Hurricane Milton claims at least ten lives and millions are without power

By Jack Phillips
Contributing author

The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Florida appears to have dodged a “worst-case scenario” during Hurricane Milton, which made landfall Wednesday evening as a Category 3 storm before moving across the state.

Forming in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, Milton strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane with winds of 185 mph for several days before hitting Florida’s Gulf Coast about 50 miles south of Tampa. But as the storm approached Florida, the National Hurricane Center downgraded the system to Category 3.

“What we know for sure is that we have avoided the worst-case scenario that we had planned for,” FEMA Director Deanne Criswell told CNN on Thursday morning. “But the fact that they prepared for the worst really ensured that they were able to respond to the impacts that they experienced, and the biggest ones right now are the tornadoes that have been reported across the state.”

Her sentiments were echoed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said at a news conference around the same time that a “worst-case scenario” appeared to have been avoided.

“We will better understand the extent of the damage as the day progresses,” DeSantis said at a briefing Thursday. “The storm was significant, but fortunately this was not the worst-case scenario.”

Criswell told CNN that Florida will continue to need federal assistance from FEMA, which responded to the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene. But Florida won’t need the same level of federal aid it “could have needed,” she said.

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told reporters that Port Tampa Bay, a key piece of Florida’s infrastructure, suffered no major damage during the storm, while DeSantis said Port Tampa Bay “will likely be able to resume operations very quickly.” .

“The port looks good, so we should be able to get fuel in and out,” Castor told reporters Thursday after touring the Port of Tampa from a helicopter. “One of the fuel containers in the port had a roof ripped off,” she said.

“If Milton had hit on the north side, we would have been in a bad situation.”

Hurricane Milton’s storm surge peaked in western Florida’s Sarasota County at 8 to 10 feet, DeSantis said in the news conference at the state emergency operations center in Tallahassee.

But the fabric that serves as the roof of Tropicana Field – home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team in St. Petersburg – was ripped to shreds by the fierce winds from Milton. It was not immediately clear whether there was any damage inside. Before the storm struck, first responders were pulled from a staging area there, officials said.

Aerial photos taken after Milton’s landing show that a large portion of the roof was torn off, leaving the baseball field and diamond visible.

About 3.4 million customers and businesses across Florida were without power Thursday morning, according to tracking website Poweroutage.us. Outages were also reported in neighboring Georgia.

The White House said in a statement that DeSantis told President Joe Biden that officials were still assessing the damage to his state. The White House added that Criswell would assess the damage with DeSantis on Thursday morning before briefing Biden on the findings.

According to the NHC, the system remained a hurricane as it moved across the state overnight. On Thursday morning, Milton’s center was over the Atlantic Ocean, just east of the Florida coast. It was expected to be downgraded to a tropical storm on Friday as it crosses the Atlantic south of Bermuda, NHC models show.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.