Floridians tally damage after Hurricane Milton leaves path of destruction

More than three million customers are without power after Hurricane Milton blew through Florida and caused widespread flooding along its west coast and inland. The hurricane and its fierce winds cut a path of destruction across many cities and towns. At least six people were killed but the very worst fears around storm surge were avoided. William Brangham reports.
Geoff Bennett:
Welcome to the “News Hour.”
More than three million customers are without power tonight after Hurricane Milton blew through Florida, causing widespread flooding along its West Coast and inland.
Amna Nawaz:
The hurricane and its fierce winds cut a path of destruction across Many cities and towns. At least six people were killed. But the very worst fears around storm surge were avoided.
William Brangham begins our coverage with this report.
William Brangham:
This is Milton’s path of destruction. The massive hurricane tore across Florida overnight and today after making landfall near Siesta Key in Sarasota county.
It came ashore as a Category 3 storm with 120 mile-an-hour winds. First responders across the state worked overnight and throughout the day rescuing people stranded by floodwaters…
Man:
It’s OK. You’re OK.
William Brangham:
… and from homes damaged by debris and fallen trees.
In Pinellas County, water rescue crews worked for hours saving hundreds of people who’d been trapped in an apartment complex inundated with floodwater. As bad as it was in some areas, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the state had avoided some of the more catastrophic scenarios predicted.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL):
The storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario. The storm did weaken before landfall and the storm surge as initially reported has not been as significant overall as what was observed for Hurricane Helene.
William Brangham:
Still, Milton did plenty of damage. In Lakeland, 50 miles from the coast, residents in this mobile home community were not told to evacuate. And by the time they realized how bad the flooding was, it was too late.
Manuel Mejia biked out of the flood. His girlfriend is still back in their home, but safe.
Manuel Mejia, Florida Resident:
They were saying it was going to head more towards the Lake Wales area, more down. So I’m like, we don’t need to get out. We will be all right. But then all of a sudden, the hurricane just had another — had its own mind,came back to us, and it was too late to get out.
Carlos Mar, Florida Resident:
I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad, but they were hitting very strong. And being in a mobile home, it really hit really strong. But the winds — like, every single time there was a powerful wind, you could feel it in the mobile home just shaking.
William Brangham:
Carlos Mar, whose mobile home was flooded with a foot of water, was rescued by boat this morning, reunited with his loved ones, including his younger sister, Angeline (ph).
So you left your big brother here all by himself?
Angeline, Florida Resident:
Yes, because my mom — my mom, we couldn’t take him because we didn’t have so much space in the car.
William Brangham:
I see, so you got to get out, but your brother had to stay?
Angeline:
Yes.
William Brangham:
But he’s OK now, which is good.
Angeline:
I’m happy for that, that God saved him.
William Brangham:
Even before it made landfall, Milton’s fierce winds set off at least 27 tornadoes, including on Florida’s east coast, destroying homes and killing several people in St. Lucie County.
Milton avoided a direct hit on the much larger city of Tampa, but in just one day, deluged the region with more than a month’s worth of rain.
Man:
I feel like I see a rabbit in the river, which is bananas.
William Brangham:
The Hillsborough River swelled to four times its usual level, submerging entire roads and businesses.
Daniel Barn, Florida Resident:
Born and raise. We have never seen anything like this.
William Brangham:
In St. Petersburg, Milton’s high winds sent a construction crane crashing into a nearby building and shredded the roof of Tropicana Field baseball stadium. Usually home to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, last night, it was used as a staging area for first responders.
In Washington, President Biden pledged to help the state clean up and rebuild.
Joe Biden, President of the United States: There’s going to be a need for a significant amount of money. I think Congress should move as rapidly as they can, particularly on the most immediate need, which is small business.
William Brangham:
As it churned across the state, Milton downed power lines and transformers, sparking fires and leaving more than three million Floridians in the dark. The storm moved off Florida near Cape Canaveral as a Category 1 early this morning after pummeling communities on the eastern shoreline.
Several residents in Sarasota, where the storm surge appeared to peak around eight to 10 feet, have begun returning to assess the damage.
Man:
This is the second time for us. We had Helene that came by. We had everything cleaned up, and then all of a sudden this comes around. So we’re — we got our fingers crossed. We’re praying to the lord that he answered our prayers and is going to give us a break.
Man:
It sounded like a train. It was pretty rough. A lot of damage around the houses, but most of the houses, I think, did pretty good, shockingly.
William Brangham:
So there is clearly a sense of relief in certain spots here, but there’s a lot of work to be done to still understand just how severe the damage is across this state — Amna.
Amna Nawaz:
William, it was clearly such a powerful storm, and, as you reported there, a lot of damage, but in terms of physical damage and loss of life, it doesn’t seem to have been as bad as Many were anticipating, thank goodness.
Why is that? What should we understand?
William Brangham:
Well, there were several reasons for that, Amna.
Number one, the storm shifted slightly south of Tampa, so it didn’t hit a major metropolitan area. Secondly, the surge that did come in wasn’t as big as meteorologists had projected. I mean, they were talking yesterday 12 to 15 feet potentially. It ended up only being about three to five.
There’s some complex meteorological reasons for that. There was actually what’s called a reverse surge that happened that pulled some of the water back from the shoreline at the moment of impact. That’s also good. It’s also true that it seems a lot of people here heard the warnings. They heard the governor, they heard their local officials, they heard the president of the United States saying, this is a big storm, and if you have a chance to, get out of here.
So people drove north, they drove west. When we flew in, we saw the airport was crowded with flights leaving Florida and the Orlando area. So this, as we reported, was one of the largest evacuations that has happened in this state’s history. So those factors, I think, all contributed to the fact that it’s very rare to be able to do for a major storm like this.
It’s nice to be able to report some good news that this wasn’t as bad as people had anticipated it would be.
Amna Nawaz:
At the same time, as we saw in your report there, there were so Many people in some of those low-lying mobile home communities where they did see quite a bit of flooding. What’s ahead for them?
William Brangham:
That’s right. We visited several of those mobile home communities today. We tried to go further out to the coast, but a lot of the major highways were flooded out and inaccessible to us.
So, we were about 50 miles from the coast, and we saw several of those small communities. And those are communities that traditionally public officials worry a great deal about, because they’re often in low-lying areas. The structures that are in those communities are not as robust from a construction standpoint. They’re not fixed to the ground like a traditional house is with its foundation.
And because they are often populated by people who don’t have as much money and are somewhat at the fringe of our society, they’re placed in places that are just not as safe and they tend to flood more and they’re often more polluted. And that’s what we saw here.
Couple that, all of those factors, with the enormous amount of rain that fell on this state. As we reported, they got almost a month’s worth of rain in just over a day or so here. You put all of those factors together and these communities are the ones that flooded the most.
And we saw several examples of that right where we’re standing here, communities that didn’t have the wind rip their roofs off, which is traditionally what happens in storms like this, but water that fell to the ground and flooded upwards and damaged their homes.
Amna Nawaz:
That’s our William Brangham reporting tonight from Lakeland, Florida.
William, thank you to you and the team.
William Brangham:
Thanks, Amna.