By Julio-Cesar Chavez and Octavio Jones
TAMPA (Reuters) -An expanding Hurricane Milton churned toward Florida’s battered Gulf Coast on Tuesday, where more than 1 million people were ordered to evacuate a day before the monster storm is forecast to slam the Tampa Bay area.
Milton, which exploded on Monday into one of the most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record, was forecast to make landfall late on Wednesday, threatening a stretch of Florida’s densely populated west coast that is still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago.
A direct hit on the bay would be the first since 1921, when the now-sprawling Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area was a relative backwater.
The National Hurricane Center forecast storm surges of 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters) along the coastline north and south of Tampa Bay, likely swamping low-lying areas. Forecasts of five to 10 inches (127 to 254 mm) or more of rainfall threatened flash flooding farther inland.
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor warned residents not to try to ride out the storm.
“Individuals that are in a single-story home, 12 feet is above that,” she said, referring to the predicted storm surge. “So if you’re in it, basically, that’s the coffin that you are in.”
Less than two weeks ago, Helene hit the Gulf Coast’s barrier islands and beaches, sweeping away tons of sand, knocking down dunes and blowing away dune grass. That could exacerbate Milton’s storm surge, according to Isaac Longley, a meteorologist with the commercial forecasting company AccuWeather.
“There’s no gradual slope left to mitigate any of it,” Longley said.
Dump trucks have been working 24 hours a day to remove mounds of debris left by Helene for fear Milton could turn them into dangerous projectiles, Governor Ron DeSantis said. Five-thousand National Guard members have been deployed, with another 3,000 on hand for the storm’s aftermath.
President Joe Biden postponed on Tuesday his Oct. 10-15 trip to Germany and Angola to oversee storm preparation and response, the White House said. Biden urged those under evacuation orders to leave immediately, saying it was a matter of life and death.
As of Tuesday afternoon, nearly 900 domestic and international flights in the U.S. were delayed, and nearly 700 were canceled. More than 1,500 flights scheduled for Wednesday have already been canceled, according to flight-tracking data provider FlightAware.
Musician John O’Leary, 38, was securing his Tampa townhouse and packing for a road trip with his girlfriend to New Port Richey, about 40 miles (64 km) north. He was worried about his baby grand piano, which he had to leave behind.
They plan to stay with friends who have a home on high ground but will keep an eye on the storm’s path and may head farther north.
“This storm is so strong, big, it’s unreal,” he said. “We’re in survival mode.”
FLEEING THE STORM
State ferryboat operator Ken Wood, 58, spent Tuesday morning packing up his truck in the Gulf city of Dunedin about 24 miles (39 km) west of Tampa so he could avoid the brunt of the storm with Andy, his 16-year-old cat.
Two weeks ago, Wood defied evacuation orders and hunkered down in his house during Helene, a night he described as one of the most harrowing experiences of his life.
“We won’t make the same mistake again,” he said.
More than a dozen coastal counties issued mandatory evacuation orders, including Tampa’s Hillsborough County. Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones.
Motorists waited to fill their tanks in lines snaking around gas stations, only to find that some were out of fuel. By early Tuesday, bumper-to-bumper traffic choked roads leading out of Tampa.
It took Mark Feinman, 38, and his family 13 hours to drive 500 miles (805 km) from St. Petersburg to Pensacola near the Florida-Alabama state line.
Feinman, a musician, said some motorists were speeding through breakdown lanes and across grass medians to cut ahead, causing accidents. All gas stations for about a 200-mile stretch of Interstate 10 seemed to be out of gasoline.
“Luckily we have a hybrid, and we’re able to switch between gas and the battery,” he said.
State police are providing escorts to fuel trucks that are headed out to replenish gas stations, DeSantis said.
CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE EXPECTED
Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic, as it surged from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane – the most powerful – in less than 24 hours.
Milton was downgraded to a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale but was still packing maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (241 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center’s latest advisory on Tuesday.
Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane after landfall in Florida, causing catastrophic damage and power outages expected to last days.
Milton is expected to grow in size before making landfall, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm-surge danger zone, said Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center. The area placed under hurricane warnings is home to more than 9.3 million residents.
As of 2 p.m. ET, the storm was 125 miles (201 km) northeast of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 520 miles (837 km) southwest of Tampa, according to the hurricane center.
Governor Joaquin Diaz Mena of Yucatan state said much of the damage reported so far had been minor, though thousands of utility customers lost power.
Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the U.S. Southeast in the wake of Helene, which made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, killed more than 200 people across six states and caused billions of dollars in damage.
(Reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez and Octavio Jones in Tampa, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks, Sarah Moreland, David Alire, Andy Sullivan and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Joseph Ax and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Rod Nickel)
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