Storm’s deadly toll set to rise
Search and rescue teams have found at least one body in Mexico Beach, the ground-zero town nearly obliterated by Hurricane Michael, an official said yesterday as the scale of the storm’s fury became ever clearer.
The death toll across the US South stood at 14, including the victim discovered in Mexico Beach.
Miami Fire Chief Joseph Zahralban, leader of a search and rescue unit that went into the flattened town, said: ‘‘We have one confirmed deceased and are working to determine if there are others.’’ Zahralban said searchers were trying to determine if that person had been alone or was part of a family.
Zahralban spoke as his team – which included a dog – was winding down its two-day search of Mexico Beach, the town of about 1000 people that was nearly wiped off the map when Michael blew ashore there on Thursday with devastating 249kmh winds.
Blocks and blocks of homes were demolished, reduced to splintered lumber or mere concrete slabs by the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental US in nearly 50 years.
As the catastrophic damage across the Florida Panhandle came into view, there was little doubt the death toll would rise.
How high it might go was unclear. But authorities scrapped plans to set up a temporary morgue, suggesting they had yet to see mass casualties.
State officials said that by one count, 285 people in Mexico Beach defied mandatory evacuation orders and stayed behind. Some of them successfully rode out the storm. It was unclear how many of the others might have left at the last minute.
Emergency officials said they had received thousands of calls asking about missing people. But with cellphone service out across vast areas of the Florida Panhandle, officials said it was possible that some of those unaccounted for were safe and had not been able to contact friends or family.
Across the ravaged region, meanwhile, authorities set up distribution centres to hand out food and water to victims. Some supplies were brought in by trucks, while others had to be delivered by helicopter because of debris still blocking roads.
Residents began to come to grips with the destruction and face up to the uncertainty that lies ahead.
‘‘I didn’t recognise nothing. Everything’s gone. I didn’t even know our road was our road,’’ said 25-year-old Tiffany Marie Plushnik, an evacuee who returned to find her home in Sandy Creek too damaged to live in.
When she went back to the hotel where she took shelter from the storm, she found out she could no longer stay there either because of mould.
‘‘We’ve got to figure something out. We’re starting from scratch, all of us,’’ Plushnik said.
US President Donald Trump announced plans to visit Florida and hard-hit Georgia early next week but didn’t say what day he would arrive. ‘‘We are with you!’’ he tweeted.
Shell-shocked survivors who barely escaped with their lives told of terrifying winds, surging floodwaters and homes cracking apart.
Emergency officials said they had completed an initial ‘‘hasty search’’ of the stricken area, looking for the living or the dead, and had begun more careful inspections of thousands of ruined buildings. They said nearly 200 people had been rescued.
Florida Governor Rick Scott said state officials still did not know enough about the fate of those who stayed behind in the region. ‘‘We are not completely done. We are still getting down there,’’ he added.
Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Brock Long said he expected to see the death toll rise.
‘‘We still haven’t gotten into the hardest-hit areas,’’ he said, adding with frustration: ‘‘Very few people live to tell what it’s like to experience storm surge, and unfortunately in this country we seem to not learn the lesson.’’
Long expressed worry that people had suffered ‘‘hurricane amnesia’’.
‘‘When state and local officials tell you to get out, dang it, do it. Get out,’’ he said.
On the Panhandle, Tyndall Air Force Base ‘‘took a beating’’, so much so that Colonel Brian Laidlaw told the 3600 men and women stationed on the base not to come back.
Many of the 600 families who live there had followed orders to pack what they could in a single suitcase as they were evacuated ahead of the storm.
The hurricane’s eyewall passed directly over the base, severely damaging nearly every building and leaving many a complete loss. The elementary school, the flight line, the marina and the runways were devastated.
‘‘I will not recall you and your families until we can guarantee your safety. I can’t tell you how long that will take,’’ Laidlaw wrote.
After Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle as a Category 4 hurricane, it charged north through Georgia and into the Carolinas and Virginia.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said a man and a woman were killed in McDowell County when their car hit a large tree that had fallen on to a road.
Meanwhile, officials in Georgia confirmed that a second life had been lost there. An 11-year-old girl in Seminole County was killed while in a mobile home when the wind hurled a metal carport into the air.
Virginia authorities said they had confirmed five deaths there and had one person still missing.
In Charlotte County, three people became stranded in a vehicle on a bridge, state police said. When rescuers arrived, they were clinging to the railings as high waters surrounded them.
A local sheriff’s deputy saved a 17-year-old man using a human chain with law enforcement officers, local residents and rope, officials said, but a man and a woman – who police said were related to the teenager – were swept away. Rescuers found the man’s body, and the woman is still missing.
We still haven’t gotten into the hardest-hit areas. Very few people live to tell what it’s like to experience storm surge, and unfortunately in this country we seem to not learn the lesson . . . When state and local officials tell you to get out, dang it, do it.