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This image obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows Hurricane Idalia making landfall in Florida on 30 August 2023, at 12h01UTC.
- Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region
as a Category 3 storm, with destructive winds and life-threatening storm surge
warnings. - Most of Florida’s 21 million residents, and many in adjacent
states, were under hurricane warnings and emergency declarations. - Authorities warned of possible fatalities, and residents
prepared for flooding, power outages, and evacuation orders.
Millions of residents were evacuated or hunkered down in homes and bunkers
as Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region as an “extremely dangerous” Category
3 storm on Wednesday, and authorities warned a life-threatening storm surge was
possible.
Drawing strength from the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters, Idalia was
forecast to unleash destructive winds and torrential downpours that will cause
coastal flooding up to 16 feet (4.88 m) deep.
“Don’t put your life at risk by doing anything dumb at this point.
This thing’s powerful,” Governor Ron DeSantis said at an early news
briefing in Tallahassee that was interrupted for a few seconds by a power cut.
The NHC said Idalia made landfall at 07:45 EDT (11:45 GMT) at Keaton
Beach, an ocean-front community of 13 000 people in Taylor County, about 121 km
southeast of Tallahassee, the state capital. It is located in Florida’s Big
Bend region, where the state’s northern Gulf Coast panhandle curves into the
western side of the Florida Peninsula.
Video footage from Keaton Beach posted on social media platform X by storm
chaser Sidney Grimmett showed heavy downpours and trees whipping in the wind as
an electrical line sparked along the side of a roadway.
Overnight, Idalia attained “an extremely dangerous Category 4
intensity” on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale on its way to
landfall in Florida Wednesday morning, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in
Miami said.
But as of 07:00 EDT (11:00 GMT) it weakened slightly, slipping into
Category 3, with maximum sustained winds of 201 km/h. Any storm reaching
Category 3 or higher is considered a major hurricane.
Most of Florida’s 21 million residents, and many in the adjacent states of
Georgia and South Carolina, were under hurricane warnings and other
storm-related advisories. State emergency declarations were issued in all
three.
Danger to life
“They’re expecting some fatalities, so I don’t want to be one of them,”
Rene Hoffman, 62, said as she prepared to leave her home in Steinhatchee,
Florida. She owns a food stand that she secured to her husband’s pickup truck
to keep it from washing or blowing away.
Florida’s Gulf Coast, southeastern Georgia and eastern parts of North and
South Carolina could face 10 to 20 cm of rain through Thursday, with isolated
areas seeing as much as a foot of rain (30 cm), the hurricane center warned.
Officials said the storm’s most dangerous feature would be a powerful
surge of wind-driven surf that is expected to flood barrier islands and other
low-lying areas along the coast.
Surge warnings were posted for hundreds of kilometres of shoreline, from
Sarasota to the sport fishing haven of Indian Pass at the western end of Apalachicola
Bay. In some areas, the surge could rise as high as 16 feet (4.9 m), the NHC
said.
“If you end up with a storm surge that even approaches 16 feet, the
chances of surviving that are not great,” DeSantis said. “You would
need to be in a three-story building because it is going to rise very, very
high.”
Sparsely populated compared with the Tampa-St. Petersburg area to the
south, the Big Bend features a marshy coast, threaded with freshwater springs
and rivers, and a cluster of small offshore islands forming Cedar Key, a
historic fishing village demolished in 1896 by a hurricane’s storm surge.
At the White House on Tuesday, US President Biden said he and Florida
Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge
Biden in the 2024 presidential election, were “in constant contact”
about storm preparations.
Biden was set to speak about the government’s hurricane response efforts
later on Wednesday.
Idalia grew from a tropical storm into a hurricane early on Tuesday, a day
after passing west of Cuba, where it damaged homes, knocked out power, flooded
villages and prompted mass evacuations.
It will be the fourth major hurricane to strike Florida in the past seven
years, following Irma in 2017, Michael in 2018 and Ian, which peaked at
Category 5, last September.
More than 40 school districts in Florida canceled classes, DeSantis said,
and Tampa International Airport suspended commercial operations on Tuesday.
About 5 500 National Guard members were mobilized, while 30 000 to 40 000
electricity workers were on standby. The state has set aside 1.1 million
gallons of gasoline to address interruptions to fuel supplies, the governor
said.
In Sarasota – a city hard-hit by Ian last year – Milton Bontrager, 40, who
runs a charter fishing service near Tampa, said his home was boarded up and
stocked with food, water and a generator, and his boats were secure.
“I don’t panic, I prepare,” he said on Tuesday.
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