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CNN's Breaking News Coverage of Hurricane Milton. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired October 10, 2024 - 03:00   ET

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

[03:00:00]

UNKNOWN (voice-over): This is CNN Breaking News.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: I'm Victor Blackwell, live in Orlando, Florida, continuing CNN special live coverage of Hurricane Milton. In just the last few minutes, the wind and rain have really picked up here in central Florida as this hurricane is now moving east and causing havoc on the East Coast. It's not done with the rest of the state.

We've gotten reports from local officials here across Orange County of reports of flooding, trees down, at least one report of a roof collapse as well. But right now, local authorities are on standby because the gusts of wind that you'll see during these live shots, they're just too strong to put those first responders back on the road. So they're waiting until the wind's calm and they expect that will be soon to get out and try to answer some of these calls.

We know that tens of thousands of people who live in this part of the state across central Florida toward the east are without power of the two million across the state without power and we're expecting significant, because of what we saw in Ian flooding in certain areas. Now there have been those reports we have seen some video on social media but not until the sun comes up will we see the true legacy of Hurricane Milton for Orange County and Osceola County.

The shelters in Osceola County are full. They're told, we're told they're at capacity. Thousands are in shelters here in Orange County and we're waiting to see just how bad this storm has been. Let me send it back into Erica Hill, my colleague who's in New York.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR AND U.S NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Victor, the daylight certainly will tell us a lot as Victor said. I'm Erica Hill here in New York. As we continue to follow these developments, Hurricane Milton has been tearing across the state of Florida for hours now, initially making landfall near Siesta Key to the south of Tampa and St. Petersburg.

And what we are starting to understand is what was left behind by those destructive winds, by the rain.

You can see some of the pictures here. That's the roof or what's left of the roof on Tropicana Field, which is the home stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball Team. That roof now in tatters. It was one of the only non-retractable roofs. Well, now it is open.

And what's really important to note here is you see all those cots. This is the stadium that was prepped earlier in the week to be used as a base camp for emergency responders. Tampa's Fire Chief says the danger posed by Milton's winds now prompting officials to stop emergency services. As you just heard from Victor there in Orlando, similar in Tampa, they have to wait until it is, of course, safe for first responders to be back out there on the ground.

And really the danger is on full display in St. Petersburg. Take a look at these pictures. That's a crane that came crashing down into a building, other parts of it ending up on the street. The wind, of course, one of the major threats of this storm. The hurricane itself spawned more than two dozen tornadoes, including on the east side of the state in St. Lucie County. The sheriff says there have been multiple fatalities after a tornado tore through a retirement community.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers is in the weather center with the very latest on the storm's movement. We talk about those tornadoes and the fact that they were popping up early on Chad, not where we were looking at the storm initially. That really, I think, had a lot of people sitting up and paying attention.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely. I mean typically when you look at a something spinning out of a hurricane, it's a water spout that comes on land. Those were not water spouts. Those were EF3s and maybe even an EF4 tornado that was on the ground out of a supercell thunderstorm just like you would see in the Great Plains.

A very rare event and a tragic loss of life there in St. Lucie County. We'll have to look at that tomorrow of course because they're not releasing anything to us today. Venice, you had winds out of the west at 107. That pushed the water into your community. So did Punta Gorda, so did Fort Myers.

There was a lot of flooding south of the landfall. Not north of the landfall because the wind was blowing the other way. That's St. Pete and St. Pete Beach over 100 miles per hour with gusts there. And on top of the Tropicana Field, I would suspect because the wind goes up with height in a hurricane, you might have been talking about gusts of 110 to 115.

And think about why a plane flies because the top of the wing is farther around the bottom of the wing and it gets faster because of that little foil there. Well that's probably what happened with that too. So the wind's on top of that. Tropicana field likely exceeded 120 miles per hour. St. Petersburg, 18 inches of rain today alone.

And then all the way over toward Lakeland, we still have the flash flood emergency going on there. The rain continues just to the east of Orlando as you saw with Victor. Look at this stripe of purple. Now there's no white in here. White would indicate more than 20 inches of rain.

[03:05:02] But a large area here of greater than 10 inches over the entire state from east to west, all the way across the state, and it's still raining in some places, the rain will continue, so will the wind, but we've really kind of calmed things down right now.

