STORM SURGE:
Hits Florida Panhandle as Category 4 hurricane, at least one person killed
Hurricane Michael wreaks havoc along the Florida coastline,
PANAMA CITY, FLA.— Ferocious Hurricane Michael roared ashore east of Panama City with pounding 155-m.p.h. (250 km/h) winds and a devastating storm surge that flooded beachside towns, shredded roofs, left nearly a half-million people powerless in three states and killed at least one person.
With the storm still raging across Georgia late Wednesday night and bound for the Carolinas, that toll of damage and death was expected to grow.
Michael, arriving at just a 2m.p.h tick below Category 5, was the strongest hurricane ever to hit the Florida Panhandle. It made landfall in the early afternoon, five miles northwest of Mexico Beach, a quiet beach town with a population of about 1,200.
By Wednesday evening, there was one confirmed death in Gadsden County, where officials said a person was killed by a falling tree. More than 388,000 homes and businesses across the Panhandle and Big Bend regions were left without power Wednesday evening. Outages affected an estimated 100,000 more properties in Alabama and Georgia.
Jerry Nelson, born and raised outside Panama City, was stunned at the destruction. The winds lifted up the rectangular porch roof, then slammed it down to the floor.
“I’ve never been through one this bad,” Nelson said.
“It sounded like 40 jet engines going off.”
As Michael churned inland, National Hurricane Center forecasters warned the back half of the hurricane would continue to spread dangerous storm surge and winds.
Michael, downgraded to a Category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds of 85 m.p.h. at 9 p.m., spun into southwest Georgia Wednesday evening. Florida Gov. Rick Scott warned Floridians were not yet in the clear from the hurricane’s inclement weather.
The storm ravaged swaths of communities along the coastline, leveling homes in Mexico Beach and inflicting substantial damage to installations like Tyndall Air Force Base. Michael also knocked roofs off buildings along its destructive path through northwest Florida, including some correctional facilities that were being assessed for structural damage.
The governor said the state had heard reports of two “devastating” tornadoes in Gadsden County and that they could still be possible elsewhere. He also warned Floridians to stay off the roads to make way for first responders and be cautious using generators as crews fanned out to assess the damage.
“If it’s not safe to leave your homes, don’t leave them,” Scott said.
Barely an hour after the storm crashed ashore, the streets in the old historic district of Panama City resembled a war zone littered with debris and tree branches. Roofs were ripped off. The golden arches of a McDonald’s toppled onto a flooded street.
At the First Presbyterian Church, the roof was peeled back. The brick facade of an adjacent education centre, the site of Panama City’s first high school in the 1900s, had fallen.
Scott Bazar, 45, also took refuge in a church parking garage after a last-minute decision to flee his house and the towering trees in his yard he worried would topple. Franklin, his terrier, and a cat named Bread Pudding also made the twoblock drive from his house.
“This looks like obliteration,” he said, as he watched the winds topple a large tree onto a church playground below.