Florida ports closed, millions ordered to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Milton

HOUSTON - Most Florida ports including Tampa and Sarasota were closed on Oct 8 to all vessel traffic ahead of Hurricane Milton, while terminals in South Carolina including Charleston began imposing navigation restrictions, reports by the US Coast Guard showed.

Milton comes as the Tampa region is still reeling from

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on Sept 26

.

As the second huge hurricane rumbled towards Florida’s battered west coast and threatened the first direct strike on the densely populated area in 100 years, a sense of looming catastrophe spread as people raced to board up their homes and evacuate to shelters or anywhere they could.

As at the morning of Oct 8, Milton was generating maximum sustained winds of 230kmh and the threat of as much as 4.6m of storm surge, the National Hurricane Centre said, calling it an “extremely dangerous” storm, and urging people to heed evacuation orders.

The Category 4 hurricane was set to move just north of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula on Oct 8, it said.

After weakening from a maximum Category 5 overnight, it is forecast to make landfall on the evening of Oct 9 on the coast of Florida and will remain powerful as it churns across the state.

At a press conference on Oct 8, Governor Ron DeSantis ticked off town after town and county after county that are in danger.

“Basically the entire peninsula portion of Florida is under some type of either a watch or a warning,” he said.

The mayor of Tampa, a metropolitan area of three million that was hit hard last month by Helene, was blunt in her own assessment.

“Helene was a wake-up call. This is literally catastrophic,” Mayor Jane Castor said on CNN.

“I can say this without any dramatisation whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”

One Florida TV meteorologist choked back tears as he talked about how Milton had intensified rapidly from a Category 1.

“I apologise,” weatherman John Morales said, as he surveyed the data. “This is just horrific.”

Mr Shirl Penney, chief executive officer of Dynasty Financial Partners in St Petersburg, already lost his home in Helene. His family of four has been living in a cramped condo in downtown St Petersburg.

After a week of dragging their salvageable belongings out of a waterlogged home, they are planning to evacuate again.

The family had flights booked for Oct 8, hoping to beat inevitable airport closures as the storm nears. His firm also secured a block of hotel rooms in both downtown St Petersburg, a higher elevation area, and the Orlando region.

“To have everyone go through that emotional toll and then go through that again 10 days later, it is hard to put into words how difficult it is,” he said, noting that about 15 of his team members also had their houses destroyed during Helene.

The National Weather Service said that Milton could be the worst storm to hit the Tampa area in more than 100 years.

Scientists say global warming has a role in these intense storms as warmer ocean surfaces release more water vapour, providing additional energy for storms, which intensifies their winds.

Communities hit by the deadly Helene, which slammed Florida in late September, rushed to remove debris that could become dangerous projectiles as Milton approached.

The back-to-back hurricanes have ignited political bickering ahead of the upcoming US election.

Mr DeSantis, a conservative known to clash with the federal government, came under fire after broadcaster NBC reported he was ignoring phone calls from Vice-President Kamala Harris on the Helene recovery.

Mr DeSantis did speak to President Joe Biden about the Milton preparations, the White House said.

Ms Harris slammed the Republican governor for “playing political games”.

Former president Donald Trump has tapped into real frustration about the federal response after Helene and fuelled it with disinformation, falsely claiming disaster money had been spent instead on migrants.

In Mexico’s Yucatan, workers boarded up glass doors and windows, fishermen hauled boats ashore and schools suspended classes.

In the south-eastern United States, emergency workers are still struggling to provide relief after Helene, which killed at least 230 people across several states.

Helene caused massive flooding in remote inland towns in states further north, including North Carolina and Tennessee.

It was the deadliest natural disaster to hit the US mainland since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, with the death toll still rising. AFP, REUTERS, BLOOMBERG