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US President Joe Biden has urged people in the path of a hurricane barrelling towards Florida to evacuate their homes “now, now, now” as the catastrophic storm hurtled towards a highly populated stretch of the state’s coastline.
Biden warned on Tuesday that the “devastating” Hurricane Milton, which was moving north-west with winds of 150 miles per hour, could be one of the worst storms to hit Florida in more than a century.
Milton is on track to make landfall on Wednesday as a category 4 storm, according to the National Hurricane Center, with storm surges of up to 15 feet predicted in some areas.
NHC forecasters warned that Milton had “the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida”.
As of Tuesday morning, 12 counties in the state were under mandatory evacuation order. Global risk advisory firm Guy Carpenter said Milton could cause the largest number of evacuations since Hurricane Irma in 2017, when 6.7mn people left their homes.
“This is literally catastrophic,” Tampa mayor Jane Castor said in an interview with CNN. “I can say this without any dramatisation whatsoever: if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”
Milton is the second major hurricane to hit the US in a fortnight after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across several south-eastern states, killing more than 225 people and destroying roads across western North Carolina.
Biden postponed an overseas trip to Germany and Angola to remain in Washington and oversee preparations for the storm, and manage the recovery efforts linked to Hurricane Helene.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made a series of false claims in the wake of Helene, accusing the government of withholding aid from Republican disaster victims. Vice-president Kamala Harris on Monday called Trump “extraordinarily irresponsible” for spreading misinformation.
The White House said on Tuesday that Biden had called the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and had spoken to Castor the previous evening to discuss plans, and had been briefed by NWS director Ken Graham on the expected effects of the storm on Florida.
DeSantis said on Fox News on Tuesday morning that the prospect of “another monster storm” hitting the state was “not easy”.
“It’s been very taxing on our citizens to have to go through this just as you’re starting to pick up the pieces from Helene,” he said.
DeSantis warned that debris from Hurricane Helene “could become projectiles” and said he had ordered all state agencies with trucks available to help clean up destruction.
The prospect of two big hurricanes hitting the US in quick succession threatens to strain federal emergency responses. Last week, homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not have enough funding to make it through this year’s hurricane season.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told reporters while en route to South Carolina following Hurricane Helene. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting — we do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season.”
