Hurricane Milton, which has been downgraded to a category three storm on its approach to Florida, is going to be “deadly and catastrophic”, officials warned on Wednesday.
Millions have fled the US state, with Milton forecast to make landfall over southern Sarasota in the next few hours – tornado and storm surge warnings are already in place
Joe Biden warns that despite the change in category, it’s still going to be “one of the most destructive hurricanes to hit Florida a century”
Earlier, the US president condemned a “reckless” promotion of “outright lies” by Donald Trump and others about the federal government’s response – remarks he repeated this evening in a Oval Office address
Milton’s arrival comes two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit the Gulf Coast as a category four storm, killing at least 225 people across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina.
Al Jazeera reports that millions of Florida residents have fled the US state as Hurricane Milton approaches, with officials there warning that those who stayed would “die” and that single-story homes would turn into “a coffin”.
“We are a few hours away from an epic catastrophe,” Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor told CNN on Tuesday. The Tampa metropolitan area, home to more than three million people, is directly in the hurricane’s path, as is a vast swath of Florida’s western coast.
Forecasters have described the hurricane, which is expected to make landfall on Wednesday night, in apocalyptic terms, warning it would be the “storm of the century”. That emphasised the power of Milton in a state that is no stranger to hurricanes, having already been battered by a series of devastating storms in recent years.
The National Hurricane Center said Milton would cause an “extremely life-threatening situation” and is expected to bring damaging winds and torrential rainfall that will extend inland and outside the forecast cone. It weakened slightly from a Category 5 storm to a Category 4 as it approached the west coast of Florida, but is still extremely powerful.
The hurricane comes just two weeks after an earlier one, Hurricane Helene, hit on September 26, causing widespread damage across the southeastern US, including in Florida, and killing more than 200 people – mainly in North Carolina and Georgia.
Trucks have been running 24 hours a day to clear mounds of debris left behind by Helene before Milton potentially turns them into dangerous projectiles, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis said. He added that preparations are under way for what will likely be the largest search and rescue operation in Florida history, once the storm passes.