Here's the latest from the Hurricane Center. I haven't even seen it yet. 85 miles per hour updates every hour on the hour now because we're on land, not every three hours like it does when it's just out in the ocean. So we're down to 85. That's some good news. I haven't even seen a gust of 85 over anything, but it's not out of the question that still could happen today and into tonight.

Now, by morning, by the time the sun comes up, the center of this storm is in the ocean. It's long gone. But the damage will have already been done. And the problem is at this point in time, we don't know how much damage that is. We don't know whether Casey Key Road down here in the Comas got overwashed and washed away homes. We don't have those pictures. It's still dark. Can't even get there.

So it's going to take some time to truly realize what the damage that this storm did. And obviously the loss of life is the tragic part to me because of those tornadoes that no one expected. Yes, there was a tornado watch. And yes, there probably should have been an EF-1 or maybe even an EF-2 tornado, but not something that completely tears up a community. Erica.

HILL: Yeah, terrible. It really is. Chad, I appreciate it. Thank you.

I want to hand things back over to Victor Blackwell, who is in Orlando at this hour. Victor.

BLACKWELL: Erica, I think I heard my name. These wind gusts are getting pretty loud. It's not really the heaviest of what we've seen. And we saw a 74 mile an hour gust at Orlando International Airport, strongest sustained, about 40 miles per hour.

So there have been stronger winds here, but right now we're seeing the gusts top out around 35 to 40 miles per hour. Let me head down to Tampa and our colleague Brian Todd, who's been watching that area. What are you seeing? Because at some point you're seeing a bit of calm, and then at other moments you're seeing fierce winds and rain. Give us an idea what you're seeing now, Brian.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, Victor. Well this city now collectively feels like it's just taking a barrage of punches from a heavyweight fighter and it's still trying to get up off the campus -- the campus, excuse me. We're still getting a little bit of rain here, the rate is now tapering off.

But I can tell you that the rain was hitting us pretty much steadily for, I think, close to 13 hours probably more and at its height was violent, it was relentless, and it was very dangerous and that part of it for several hours. We're finally getting maybe our first break in this as far as just the actual weather event that's hitting us.

In a few hours, daylight will break and then the first responders will be out. They're already going to be starting to get out before daylight to try to get an assessment of the damage, try to get to where they need to go. Maybe conduct, if they have to conduct any water rescues or anything like that, they'll be starting to do that very soon.

This has become obviously a power outage event. Roughly 400,000 customers here in Hillsborough County are without power. That has affected water usage. Water facilities, water processing facilities, treatment plants and other things, they have been suffering some power outages. They're working to get those back online, but in the meantime, they're asking residents to limit their water use for at least the next few hours while they work on that.

You know, it's just, again, a deceptively dangerous period here. It's calm now. There's just a few sprinkles left. You'd think that it was just a normal rain event if you were just out on the street right now. But it's very deceptive. There's still a lot of ponding on the roads, these deep culverts of water that people try to drive through. That's when they get hurt and get stuck.

So again, you know, just these are some of the most dangerous and deceptive periods of a major hurricane is when the brunt of it has passed you and people start to think that they can venture out. They really cannot do that.

As a matter of fact, officials here in Hillsborough and nearby counties have been telling people in the shelters, hundreds of thousands of people in the shelters, to stay in the shelters for the next few hours. Don't go out yet until officials have a chance to fan out and get their assessments and get back to you as far as when you can get back to your home.

So Victor, I know you're taking the brunt of it where you are, and I know how relentless that can be, because we just went through it. And these people here are just going to wake up in a few hours to try to embrace some of the reality of what's happened here.

BLACKWELL: All right, Brian Todd for us there in Tampa makes a good point that daylight is the first opportunity for first responders for police to get out and see it. You at home should stay there until you get the all clear from local authorities.

[03:09:53]

Let's bring it out. Jennifer Hubbard with the National Weather Service, who can give us an idea. I mean, Jennifer, it's really picked up here in Orlando and central Florida. The rain and wind in the last couple of minutes. Give us an idea of how long it will be like this here and in the forecast for Milton as it moves east?

