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Milton Stays at Hurricane Strength as it Moves Over Florida; Milton Pushes to Florida's East Coast as Cat 1 Hurricane. Hurricane Milton Turns Deadly Amid Tornado Outbreak Aired 4:00-4:30a ET

Aired October 10, 2024 - 04:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[04:00:00]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Thanks for joining us. Top of the hour here. I'm Erica Hill in New York. My colleague, Victor Blackwell, is in Orlando, Florida, as we continue CNN's live breaking news coverage of Hurricane Milton.

The storm itself weakening, but it is still packing a powerful punch as it makes its way east across Florida, now a category one hurricane, and bringing with it damaging winds and dangerous flooding. Nearly three million customers across the state are without power at this hour.

Milton, of course, has been tearing across the state of Florida for hours now after making landfall last night near Siesta Key on the west side of the state, just to the south of Tampa and St. Petersburg.

We are starting to get a sense of some of the damage left behind by Milton's destructive winds. The pictures that you're looking at right now, that's what's left of the roof on Tropicana Field. That's the home stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. As you can see there, it is in tatters. This is the same stadium that had been prepped earlier in the week to be used as a base camp. You see all those cots there. It was set to be used as a base camp for emergency responders.

Tampa's fire chief says the danger posed by Milton's winds have also prompted officials to stop emergency services until it is safe for first responders to be out there on the ground.

And we showed you the roof damage there in St. Petersburg. There's more where that damage came from. Take a look at this.

This is a crane. You see it there. It crashed into the side of the building and then also down onto a street. And that just gives you a sense of the power of these destructive winds and why the winds are such a major threat from this hurricane.

And speaking of threats, the hurricane itself is spawning more than two dozen tornadoes across the state of Florida, including a number of them on the east side of the state. And this is long before Milton made landfall on the west side of Florida. In St. Lucie County, the sheriff there says there have been multiple fatalities after a tornado tore through a retirement community. We have reporters standing by in some of the hardest hit areas across Florida. I want to get straight, though, to CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, who has a closer look at Milton's path at this hour.

Derek, good morning.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Erica, we're just getting word that now over three million customers in the state of Florida are without power because of the force of Hurricane Milton. And this is all because of a combination of factors, not only the wind, but the tornadoes that swept through on the outer bands. You saw them on your TV screens just a moment ago.

Every single hurricane that makes landfall in the U.S. has its own identity, its own character, characteristics, I should say. And I think when we look back at the history of Milton, we're going to see that, yes, storm surge was a component, but I believe that the tornado outbreak that precluded it, as well as the flash flood threat that is ongoing now, will also be a big part of this story.

I mean, look at the rainfall totals here in St. Petersburg, 18 inches of rain, several inches of rain falling in a matter of an hour. So we have had over a foot of rain in Clearwater Beach, Tampa also receiving just shy of 10 inches of rain. And this has prompted the National Weather Service to issue this flash flood emergency. You can see parts of Hillsborough County included within this.

This is all because the exact path of the storm brought the heaviest access of the rain right here. You can see it basically from Tampa Bay slicing through the Central Peninsula into the Orlando region before exiting off the East Coast. This is an area that we've seen over 10 inches of rain.

This is a radar estimate, but you can see the totals I just showed you a moment ago have easily topped almost a foot and a half of rain, and it's still raining in many locations. So the eye now pulling off the East Coast of Florida as anticipated. So they're getting this onshore components along the Atlantic seaboard of Florida.

You can see Daytona Beach gusting to 83 miles per hour. That's tropical storm force, though, in terms of the sustained winds at 62 miles per hour. The current National Hurricane Center update has this as a category one.

So still a powerful storm, but it's going to exit very quickly this morning and we're going to be left with the cleanup efforts and also the flash flood that will be ongoing as so many inches of rain have fallen from this storm -- Erica.

HILL: Yes, absolutely. Derek, appreciate it. Thank you.

I want to turn things over now to my colleague Victor Blackwell, who is in Orlando. Victor, on over to you.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: All right, Erica. Thank you very much.

[04:05:00]

We're still experiencing the rain and wind as Milton continues to move east, and there are major concerns about the effects potentially of tornadoes on Florida's eastern coast.

So I want to go straight to Teresa Lamar-Sarno. She's the assistant city manager of Port St. Lucie. Thank you for joining us this morning. Give us an idea of what you know about potential damage there and tornadoes, if any, there in Port St. Lucie.

TERESA LAMAR-SARNO, ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER, PORT ST. LUCIE, FLORIDA: Yes, Eric. Thank you for having me. We have confirmed several communities in the St. Lucie County area that have been impacted by direct hits of tornadoes. I believe Spanish Lakes retirement community was hit. We do not know exactly -- we don't have an assessment yet, but we do have, I believe, two confirmed F3 tornadoes that have gone through the community here and throughout the Treasure Coast.

