Hurricane Idalia was bringing flooding to the streets of Florida from Tampa to Tallahassee, a stretch of more than 200 miles, after making landfall on the state's west coast early Wednesday.
Idalia came ashore in the lightly populated Big Bend region, where the Florida Panhandle curves into the peninsula, as a dangerous Category 3 hurricane.
The hurricane unleashed devastation along a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast, submerging homes and vehicles, turning streets into rivers, unmooring small boats and downing power lines.
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State officials, 5,500 National Guardsman and rescue crews were in search-and-recovery mode, inspecting bridges, clearing toppled trees and looking for anyone in distress in one of Florida's most rural regions.
Because of the remoteness, search teams may need more time to complete their work compared with past hurricanes in more urban areas, said Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Department of Emergency Management.
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“You may have two houses on a 5-mile road so it’s going to take some time,” Guthrie said.
Residents in vulnerable coastal areas had been ordered to pack up and leave as Idalia gained strength. Mayor John Dailey of Tallahassee, Florida's capital, urged everyone to stay put Wednesday because it's too late to risk going outside.
"The time to evacuate has come and gone," Dailey said on NBC’s "Today" show. "It is time to shelter in place."
Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis shared a photo on X of an oak tree on the grounds of the governor's mansion in Tallahassee that was apparently split during the storm.
Cedar Key, not far from where Idalia made landfall in Keaton Beach, was inundated with storm surge.
“We have multiple trees down, debris in the roads, do not come,” posted the fire and rescue department in Cedar Key, where a tide gauge measured the storm surge at 6.8 feet, submerging most of the downtown. “We have propane tanks blowing up all over the island.”
Photos: ‘Catastrophic' Hurricane Idalia slams Florida's Big Bend
RJ Wright stayed behind on Cedar Key so he could check on elderly neighbors. He hunkered down with friends in a motel and when it was safe, walked outside into chest-high water. It could have been a lot worse for the island, which juts into the Gulf, since it didn’t take a direct hit, he said.
“It got pretty gnarly for a while, but it was nothing compared to some of the other storms,” Wright said.
In the town of Perry, the wind blew out store windows, tore siding off buildings and overturned a gas station canopy.
In Clearwater, in the Tampa Bay area's Pinellas County, the city was asking those who remained despite a mandatory evacuation order to restrict their water and toilet usage because the stormwater system is strained.
Some counties implemented curfews to keep residents off roads.
“For those who have chosen to remain on the beaches despite the mandatory evacuation order, please restrict your water and toilet usage,” the city of Clearwater posted. “Due to flooding, the city’s lift stations and stormwater system are under strain.”
County officials said flooding had been reported on roads throughout coastal areas. The county sheriff’s office closed access to barrier islands, and much of Gulf Boulevard, along the barrier islands, is closed because of significant flooding.
St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said parts of the city were hit with about 4 feet of storm surge, with more water expected at high tide Wednesday afternoon.
Welch said there remained a risk from tornadoes and live downed power lines.
Three major bridges, including the Sunshine Skyway across the mouth of Tampa Bay, remained closed.
“Make no mistake, this hurricane left its mark. The reality is we are not done dealing with the consequences of this major storm,” Welch said.
Idalia was also knocking out power in Florida after making landfall. Over 200,000 customers were without power Wednesday in the state, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.
The vast majority of outages were in the state’s Big Bend region, but outages were expected to grow throughout the day in Florida, as well as Georgia and South Carolina.
At a news conference early Wednesday afternoon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there no confirmed fatalities related to the storm in the state, although fatal traffic accidents in two counties may end up being storm-related.
A falling tree killed a Georgia man clearing a blocked roadway Wednesday as Idalida tore through the Valdosta, Georgia, area, according to Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk.
“The guy was out working on cleaning up a tree in the road, just a local citizen doing good things,” Paulk told The Associated Press. “A big gust of wind came up and dropped another tree, killed him instantly.”
A second person was seriously injured by the same tree and a sheriff’s deputy suffered minor injuries, Paulk said.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee called Idalia "an unprecedented event" since no major hurricanes on record have ever passed through the bay abutting the Big Bend.
DeSantis had warned people in the path of Hurricane Idalia to “just hunker down until it gets past you.”
The National Hurricane Center in Miami had been expecting storm surge to reach up to 16 feet in some areas of the Big Bend region. Northeast Florida already had 11 tornado warnings and there were more possible.
The U.S. Coast Guard was on standby and had pre-positioned 15 aircraft and more than 25 cutters and 20 flood response teams that were prepared to respond in the wake of the storm, Rear Admiral Douglas Schofield said. Crews flew over the western Florida area up to the Big Bend area and made call-outs to mariners to seek shelter. They were ready to launch aircraft for urgent maritime search and rescue in the Tampa and Big Bend areas as the storm passes, he said.
