Hurricane Milton hit Florida as a Category 3 storm Wednesday evening, wreaking havoc on a coast that had still not fully recovered from Hurricane Helene, battering cities with winds of more of 160 kilometers per hour after producing a barrage of tornadoes, but sparing Tampa from a direct hit.
The cyclone had sustained winds of up to 125 mph when it made landfall at 8:30 p.m. near Siesta Key, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Siesta Key is a thriving strip of white sand beaches home to 5,500 people about 70 miles south of Tampa.
Even though Tampa was not in the direct path of the hurricane, the situation remains a major emergency, while St. Petersburg recorded more than 41 centimeters of rain.
Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, in St. Petersburg, appeared to be badly damaged. The fabric that serves as a roof for the domed stadium was torn apart by the high winds. It is not known if there was any damage to the interior. Several cranes were also toppled by the storm, the U.S. National Weather Service said.
Residents of St. Petersburg can no longer get water from their household taps after a broken pipe led the city to cut off service.
The storm knocked out power to much of Florida, as more than three million homes and businesses were left without power Thursday morning, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.
Before Milton even reached the mainland, tornadoes were making landfall across the state. Spanish Lakes Golf Club, near Fort Pierce on Florida’s Atlantic coast, was particularly hard hit, with homes destroyed and residents killed.
“We lost lives,” St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson told WPBF News, although he did not specify how many people died.
About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane made landfall, many of which were mobile homes in senior communities, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said.
About 90 minutes after making landfall, Milton was downgraded to a Category 2 storm. As of Thursday morning, the hurricane was a Category 1 with maximum sustained winds of about 85 mph as it moved offshore and was about 55 kilometers east of Orlando.
Heavy rain was also likely to cause inland flooding along rivers and lakes as Milton crosses the Florida peninsula as a hurricane, eventually emerging into the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday. It is expected to impact the highly populated Orlando area.
The storm hit a region still reeling two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded streets and homes in west Florida and left at least 230 dead in the southern United States. Many municipalities rushed to clean up the debris before Milton’s winds and storm surge moved it and worsened the damage.
At a news conference in Tallahassee on Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said 9,000 members of the National Guard from Florida and other states, more than 50,000 utility workers from California and highway patrol cars with sirens to escort gasoline tankers were going to be deployed.
“Unfortunately, there will be deaths. I don’t think there are any other options,” Mr. DeSantis conceded.
Heavy rain and tornadoes hit parts of South Florida beginning Wednesday morning, with conditions deteriorating throughout the day. Between 15 and 31 centimeters of rain, up to 46 centimeters in some places, was expected inland, bringing the risk of catastrophic flooding.