BLACKWELL: Do you know anything? Let's stay on that senior mobile home community there that was hit by this tornado. Do you know anything about if people were injured, if there were any casualties in that community?

LAMAR-SARNO: At this time, we have not, I have not received any confirmation yet of casualties, but I know as soon as we can get that information, we're going to get it out to our community. We're working diligently and trying to do search and rescue. Right now, as you can imagine, we have 50 mile per hour gusts, and it is quite dark. And they're here right now, so we are working to get that information out as quickly as possible.

BLACKWELL: There's been a lot of concentration, certainly ahead of the storm, about evacuations on the western coast of Florida because, obviously, of the positioning and the track of Milton. But do you know if there were evacuations, if people left these mobile home communities, which are historically vulnerable to hurricanes and tornadoes ahead of the storm?

LAMAR-SARNO: Well, we did not institute active evacuations. What we did instead is provided several shelter locations for the community to go and take shelter in some of our high schools in the area so that they had a place to go. And we encouraged that for the last 24 hours, I believe.

BLACKWELL: Can you tell us about the calls you've received? Are there rescue calls? I know that because of the winds right now, that you're not able to put safely your first responders out on the streets.

But what are you hearing from people there in Port St. Lucie?

LAMAR-SARNO: Sure. When we've had downed traffic lights, we've had homes hit with tornadoes. We have downed trees, downed power lines, water on the roads. Our rescue teams, our first responders are doing a great job, and we're doing a great job responding to that and continue to do so as we speak. Just trying to play it safe and make sure that everybody's staying safe out there. But those are some of the calls we're getting consistently, and we're still in it with the 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts.

BLACKWELL: Yes, I know that for you, this is not a past tense storm. It is happening now, and it's tragic to hear that this tornado, as you say, hit a senior mobile home community. Of course, I imagine that'll be your first visit once you get these vehicles safely back on the road.

Teresa Lamar-Sarno, the assistant manager of Port St. Lucie there with an update on the east coast of Florida, thank you so much for being with us. We'll take a quick break. We'll continue our coverage.

Again, this storm is still ferocious on the east coast. Reports of tornadoes. We'll take a break. We'll be back.

[04:10:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell here in Orlando as we continue our live special coverage of Hurricane Milton. We just got an update from the National Weather Service of sustained winds of 82 miles per hour on the east coast of Florida along the Flagler and St. John's County line with gusts up to the lower 90s. So this is still a very strong storm at the edge of Florida as it moves off the coast.

We are certainly still feeling the wind and rain here in central Florida as this storm continues to move eastward. I want to check back west though with my colleague Randi Kaye who has been in Sarasota throughout the entirety of the Hurricane Milton preparation and now through the storm. Randi, what are you seeing there and what are you hearing from local officials there, if anything?

Here in Orlando, they're getting their police back on the roads to start to respond to some calls. Do you know if officials there, the police, fire rescue, are able to get out yet?

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Most of our cell phone service is down, Victor, so we haven't been able to reach out to the local officials. But we have seen a few emergency vehicles. But I do know from before the storm, we spoke with the mayor here, Liz Alpert, the mayor of Sarasota, and she said that there wouldn't be any, you know, aid or assistance going out if there were 45 mile an hour winds.

It does seem as though it's calm enough for people to start some search and rescue if that is needed. But we haven't seen that going on here. So we're going to have to wait just a little bit for that before we can make some contact.

But I was just actually going to just head down here. This is the street there at the end of this driveway. There was some pretty good flooding there while the storm was going on. And I did take a look just before we were coming back on air here. And it does look as though those waters have receded a bit.

[04:15:00]

We are getting some reports of flash flooding here in Sarasota. And of course, the majority of the customers are without power here in Sarasota County. So none of that is good news.

But hopefully, there is some good news in this that people did evacuate. They heeded the warnings. They saw what happened with Hurricane Helene just a couple of weeks ago. And that scared them enough to know that they should get out of town.

I can tell you that we did see a fair amount of destruction just where we are. During the storm, there was this fence here that blew down. This separates the house where we are from the house next door.

And now that is just in pieces here on the ground. There was a ceiling fan that was on the porch above me that came apart. And the fan blades came crashing down.

So these winds, as you know, and as you're experiencing now, are no joke. I went just into the backyard of the house where we are. There's now a tree in the pool. And all of the pool furniture is pushed to one side of the yard.

