After Helene, Florida prepares for Hurricane Milton

A new hurricane approaches Florida on Sunday in the midst of controversy over federal aid provided to disaster victims after the devastating passage of Hurricane Helene in the southeast of the United States a week ago.

Milton, which is located in the Gulf of Mexico, is currently considered a Category 1 hurricane and is expected to strengthen into major hurricane (category 3 and above) before making landfall in Florida in the middle of next week, the US hurricane monitoring agency warned (NHC).

These predictions of NHC are causing concern in Florida and the American South-East, a large part of which has been devastated since the devastating passage of Helene.

Emergency services are still working to help the many victims of this hurricane, the deadliest to hit the United States since Katrina in 2005.

Helene, which peaked as a Category 4 hurricane, caused more than 226 deaths in half a dozen southeastern states and caused destructive flooding.

By warming sea waters, climate change makes rapid intensification of storms more likely and increases the risk of more powerful hurricanes, scientists say.

The American Weather Observatory (NOAA) had warned at the end of May that the hurricane season, which extends from the beginning of June to the end of November, was expected to be extraordinary this year with the possibility of four to seven hurricanes of category 3 or more.

Florida on alert

We are totally ready.

We started preparing for this several days ago, even before [la tempête] does not form. We know she’s heading straight to Florida. We will deploy resources to meet the needs [de la population]she added during an interview on ABCspecifying that teams are already on site.

Joe Biden called on Sunday all Florida residents to listen to local officials and prepare accordingly.

Reiterating its commitment to supporting as long as it takes the disaster regions of the southeast, the president also announced in a press release the deployment of 500 additional soldiers in North Carolina, the state most affected by Hurricane Helene with at least 118 dead.

In total, 1,500 soldiers are mobilized and are added to the thousands of rescuers and members of the National Guard, a reserve force.

On Sunday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis extended the state of emergency declared the day before to several localities. Now, 51 out of 67 counties are affected.

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According to the NHC, heavy precipitation will hit parts of Florida Sunday and Monday even before Milton arrived.

If he is still too early to specify the exact scale and location of the most significant impactsthe agency warns of the possibility of destructive winds and significant storm surges later in the week.

Floods of fake news

This new threat comes at a time when American authorities are struggling to counter a flood of disinformation about aid provided to disaster victims in the southeast of the country.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday repeated false allegations, also relayed by Elon Musk, that the Biden-Harris administration had redirected aid funds intended for areas devastated by Hurricane Helene to spend on programs in favor of migrants.

This is frankly ridiculous and simply wrong.the director of the FEMAcastigating the numerous rumors which abound on social networks on this subject.

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The Republican billionaire, candidate in the November presidential election, had accused, earlier in the week, the government and Democratic authorities of North Carolina of deliberately not helping people in republican areas.

This kind of rhetoric doesn’t help peoplelamented Deanne Criswell, worried about the impact of these false rumors on the work of rescuers. The affected people are afraid to ask us or register for help. And this has a considerable impact on the state of mind of our teams […]it’s demoralizingshe confided.

The problem is such that FEMA as well as the authorities of North Carolina, the most affected state, have created a web page in which they deconstruct these false allegations, for example that according to which households which request federal aid following the disaster could be expropriated .