PANAMA CITY: Three days after Hurricane Michael’s devastating strike, search teams in Florida pressed their hunt for victims into hard-to-reach areas Saturday (Oct 13), as the death toll rose to 17 and officials scrambled to deliver aid to those who lost everything.
The mammoth storm, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Wednesday, claimed lives in four states, but Florida suffered the worst damage by far.
Large part of the state’s panhandle were pulverized by the strong winds and rain, and eight storm-related deaths have been reported in Florida so far.
“Mexico Beach is devastated,” Governor Rick Scott said of the town hardest hit by the hurricane, the most powerful to hit the United States in decades.
“It’s like a war zone,” he said while touring the town of 1,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico.
Rescue teams with sniffer dogs were searching for possible victims buried under the rubble in the debris-strewn community.
US media have reported one death in the town — the body of an elderly man was found hundreds of yards (meters) from his home.
Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), warned that the death toll could yet rise.
The death toll from Hurricane Michael’s rampage across the south-eastern United States rose to at least 18 as rescue crews spread out across the devastated Florida Panhandle in search of more victims.
Fears were growing for an untold number of people who defied orders to evacuate before the monster storm slammed into the coast on Wednesday with 155mph winds and obliterated several waterfront communities.
Panama City, Florida, on 11 October. Michael was the third strongest storm on record to hit the continental United States. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Image
There is no cellphone signal or power in many of the worst-affected areas and officials believe residents still unaccounted for could be trapped in wreckage in cut-off areas. Searchers found one person dead in the rubble of Mexico Beach, said Joseph Zahralban, Miami’s fire chief. Three additional deaths were reported in Marianna, in Jackson county, Florida, Sheriff Lou Roberts told a news conference on Friday afternoon.
“I expect the fatality count to climb today and tomorrow,” Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), told CNN. “Hopefully it doesn’t rise dramatically but it does remain a possibility.”
Five deaths were confirmed overnight in Virginia, adding to four reported from Florida and one each in North Carolina and Georgia, where an 11-year-old girl was killed when a carport ripped off by the wind crashed into her home. North Carolina authorities later said a car smashed into a tree felled by Huricane Michael, killing two more people.
Donald Trump announced plans to visit two of the storm-ravaged states in a lunchtime tweet People have no idea how hard Hurricane Michael has hit the great state of Georgia. I will be visiting both Florida and Georgia early next week. We are working very hard on every area and every state that was hit we are with you the president wrote.
Helicopter footage showed only small handfuls of structures still standing in Mexico Beach, where Michael made landfall. Roads were blocked and across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia more than 1.5 million remained without power.
Florida emergency officials say they have rescued nearly 200 people and checked 25,000 structures since Hurricane Michael battered the state this week.
The state emergency operations center in Tallahassee on Friday evening, authorities said they had wrapped up their initial rapid searches and had begun more-intense searches including inspecting collapsed buildings.
Mark Bowen, head of emergency management for Bay county, said restoring critical services was a question of starting again. “Everything that people depend on for their daily lives has not just been disrupted, it’s been absolutely destroyed,” he told CNN.
Bowen said he believed tens of thousands of residents had not evacuated. “I do expect we are going to find that kind of bad news,” he said.
Federal rescue and relief workers were arriving in the region following Trump’s disaster declaration, using dogs, drones and GPS devices to locate and reach survivors.
The Pentagon said about 5,000 US servicemen were deployed to help with relief and recovery efforts, using 100 helicopters and 1,800 high-water vehicles.