So we had winds here. I think it was clocked at 102 at Sarasota Airport. So that we are just near the airport. So that's the power of the winds. And that's why it's so important to either shelter in place or get out of town -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right, Randi Kaye for us there in Sarasota. Randy, thanks so much.

I'm going to go now to Mayor Nick Pachota of Venice, Florida. Mr. Mayor, thanks for being with me. We're still waiting to get an update from local authorities, where Randy is, about the severity of damage.

But what do you know about Milton's effect on Venice? Tell us what's happening there.

MAYOR NICK PACHOTA, VENICE, FLORIDA (via phone): Thanks for having me, Victor. So right now, we've got what they're called practical first-in teams. And they're going to be deploying out onto the streets to clear roadways.

You have to think, there's a lot of downed trees, a lot of downed power lines, most of the areas without power. So it's going to take us a little bit of time to get those arterials cleared up, so that we can get responders in there to start doing assessments.

It also isn't quite daybreak yet. So we've got to wait for a little bit of a light to help us kind of do some more of this hard work to get in and get the assessments done. But for right now, the tactical first-in teams, they'll get out on the streets, and they will start clearing the roadways so that we can start getting our responders out there.

BLACKWELL: Have you received calls for help, for rescue?

PACHOTA: As of right now, you know, I know the 911 centers are active. They are busy. I can't tell you statistics right now.

My connectivity with our EOC was lost a couple hours ago. They are up and functional. It's just that where I'm located, I don't have the best connectivity.

BLACKWELL: Yes, understood. And we, of course, heard that during Helene in the Carolinas about how the communications were damaged there, and we're hearing something similar now from some areas here in Florida with Milton.

I wonder, have you assessed how many people evacuated? Did you have the majority of communities leave? Was there a mandatory evacuation for any of Venice?

PACHOTA: Yes, so normally we don't do mandatory evacuations. We, I mean, we do an evacuation request. We tell everyone we want them to go, and we impress upon them the danger in staying behind, and that implies, you know, limited resources.

We shut down our water supply to preserve the integrity of our infrastructure. So we did see probably within the last 24 to 48 hours, a significant increase in evacuations. We did fill up some of the shelters.

I know the one closest to us was full. So I think that we saw a lot of people start to really heed that request there at the very last minute. You know, thankfully, you know, that we want to make sure to get everybody to a safe place. Preserving life is the biggest concern.

BLACKWELL: What's your message to people who undoubtedly hear that, you know, those first teams are being sent out by the city, that they think that they can now go out and take a look? What do you want to tell them this morning?

PACHOTA: Please continue to shelter in place. It's very important that there's going to be so many hazards out there, so many obstacles. Let the first responders do their work. Let them get the roads cleared. Just driving on the streets, you know, there's down trees, down power lines. They are a hazard to you.

And we really want to prevent as many rescue calls as we can. And you being out on the roads right now only increases the potential for us to have to work harder to do rescues and take time away from clearing these roads so that we can get the necessary resources here to start getting the power grid and the utilities back up and running.

So please continue to shelter in place. Be patient with us. And we will continue to message, you know, to let you know where it's safe and when it's safe.

BLACKWELL: Mayor Nick Pachota of Venice, Florida. I'm sure there are mayors and executives across counties and cities here in Florida who are echoing your request for people to stay off the roads, continue to shelter in place.

[04:20:00]

I thank you for your time. And thank you for the work you do.

We're first getting just a glimpse --

PACHOTA: Thank you, Victor.

BLACKWELL: -- through these reports from, certainly, from mayors and leaders across the state of the damage. Now we're waiting for the sun to come up to see the full scope.

But just a few moments ago from the assistant city manager in Port St. Lucie, a report of a tornado hitting a senior mobile home community. We heard from the mayor of Longboat Key, a bridge damage there as well. Of course, a crane, a crane down in St. Petersburg, Tropicana Field, the cover there, the roof blown off. So these are just the first reports of damage. And I'm seeing some green and blue flashing behind this hotel, which means a transformer blowing as we're seeing the wind and feeling the wind here in central Florida. We'll continue our live special coverage of Hurricane Milton after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: 24 minutes past the hour now. I'm Erica Hill in New York. You are watching CNN's special live coverage of Hurricane Milton.

The storm lashing a large swath of Florida for hours now. More than three million people are without power -- more than three million customers, rather, are without power across the state.

The storm initially made landfall near Siesta Key, just south of Tampa and St. Petersburg. And it made landfall as a dangerous Category 3 hurricane. It stayed a Category 2 for some time, dumping more than a foot of rain in many areas in St. Petersburg, a foot and a half. Tampa hit particularly hard.

[04:25:00]

In St. Petersburg, as I mentioned, a lot of rain there, also a lot of wind.