JENNIFER HUBBARD, WARNING COORDINATION METEOROLOGIST, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE; Well, we went through the eye a few hours ago and it was a good three to four hours of just intense frequent hurricane strength gusts and you know, it was it was quite a battering.

HILL: And Jennifer, this is Erica Hill joining you from New York. And Victor's having a hard time with all those winds there. As we look at what is coming, this will likely be, will be gone by the time on the East Coast, by the time a lot of folks wake up. But there will still be a little bit of rain coming. I mean, what is that window as this slowly moves out?

HUBBARD: Well, I'm over here on the east coast of Florida, or the west coast, sorry. So we're pretty much, you know, we're wrapping it up on our side of the state. The east coast will have to continue, you know, through the morning with the rain, torrential rainfall.

We've just seen, you know, crazy amounts of rainfall that have happened. Water rescues are occurring just from the flooding rains, not from storm surge. But they will have to contend with those continued rains, those frequent wind gusts through the morning as it continues to push off the East Coast.

HILL: You talk about all those rains too, these flash flood warnings. I know I was just speaking with folks in Tampa a short time ago. That was the major concern there, these flash floods. Just the incredible amount of rain. And my colleague Chad Myers going through 18 inches in St. Petersburg. There's the flash flooding concern. There's also where does all that water go?

HUBBARD: Yes, we are expecting moderate to major river flooding to be occurring over the next week or so as all of that rainfall that occurred today is going to be gradually draining into our rivers. We have also had historic crests that we're expecting on several area rivers. So it's going to be a while with all of the water that fell from the sky today that we're going to be dealing with through at least the next week.

HILL: And you mentioned, Jennifer, you mentioned water rescues. Can you tell me more about those rescues, where they were, how many, if you know?

HUBBARD: We have them occurring in Pinellas County. I'm not sure how many, but we had reports of freshwater flooding up to people's wastes in their homes, across portions of Pinellas County. And that's where that 18 plus inches of rain fell.

HILL: Right. In St. Petersburg, they're also the -- were any of these in the barrier islands because those barrier islands too before obviously getting over to the area where St. Petersburg is in Pinellas County those were really at high risk.

HUBBARD: They were at very high risk but the water rescues that are currently happening are not on barrier islands that we're aware of.

HILL: Okay and in terms of being able to stage for that knowing that those could happen do you have a sense of how many how many vehicles are even available for those high water rescues?

HUBBARD: I don't just we have so much help that's coming in from out of state out of country even for all types of rescues and so it is very heartening to see you know all of the help that we're receiving that we have received after Helene and just the fact that we've had to go through this you know two weeks in a row with two back-to-back storms has been quite exhausting and quite you know stressful.

HILL: Yeah, exhausting, stressful to call it a lot is a -- is a gross understatement. As you point out, though, what is heartening is to see all of that help coming in. We know there's a lot of help as well that is staged and ready to move in once it is safe to do so. So that will be coming in as well. Jennifer Hubbard, joining us from Ruskin, Florida. I really appreciate you joining us at this hour.

Much more to come here as our coverage continues as we follow the path of Milton across Florida. Victor Blackwell is in Orlando. Victor, I think maybe you can hear me again. I know those winds and the rain are making it a little tough sometimes.

BLACKWELL: Yeah, it's a miracle that we're on air considering all that we're facing with these storms that are passing through. But yes, I can hear you and we'll be checking with our teams.

In this immediate area the power has held as you can see with the lights around me but we know there are tens of thousands across this county and millions across this state without power. So we'll be checking with our teams as Hurricane Milton moves east and off the coast. Our special live coverage continues here on CNN. Stay with us.

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[03:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell, live in Orlando. As you can see, the wind really picking up as Hurricane Milton is moving closer to the East Coast and soon off the shore. We just got an update that we are nearing three million customers without power across this state as these gusts of wind have taken down trees.

We know that there are concerns about flooding here in this county. We know that there have been calls for flooding trees down at least one roof down as well, but not in. the sun comes up, will we get to see the real legacy of this storm for this part of the state and across all of Florida?

Let's go to now my colleague Randi Kaye, who's in Sarasota, who saw what I'm feeling right now just a bit ago. Give us an idea of what it's like there now and the damage that you've seen some of these things kind of collapse in front of you, fences blow. Give us an idea of what Milton has done.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Victor, I feel for you because I know what you're going through and what is coming your way. And it is significant. So certainly brace yourself for all of it because we've been through it here on the west coast of Florida. Here in Sarasota, we saw the heavy winds, the heavy rains throughout the day, certainly throughout the evening and into the overnight.

