Maximum alert in Florida before the arrival of Milton, the “storm of the century”

2024-10-09 19:27:00

“They have to go outr, and they have to leave now. “If you stay in a one-story house and we have a storm surge over four meters, that house will end up being yours.” coffin”. “This storm It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen.or before.” “It could be the storm of the century”.

The messages that the US authorities sent this Wednesday to Hurricane Milton is approaching the west coast of Florida to a densely populated area that includes Tampa, Sarasota and Fort Myers, were not a call for alarmism, but a voice of realism.

In the bulletin released at two in the afternoon, local time, by National Hurricane Center, That hurricane that became monstrous over the warming waters of the Gulf of Mexico had been reduced to Category 4, one of its last fluctuations after reaching Category 5 several times, but gained in size. It was moving at 16 miles per hour, with sustained winds of 135 miles per hour and even stronger gusts.

Even if it was impossible to predict where it would land at some point, on Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning, and this was expected to happen with category 3 or 4, its effects were already starting to be felt on the ground. The conditions worsened moment by moment and were present tornado a little more intense than those that usually accompany tropical storms.

But the worst was yet to come: his was expected devastating winds, torrential rains, devastating floods and storm surges up to three meters and more according to forecasts.

blow after blow

A couple of weeks after hitting the region Elenaanother hurricane that hit mostly Georgia and North Carolina, Milton sparked fear in Floridaand with reasons. Its dangers are most striking almost 7.5 million people who live in 15 counties in which the mandatory evacuation.

At least 31,000 inhabitants They had responded to that order seeking safety shelters enabled, with a capacity of 200,000 people. Hundreds of thousands more attended slow and excruciating exodus along the streets which took them away from the coast to the south or north, a complicated escape from the fuel shortage. One of the state’s four gas stations was out of gas on Wednesday, according to data compiled by CNN.

The authorities They closed some bridges and roadsnumerous airports cease operations the entire range that the hurricane will travel from coast to coast before exiting the Atlantic and the window of opportunity to escape from an area where hospitals evacuated patientsschools closed and Virtually all activities were paralyzed. In some counties they imposed curfew force residents to stay in their homes or hotel rooms in places like Disney’s Orlando park.

Him The governor of Florida, Republican Ron DeSantishe anticipated that Milton will cause “a huge amount of damage” but it reinforced the idea of ​​a solid state preparedness to respond. He promised that this response will break records, citing as an example the greater mobilization of National Guard members for search and rescue operations and the arrival of 50,000 public service workers guarantee as soon as possible the restoration of the electricity service which will certainly be knocked out by the hurricane for millions of inhabitants.

For your part, be the president Joe Biden as vice president and presidential candidate Kamala Harris On Wednesday, they participated in an information session with officials from various departments and agencies in charge of the federal emergency response. At that meeting the alerts were renewed, the invitations to the population to listen and follow the instructions of the local authorities and the promises of a strong federal response.

Another storm that intensified with Helene and now with Milton was also denounced: that of a “reckless, irresponsible and implacable promotion of misinformation and outright lies“, as Biden said, that directly accused Donald Trump of having “led the disinformation campaign”.