What you're looking at now are pictures of Tropicana Field. That's the home stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays. As you can see that roof just shredded, ripped right off. And this is especially concerning because that building had been prepped to be used as a base camp for emergency responders there to deal with the aftermath of this storm.

So you see the preparations there, all of those cots ready to go. Now the question is what will happen? Where will those folks stay? Because again, that was set to be a home base for emergency responders.

We also know there was a lot of concern overnight, not just about the wind, but also about flash flooding conditions in Tampa, the city pulling its first responders off the road because of those deteriorating conditions.

Meantime, in St. Petersburg, you saw that stadium, the Tropicana Field. Look at the other damage that our crews have found. That is a crane on the street. You can see in another angle that part of that crane, as you see here, also came crashing into a building.

And we also know that this hurricane has already turned deadly, spawning more than a dozen tornadoes during the day on Wednesday, more than two dozen, rather. In St. Lucie County, the sheriff there says there were fatalities when a tornado tore through a mobile home retirement community. In fact, folks from the county telling my colleague, Victor Blackwell, just a short time ago, that there were a couple of tornadoes there.

I want to bring in CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, who's in the CNN Weather Center in Atlanta, for more on the storm's movement. Those devastating tornadoes we were talking about in the last couple of hours, people may not have expected where they were popping up during the day on Wednesday.

We were watching the storm on the west coast, but we were seeing those tornadoes on the east coast, Derek.

VAN DAM: Well, that's it. That goes back to my original point earlier in our show, is that each landfalling hurricane has its own identity, its own characteristics. You never quite know how it's all going to unfold.

And this one had a tornado outbreak associated with the storm before it even made landfall, right? Now, the tornado threat is still ongoing, but it has diminished some from what we experienced late yesterday.

The area that I'm highlighting right now is along the Treasure Coast of Florida. So the Atlantic side, the eastern side of Florida, inclusive of Daytona Beach northward between basically Daytona Beach and Jacksonville. This area getting an onshore wind. This is going to at least create the potential for brief spin-up tornadoes.

We get these cells that come off of the ocean, interact with the land, get friction and allow for that spin to happen very quickly. So the tornado threat, and I just checked from the Storm Prediction Center, still around 2 percent within this area. So we can't -- that's not negligible. We still need to leave that in as more of an immediate threat for this region, even though the eye is moving off the coast.

You can see the wind gusts here in Daytona Beach at 83 miles per hour, sustained at 62. So still a very difficult next few hours, especially for the eastern seaboard.

But let's just layer on the other threats that are ongoing right now, because we have had a large swath of over 10 inches of rain fall from the sky. We're talking about two to three months worth of rainfall in a matter of a day. This is just incredible. So the flash flooding that is ongoing across Hillsborough County and to the north and east, even stretching towards the Orlando region is significant. Earlier this morning, there were flash flood emergencies for Hillsborough County. That's been discontinued, but warnings for flooding continue just to the north and east as the rain continues to fall from the sky. You can see Orlando included in that, all the way to the Space Coast as well.

Look at these rainfall totals, you know, just checking some of the latest information from the stations on the ground that are reporting this. This is nearing 19 inches in St. Petersburg now. So we'll get updated on that. 107 mile per hour wind gusts in Venice. Remember a category three is 111 miles per hour or higher, and that needs to be sustained.

So we haven't found anything that was quite category three status when it made landfall, which was in Siesta Key, 8:30 in the evening. This was just a quick recap of when it actually made landfall, but 120 mile per hour storm with some of those gusts being realized just slightly under that category three threshold. Regardless, we're splitting hairs here on terms of wind speed because that damage potential from 100 mile per hour winds or greater is substantial.

So the ongoing threat right now, the flash flooding, the tornado threat, and then this surge threat that's still impounding or impacting, I should say, the eastern portions of Florida coastline because we're getting that onshore push. We're talking about two to four feet of storm surge still possible here along the Treasure Coastline.

Still category one, the storm racing off the eastern seaboard. At least the eye has now exited the Florida peninsula.

[04:30:00]

And so we'll get those wraparound rain bands, which if we are learning anything from what happened on the western side of the state, some of the intense winds are actually on the north and western portions of this eye. So we are not done yet. You saw the wind gusts in the measurements we took a minute ago, 83 miles per hour in Daytona Beach. That's substantial.

Tampa Bay actually just tweeting something out from their National Weather Service there, Erica. This is a really important point to hammer home to our viewers this morning.

There is ongoing flash flooding near Tampa. A lot of downed power lines. You don't know if they're still live.

And so getting out into those conditions, it's dark. It's very dangerous to go through flooded streets. My advice don't do it if you're actually riding out this storm there.