Hurricane Milton leaves a trail of destruction in Florida

• Hurricane Milton barreled into Florida's west coast Wednesday.
• The storm made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane but was later downgraded to a Category 1.
• It's the second massive storm to strike the region in two weeks.

Hurricane Milton left a trail of destruction in Florida after making landfall on Wednesday evening as a Category 3 storm, causing at least 10 reported deaths. Emergency crews are still working to assess the damage.

The monster hurricane slammed into the state's west coast near Siesta Key in Sarasota County, unleashing heavy winds and a flurry of tornadoes on an area still recovering from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago.

Milton had "explosively" intensified over the Gulf of Mexico into a Category 5 storm earlier this week, the National Hurricane Center said, spinning up peak winds of up to 180 mph.

When it made landfall, Milton pummeled the Tampa Bay area and Southwest Florida with high winds reaching up to 120 mph and blanketed the state in heavy rain.

The National Hurricane Center said in an update that by early Thursday morning, Milton had weakened to maximum sustained windspeeds of 85 mph, which would make it a Category 1 hurricane.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said during a news conference on Thursday that officials hadn't determined the extent of the damage yet.

"First responders have been working all through the night to help people who were in distress. And what we can say is the storm was significant, but thankfully, this was not the worst-case scenario," DeSantis 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."

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a White House press briefing on Thursday that there have been at least 10 reported deaths from Milton.

Mayorkas also said that over 10,000 federal staff are helping out with Helene and Milton response efforts on the ground across the southeast, adding that since Helene first made landfall, more than 4,300 people have been rescued in total.

Tornadoes that Milton spun off in St. Lucie County killed four people on Wednesday night, the St. Lucie medical examiner confirmed in a press release on Thursday. A spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Police Department told Business Insider that as of Thursday morning, the department was considering two deaths in the city to be storm-related.

But DeSantis said during Thursday's news conference that the state did not have total confirmed fatality numbers yet.

During a Thursday-morning news conference, Mayor Jane Castor of Tampa urged residents to stay inside, saying, "It's not over."

She added that when high tide came in, rivers were expected to flood "all over" Hillsborough County.

Milton caused a huge tear in the roof of the MLB stadium Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. The field was supposed to be used as a base camp for first responders.

A large tower crane collapsed in downtown St. Petersburg. The sound of it crashing into a nearby building was like a "train wreck," a resident told CNN.

According to PowerOutage.us, the storm had caused power outages for more than 3.1 million homes and businesses across Florida as of 5:53 a.m. ET on Thursday.

Across the state, Floridians were racing to comply with evacuation orders, obtain gas from depleted pumps, and brace for lost power.

Even in counties along Florida's Atlantic coast, which was further from the storm's eye, a series of dangerous tornadoes decimated homes and sent residents seeking shelter.

Dante Sacks, a 25-year-old resident of Parkland, a city in Broward County where conditions had begun to deteriorate by Wednesday evening, said roughly half a dozen of his loved ones spent most of the day Tuesday evacuating cities in the storm zone, such as St. Petersburg, Siesta Key, and Fort Myers.

Sacks told BI his aunts and uncles made it to Miami ahead of the storm's arrival after a "horrendous" drive but had no idea what kind of damage it could do to their homes.

"At the end of the day, we're just praying that all of our family is fine, that they've all evacuated, that their own homes are safe," he said.

His relatives left most of their possessions behind, he added, save for their clothes and electronic devices.

Sacks estimated the damage to their properties could collectively reach into the millions and said the family was hoping insurance would cover the inevitable losses.

It's created "an insane amount of stress," he said.

'I've never really been nervous about a storm until now'

After Hurricane Helene struck Florida in late September, some homeowners in the Sunshine State told BI that they were reconsidering whether to stay in Florida.

The back-to-back storms could deal a serious blow to Florida's volatile real-estate market, even though housing prices don't appear to have been drastically affected yet and the state continues to beckon new residents.

Still, many homeowners have been grappling with increasing chances of catastrophic weather and skyrocketing insurance costs.

Natalie Schwartz, 24, and her husband, Brett, are two such homeowners who are waiting to find out how costly the storm may prove.

The first-time homebuyers, who are sheltering in Tampa with Schwartz's mother and don't have flood insurance, peered through the windows of their house Wednesday night as they watched wind gusts whip up debris in the backyard, tear fronds off their palm trees, and cause the street lights out front to flicker on and off — an "eerie" reminder, Schwartz said, that their electricity could go out at any moment.

The region had made a last-minute push to clean up remnant debris from Helene, like fallen trees, drywall, appliances, and broken furniture, before Milton could transform the objects into dangerous projectiles. But Schwartz said people didn't take the last storm seriously enough and that this time they weren't taking chances as they battled "chaos and gridlock" on the roads and in supermarkets.

As Milton made landfall, Schwartz and her family heard several ominous noises outside, which Schwartz described as "booms," and feared that something had hit the house — maybe the roof, she said.

Many of her friends have texted to say they've already lost power, she said. "One is currently reading a book with a flashlight," she added.

For Schwartz, the thought of what will happen to the community where she grew up is the most sobering aspect. "It's going to be underwater," she said. "I've never really been nervous about a storm until now."

FEMA is ready, but says hurricane season isn't over

The succession of storms raised concerns about government relief funding, with Mayorkas saying last week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not have enough funding to last through the hurricane season, which runs until the end of November, The Associated Press reported.

On Thursday, as crews were still determining the damage from the latest storm, Mayorkas said, "We have the resources to respond to the immediate needs of individuals impacted by Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton."

"That being said," Mayorkas added, "We will need additional funds and we implore Congress, when it returns, to, in fact, fund FEMA as is needed."

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden wrote a letter to Congress — which is in recess until after the election — urging it to allocate more resources to both FEMA and the Small Business Administration's disaster-loan program.

FEMA said Monday it had the "capacity to manage multiple simultaneous disasters," including Helene and Milton.

But The New York Times reported Tuesday that the agency was facing staff shortages.

In a press briefing Wednesday, FEMA's administrator, Deanne Criswell, said the agency had 1,000 personnel already on the ground in Florida and had sent an additional 1,200 for search-and-rescue efforts in response to Milton.

The agency also launched its own fact-checking page to combat misinformation. It dispelled rumors spread by former President Donald Trump, including false claims that relief funds were being diverted to migrants and that disaster survivors would receive only $750.

Criswell told CNN Tuesday she was concerned the rhetoric could persuade people not to register for assistance.

As for FEMA funding, Criswell said during the briefing that there's $11 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund and that she's evaluating whether it would be necessary to ask Congress for more money.

"The funding is there to support Helene and Milton," Criswell said. "What I want to make sure I have available is enough funding to support another event, considering that we are still in hurricane season."