Floridians warned ‘you are going to die’ if they don’t evacuate as Milton nears, screamed The Guardian headline on Wednesday morning. According to The Associated Press, eleven Florida counties, home to about 5.9 million people, were under mandatory evacuation orders as of Tuesday afternoon. Officials are warning residents not to bank on the storm weakening.
Hurricane Milton remained on course Tuesday evening for Florida’s west coast, traveling northeast across the Gulf of Mexico at about 10 mph (17 kph), according to the US National Hurricane Center’s latest advisory, the AP said.
Hurricane Milton was upgraded back to a Category 5 storm as it churns toward Florida’s west coast. The ferocious storm could land a once-in-a-century direct hit on Tampa and St. Petersburg, engulfing the populous region with towering storm surges and turning debris from Helene’s devastation 12 days ago into projectiles, the AP added.
Milton is expected to make landfall on the west coast of Florida late Wednesday.
Hospitals and other health care facilities on Florida’s Gulf Coast — still reeling from Hurricane Helene — are now revving up for Hurricane Milton.
The system, which is shaping up to be one of the most powerful to hit the region in years, is projected to make landfall a bit south of the Tampa area late Wednesday. Long-term care facilities in counties where mandatory evacuations have been issued are taking their patients elsewhere, while hospitals are largely on guard, preparing to stay open through the storm.
According to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ website, 10 hospitals have reported evacuations as of Tuesday afternoon. Three hundred health care facilities have evacuated as of this morning, the most many of the staff working there could remember, said Florida Agency for Health Care Administration deputy secretary Kim Smoak. That count included 63 nursing homes and 169 assisted living facilities.
Steve McCoy, chief of the Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of Emergency Medical Oversight, said it is the state’s “largest evacuation ever.”
Health officials are using almost 600 vehicles to take patients out of the storm’s path, tracking them with blue wristbands that show where they were evacuated from and where they are being sent. They plan to keep getting patients out through the night, until winds reach sustained speeds of 40 mph and driving conditions become unsafe.