Hurricane Michael Kills At Least 11 People in U.S.

Date: 12 October 2018 - 21:38

News ID: ۵۸۴۰۰

WASHINGTON (Guardian) -- Rescuers searched for survivors on Friday after one of the most powerful hurricanes in U.S. history slammed into the Florida Panhandle before moving across Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, killing at least 11 people.
Hurricane Michael struck Florida’s north-west coast near the small town of Mexico Beach on Wednesday afternoon with top sustained winds of 155mph (250kph), pushing a wall of seawater inland and causing widespread flooding.
By early Friday morning, the fast-moving storm was about 65 miles (105km) north-east of Norfolk, Virginia, with top sustained winds of 60mph (95kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. At least five people were killed in Virginia, state officials said on Friday.
"I expect the fatality count to climb today and tomorrow,” Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), told CNN. "Hopefully it doesn’t rise dramatically but it does remain a possibility.”
Michael was also threatening to bring flash floods and wind damage to parts of North Carolina and the southern mid-Atlantic still recovering from last month’s Hurricane Florence.
The storm, which came ashore as a category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, tore entire neighborhoods apart, reducing homes and businesses to piles of wood and siding, damaging roads and leaving scenes of devastation that resembled the aftermath of a carpet-bombing operation.
U.S. army personnel used heavy equipment to push a path through debris in Mexico Beach to allow rescuers through to search for trapped residents, survivors or casualties, as Blackhawk helicopters circled overhead. Rescuers from Fema used dogs, drones and GPS in the search.
"We prepare for the worst and hope for the best. This is obviously the worst,” said Stephanie Palmer, a Fema firefighter and rescuer from Coral Springs, Florida.
Many of the injured in Florida were taken to hard-hit Panama City, 20 miles (32km) north-west of Mexico Beach.
Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center treated some but the hospital evacuated 130 patients as it faced challenges running on generators after the storm knocked out power, ripped off part of its roof and smashed windows, according to a spokesman for the hospital’s owner, HCA Healthcare Inc.
Much of downtown Port St Joe, 12 miles (19km) east of Mexico Beach, was flooded after Michael snapped boats in two and hurled a large ship onto the shore, residents said.
"We had houses that were on one side of the street and now they’re on the other,” said Mayor Bo Patterson, who watched trees fly by his window as he rode out the storm in his home seven blocks from the beach.
Patterson estimated 1,000 homes were completely or partially destroyed in his town of 3,500 people.