Footage has captured Hurricane Milton hitting Florida as the first deaths have tragically been confirmed.
Hurricane Milton hit Florida’s west coast with devastating force on Wednesday night, bringing 120 mph winds, widespread damage, and multiple tornadoes across the state.
The Category 3 storm made landfall near Siesta Key in Sarasota County at around 8:30PM local time, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, per Sky News.
Milton’s intensity decreased overnight, with winds weakening to 90 mph, downgrading it to a Category 1 storm, the NHC reported. However, the damage was already extensive.
Before even making landfall, the storm had destroyed about 125 homes, many of which were mobile homes in senior citizen communities, according to Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Power was knocked out for more than two million homes and businesses across Florida, with Sarasota and neighboring Manatee County experiencing the most outages.
While Tampa Bay, a highly populated region along Florida’s west coast, avoided a direct hit, a storm surge is still expected to affect Tampa and St. Petersburg.
The cities of Sarasota and Fort Myers further south are also bracing for storm surges.
Videos captured the terrifying intensity of the storm, showing widespread devastation.
Several tornadoes were reported, and at least two people were killed in St. Lucie County, according to NBC News.
A spokesperson for the St. Lucie Fire District confirmed the fatalities and added that several others had been hospitalized.
Hurricane Milton was one of the fastest intensifying storms in Atlantic history, rapidly growing from 60 mph winds on Sunday to 175 mph on Monday.
It was downgraded to a Category 4, and later Category 3, as it reached Florida.
This morning, the storm has been further downgraded to a Category 1 as it moves across the state.
Milton has hit a region still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which recently devastated beach communities with a storm surge and claimed a dozen lives in Pinellas County.
Officials made final pleas on Wednesday, urging nearly two million people under evacuation orders to flee.
“Those of you who were punched during Hurricane Helene, this is going to be a knockout. You need to get out, and you need to get out now,” said Cathie Perkins, emergency management director for Pinellas County.
Even the animals at Tampa’s zoo were relocated to hurricane-hardened buildings to wait out the storm.
In St. Petersburg, the hurricane ripped the roof off Tropicana Field stadium and caused a crane to collapse into a nearby building.
The 42,735-capacity stadium was intended to serve as a shelter for up to 10,000 people and a staging site for emergency responders.
Fortunately, no injuries were reported at the site.
