PANAMA CITY - Hurricane Michael, the
third most powerful storm ever to strike the U.S. mainland,
headed northeast on Thursday, weakened but still set to soak
Georgia and the Carolinas after devastating the Florida
Panhandle.
A man was killed when a tree toppled onto his house in
Florida and a girl died when debris fell into a home in Georgia,
officials said and local media reported.
The Category 4 hurricane was the fiercest to hit Florida in
80 years when it came ashore on Wednesday, but its strength
waned as it pushed into Georgia.
Early on Thursday, it was
downgraded to a tropical storm, with top sustained winds
diminishing to 60 miles per hour.
More than 700,000 homes and businesses were without power in
Florida, Alabama and Georgia early Thursday. Thousands hunkered
down in shelters overnight after fleeing their homes to escape
the fast-approaching storm.
The storm, packing sustained winds that reached 155 miles
per hour, clobbered communities across the Panhandle, toppling
buildings, downing trees and power lines and turning streets
into roof-high waterways, television footage showed.
"The wind that came through here was surreal. It destroyed
everything," Jason Gunderson, a member of the Cajun Navy, a
group of rescue workers, told CNN early Thursday from Callaway,
a suburb of Panama City in the Florida Panhandle. "It's
unlivable. It's heartbreaking."
Michael rapidly intensified as it churned north over the
Gulf of Mexico and caught many by surprise. The storm made
landfall on Wednesday afternoon near Mexico Beach, about 20
miles (32 km) southeast of Panama City.
The governors of North and South Carolina urged residents to
brace for heavy rain and storm-force winds as Michael plowed
northward up the Atlantic seaboard. The Carolinas are still
recovering from Hurricane Florence less than a month ago.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Michael would dump
as much as 8 inches of rain in some areas. Up to a foot (30 cm)
of rain was forecast in Florida.
Television news footage showed homes submerged in
floodwaters up to their roofs in Mexico Beach. The fate of about
280 residents who authorities said ignored evacuation orders was
unknown.
Numerous buildings in Panama City were demolished or left
without roofs amid deserted streets littered with debris,
twisted, fallen tree trunks and dangling wires.
Bill Manning, a 63-year-old grocery clerk, fled his camper
van in Panama City for safer quarters in a hotel only to see the
electricity there go out.
"My God, it’s scary. I didn’t expect all this," he said.
'ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE'
Twenty miles south of Mexico Beach, floodwaters were more
than seven feet deep near Apalachicola, a town of about 2,300
residents, hurricane center chief Ken Graham said. Wind damage
was also evident.
"There are so many downed power lines and trees that it's
almost impossible to get through the city," Apalachicola Mayor
Van Johnson said.
Some 500,000 Florida residents had been ordered or urged to
seek higher ground before the storm in 20 counties spanning a
200-mile stretch of shoreline, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) said.
As many as 320,000 people on Florida's Gulf Coast had
disregarded evacuation notices, according to Brad Kieserman of
the American Red Cross.
An estimated 6,000 people evacuated to emergency shelters,
mostly in Florida, and that number was expected to swell to
20,000 across five states by week's end, Kieserman said.
Bo Patterson, the mayor of Port St. Joe, just south of
Mexico Beach, rode out the storm in his house seven blocks from
the beach, describing the scene outside as "very, very scary."
In all, about 2,500 of the town's 3,500 residents stayed
put, with many caught off guard by the storm's rapid escalation.
"This happened so quickly," he said.
FEMA head Brock Long acknowledged that evacuation efforts in
the area were slow compared with how fast the hurricane
intensified. Michael grew from a tropical storm into a Category
4 hurricane in about 40 hours.
With a low barometric pressure recorded at 919 millibars,
the measure of a hurricane's force, Michael ranked as the third
strongest storm on record to make landfall in the continental
United States. Only Hurricane Camille on the Mississippi Gulf
Coast in 1969 and the so-called Labor Day hurricane of 1935 in
the Florida Keys were more intense.
U.S. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency
for all of Florida, freeing federal assistance to supplement
state and local disaster responses.
About 3,500 Florida National Guard troops were deployed,
along with more than 1,000 search-and-rescue personnel, Governor
Rick Scott said.
The Pentagon positioned more than 2,200 active-duty military
personnel, along with helicopters, high-water vehicles and
swift-water boats.
Even before landfall, the hurricane disrupted energy
operations in the Gulf, cutting crude oil production by more
than 40 percent and natural gas output by nearly one-third as
offshore platforms were evacuated before the storm hit.