Florida is getting ready | Hurricane Milton returns to maximum category

(Tampa) L’ouragan Milton returned to the maximum category on Tuesday before it made landfall in Florida during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, in what could be “the worst storm” to hit this peninsula “in a century” according to President Joe Biden.

Milton is “a major and dangerous hurricane” returned to category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, the highest, after being downgraded to category 4, the American National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned on Tuesday.

With winds of up to 270 km/h, “intensity fluctuations” are likely before the hurricane hits the west coast of Florida, he said in his latest bulletin.

The hurricane is moving from southwest to northeast in the Gulf of Mexico. Its passage Tuesday off the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, caused no casualties, only causing some material damage.

“The entire Florida peninsula is under either a form of watch or alert,” Ron DeSantis, governor of the southeastern US state, said on Tuesday.

Milton could be “the worst storm in Florida in a century,” Joe Biden said on Tuesday, on the sidelines of a meeting at the White House on preparations.

“You must evacuate now, it is a question of life and death,” the American president told residents of the third most populous state in the country. His vice-president Kamala Harris followed suit on ABC. The Democratic presidential candidate in November asked residents to “take local officials seriously.”

A sign of the seriousness of the situation, the White House announced that Joe Biden had decided not to go as planned at the end of the week to Germany and then to Angola.

Milton is expected to make landfall in Florida, the third most populous state in the United States, overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.

“Everyone is leaving”

Climate change makes rapid intensification of storms more likely and increases the risk of more powerful hurricanes by warming sea and ocean waters, scientists say. Temperatures in the North Atlantic have been continuously evolving for more than a year at record levels of heat, according to data from the American Meteorological Observatory (NOAA).

According to weather expert Michael Lowry, “if the worst forecasts materialize for the Tampa Bay region, coastal flooding caused by Milton could be double those observed two weeks ago Helene ».

« Milton strengthened on Monday at a breakneck pace”, one of the “fastest ever observed in the Atlantic basin”, he added.

Generators, food, water and tarps are being distributed across Florida and many residents plan to leave. In Tampa, dozens of cars lined up to collect sandbags to try to protect their homes from expected flooding.

“I fear that everything will be flooded,” confides Luis Santiago in the line.

South of Tampa, in the city of Sarasota, Sam Lee stopped at a store before evacuating to an Airbnb inland with his wife and children.

“Everyone leaves. I’m going to leave, not right away, but probably later in the evening, just to be safe, because I have children,” says the 43-year-old plumber.

“The height of irresponsibility”

Emmanuel Parks, a 36-year-old pastor, says he is also preparing to leave Tampa and waiting for the passage of Milton in a hotel.

In Orlando, a large tourist city in central Florida, Disney announced the closure of its theme parks from 1 p.m. Wednesday (1 p.m. Eastern time).

The southeastern United States is barely recovering from the passage ofHelene at the end of September, a devastating hurricane caused considerable flooding and damage in half a dozen states and left at least 235 dead.

In the middle of the presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump was quick to accuse the federal state, led by Democrats, of having done too little, too late, to provide assistance to the disaster victims.

The Republican had notably accused the Democrats of having “stolen money” from the federal natural disaster response agency (FEMA), “in order to be able to give it to their illegal immigrants”.

Her rival in the November 5 vote, Kamala Harris, castigated Tuesday on ABC “a height of irresponsibility and frankly insensitivity”.