[03:20:05] We saw, as you mentioned, a lot of the debris has been flying around here. This was a fence that was separating the property lines from where we are to the home next door, which is boarded up and evacuated.

But this just started flying around during the heaviest winds that we've seen came apart. The entire fence just started blowing around here. And then there was this other little tarp that was sort of covering this patio there. Now that you can see is just all mangled there behind the fence.

So we do know that here in this area we are getting some reports of flash flooding. We also know that the majority of customers in Sarasota County are without power. We've been without power now for several hours. We don't have any phone service either.

So I would expect that a lot of the people here in this county are in the same boat that we are, whether or not they're home. To know that, we just don't know. It's unclear how many people evacuated. We won't really know that until daybreak and we get some light to survey the damage here.

But there were certainly a lot of people who were concerned about what happened with Helene. They -- may have stayed behind and then they saw what happened with Helene so that they decided to evacuate this time around for Hurricane Milton. We're only, where I'm standing, we're only about 20 minutes or so, Victor, from Siesta Key where Hurricane Milton made landfall right near Siesta Key.

So that's one of the barrier islands. We know that the bridge to those barrier islands was closed at 7 p.m. the night before the storm hit. So it's still again unclear according to the mayor of Sarasota, if everyone have evacuated.

So, again, I think as soon as first responders can get into those areas and assess the damage, assess who may have been left behind, who may, people who may not have evacuated, we won't really know exactly what the toll is here in Sarasota County and in downtown Sarasota where we could see storm surge. They were expecting seven, or expecting nine to 13 feet of storm surge, so we won't know again until daylight. So right now we're just watching, waiting and hoping that it isn't too bad. Victor?

BLACKWELL: Alright, Randi Kaye reports there in Sarasota. We are all waiting for daylight to see the damage from Milton. Thanks so much.

Let's go and stay actually in that area not too far from landfall. Howard Tipton is the town manager of Longboat Key, not too far from Siesta Key. Give us an idea of what you know about the damage from the storm and give us an idea of what it looks like there now.

HOWARD TIPTON, LONGBOAT KEY, FLORIDA TOWN MANAGER (on the phone): Well good morning, we know that we had a top wind of around 110 miles an hour and we're still waiting to see the surge damage but we do know that the bridge that serves our southern entrance kind of off of the Ringling Causeway in the Saint Armand's and then over to Longboat that bridge was damaged and it unable to pass. So we're evaluating the north entrance through Bradenton Beach to see how we can access the island.

BLACKWELL: So you say that the bridge was damaged. Can you give us a little bit more about the severity of that damage? How much do you know?

TIPTON (on the phone): Yeah, the only thing we know is that the westbound may look to have either collapsed or have been significantly damaged on the Ringling Causeway, the lower bridge there. It's an older bridge. And it really wasn't deemed safe for the team to take their vehicles over the eastbound lane.

And so treated and are going to be talking with the Florida Department of Transportation about that bridge but in the meantime looking to go up through Manatee County to see the Bradenton Beach access point and to see how that went. Otherwise we have no other reports from the island. We have lost power and we really, we think that we were about 98 percent evacuated and so we don't really have any reports from the island at this time.

BLACKWELL: Have you been able to communicate with any of those few who decided to ride the storm out?

TIPTON (on the phone): We did get an email.

(TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES)

BLACKWELL: Alright, now Howard Tipton, the town manager of Longboat Key, which is really about 17 miles south of Siesta Key where Hurricane Milton came ashore at a category 3. So we are getting those reports of the bridge damage and we're just getting into those few people who decided to stay but again when the sun comes up, we'll see just how bad that damage is.

[03:25:06]

We will continue our coverage here as things pick up in central Florida. Hurricane Milton moving east. We'll be right back.

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HILL: I'm Erica Hill, in New York. You're watching CNN special live coverage of Hurricane Milton. The storm lashing a large swath of Florida for hours now. Nearly three million people are without power across the state. The storm making landfall near Siesta Key just south of Tampa and St. Petersburg as a dangerous category three hurricane.

