Rescuers scour ruins in Florida, as hurricane death toll increases

Sniffer dogs roped in to search for victims who may be buried under rubble

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The death toll from Hurricane Michael had risen to at least 17, amid fears it would continue to climb yesterday, as search-and-rescue teams scour the debris of the Florida town that bore the brunt of the monster storm.

“Mexico Beach is devastated,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said of the town where Michael made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Wednesday.

“It’s like a bomb went off,” Scott said as he toured the town of 1,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s like a war zone.”

Rescue teams were using sniffer dogs in Mexico Beach on Friday to search for victims who may be buried under the rubble in the debris-strewn community.

US media later reported one death in the town — an elderly man found alone, according to Mayor Al Cathey. Officials said his body was found hundreds of yards from his home.

Evacuation orders

Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), warned that he expected the toll to rise.

“I hope we don’t see it climb dramatically but I have reasons to believe we still haven’t got into some of the hardest hit areas,” he said.

Dozens of structures in Mexico Beach — homes, shops and restaurants — were lifted off their foundations by storm surge and 250km/h winds and moved hundreds of feet inland or smashed to bits.

“Very few people live to tell what it’s like to experience storm surge,” Long said.

State officials said Mexico Beach was under mandatory evacuation orders but some residents decided to stay and try to ride out the storm.

“You hope that somehow at the last minute a bunch of people got up and left or went somewhere else,” Florida Senator Marco Rubio told CNN.

Eight deaths from the storm have been reported in Florida, five in Virginia, one in Georgia and three in North Carolina.

The two deaths in North Carolina occurred in McDowell County when a car struck a tree that had fallen across a road, officials said.