premiums have drastically gone up over the years, almost quadrupling since they first bought the property as severe storms threaten communities in coastal regions.
Cleanup efforts are continuing on Florida’s west coast after two hurricanes made landfall in recent weeks.
However, it appears Canadian snowbirds are divided on whether they want to stay or rethink their decision to own property in the state as worsening weather and surging property costs become a bigger fact of life.
For Ms. Riddell, these issues haven’t yet persuaded her to sell.
She said her Florida neighbours are like her “second family.”
“I see more people when I’m in Florida in the winter than I do here (in Toronto),” Ms. Riddell said.
She added, “In Toronto, it’s like, I see my neighbour when he puts out the garbage and then that’s it.”
The Riddells have, however, had to make investments to secure their property against severe weather, such as by maintaining hurricane shutters.
“I’ll have to spend more money making sure … we have the defences in place for another catastrophic (event),” Ms. Riddell said.
“I’m going to dig in like a lot of Floridians do,” she added. “We’re not leaving.” Hurricane seasons are getting more intense as oceans get warmer. When Helene plowed through Florida roughly two weeks ago, it was the seventh Category 4 or stronger storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. in eight years. That’s more than triple the average annual rate of such monster landfalls in the U.S. since 1950, according to a data analysis by The Associated Press.
Two years ago, Hurricane Ian caused about $60-billion in insured damages in Florida, where many communities and local businesses are still recovering from the destruction.
Martin Kinal, a Mississauga, Ont., resident, sold his Venice, Fla., vacation home earlier this year. Though his property is more inland and less susceptible to floods, he had a close encounter with Hurricane Ian.
“Ian was the last one and while our home and city sustained very little wind damage … we did have water reach our front doorstep,” Mr. Kinal said in an email.
“One more step and it would have been inside our home.”
Mr. Kinal said one of his Florida neighbours decided to move to Arizona the following year because they realized “sooner or later, one will hit our area.”
“We decided to sell in May this year due to costs associated with keeping a vacation home in Florida,” he said. “Since the pandemic hit, cost of everything seems to double.”
As the frequency of storms hitting the coast of Florida increases, some insurance companies have significantly hiked premiums, limited their policy offerings or pulled out of the region all together.
Nine insurers have been declared insolvent or merged into other companies in Florida since 2021. Average annual property insurance premiums jumped 42 per cent last year to $6,000 in Florida, compared with a national average in the U.S. of $1,700, an AP analysis said.
Kris Rossignoli, a cross-border financial planner at Cardinal Point, said owning a second home in Florida requires thinking about more than whether you can afford to buy and pay the mortgage.
“It’s now, ‘Can I afford the price of the home plus all of the additional insurance’ that comes with the home, and especially flood insurance,” he said.
Upkeep of vacation homes is also getting more expensive because of the rising price of building materials and property caretakers, as well as more frequent maintenance, Mr. Rossignoli said.
“A lot of Canadians couldn’t go down … to prepare their [Florida] homes for this storm,” he said. “You either have to have really good neighbours or you hire third-party services to do that.”
While that’s stretching the financial equation of owning a second home, Mr. Rossignoli said it still seems viable when compared with the cost of long-term rentals in Florida.
Ontario resident Ray Ferris, who owns a property in Treasure Island, Fla., says he’s concerned about what he will find when he heads south this winter. But he adds that he’s eager to get down there and help the city rebuild.
Mr. Ferris and his wife spend two to three months a year at their vacation condo, which they bought in 2021, to escape the gloomy northern winters.
For the rest of the year, they rent it out, but the latest storms could impact that.
Mr. Ferris said renting out the condo helps keep up with condo fees, ongoing maintenance and insurance but he’s now worried he won’t be able to find renters.
“We’re now concerned that nobody is going to vacation on Treasure Island, if it is in fact a ghost town,” he said.
