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Rescue operations were under way in Florida on Thursday as officials sought to assess the damage inflicted by Hurricane Milton as it crossed the state overnight, triggering widespread flooding and leaving millions without power.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday morning said state search and rescue teams were engaged in 125 active missions, with 48 people successfully rescued from torrential floodwater and destroyed buildings. Ten people had been killed, said homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The Tampa Bay area was spared the catastrophic storm surge that had been feared, although Sarasota County — where Milton made landfall as a category 3 storm — encountered a surge of up to 10 feet in places.
“What we can say is the storm was significant, but thankfully, this was not the worst-case scenario,” DeSantis said.
Tampa mayor Jane Castor on Thursday said “one of the blessings” was that the city avoided the predicted storm surge. “That saved a lot,” she said.
The storm’s route has reduced estimates of insurance losses from Milton, with credit rating agency Fitch putting them in the $30bn-$50bn range.
The densely populated cities of Tampa and St Petersburg escaped the “worst-case scenario” for flooding, saving some $5bn-$10bn in flood insurance payouts alone, said Trevor Burgess, the chief executive of Neptune Flood Insurance, the country’s largest private provider of flood insurance.
Just 13 per cent of Florida homeowners own flood insurance but Burgess noted that his company had sold a record number of policies ahead of Milton’s arrival.
“It’s sad that it takes events like these to raise people’s awareness levels of the risk of flooding,” he said.
“The real story of Milton was the wind. Our Tropicana Field [sports stadium] is missing its roof,” he added. “That is going to have a very large impact on the homeowners insurance business relative to the flood insurance business.”
US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that he had been in contact with state officials throughout the day, and called on Congress to address disaster relief funding “immediately”.
Biden said that while the Federal Emergency Management Agency “has what it needs”, the Small Business Administration, which offers aid to local companies, was “pretty right at the edge right now”.
Congress is not scheduled to return to Washington until after the November 5 presidential election.
Biden also reiterated his criticisms of former president Donald Trump for spreading misinformation about the federal government’s aid efforts. When asked by reporters if he intended to speak to Trump directly, Biden turned to the camera and said: “Mr former President Trump. Get a life, man.”
By Thursday afternoon, the storm’s wind speeds had come down to 75mph, and Milton had been reclassified as a post-tropical cyclone as it passed over the Atlantic Ocean.
More than 3.2mn homes and businesses were without power in Florida at 3pm local time on Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks utility reports across the country.
More than 2,000 flights around the US were cancelled because of the storm, most of them connecting to Orlando, Tampa, Palm Beach, Miami and Southwest Florida International Airport, said FlightAware, an airline tracking service.
Four deaths were recorded after tornadoes formed in St Lucie county on Florida’s east coast, according to county spokesperson Erick Gill. The county did not have a mandatory evacuation order in place. “We did not expect to see the tornado activity that we saw yesterday,” he said.
Milton is the second hurricane to hit the southern US in a fortnight. It comes after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across several south-eastern states last month, killing more than 225 people and destroying roads across western North Carolina.
Economists at Citigroup estimated the impact of Hurricane Helene alone was likely to drag down monthly jobs growth by at least tens of thousands of positions, a number that could swell above 100,000 when combined with the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.
Milton could also have a “notable” effect on economic activity, reducing inflation-adjusted GDP growth by as much as 0.4 percentage points in the fourth quarter, said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY.
The industries most affected include tourism, construction, retail and energy. “Hurricane Milton will leave a significant trail of destruction in its path,” he said.
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