Florida begins to assess the devastation from Hurricane Milton

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(Bloomberg) –Hurricane Milton was moving off Florida’s east coast after cutting a path of destruction through the state, leaving residents to assess the damage from one of the most feared storms in recent history.

Milton drenched central Florida with intense rains and battered the region with searing winds, causing widespread power outages, significant flooding risk and flight cancellations at airports including Tampa and Orlando. It may take days to take stock of the damage.

The center of the storm was moving into the Atlantic after passing near Cape Canaveral, the National Hurricane Center said in an update at 5 a.m. Eastern time. Top winds were around 85 miles (140 kilometers) per hour, making Milton a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. It was still lashing parts of Florida with damaging winds and heavy rain.

The hurricane shredded the roof of Tropicana Field, a domed stadium in St. Petersburg and the home of Major League Baseball team, Tampa Bay Rays, ABC reported. The storm has also knocked out power for more than 3 million homes and businesses in Florida, according to PowerOutage.us.

Milton came ashore south of where Hurricane Helene — which killed at least 230 people — struck Florida’s west coast two weeks ago. The US mainland has been hit by five hurricanes so far this year, including Beryl, which battered Houston in July and knocked out power to millions of homes and businesses.

The hurricane was forecast to bring as much as 18 inches of rain on some areas, according the National Hurricane Center.

“This rainfall will continue to bring the risk of catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding, along with moderate to major river flooding,” agency forecasters wrote in an outlook. Tropical storm conditions will spread to the South Carolina and Georgia coasts today, they added.

President Joe Biden was previously briefed by Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall and US Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator, Deanne Criswell, on the initial impacts of the hurricane on the Florida Peninsula, according to a statement from the White House.

The hurricane was expected to cause damages and losses in a range from $60 billion to $75 billion, a “major catastrophe” for the region, Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler for Enki Research, said before the storm made landfall.

The reduction in the storm’s intensity to Category 3 as it made landfall may significantly cut insured losses, according to Bloomberg Intelligence insurance analyst Charles Graham.

Major Flooding

Even as far south as Naples Bay, over 100 miles from where Milton made landfall, major flooding was recorded, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Melissa Seixas, president of Duke Energy Florida, said Milton “is our worst fears come true.” The company just replaced hundreds of transformers destroyed by Helene two weeks ago, and that equipment is now vulnerable again. “We had about 24 hours between the final restoration of Helene and preparing for this storm,” she said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at a Wednesday briefing that the state has more than 50,000 linemen on standby, ready to start power restoration as soon as it’s safe. President Biden said the federal government stood ready to deploy military personnel to aid recovery efforts.