Mexico Beach residents return home after Michael
MEXICO BEACH, FLA. — Residents of hardhit Mexico Beach began returning home for the first time Wednesday since Hurricane Michael to see homes devastated by wind and water and pieces of their lives scattered across the Florida sand.
Nancy Register sobbed uncontrollably after finding no trace of the large camper where she’d lived with her husband Taylor. She was particularly distraught over the loss of a black-and-white photo of her mother, who died of cancer.
Husband Taylor Register found little but a stool and a keepsake rock that was given to him by a friend 40 years ago.
Just up the road, Kentucky residents Ron and Lanie Eden picked through the remains of the small beach house where they’ve stayed with their children each October for years.
Residents who rode out the storm at home have been in Mexico Beach since Michael hit, but authorities told others to stay away for a week after the Category 4 storm ravaged the beach town with 250 km/h winds and a strong storm surge.
State emergency management officials said some 124,500 customers across the Panhandle were still without power Wednesday morning and 1,157 remained in shelters.
In Bay County, home to Mexico Beach and Panama City, 54 per cent of customers remained without electricity. Inland, in Calhoun County, 98 per cent of the customers didn’t have power Wednesday morning, according to the emergency management website. And in Jackson County, which borders Alabama and Georgia, about 98 per cent of customers are still without power.
In the meantime, in many areas devastated by the hurricane, law enforcement officials are battling looting of homes and businesses.
Bay County Sheriff’s Maj. Jimmy Stanford said deputies have arrested about 10 looters each night since the storm hit. In some parts of the county, residents have spray-painted signs warning that “looters will be shot.”
Callaway resident Victoria Smith told the News Herald that thieves came into her townhome while she and her four children were sleeping with the front door open to allow a breeze inside.
“I must’ve been so exhausted from everything in the past days I didn’t even hear them come in,” Smith said. “They just snatched my purse out of my hands and ran . ... It was all we had.”
Often the looters have been armed, Stanford said.
“Most of our officers lost their homes, have been working 16- to 18-hour shifts with no sleep, no shower, and now they’re encountering armed individuals,” he said. “It’s a stressful time for everyone in Bay County.”
The storm killed at least 16 people in Florida, most of them in the coastal county that took a direct hit from the storm, state emergency authorities said Tuesday. That’s in addition to at least 10 deaths elsewhere across the South. The scope of the storm’s fury became clearer after nearly a week of missing-persons reports and desperate searches of the Florida Panhandle neighbourhoods devastated by the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in nearly 50 years.
The Florida Department of Emergency Management’s count of 16 dead was twice the number previously tallied by The Associated Press. That number included 12 deaths in Bay County, where the hurricane slammed ashore with 250 km/h winds and a catastrophic storm surge last Wednesday.