At least two deaths were reported at a retirement community following a suspected tornado in Fort Pierce on the eastern coast of Florida, NBC News reported, citing St Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson. His department did not immediately respond to a request for details.
Pearson estimated 100 homes were destroyed in the county where some 17 tornadoes touched down.
Scenes outside a hotel in Tampa where residents and visitors are taking shelter.Credit: AP
More than two million homes and businesses in Florida were without power.
Sydney resident Bobbie Pecev, 47, who moved to Tampa in 2016, sheltered in a storage area in her home with her husband and their 14-year-old son and their daughter, 20, who came home after Hurricane Helene passed through her university town two weeks ago.
Tossing up between staying and leaving, the family booked a hotel in Tallahassee that fell through. When Pecev tried to book another, there weren’t any rooms left.
She said they “talked to other friends and neighbours and decided to stay and hunker down if needed”.
Bobbie Pecev and her husband in their storage room in Tampa waiting for Hurricane Milton to pass.Credit: Bobbie Pecev
“We have a few storage areas which are safe so we knew we could hide there,” she said.
They moved their pool furniture indoors, bought extra drinking water and non-perishable food, filled their bath with water and charged their phones and torches. Even after the hurricane passed it remained a waiting game as flash flooding warnings continued.
Pecev’s son, she says, is being a “typical teenager” playing games until his parents made him move to the storage room, where he’s swapped one screen for another to watch a movie.
The storm was expected to cross the Florida peninsula overnight and emerge into the Atlantic, still with hurricane force.
Brandon Marlow walks through surge waters flooding the street after Hurricane Milton came ashore in the Sarasota area in Fort Myers, Florida.Credit: Getty
Milton was forecast to maintain hurricane intensity while crossing Florida but after moving into the Atlantic it is likely to gradually lose tropical characteristics and slowly weaken, the Hurricane Centre added.
In a state already battered by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, as many as two million people were ordered to evacuate, and millions more live in the projected path of the storm.
Much of the southern US experienced the deadly force of Hurricane Helene as it cut a swath of devastation through Florida and several other states. Both storms are expected to cause billions of dollars in damage.
US President Joe Biden was briefed by emergency authorities on the initial impacts of the hurricane, according to a White House statement.
While human evacuees jammed the highways and created gasoline shortages, animals including African elephants, Caribbean flamingos and pygmy hippos were riding out the storm at Tampa’s zoo.
Nearly a quarter of Florida’s petrol stations were out of fuel. NASA was also forced to postpone a joint mission with Space X to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa because of the storm.
The roof of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, has been torn off by Hurricane Milton. There were plans for the stadium to be used as a staging ground for first responders and clean-up teams before the damage.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had moved millions of litres of water, millions of meals and other supplies and personnel into the area. None of the additional aid will detract from recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene, the agency’s administrator, Deanne Criswell, said.
Debris covers the ground near a crane that fell onto a building along 1st Avenue South in St Petersburg,Credit: AP
Trucks have been running 24 hours a day to clear mounds of debris left behind by Helene before Milton potentially turned them into dangerous projectiles, DeSantis said.
About 9000 National Guard personnel were deployed in Florida, ready to assist recovery efforts, as were 50,000 electricity grid workers in anticipating of widespread power outages, DeSantis said.
Search-and-rescue teams were prepared to head out as soon as the storm passes, working through the night if needed, DeSantis said.
“It’s going to mean pretty much all the rescues are going to be done in the dark, in the middle of the night, but that’s fine. They’re going to do that,” DeSantis said.
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