Hurricane Michael mauls Florida
MASSIVE FORCE At least two people killed, authorities fear they will find more bodies under rubble
PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA: A vast search-and-rescue operation was underway on Thursday after Hurricane Michael cut a brutal path through the Florida Panhandle, leaving communities in its wake to confront splintered homes, twisted metal and flooding that reached to the rooftops of some homes.
At least two people were killed, and authorities feared they would find more bodies in the rubble as specialized out-of-town teams, local officials and residents hurriedly searched for trapped survivors and assessed the damage.
Another concern was the condition of two hospitals in Panama City, which governor Rick Scott said were damaged in the storm.
The storm made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, just shy of Category 5 strength Wednesday afternoon and was not downgraded to a tropical storm until midnight, once it had raced through the Panhandle and southwest Georgia as a hurricane. It was expected to target the Carolinas, still recovering from Hurricane Florence last month, on Thursday.
A man died Wednesday after a tree crashed down on his home in Greensboro, northwest of Tallahassee, the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office said.
WMAZ-TV reported that a girl died in Seminole County, in southwestern Georgia, when her home was struck by debris.
Much of the coast of the Florida Panhandle, including Panama City, Florida, and Mexico Beach, near where the hurricane made landfall, was left in ruins.
At 5 am on Thursday, Michael was about 30 miles west of Augusta, Georgia, heading northeast with sustained wind speeds of up to 50 mph.
The storm is moving relatively quickly, at 21 mph, and is expected to speed up as it crosses into the Carolinas on Thursday and blows out to sea by early Friday.
As of Thursday morning, more than 800,000 customers had lost power in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, accord- ing to electrical providers in those states. In some Florida counties, such as Franklin and Leon, nearly every customer was without power.
Michael took the nation by surprise, intensifying rapidly from a tropical storm to a major hurricane in just two days and leaving little time for preparations.
A storm that was initially forecast to arrive as a tropical storm instead amped up to furious intensity, hitting landfall just after midday Wednesday near the small seaside community of Mexico Beach, 100 miles southwest of Tallahassee, with winds topping 155 mph.
Images from there showed swaths of shattered debris where houses once stood and structures inundated up to their rooftops; the streets of Panama City, farther west, were blocked by downed tree limbs and impossible tangles of power lines.