Hurricane Milton churned into the Atlantic Ocean north of the Bahamas on Thursday after blasting across Florida.
Even before making landfall Wednesday night, it whipped up tornadoes. While crossing the state, it ripped the fabric roof off Tropicana Field. That’s the home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team in St. Petersburg. The storm smashed a tower crane into a downtown Tampa building.
The highly populated Tampa Bay area was spared a massive storm surge. But barrier islands along the Gulf Coast suffered heavy flooding. Sarasota had uprooted trees and siding stripped from buildings.
The storm shifted from a Category 5 to a Category 3 by the time it struck land Wednesday night. Category 3 hurricanes can have winds up to 129 miles per hour.
Tornadoes touched down before the storm’s onslaught and damaged communities. St. Lucie County on Florida’s Atlantic Coast was hit particularly hard. Twisters destroyed homes and tragically killed four residents.
St. Petersburg recorded more than 16 inches of rain. The National Weather Service warned of flash flooding there along with other parts of western and central Florida. Trees and power lines toppled across the city and surrounding areas. St. Petersburg, Gulfport, and Lealman had no running water.
The storm knocked out power for more than 3.3 million homes and businesses. It wiped out electricity to more than 80 percent of customers in some Gulf Coast counties.
Plant City is just inland from Tampa. It endured 13.5 inches of rain. City Manager Bill McDaniel has lived in the area his entire life. He observes, “We have flooding in places and to levels that I’ve never seen.”
Roger Young is the executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He says state search and rescue teams performed more than 42 rescues. Responders removed several people safely from their vehicles in Hillsborough County. They evacuated about 100 people in an assisted living facility.
Prior to the storm’s arrival, authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties, a population of about 7.2 million people.
Governor Ron DeSantis described deployment of a wide range of resources at a news conference. He noted about 9,000 National Guard members from Florida and other states were available. More than 50,000 utility workers from as far away as California offered aid.
Highway patrol cars with sirens escorted gasoline tankers to replenish supplies so people could fill up their tanks before evacuating. Even with these efforts, GasBuddy reported more than 60% of gas stations in Tampa and St. Petersburg were out of fuel by Wednesday night.
Governor DeSantas spoke at another news conference on Thursday morning. “The storm was significant, but thankfully, this was not the worst case scenario.”
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those who take refuge in Him. — Nahum 1:7