That happened before 9 p.m. Eastern time. It's dumped more than a foot of rain in a number of areas. Tampa hit particularly hard in St. Petersburg, Florida, close to Tampa. That's a home, of course, of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. As you can see, that roof was shredded right off the building.

And this is important as well because the building itself had been set up to be used as a base camp for emergency responders. Some 10,000 cots ready to go there. It was going to be again the base camp for emergency responders. So that now a question in terms of what happens for those folks. At one point Tampa had pulled its emergency responders off the roads as conditions continued to deteriorate a lot of wind flash flood warnings in Tampa as well.

Also in St. Petersburg, not just the roof of that stadium the trop being ripped off ripped to shreds, but you can see here see the video are seen in cruise capture. That's a crane down there now on the street came crashing down, went into a building as well as hitting the street.

[03:30:00]

The hurricane turning deadly as well, spawning more than a dozen tornadoes, more than two dozen.

The St. Lucie sheriff says a number of people were killed, unclear exactly how many, but noting that happened when a tornado tore through a mobile home retirement community. More details of course on a lot of this will be coming to light once the sun does come up.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers He's in the CNN Weather Center in Atlanta for the very latest on the storm's movement. So making its way across the state, but it is not done with Florida yet, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: No, not at all. Not even done with Victor. I mean, we have now the backside of the eye itself right over Orlando where it's been raining now for hours and hours and hours.

But I know I was just watching some of those pictures out of St. Petersburg when it just looked like sheets of rain blowing across the streets at 85 or 90 miles per hour. St. Petersburg itself picked up a foot and a half of rain today alone. So yes, even for Lakeland, you picked up a lot of rain, flash flood emergency for you, which means flash flood is happening. And it's happening all the way off toward the east as well.

There's the rain, here's our Victor Blackwell right there. Notice the backside of what was probably an expanding eye or maybe just an outer band, but that's now getting down to Victor.

And if you were with us earlier, every time the rain comes by, the wind picks up. When the rain subsides, the wind subsides. Well, now there's more rain for Victor. Here is the rainfall, though, across the state. This is what has happened. It's a radar estimate, but it's close enough.

Everywhere that's purple is more than 10 inches of rainfall. And it's OK if 10 inches falls in a small little town or in some place rural. But when you put this much rain in counties worth of property, there's no place for that water to run off. It is all going to just try to get into the lowest spots.

That's why we think that there's probably going to be so many flooded roads by morning that you probably shouldn't be going out at night because it's very hard to see those flooded roads. Just looks like some water or maybe a wet road, but it's not. It's feet of water out there.

Now the storm is pretty much done for the most part. It is going to get into the ocean, into the Atlantic Ocean in the next two or three hours. We'll still have another two to three inches of rainfall still to come for some folks, but for the most part we're kind of winding this down.

The water is coming back into Tampa Bay and I know we talked about how Tampa could get this big surge. That didn't happen because landfall was down here, well south. So what happened all day is that the wind was blowing out of Tampa Bay, not into Tampa Bay. The water was blowing into Fort Myers, into Naples, into Punta Gorda. Those are the places in Venice, those are the places that flooded, those are the places that had surge.

There's still a chance that we could get a hurricane force wind gust later on tonight, but look how quickly this gets into the ocean and sayonara, get out of here. We're pretty much tired with this because we've had wind gusts well in excess of a hundred miles per hour in a large swath.

Not just one swath, but I mean to go from Venice to Sarasota. It's going to take you at least an hour and a half to probably drive that even without traffic. So that's how wide of an area had so much wind, so much wind damage, 2.8 million or so people without power.

It's going to be weeks before everybody gets power because you've got 2.8 million people to get recovery, to get recovered. I mean it's just, that's a long duration. And we have so many crews in North Carolina and South Carolina trying to put power lines back up there.

HILL: Yeah, it's so true. I was just thinking the same thing, Chad. I mean, you get these two storms back to back and we are still working on the recovery from one. It's a great point. I Appreciate it. Thank you.

