Milton brings Florida to its knees, there is no fuel for the evacuations

Storm-hit Florida braced for a direct hit from Hurricane Milton as it strengthened into a Category 5 storm. On Tuesday, the U.S. president Joe Biden implored residents to flee what he warned could be the worst natural disaster to hit the state in a century. It is the second major hurricane to hit Florida’s west coast in two weeks. “It’s a matter of life and death, and that’s not hyperbole,” Biden said from the White House, urging those ordered to leave to “evacuate now, now, now.”

As of Tuesday, Milton had returned to its maximum Category 5 classification, generating maximum sustained winds of 165 mph (270 kph), the National Hurricane Center said. “Fluctuations in intensity are likely as Milton moves across the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but Milton is expected to be a dangerous hurricane when it reaches the west-central coast of Florida Wednesday night,” the NHC said.

The governor Ron DeSantis in a press conference, listed city after city and county after county that are in danger. “Basically the entire portion of the Florida peninsula is under some type of alert or warning,” he said. Airlines have put on extra flights from Tampa, Orlando, Fort Myers and Sarasota as highways are clogged with fleeing traffic and gas stations have run out of fuel.
Hurricane expert Michael Lowry warned that in the Tampa area, home to about three million people, Milton’s storm surge “could double the storm surge levels seen two weeks ago during Helene,” which brought massive floods. Biden postponed a major trip to Germany and Angola to oversee the federal response, as storm relief efforts emerged as a political battleground ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election.

The controversy between Harris and Trump

Trump exploited frustration with the emergency response after Hurricane Helene and fueled it with misinformation, falsely claiming that disaster money had been spent on migrants instead. Biden on Tuesday criticized Trump’s comments as “un-American,” while presidential candidate Harris warned of the danger that misinformation poses to the federal response. “That’s crude. Don’t you have empathy, man, for the suffering of others?” he said, directly challenging Trump, during a late-night talk show.

In a scene of frantic preparation repeated across Florida, dozens of cars lined up at a sports facility in Tampa to collect sandbags to protect their homes from flooding. Communities affected by deadly Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida late last month, have rushed to clear debris that could become dangerous projectiles as Milton approaches.

In Mexico’s Yucatan, strong winds toppled trees and pylons and heavy rain caused flooding, but the peninsula avoided serious damage or casualties as the storm made landfall offshore. Across the southeastern United States, emergency workers are still struggling to provide relief after Helene, which killed at least 230 people in several states. It hit the Florida coast on September 26 as a major Category 4 hurricane, causing massive flooding in remote inland towns in states farther north, including North Carolina and Tennessee.

Helene was the deadliest natural disaster to hit the US mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with the death toll still rising.