By By Leonara LaPeter Anton and Brad Brooks
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (Reuters) – Hurricane Milton marched across Florida on Thursday, whipping up tornadoes, destroying homes and knocking out power to millions before blowing out into the Atlantic.
However, the Tampa Bay area appeared to have escaped without the catastrophic flooding that had been feared.
At least four deaths were reported in St. Lucie County on Florida’s Atlantic Coast when an unconfirmed tornado flattened a retirement community, local media reported, citing county officials. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.
More than 3 million homes and businesses in Florida were without power on Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us. At least some of them had been waiting for days for power to be restored after Hurricane Helene hit the area nearly two weeks ago.
The hurricane also tore a gaping hole in the fabric that serves as the roof of Tropicana Field, the stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team in St. Petersburg, but there were no reports of injuries.
“One of the blessings for us is that we did not see that predicted storm surge. That saved a lot,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said during an early morning news conference.
In the Tampa area, the storm toppled trees and threw debris across roadways and downed powerlines, video footage from local news showed. Some neighborhoods were flooded, but the extent of the damage will not be known until crews can get out and assess the destruction, Castor said.
Emergency crews in the area responded overnight to dozens of calls for help, including one in which a tree fell on a house with 15 people, including children, inside, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw said. All 15 people were taken to a shelter, he said.
The winds also toppled a large construction crane in St. Petersburg, sending the structure crashing down onto a deserted street.
The state was still in danger of river flooding after up to 18 inches of rain. Authorities were still waiting for rivers to crest, but so far water levels were at or below what they received with Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, Castor said on Thursday morning.
“INSTANTANEOUSLY”
In Fort Myers on the southwest coast, resident Connor Ferin surveyed the wreckage of his home, which had lost its roof and was full of debris and rainwater after a tornado suddenly hit.
“All this happened instantaneous, like these windows blew out,” he said. “I grabbed the two dogs and run under my bed and that was it. Probably one minute total.”
The storm hit Florida’s west coast on Wednesday night as a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, with top sustained winds of 120 mph(205 kph). While still a dangerous storm, this was less violent than the rare Category 5 hurricane that had threatened the state as it trekked over the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.
Milton weakened as it crossed land, dropping to a Category 1 hurricane with top sustained winds of 85 mph (145 kph) as it reached the peninsula’s east coast, the National Hurricane Center said. By Thursday morning, the storm was moving away from the Florida Atlantic coast after lashing communities on the eastern shoreline.
The eye of the storm hit land in Siesta Key, a barrier island town of some 5,400 people off Sarasota about 60 miles (100 km) south of Tampa Bay.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Thursday morning that crews across the state spent the night clearing debris. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration had agreed to all of Florida’s request for emergency assistance, he told CNBC.
“Our state is a peninsula in the middle of a tropical environment. I mean, we are just built to be able to respond to hurricanes,” DeSantis said. “We’ll survey the damage and get people on their feet. We’ll get through this.”
Milton also spawned at least 19 tornadoes, the governor said, causing damage in numerous counties and destroying around 125 homes, most of them mobile homes.
St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson estimated 100 homes were destroyed in the county where some 17 tornadoes touched down, NBC said.
In a state already battered by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, as many as two million people had been ordered to evacuate ahead of Milton’s arrival, and millions more live in the path of the storm.
Much of the southern U.S. experienced the deadly force of Helene as it ripped through Florida and several other states. Both storms are expected to cause billions of dollars in damage.
As of Thursday morning, 2,209 U.S. flights had been canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, with the highest number cancellations from Orlando, Tampa and southwest Florida.
