U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday surveyed the devastating damage in Florida left in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton sweeping across the state last week, where residents are still recovering from the destruction wrought by late September’s Hurricane Helene.
“This area is taking a real beating from back-to-back storms,” Biden said after his Marine One helicopter flew over Florida’s western coast from Tampa to St. Petersburg. The flight offered him a close look at the battered region, including the shredded roof of the Tampa Bay Rays’ baseball stadium, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg.
Seventeen people were killed across the state during the storm, many from tornadoes spawned by the hurricane.
On the ground, Biden saw entire neighborhoods in St. Pete Beach with debris piled on street corners next to felled palm trees. Many of the pastel-painted garage doors were busted open as the smell of moldy building materials filled the air.
Heaps of mattresses, siding, couches, microwave ovens, pillows and ruined kitchen cabinets all lined the island's roads, some still covered in large patches of sand, as Biden walked through with emergency responders. One photo album still lay scattered in the street.
“Help,” one resident asked Biden in lettering on one pile of household debris.
Biden praised the region’s residents for helping each other recover. “That’s the resilience of west Florida,” he said, noting that even with the contentious Nov. 5 presidential election in the immediate offing, people were pitching in to restore their community, “not as Democrats and Republicans, but as Americans, Americans who need help.”
He said power had been restored to 2 million of the estimated 3 million people who lost electricity during the wrath of Milton as it swept eastward from the state’s western shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico across the state before moving into the Atlantic Ocean. Biden said thousands of electrical workers from 43 states and Canada had gone to Florida to help repair its grid.
Biden announced $612 million in new federal aid for the victims of the two hurricanes across the southeastern U.S.
The National Weather Service said flooding is expected to continue around Tampa Bay and the Sanford area northeast of Orlando as river waters continue to rise.
More fuel distribution sites were scheduled to open Sunday, according to the state's emergency operations center.
Sarasota Mayor Liz Alpert said recovery was expected to take a long time as officials continued to restore power more widely and extend more services to barrier islands by late Monday
"It's still a mess," she told ABC News' "This Week" program. "People are coming together. Neighbors are helping neighbors. It's been heartening to see all of the outpouring of support and help that people have been offering."
While Milton was not as destructive as officials had initially forecasted, analysts have estimated insured losses could total between $30 billion and $60 billion.
Some material in this report came from Reuters.
