Hurricane-weary Floridians assessed storm damage and started clearing out debris Friday, a day after Hurricane Milton brought floodwaters and destructive winds across a swath of Florida.
Hurricane-weary Floridians picked up a familiar routine Friday — assessing storm damage and clearing out muck and debris — a day after Hurricane Milton tore through the state, flooding low-lying barrier islands and inland communities in the heavily populated central west coast and spawning deadly tornadoes in the east.
At least 16 people were dead, killed by tornadoes, falling trees, downed power lines, wrecked vehicles or medical emergencies after Milton lashed the state with powerful wind and rain.
In just 24 hours, Milton dropped more than 18 inches of rain on St. Petersburg — a more than one-in-1,000 year rainfall event for the area, according to the National Weather Service.
And the threat of flooding had still not receded.
In Dover and Lithia, small communities about 20 miles inland from Tampa, rescue teams plunged into murky brown water to save seniors and families trapped in flooded homes as the Alafia River swelled. In some homes, the Hillsborough County sheriff’s office said, the water rose as high as 6 feet.
“Where’s everybody at?” a rescue worker from the Hillsborough County sheriff’s office yelled Friday morning as he waded into a flooded home in Dover. The living room was bobbing with armchairs, sneakers and pillows. “How many people? 1, 2, 3 .”
A family of eight, including a child, was inside.
“Hey, if you have any trouble, let somebody know,” the rescue worker told the residents as they clung on to a yellow rope affixed with buoys and began to be escorted outside to safety.
After making landfall as a Category 3 storm near Siesta Key, a barrier island in Sarasota County, Milton barreled east with powerful winds and tornadoes that downed trees, snapped power lines, flipped semitrucks and tossed houses off their foundations.
By Friday afternoon, long after Milton exited the peninsula, more than 1.3 million people were under a coastal flood warning, according to the weather service. The service forecast moderate to major river flooding in central Florida and the St. Johns River basin over the weekend and through the coming weeks.
Milton was the third hurricane to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast this year. On Aug. 5, Debby, a Category 1 hurricane, made landfall near Steinhatchee, Fla., a lightly populated area of the Big Bend region. On Sept. 26, Helene, a more powerful Category 4 hurricane, brought catastrophic flooding and damaging winds to a large stretch of the Gulf Coast before barreling north into Georgia and North Carolina.
Climate scientists with World Weather Attribution, a group that studies extreme weather, said in a report Friday that extreme rainfall events such as Milton are “20-30% more intense and about twice as likely in today’s climate, [which] is 1.3°C warmer than it would have been without human-induced climate change.”
President Biden said Friday the damage from Milton, the third major storm to hit Florida in three months, was expected to cost nearly $50 billion.
“I want everyone in the impacted areas to know we’re going to do everything we can to help you pick back up the pieces and get back to where you were,” Biden said at a news briefing.
