Hurricane Milton effects (not pictured) – Florida coastline — Courtesy: Shutterstock — bonandbon
Homes and, in some cases, entire neighborhoods were left soaked, muddy, and in disrepair when Hurricane Milton battered Florida’s Gulf Coast with pouring rain and winds of 120 miles per hour. Officials told CBS News that the storm was responsible for at least 24 fatalities.
The extent of the destruction in coastal villages around the Sarasota barrier island of Siesta Key, where Milton made landfall as a strong Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday, October 9, is depicted in satellite pictures throughout the western portion of the Florida peninsula.
The photographs, taken a day after the storm hit the area, depict damaged and darkened beaches in Siesta Key and Anna Maria Island, another barrier island, just north of Milton’s landfall location. The beaches are covered in murky sand that seems to surge inland toward the nearby streets and structures. Satellite photos of the same regions taken before to the most recent hurricane show them on the left.
As loose metal and other debris littered the ground, CBS News correspondent Nicole Valdes, who was flying over Siesta Key with the Florida National Guard on Friday, witnessed the immense destruction from above. Less than two weeks before Milton arrived, Hurricane Helene slammed into the Gulf Coast, leaving this town as one of the areas reeling from back-to-back hurricanes.
The region’s severe weather information center said Tuesday that government buildings, including the island’s chamber of commerce headquarters, and beaches on Anna Maria Island were still closed. According to Sarasota County officials, a boil water advisory was still in effect at Siesta Key, and water had not yet been restored at Fisherman’s Haven and Sanderling Road, which are located at the lowest edge of the barrier island.
Devastation can be seen in another satellite image from Clearwater, which is close to Tampa and St. Petersburg. There, first responders used boats and high-water vehicles to rescue families who were stranded inside a nearby apartment complex.
“We lost everything, I lost everything, there was about 10 feet of water in my apartment right, because I tried to go back in and grab some stuff, and it rising, rising, it was up to my chest,” a resident of the complex told CBS.
Following the hurricane, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office performed hundreds of rescues and rescued over 135 individuals from an assisted living facility, while some residences in the surrounding Tampa area were nearly entirely inundated.
A satellite image reveals debris covering roads and docks along the shoreline in Cortez, a fishing hamlet in Sarasota County that was similarly affected by Helene and Milton. The medieval village was severely damaged by both hurricanes, which left buildings in ruins and tore down trees and electricity lines.
More images of fully collapsed homes and docks in Cortez were released by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Additionally, satellite photos of that part of the town show debris on the ground and strewn around the surrounding area after Milton tore off a portion of the roof of a nearby condominium.
Milton’s storm surge threw huge stones and at least one yacht up the beaches and into structures along the shoreline in Manasota Key, which is located just south of Sarasota on Florida’s western coast. Tom Hanson of CBS News reported from the island that piles of sand that were left behind by the hurricane were six feet high in some places. The sand, which covered homes’ exteriors and interiors, like “snow drift from a blizzard,” according to Hanson, who described “a devastating scene.”
Hanson observed that Gulf seas were significantly closer to shore than they had been prior to the hurricane, and the beach had been reduced from Milton.
Officials said they anticipated that power will be entirely restored throughout the state of Florida by Tuesday night, after Milton knocked out power to almost 3 million residents. In the meantime, President Biden has approved an extra $612 million in federal assistance to support the Milton and Helene-affected areas of Florida and North Carolina.
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Chris began his writing as a hobby while attending Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. Today he and his wife live in the Orlando area with their three children and dog.