Mr. Ferris said he has ”secondguessed” his decision to buy a condo on the beach on the Gulf of Mexico when tracking storms but isn’t convinced that it’s time to sell.
“It’s almost a fact of life you have to accept if you’re going to live on the water,” he said.
Meanwhile, for Ms. Riddell, selling her vacation property will have to meet a high bar.
“If I see a cow flying and my house [is] up in the sky, it’s time to move,” she said.
Moody’s estimates economic costs from hurricane will range from $50B to $85B
This article was written by Russ Bynum, Brendan Farrington, and Ty Oneil, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 13, 2024.
Fuel distribution workers fill cars at a depot in Plant City, Fla., on Saturday. Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state has opened three fuel distribution sites and planned to open several more.
Floridians recovering from Hurricane Milton, many of whom were journeying home after fleeing hundreds of kilometres to escape the storm, spent much of Saturday searching for gas as a fuel shortage gripped the state.
In St. Petersburg, scores of people lined up at a station that had no gas, hoping it would arrive soon. Among them was Daniel Thornton and his nine-year-old daughter Magnolia, who arrived at the station at 7 a.m. and were still waiting four hours later. “They told me they have gas coming but they don’t know when it’s going to be here,” he said. “I have no choice. I have to sit here all day with her until I get gas.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters Saturday morning that the state opened three fuel distribution sites and planned to open several more. Residents can get 10 gallons (37.85 litres) each, free of charge, he said.
“Obviously as power gets restored … and the Port of Tampa is open, you’re going to see the fuel flowing. But in the meantime, we want to give people another option,” DeSantis said.
Officials were replenishing area gas stations with the state’s fuel stockpiles and provided generators to stations that remained without power.
The two hurricanes left a ruinous mess in the fishing village of Cortez, a community of 4,100 along the northern edge of Sarasota Bay. Residents of its modest, single-storey wood and stucco-fronted cottages were working to remove broken furniture and tree limbs, stacking the debris in the street much like they did after Hurricane Helene.
In Bradenton Beach, Jen Hilliard scooped up wet sand mixed with rocks and tree roots and dumped the mixture into a wheelbarrow.
“This was all grass,” Hilliard said of the sandy mess beneath her feet. “They’re going to have to make 500 trips of this.”
Milton killed at least 10 people after it made landfall as a Category 3 storm, tearing across central Florida, flooding barrier islands and spawning deadly tornadoes. Officials say the toll could have been worse if not for the widespread evacuations.
Overall, more than a thousand people had been rescued in the wake of the storm as of Saturday, DeSantis said.
On Sunday, President Joe Biden will survey the devastation inflicted on Florida’s Gulf Coast by the hurricane. He said he hopes to connect with DeSantis during the visit.
The trip offers Biden another opportunity to press Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to call lawmakers back to Washington to approve more funding during their pre-election recess. It’s something Johnson says he won’t do.
Moody’s Analytics on Saturday estimated economic costs from the storm will range from $50 billion to $85 billion, including upwards of $70 billion in property damage and an economic output loss of up to $15 billion.
At least 10 people dead as rescues continue in Florida’s coastal communities
This article was written by Chris O’Meara, Brendan Farrington, and Ty O’Neil, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 12, 2024.
A member of the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office goes out to help residents trapped in their homes Friday as waters rise after Hurricane Milton caused the Anclote River to flood in New Port Richey, Fla.
Florida residents slogged through flooded streets, gathered up scattered debris and assessed damage to their homes on Friday after Hurricane Milton smashed through coastal communities and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes.
At least 10 people were dead, and rescuers were still saving people from swollen rivers, but many expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared densely populated Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialized.
Gov. Ron DeSantis warned people to not let down their guard, however, citing ongoing safety threats including downed power lines and standing water that could hide dangerous objects.
“We’re now in the period where you have fatalities that are preventable,” DeSantis said. “You have to make the proper decisions and know that there are hazards out there.”
