After Milton, a weary Tampa Bay begins recovery again
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A water rescue at The Standard apartments in Clearwater. Photo: Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images
Tampa Bay emerged Thursday from its second hurricane in two weeks shaken, waterlogged and, despite it all, relieved it wasn't worse.
State of play: With daylight came the extent of the damage wreaked by hours of pelting rain and window-rattling gusts.
- Water rescues from flooded homes and apartments far from the coasts extended into the afternoon.
- Many roads — including a stretch of Dale Mabry Highway — were impassable, disappearing into pools of black water.
- Everywhere, power lines and uprooted trees criss-crossed streets and sidewalks if you were lucky and cars and homes if you weren't.
Still, the catastrophic storm surge once projected as high as 15 feet never materialized as a last-minute wobble pushed Hurricane Milton onto land south of us.
- That put a stretch of communities from Sarasota to Naples — some still recovering from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, others still rebuilding from Ian two years ago — in the salty crosshairs.
During hurricane season especially, luck is relative and often tinged with guilt.
The latest: Much of the region was still without power Thursday. Duke Energy said outages could last for a week or more.
- Only three of Pinellas County's 14 hospitals were open to receive patients Thursday afternoon, as the rest were grappling with interruptions to water and power service, county officials said.
- HCA Florida Largo Hospital had to evacuate patients due to flooding.
- Structural damage on Madeira Beach and Treasure Island prompted concerns that one of the many tornadoes ahead of the storm may have blown through.
Police reported three storm-related deaths:
- A woman in St. Petersburg had a medical episode that paramedics couldn't respond to in the worsening conditions, police spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez told Axios.
- St. Pete officers found a man's body in a park Thursday morning. The medical examiner is working to determine a cause, but authorities consider the death related to Milton, Fernandez said.
- After the storm passed, a Tampa woman in her 70s working to clean up her yard was killed when a large tree branch collapsed onto her, police said.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri thanked residents for heeding evacuation orders on the barrier islands, which became Florida's epicenter of Helene fatalities. Nearly all drowned in the storm surge.
Zoom in: Just 14 Tampa Bay Rays staffers were at Tropicana Field when the fiberglass dome ripped off, St. Pete officials said. They fled to safety in another part of the stadium.
- The thousands of response workers that Gov. Ron DeSantis said would be stationed there moved to another location due to concerns about wind speeds.
Water rescues by the numbers: First responders saved 449 adults and 116 children from The Standard apartments in Clearwater, where flooding in some areas reached second-story balconies.
- The complex of 2,000 people has flooded before, and Gualtieri said it should be shut down and deemed uninhabitable.
- Hillsborough County firefighters rescued more than 500 people and 104 pets, the agency said.
- Among them was 135 residents of an assisted living facility near the University of South Florida, which was so inundated with flooding that campus officials canceled classes today and tomorrow.
What's next: "We're all praying that this one is the last one," Pinellas emergency management director Cathie Perkins said during a news conference.
- "We really hope that over the next few days and few weeks and few months, we can really focus on the long process of rebuilding."