I want to hand things back over to Victor in Orlando, who as Chad just noted is now getting the backside of that eye wall of the storm. Looks a little bit more calm at this moment, Victor, but we know there's still more to come, unfortunately.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Erica, there is this fascinating phenomenon that because of where I am, this is the kind of hotel district at Lake Buena Vista near the Disney parks. There's some trees, maybe a football field away, and I can hear the wind before it hits. So I'm actually pretty grateful that I know what's coming before it actually hits me, but the rain and the wind have been pretty consistent and I can hear another gust coming now.

So I want to go now to Sarasota. And to -- And there it is to Sarasota to Jordan Hall, a storm chaser who's been watching this storm and others. Jordan, give us an idea of what you saw in this storm, when it was at its worst and what you're seeing now.

JORDAN HALL, MY RADAR STORM CHASER, SARASOTA, FLORIDA (on the phone): Yes, absolutely. So I started out in Sarasota and then worked my way down to Venice.

[03:34:59]

And as Milton made its final approach, it almost looked like the 4th of July with all the power lines arcing and exploding due to the trees and the debris that were flying into the lines. And then as Milton made landfall, we noticed some storm surge really making its way in, especially there in that Venice area, and that did quite a bit of damage as well.

BLACKWELL: Ahead of landfall, Milton was being compared to Hurricane Ian of 2022, the most expensive storm ever to hit Florida. In reality, now that it's here, how does the reality of the storm compare to what was forecast just 24, 48 hours ago?

HALL (on the phone): Yeah, I mean, everything that was forecasted seems to have verified for the most part, except the storm surge is hopefully going to be on the lower end of that forecast. But I think something that really stood out today was the large tornado outbreak that went through central Florida. That was very surprising and I think caught a lot of people off guard.

BLACKWELL: Yeah, and you're a storm chaser, so you've done this before. How does that compare to other hurricanes you've chased across Florida?

HALL (on the phone): You know, it was definitely very intense, especially on that southeast corner of the eye. But something I did note was it was very dry coming into the eye and on the back side as well. So that definitely was a limiting --

(TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES)

BLACKWELL: Alright we lost Jordan Hall, storm chaser who worked his way from Sarasota to Venice Beach. We will continue our coverage of Hurricane Milton still blowing and raining here in central Florida. We'll get you an update on those power outages across the state as local authorities are waiting for these winds to calm to really go out and survey and assess the damage. Our coverage continues here on CNN after the break.

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[03:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: Hurricane Milton continuing to make its way across the state of Florida at this hour, leaving behind massive damage in its wake. Despite weakening to a Category 1 storm since making landfall just hours ago, we can tell you at this point nearly 3 million customers in Florida without power across the state. There are also issues about water.

Some areas have lost access to water. Some of that is related to the power outage issue. Understandably, at this hour, deeming those conditions still too unsafe for first responders to get out there. Part of that is wind, part of that is flash flooding, part of it sometimes can be the dark as well. So what happens in those moments?

Jules Carl is riding out the storm. She's in Steinhatchee, so that's further north in the state's Big Bend region on the western side of the state, north of where Milton made landfall, but she is no stranger to hurricanes having ridden out Hurricane Idalia while pregnant last year.

Jules joins me now with that hurricane baby, I believe. Jules, good to have you with us. So you had decided to ride this out. First of all, riding out Idalia was one thing, especially given just how hard hit Steinhatchee was.

JULES CARL, RIDING OUT STORM, STEINHATCHEE, CALIFORNIA (on the phone): Yeah, we actually, Idalia wasn't all that bad compared to Helene that we had a couple weeks ago. This one, thankfully, it seemed to go far enough south of us that we didn't get a whole lot more than rain and some heavy gusts. I know there's some people in town dealing with PTSD from Helene that are freaking out every time they hear wind at all. But I think we managed to get lucky as far as Milton goes.

HILL: Were you concerned at one point though because as you mentioned Helene, right? I mean talk about taking a hit from Helene just two weeks ago. Given what you experienced, what made you decide to stay?

CARL (on the phone): I think for us it was the fact that well especially after Helene we knew that we weren't going to get water any higher than we did that time. I think we had like 23 foot surge in this town and my house was only about a foot from having water in it, my mother-in-law's house.

And so we were just not that nervous about staying for this one knowing that it was going to be far enough south and we were getting the lighter side of the storm that was going to be pulling the water out as opposed to pushing it in. Winds we weren't too concerned about. It's more the storm surge and kind of stuff that you got to worry about right here.

