Florida woke up this Thursday after the passage of Milton with the task of gauging the extent of the ravages of the second hurricane to hit the State, after Helenein two weeks. Fortunately, it was not, according to the first damage estimate, the “storm of the century” that US President Joe Biden had predicted, supported by forecasts that spoke of a meteorological phenomenon with few precedents.
The cyclone made landfall as a category 3 (out of a maximum of 5) around 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday in Siesta Key, south of the large conurbation of Tampa Bay, which, after all, was spared the worst, and came out the next morning, and after a sleepless night, heading to the Bahamas along the eastern coast, near Cocoa Beach. Everywhere it went, it showed its teeth and showed off its enormous capacity for devastation: it destroyed trees, roofs and light poles, caused flooding in inland towns and left more than 3.4 million customers without electricity. . Despite all those blows, “no [dejó tras de sí] the worst possible scenario,” according to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
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Rescue teams and local and state authorities woke up early to help the tens of thousands of people affected. The first death toll spoke of five deaths due to the effects of one of the hundreds of tornadoes that it brought with it. Milton and that hit the town of St. Lucie. By early afternoon, it was estimated that the death toll would reach at least 10 across Florida.
The roads that cross the State were filled with cars driven impatiently, causing endless traffic jams. On Interstate 75, one of those roads that organize American life in its path and a straight line that crosses the wetlands of the Everglades and connects Miami and its surroundings with the Gulf Coast, vehicles moved slowly, as they opened to allow emergency response teams and trucks equipped to make urgent reconnections of electrical wiring or to collect fallen branches and trees. Many of the private vehicles were loaded to the brim, with entire families and with the things they had been able to gather in a hurry to leave in time for places where they could be safe from the fury of Milton. Now they have to return home to see what the hurricane left in their wake.
Brigade members rescue residents of Clearwater, Florida from floods. Mike Stewart (AP)
The sky looked blue, like only the calm after the storm looks. In the ditches, small mountains of debris accumulated against the side barriers that separate the water and the crocodiles from the asphalt as reminders of the ferocity of the tornadoes that Milton caused in its outermost areas. This highway was one of the first places that received the onslaught of the hurricane, precisely because of those tornadoes that the cyclone caused on Wednesday, the day in which Florida set a historical record for this type of devastating meteorological phenomena. They were the first to claim victims hundreds of kilometers to the north.
The night brought with it one of the images for which he will surely be remembered. Milton: the roof of the Tropicana Field baseball stadium in Tampa Bay, flying through the air as if it had been built with cigarette paper. In addition to being the home of the Rays, the local pride of the city, it doubled its duty in the early morning hours when the hurricane arrived as a shelter for dozens of emergency workers, who were waiting inside for the storm to pass. Despite the spectacular nature of the images, there were no injuries or deaths.
Another scene of tragedy came from Clearwater, a vacation town between Tampa and St. Petersburg, which did not suffer the storm surge that Milton’s prediction models had reserved for it. In Clearwater, rescue teams moved aboard amphibious vehicles to reach where they were needed.
In an appearance from Washington, Biden congratulated himself at the beginning of the afternoon that the population had heeded the calls of the authorities to get to safety. Throughout the week, they were not afraid to exaggerate when talking about the devastation they attributed to Milton. In the first hours after the storm passed, and without yet knowing the real extent of the havoc it left behind, it seemed that the strategy was successful.
“We know from previous hurricanes that it is often the case that more lives are lost in the days following the storm than during the storm itself,” Biden said. “There are still very dangerous conditions in the state, and people should wait for their leaders to give them the go-ahead before leaving.”