About 2.2 million customers remained without power in the state, according to poweroutage.us. St. Petersburg’s 260,000 residents were told to boil water before drinking, cooking or brushing their teeth, until at least Monday.
Also Friday, the owner of a major phosphate mine disclosed that pollution spilled into Tampa Bay during the hurricane.
The Mosaic Company said in a statement that heavy rains from the storm overwhelmed a collection system at its Riverview site, pushing excess water out of a manhole and into discharges that lead to the bay. The company said the leak was fixed Thursday.
Mosaic said the spill likely exceeded a 17,500-gallon minimum reporting standard, though it did not provide a figure for what the total volume might have been.
Calls and emails to Mosaic seeking additional information about Riverview and the company’s other Florida mines received no response, as did a voicemail left with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
The state has 25 such stacks containing more than 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum, a solid waste byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer mining industry that contains radium, which decays to form radon gas. Both radium and radon are radioactive and can cause cancer. Phosphogypsum may also contain toxic heavy metals and other carcinogens, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and nickel.
Florida’s vital tourism industry has started to return to normal, meanwhile, as Walt Disney World and other theme parks reopened. The state’s busiest airport, in Orlando, resumed full operations Friday.
Arriving just two weeks after the devastating Hurricane Helene, Milton flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off the Tampa Bay Rays ‘ baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.
Crews from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office on Friday were assisting with rescues of people, including a 92-year-old woman, who were stranded in rising waters along the Alafia River. The river is 25 miles (40 kilometres) long and runs from eastern Hillsborough County, east of Tampa, into Tampa Bay.
In Pinellas County, deputies used high-water vehicles to shuttle people back and forth to their homes in a flooded Palm Harbor neighbourhood where waters continued to rise.
This article was written by Brad Brooks and Leonora Lapeter Anton, and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 11, 2024.
Hurricane Milton wreaked havoc in North Fort Myers, Fla., seen on Thursday. Most of the severe damage reported so far in Florida came from tornadoes, according to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who added that ‘the evacuation orders saved lives.’
Governor Ron DeSantis says the state avoided the ‘ worst-case scenario,’ but storm proved deadly
Hurricane Milton plowed into the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday after cutting a destructive path across Florida that spawned tornadoes, killed at least 10 people and left millions without power, but the storm did not trigger the catastrophic surge of seawater that was feared.
Governor Ron DeSantis said the state had avoided the “worstcase scenario,” though he cautioned the damage was still significant and flooding remained a concern.
The Tampa Bay area appeared to sidestep the storm surge that had prompted the most dire warnings, though the barrier islands along the shore south of the city endured extensive flooding.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a White House briefing that there were reports of 10 deaths thus far, adding it appeared they were caused by tornadoes. At least 27 twisters touched down in Florida, he said.
In St. Lucie County on Florida’s east coast, a spate of tornadoes killed five people, including at least two in the senior-living Spanish Lakes communities, county spokesperson Erick Gill said.
On Thursday, snapped concrete electric poles and overturned trucks in ditches offered evidence of the twisters’ power.
Crystal Coleman, 37, and her 17-year-old daughter hid in their bathroom during the storm as a tornado began peeling the roof off her Lakewood Park house.
“It felt like I was in a movie,” she said. “I felt like I was about to die.”
More than 3.2 million homes and businesses in Florida were without power on Thursday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. At least some had already been waiting days for power to be restored after Hurricane Helene hit the area two weeks ago. Milton shredded the fabric roof of Tropicana Field, the stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team in St. Petersburg, but there were no reported injuries. The ballpark was a staging area for responders, with thousands of cots set up on the field.
In downtown St. Petersburg, dozens of onlookers came out in the bright sunshine to look at a fallen crane that sliced off a corner of the Johnson Pope building on First Avenue South, home also to the Tampa Bay Times. The crumpled boom stretched from one end of the street to the other.