HILL: You mentioned the PTSD that a number of your neighbors have. I mean I would imagine you have a little bit of that too having to deal with so many storms in such a short period of time, what is it like as this is coming at you again, even if it was further south this time, but knowing what you just went through two weeks ago, knowing what happened a year ago, it's a lot to weigh on you?

CARL (on the phone): It really was, yeah. It's a lot to lay on anybody in this town. We're all kind of starting to suffer emotionally from it. It's -- it's hitting really hard every time somebody hears of another system or you know, they heard that this one was coming. It was people were starting to break down.

HILL: Has anything changed that you've noticed among your neighbors or even for you in the way that you look at these storms and whether you want to be there for them? CARL (on the phone): I think a lot of my neighbors are not willing to

write this kind of thing out again and if it's coming toward them where before it was like that you know will shelter in place now a lot of people are like I don't think I want to go through that again. I myself used to be a tornado chaser and storm chaser so it's for me as far as the PTSD goes it, I don't really have as much of that problem but I'm not the typical person in this town and a lot of people are really scared about it now.

HILL: Are you concerned about the increasing not only frequency but also strength of these storms?

CARL (on the phone): Yes, absolutely. They're just becoming monstrous. The size of Helene and then the strength and how fast Milton became a cat five. I think it was a matter of less than 24 hours. Yeah it's getting scary how fast and how big these things are becoming and how unpredictable they're becoming, I mean, you've got the cone but you see them wobbling a lot more now and it's just getting harder to trust the trust the spaghetti models in the past.

HILL: Yeah, it's there's a lot going on there. As you noted and then how it did in course double so quickly in size, how quickly became a cat five. Can you just tell me before I let you go and nearly 3 million people in Florida are without power at this hour. Do you still have power?

CARL (on the phone): We do, fortunately, yes. I don't think anybody here -- No, I take it back. There was one person, one part of town that I did here had lost power. But some of us still didn't have power back from the last one yet.

[03:45:05]

So, yeah, I know the other side of the state. Like, I used to live in Flagler, Plum Coast area, and I know that they've lost power. I've been seeing what's going on with my friends over there. But no, here, for the most part, it didn't do too much damage to our power grid.

HILL: All right. So now you have to continue the cleanup from Helene from two weeks ago, as you pointed out, to try to get back to taking care of. Jules, glad to hear, though, that you and your little one and your family are safe. And let's hope that there is not anything else come in your way. I Appreciate it. Thank you.

CARL (on the phone): Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

HILL: I want to hand things back over now to my colleague, Victor Blackwell, in Orlando, where things are picking up again. But as you noted, luckily you get a little bit of a warning thanks to the trees behind you, Victor, when these gusts are coming through.

BLACKWELL: Yeah, and they've been coming through pretty quickly and a quick succession here. On the topic of power outages, we've been checking with local authorities here and utility companies, an additional 10,000 customers lost power in just the last few minutes. So those numbers we're expecting to continue to grow as the winds pick up here. And there've been a report to those trees down.

Let's check back in now with Randi Kaye who's in Sarasota. Randi, I understand that you are in a moment of calm, at least you were last time we checked in. Hopefully those roads are still clear because authorities do not want people out checking on the damage. What are you seeing around here?

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, exactly. Victor, the roads are still pretty quiet here. We have seen just a couple of emergency vehicles, but the neighborhood that we're in is pretty dark and pretty quiet. But one reason why they don't want people out is something like this.

We were here earlier and this is a piece of -- this is a fan blade. There was a ceiling fan up on the patio, up on the deck right above me that came flying off during the storm. So that's one of the reasons why you have to, you have to evacuate and you have to be careful where you go during the storm. This is some of the fence that was separating our yard where we are from the neighbor's yard and this fence just blew apart during the storm and some of it was airborne.

So they were very concerned about projectiles and pieces of furniture and fencing and other items becoming projectiles and harming people. So that's why people were told to evacuate.

I do want to just mention Siesta Key where we are about 20 minutes or so from Siesta Key. That is the barrier island off Sarasota where Hurricane Milton made landfall just nearby that. And I wanted to share the story of this woman who we met just before the storm came through.

