Florida begins assessing the devastation of 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 heavy rain and lashed the region with strong winds, causing widespread power outages, a significant risk of flooding and flight cancellations at airports including Tampa and Orlando. It may take days to take stock of the damage.

The storm’s center was moving into the Atlantic after passing near Cape Canaveral, the National Hurricane Center said in a statement. update at 5 a.m. Eastern time. Top winds were around 90 miles per hour, making Milton a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. It was still battering parts of Florida with damaging winds and heavy rain.

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

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

The hurricane was forecast to bring up to 18 inches of rain in some areas, according to the National Hurricane Center.

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

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

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

Downgrading the storm to Category 3 as it makes landfall can significantly reduce insured losses, according to Bloomberg Intelligence insurance analyst Charles Graham.

Major floods

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

Melissa Seixas, president of Duke Energy Florida, said Milton “is our worst fears fulfilled.” 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 Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a briefing Wednesday that the state has more than 50,000 emergency responders on standby, ready to begin restoring power as soon as it is safe to do so. President Biden said the federal government is prepared to deploy military personnel to aid recovery efforts.

Florida’s agriculture sector is also experiencing widespread disruption. Tampa fertilizer maker Mosaic Co. inactive his operations in Florida prior to Milton’s landing. Hurricane Helene last month resulted in a duration of about 10 days reduction operations, while Hurricane Francine in mid-September affected the company’s phosphate production the volumes and shipping, according to Mosaic.