Hurricane Milton blasted with such intensity on Monday that it became a potentially devastating Category 5 hurricane for Florida, threatening the US state with its second deadly storm in as many weeks.
As one after another storms the US election, Vice President Kamala Harris blamed her White House rival Donald Trump and Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for “political gamesmanship” and spreading misinformation about the federal response. Is.
Milton, which is predicted to devastate Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula as it moves eastward, quickly reached the highest category on a scale of five, triggering evacuation orders and warnings of brutal conditions on Florida’s west coast. .
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the storm’s maximum sustained winds were near 180 miles (285 kilometers) per hour, and the air pressure at the storm’s center was at “near record lows”.
Communities affected by Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida late last month, rushed to remove debris that could have turned out to be projectiles as dangerous as Milton barrels.
“Last time, people’s cars were underwater … but this time the bigger issue is going to be wind,” said David Levitsky, a retired homeowner on Treasure Island in Pinellas County.
Lower Island residents are piling up flood debris from Helen in their front yards to remove it.
“All this stuff is just a gust of wind that will blow across the street and hit who knows who,” the 69-year-old man told AFP.
Amid the wreckage, DeSantis, a conservative known for his confrontation with the federal government, found himself under fire after broadcaster NBC reported that he was ignoring Harris’ phone calls over Helen’s recovery.
The White House said late Monday that DeSantis spoke with President Joe Biden about preparations.
Harris criticized the Republican governor for “playing political games.”
“This is about political gamesmanship rather than doing the job you swore an oath to do, which is to put people first,” he told reporters. He also criticized Trump, calling him “extraordinarily irresponsible”.
The former president took advantage of genuine frustration about the federal response after Helen and fueled it with disinformation, falsely claiming that federal disaster funds were misused and instead spent on immigrants.
Worst hit in 100 years
As Milton moves toward Florida, state officials have issued mandatory evacuation orders for areas including parts of Tampa, a metropolitan area of ​​more than three million people, that could be directly affected.
The National Weather Service said, “If the storm remains on its current path, it will be the worst hurricane to hit the Tampa area in more than 100 years.”
A major storm is expected to hit Florida’s west coast Tuesday night or early Wednesday, and could leave water levels eight to 12 feet (2.4 to 3.6 meters) above ground level in Tampa.
Rainfall of up to 10 inches (25 cm), with local amounts of up to 15 inches, is expected to cause severe flooding.
In downtown Orlando, under gray skies, hundreds of cars lined up to collect sandbags.
“We can get me and my pets out, we can go to Georgia,” Tony Carlson, 32, told AFP. “People think it’s going to be very bad.”
Maria Torres, 29, said her family was not planning to leave, but had made preparations with a generator, food and water.
In Yucatan, Mexico, workers boarded up glass doors and windows, fishermen pulled boats ashore and schools were suspended.
In the southeastern United States, emergency workers are still struggling to provide relief after Helene, which killed at least 230 people in several states.
Helene struck the Florida coast as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26, causing heavy rains and widespread flooding in remote inland cities in states to the north, including North Carolina and Tennessee.
Dean Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), also dismissed claims that money was being sent to migrants and called the misinformation “alarming.”
He warned on Monday that “these storms are bringing more water than ever before and so while we have the threat of wind, the water is killing people.”
Researchers say climate change likely plays a role in hurricanes becoming increasingly intense because warmer oceans have more energy to feed on.
Helene was the deadliest natural disaster to hit the mainland US since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with the death toll still rising.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