She said that her husband had ridden out Helene on Siesta Key just a couple of weeks ago and they had been watching the weather like a lot of people do as you know Victor. They watch it, they think that okay it's not going to get us and they stayed -- he stayed put, she evacuated, and he ended up with five feet of water.

He was chest deep in water. He had to swim in the dark of night to another house where he could get to higher ground and then had to swim back to their house. The house was completely destroyed. All of their, there's mold all over, so they're going to have to gut that house.

But there was, all of their belongings were destroyed. So when you think about Milton coming across Siesta Key and making landfall right near Siesta Key, I just think about what if everybody hadn't evacuated there? And we just don't know. And I had asked the mayor if everybody had evacuated from those barrier islands, and she wasn't able to say for sure.

So that's a big question because if this storm was worse than Helene at that barrier island, and we heard that story from that woman about her husband at Siesta Key, you can only imagine what those people might have gone through, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Yeah, we just heard from the town manager of Longboat Key, the town manager of Longboat Key that's not too far from where you are, just south of Siesta Key, said that their bridge had been damaged and there were the majority of people who left the barrier island but still some people on there so they'll be trying to get in contact with them as well. Sarasota is being covered by my colleague Randi Kaye. We'll be checking in throughout the morning.

We'll take a quick break now as the winds and rain continue here in central Florida. The calm that they're seeing on the west coast, we are not feeling on the central part of the state and it certainly isn't what they're feeling out east. We'll continue the coverage of Hurricane Milton right here live on CNN.

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[03:50:00]

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HILL: Officials in Florida's St. Lucie County are reporting multiple fatalities following tornadoes spawned by Hurricane Milton. Search and rescue efforts are ongoing after one tornado ripped through a mobile home retirement community. The St. Lucie County Sheriff spoke with CNN about the devastation.

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SHERIFF KEITH PEARSON, ST. LUCIE COUNTY, FLORIDA: The first wave of this storm bill came through our area is not used being any kind of tornado activity. We had one tornado pop-up but actually struck our sheriff's office taking out a 10,000 square foot red iron structure that was housing all of our emergency equipment in preparation for hurricane Milton.

Shortly after that, maybe 20 minutes later all of our alarms have gone off. All the messages came out there. Our deputies reported at least seeing six tornadoes on the ground, ripping through our county in a northern direction, leaving hundreds of homes devastated, completely totaled. And it unfortunately struck a retirement community that was mainly modular homes where we did have loss of life.

And we have crews on scene right now working through the hurricane conditions that we're facing right now to rescue anybody who's still inside there. I mean, these trailers are just devastated. They're lifted off their foundation. I'm not going to get into how many, but I can tell you it's more than one person who's lost their life that we've already recovered.

[03:55:04]

But again, we're focusing right now on getting all of our resources in there to rescue those individuals that could be trapped inside these homes. The loss of life that we're focusing on is a mobile home community that's a 55 and older community. So we have elderly folks in there. We have the type of construction. It just went right through the middle of this community and it left a path of destruction there.

(END AUDIO CLIP) HILL: And again, that was the county sheriff there from C -- from Lucie County, which of course is on the east coast of Florida. I do want to send things back to Victor Blackwell, who's there in a more central part of the state in Orlando, dealing with this backside of that storm as it continues to make its way east across the state.

BLACKWELL: Yeah, interestingly enough, Erica, as we've been reporting for the last several hours that Orlando Police Fire Rescue and Orange County Sheriff's Office, they pulled their rescue crews from the streets because the winds were too strong. But as you've seen, we've seen stronger winds over the last 20 to 30 minutes or so. In those last 30 minutes, they've tweeted that they have their crews back on the streets now.

So we should expect that there will be updates about the severity of the damage and potentially flooding across this part of the state. I'm not sure how long they'll be out on the road if their threshold is these 40 mile per hour gusts because we've seen more of those in the last few minutes than we have for some time before that.

So I'm not sure how long they'll be on the roads, but they've seen enough that they're going to be out and they're tweeting actually video out of their vehicles, their officers, their deputies going around and surveying the damage. So they're responding to calls. I'm not sure for how long, but we should get some updates on the damage here in Orange County.

We'll continue our live special coverage of Hurricane Milton in just a minute. Stay with us.

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