“That, to me, is shocking and crazy to see,” said Alberta Momenthy, 27, who lives nearby. “It looks like it kind of keeled over, and the building caught it and got a little destroyed.”
Steven Cole Smith, 71, an automotive writer and editor who lives in Tampa about 11 kilometres from the Gulf Coast, rode out the storm with his wife. He said the wind shook the windows so hard he thought they would shatter.
“We really didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Mr. Smith said of their decision not to follow evacuation orders. He has a house in central Florida, but said the forecast for that area looked as bad as where he was staying.
“I spent yesterday scavenging for supplies, fuel for the generator, everything we’d need,” he said. “I have a chainsaw, too.”
Luckily, he said, Tampa was spared a direct hit.
Ken Wood, 58, a state ferryboat operator in Pinellas County, fled his Dunedin home on Florida’s Gulf Coast with his 16-year-old cat Andy, after making the “harrowing” mistake of riding out Hurricane Helene two weeks ago in his mobile home.
They heeded evacuation orders and headed north but only made it as far as a hotel about an hour’s drive away when he decided the roads were no longer safe.
“It was pretty loud, but Andy slept through it all,” he told Reuters by telephone.
He is worried about his home but was awaiting official word that roads were clear before returning. Helene destroyed about a third of his neighbourhood, and the streets were still piled with rubble that could have become wind-driven projectiles.
The state was still in danger of river flooding after up to 18 inches (457 millimetres) of rain fell. Authorities were waiting for rivers to crest, but so far levels were at or below those after Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on Thursday morning.
Most of the severe damage reported so far stemmed from the tornadoes, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency head Deanne Criswell, who was in Tallahassee on Thursday.
“The evacuation orders saved lives,” she said, noting that more than 90,000 residents went to shelters.
President Joe Biden, who postponed an overseas trip to monitor Milton, said on Thursday he believes the U.S. Congress should come back into session to address disaster relief funding needs after the storm.
Storm threatens a region home to 3.3 million people
This article was written by the Associated Press and was published in the Toronto Star on October 9, 2024.
A GeoColor satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows hurricane Milton in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula around noon on Tuesday.
Fearful Florida residents streamed out of the Tampa Bay region Tuesday ahead of what could be a once-in-a-century direct hit from hurricane Milton, as crews worked furiously to prevent furniture, appliances and other waterlogged wreckage from the last big storm from becoming deadly projectiles in this one.
Tuesday marked the last chance for millions of people in the Tampa metro area to ready for lethal storm surges, ferocious winds and possible tornadoes in a place that has narrowly avoided a head-on blow from a major storm for generations.
“Today’s the last day to get ready,” said Craig Fugate, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency director who previously ran the state’s emergency operation division. “This is bringing everything.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state deployed more than 300 dump trucks that had removed 1,300 loads of debris left behind by hurricane Helene by Tuesday afternoon.
In Clearwater Beach, Nick Szabo spent a second long day hauling away one-metre piles of soggy mattresses, couches and drywall after being hired by a local resident who was eager to help clear the roads and unwilling to wait for overwhelmed city contractors.
After weakening slightly, Milton regained strength Tuesday afternoon and became a Category 5 storm again, with winds of 265 km/h. It could make landfall Wednesday night in the Tampa Bay area, which has a population of more than 3.3 million people. The 11 Florida counties under mandatory evacuation orders are home to about 5.9 million people, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
Fluctuations in the storm’s intensity are likely while Milton moves across the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said, but it is expected to be a dangerous storm when it reaches Florida.
Milton’s forecasted trajectory also wobbled slightly Tuesday, which means it could make landfall Wednesday in the less-populated areas a bit south of Tampa Bay, according to the centre.
Still, the whole region is expected to get slammed by the storm. It is difficult to predict an exact landfall location even a day before it’s expected to come ashore. Predictions can be off by a little over 96 kilometres, the hurricane centre said.
Hurricane Milton is forecast to cross central Florida and to dump as much as 46 centimetres of rain while, the hurricane centre said.
