Hurricane Milton intensified “explosively” near the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, before its expected arrival on the night of Wednesday October 9 to Thursday October 10, in Florida, already affected by the destructive passage of Helen at the end september.
The arrival of this category 5 hurricane (the maximum on the Saffir-Simpson scale) comes at a time when Republicans and Democrats continue to argue over the response of federal authorities to the cataclysm caused by Hurricane Helene, which caused at least 230 dead in the southeast of the United States.
“If the storm stays on its current path, it will be the worst to hit the Tampa area in more than 100 years,” the weather services of this large Florida city warned on Monday.
Milton, is expected to make landfall in this southeastern American state, the third most populous in the United States, during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, after having skirted the northern coast of the Mexican Yucatan peninsula on Monday and Tuesday.
With “destructive winds” of up to 270 km/h, according to the latest bulletin from the American Hurricane Center (NHC), the tropical cyclone is expected to bring “destructive waves” to the Yucatan.
The new Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum also alerted the population to the possibility of “torrential rains”.
Earlier Monday, workers in Yucatan barricaded doors and windows as fishermen returned their boats to port.
“Fierce”
Less than two weeks after Helene, residents of Florida were also preparing with concern for the arrival of this new hurricane.
“It’s too much,” sighs Ernst Bontemps as he attaches wooden planks to the windows of his clinic in St. Petersburg in west Florida.
“It’s really hard because we have already seen our city completely devastated” not long ago and “it’s starting again,” this 61-year-old gastroenterologist despairs.
Milton is a “fierce” hurricane, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis warned Monday.
“You have time to leave. So please do it,” he urged residents of at-risk areas. To facilitate these evacuations, the Florida authorities have announced that they will make penalties free.
Milton is expected to cross the state from southwest to northeast. Of Florida’s 67 counties, 51 are under a state of emergency order.
In Orlando, a city with numerous amusement parks in the center of the state, hundreds of cars were expected Monday under a gray sky for a distribution of sandbags.
Dominick Tucciarone, 29, told AFP that he had not planned to evacuate but admitted to being worried. “It’s been a long time since the eye of a hurricane passed over Orlando,” he said.
The Disney World theme park said on its website that it would remain open Tuesday. In Tampa, zookeepers rushed to evacuate porcupines, elephants and even orangutans to protected areas.
The deadliest since 2005
By warming sea and ocean waters, climate change makes rapid intensification of storms more likely and increases the risk of more powerful hurricanes, scientists say.
Temperatures in the North Atlantic have been evolving continuously for more than a year at record heat levels, well above historical records, according to public data from the American Meteorological Observatory (NOAA).
NOAA warned at the end of May that the hurricane season, which extends from early June to the end of November, was expected to be an extraordinary year in the region.
Milton intervenes even as emergency services are still hard at work to help the many victims of Hurricane Helene, the deadliest to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005.
Hélène, which caused destructive floods and caused at least 230 deaths across half a dozen states, took a political turn, in the middle of the American presidential campaign.
Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump accuses the federal state, led by Democrats, of having done too little, too late, to provide assistance to the disaster victims, which President Joe Biden and his vice-president Kamala Harris, candidate for the presidential election of November 5, candidate firmly.
“Playing political games right now, in these crisis situations – we are at the height of it – is simply irresponsible and selfish,” criticized Ms. Harris.
He added: “It’s playing politics, instead of doing the job you took an oath to do, which is putting the people first.”
