Gov. Ron DeSantis is giving an update on Hurricane Milton on Thursday morning after the storm exited the state near Cape Canaveral.
He was speaking from the State Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee with the state streaming on thefloridachannel.org as well as the governor’s social media sites on Facebook and X.
“We had over 80,000 people that were into shelters overnight as the storm hit the state,” he said. “We will better understand the extent of the damage as the day progresses.”
Teams are out in force to assess damage.
“What we can say is the storm was significant, but thankfully, this was not the worst case scenario,” he said. “The storm did weaken before landfall, and the storm surge, as initially reported, has not been as significant overall as what was observed for Hurricane Helene.”
First responders continue work that began overnight to help people in distress.
“State search and rescue teams report at least 48 individuals have been rescued as of 6:30,” he said. “National Guard search and rescue teams have worked overnight and successfully executed rescues of families and pets on the West Coast and from the destruction of the tornadoes in east, in the central and eastern parts of Florida.”
He said the National Guard continues Thursday morning amid 125 active missions in 26 different counties with more than 6,500 soldiers deployed.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission made land and water rescues in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties, he said, while the Florida State Guard has also helped with search and rescue, floodwater evacuations and damage assessments.
Joining him were Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie, Florida Wildlife and Conservation Commission Director Roger Young, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, Florida State Guard Director Col. Mark Thieme and Major General John D. Haas representing the Florida National Guard.
Hurricane Milton made landfall on Siesta Key on the Florida Gulf Coast on Wednesday night as a major Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph winds as the state endured an assault of at least 19 tornadoes that resulted in multiple deaths. It never lost hurricane strength as it crossed the state exiting near Cape Canaveral by 4 a.m. Thursday.
Hurricane Milton still lashing state heading into Atlantic; multiple tornado deaths reported
As of 8 a.m., the hurricane was located about 75 miles east-northeast of Cape Canaveral with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph. moving northeast at 18 mph. Its eye had moved off the coast as of 4 a.m. after spending nearly seven hours crossing the state.
More than 3.3 million customers without power in the state as of 8:30 a.m., according to poweroutage.us. DeSantis said 635,000 customers had already had their power restored.
More than 50,000 linemen are staged in Florida to deploy and tackle the outages. The hardest hit counties were Hillsborough (75%), Hardee (97%), Manatee (82%), Pinellas (68%) and Sarasota (75%).
The areas that have the most significant outages as of this morning are Hillsboro, 75% out party, 97% out, manatee, 82% out, Pinellas, 68% out and Sarasota, 75% out. Of course, there are 50,000 plus linemen that have been pre staged. A lot of what they’ll do this morning is likely assess the damage and then begin restoration operations.
Guthrie urged Florida residents to not go out and visit the damaged areas.
“You will be inhibiting first responders by doing so. By now, we need those roadways cleared for electrical crews, fire crews, EMS crews, urban search and rescue crews,” he said.
He said 20 such crews will move into impacted areas and do door-by-door searches.
“This was not the worst-case scenario. We still had damage, and we’re going to need to get out there and go door to door and make sure that everyone is OK so please stay off the road,” he said.
Emergency officials across the state urged residents to stay inside as teams assessed damage including downed power lines and fallen trees. Search and rescue operations were in effect in some Gulf Coast counties.
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