Storm on track to hit Tampa Bay area just days after Helene struck Gulf Coast
This article was written by Freida Frisaro and was published in the Toronto Star on October 7, 2024.
A resident boards up windows in Palm Harbor, Fla., Sunday, ahead of hurricane Milton’s expected landfall. Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said the state is preparing for what is likely its largest evacuation since hurricane Irma in 2017.
Hurricane Milton quickly intensified Sunday and is on track to become a major hurricane with the Tampa Bay area in its sights, putting Florida on edge and triggering evacuation orders along a coast still reeling from Helene’s devastation.
While forecast models vary, the most likely path suggests Milton could make landfall Wednesday in the Tampa Bay area and remain a hurricane as it moves across central Florida into the Atlantic Ocean, forecasters said. That would largely spare other southeastern states ravaged by hurricane Helene, which caused catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian Mountains and a death toll that rose Sunday to at least 230 people.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that it’s clear that Florida is going to be hit hard by Milton — “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point.”
Hurricane Milton was centred about 1,310 kilometres west-southwest of Tampa on Sunday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 130 km/h, the National Hurricane Center said.
“You have time to prepare — all day today, all day Monday, probably all day Tuesday to be sure your hurricane preparedness plan is in place,” the governor said. “If you’re on that west coast of Florida, barrier islands, just assume you’ll be asked to leave.”
In Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, officials issued voluntary evacuation orders for people along the barrier island beaches and mobile home parks. Mandatory evacuations are likely to follow.
With Milton achieving hurricane status, this is the first time the Atlantic has had three simultaneous hurricanes after September, said Colorado State University hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach. There have been four simultaneous hurricanes in August and September.
DeSantis expanded his state of emergency declaration Sunday to 51 of the state’s 67 counties — home to more than 90 per cent of the state’s nearly 23 million residents. The state’s Panhandle, which continues to recover from other recent storms, is expected to be mostly spared.
Floridians should prepare for more power outages and disruption, making sure they have a week’s worth of food and water and are ready to hit the road, DeSantis said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), meanwhile, co-ordinated with the governor and briefed President Joe Biden Sunday on how it has staged lifesaving resources.
“We are preparing … for the largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017, hurricane Irma,” said Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
The state has prepared emergency fuel sources and electric vehicle charging stations along evacuation routes, and “identified every possible location that can possibly house someone along those routes,” Guthrie said. People who live in homes built after Florida strengthened its codes in 2004, who don’t depend on constant electricity and who aren’t in evacuation zones, should probably avoid the roads, he said.
All classes and school activities in St. Petersburg’s Pinellas County pre-emptively closed Monday through Wednesday, and officials in Tampa opened all city garages free of charge to residents hoping to protect their cars from floodwaters.
As many as 4,000 National Guard troops are helping state crews to remove the tons of debris left behind by Helene, DeSantis said, and he directed that Florida crews dispatched to North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath return to the state to prepare for Milton. The Florida Department of Emergency Management is establishing a base camp at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, where the Tampa Bay Rays play baseball, to support the operations to remove debris ahead of Milton’s arrival, DeSantis said.
Air search and rescue teams on Saturday found 39 more storm survivors who were still stranded in western North Carolina, state Gov. Roy Cooper’s office said. So far, almost 6,600 people have been rescued, evacuated or assisted by search-and-rescue teams since the storm hit, the office said.
FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell defended her agency’s response to the hurricane’s destruction after Republicans’ false claims, amplified by former president Donald Trump, created a frenzy of misinformation across devastated communities.
“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people and it’s really a shame we’re putting politics ahead of helping people,” Criswell told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
Criswell said the agency is already preparing for Milton.
Federal disaster assistance for survivors has surpassed $137 million (U.S.) since Helene struck more than a week ago, one of the largest mobilizations of personnel and resources in recent history, FEMA said Sunday.
My Climate Change Website 