Florida on alert before the arrival of Hurricane Milton, returned to maximum category

Hurricane Milton returned to maximum category on Tuesday, October 8, while it is expected to make landfall in Florida during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, possibly becoming “the worst storm” to hit this peninsula “in a century”according to the President of the United States, 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 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 either under surveillance or on alert”declared Tuesday Ron DeSantis, governor of this state in the southeast of the United States.

“You must evacuate now, it’s a matter of life and death”launched Joe Biden to the inhabitants of the third most populous state in the country. His vice-president, Kamala Harris, followed suit on ABC. The Democratic presidential candidate on November 5 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.

“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 from Milton could be double that observed two weeks ago durant [l’ouragan] Helene ». “Milton strengthened on Monday at a breakneck pace”one of “fastest ever observed in the Atlantic basin”also underlined this expert.

Generators, food, water and tarps are being distributed in 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 everything will be flooded”confides, in the line, Luis Santiago. 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 kids.”says the 43-year-old plumber.

In Orlando, a large tourist city in central Florida, Disney announced the closure of its theme parks from 7 p.m. (Paris time) on Wednesday.

The southeastern United States is just recovering from the passage of Hurricane Helene at the end of September, which caused flooding and considerable damage in half a dozen states and which caused least 235 dead. In the middle of the presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump was quick to accuse the federal state of having done too little, too late, to provide assistance to the victims. The Republican had notably accused the Democrats of having “stole the money” of the federal agency for response to natural disasters (Fema), “so they can give it to their illegal immigrants”. “Don’t you have any empathy for people’s suffering?” »replied his rival, Kamala Harris.