The cleanup operation after Hurricane Milton’s devastating swipe at southern Florida got underway on Friday, October 11, as local residents attempted to return to what was left of their homes.
The category 3 hurricane that made landfall in the southwest of Florida State near Sarasota 24 hours before had given rise to tornadoes, ripped out power lines, damaged homes, blocked roads with floods, and demanded hundreds of rescue missions. At least 8 lives were lost in the storm.
Hurricane Milton topples crane & rips off roofs
The storm battered Florida just as people were attempting to gather their lives after Hurricane Helene a couple of weeks before. In St. Petersburg, Milton toppled a crane from a 46-story construction site and ripped the roof off Tropicana Field, home to the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.
Tampa wasn’t hit as hard as was originally feared as the winds dropped to category 2 after making landfall and headed towards the Atlantic Ocean. On Friday morning, 2 million homes were still without electricity in the affected zone. However, one 70-year-old woman was found to have died under a falling tree branch in the city.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned communities to take great care while trying to recover their homes as reports have been coming in of more deaths from people encountering downed power cables in the flood waters. He said ‘emergency debris removal has become a focus for the state’ and pledged to provide all-day access to landfills and give over trucks and road contractors to debris removal.
Five of the 8 people killed lost their lives when a tornado hit the Spanish Lakes Country Club near Fort Pierce, on the Atlantic Coast, authorities said. A 79-year-old woman in Ormond Beach and a 54-year-old woman in Port Orange died after trees crashed into their homes.
At least 340 people and 49 pets have been rescued in ongoing efforts, and around 80,000 people spent the night in emergency shelters, and thousands of others fled after authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties, which added up to a total population of about 7.2 million people.
