As of Saturday morning, the official death toll from Hurricane Michael stands at 17, with victims from Florida to Virginia. But sadly that number is likely to be eclipsed as officials begin to tally those lost in Mexico Beach and nearby areas. Police in the devastated region, who attempted to collect a list of those who had decided to stay in advance of the storm, won’t yet say how many bodies have been found, or how many people they’re still looking for. But the chief of emergency services in Bay County, home to both Mexico Beach and Panama City, says that “a tremendous number” of people are still unaccounted for. Meanwhile, rains from the storm have again pushed rivers in North and South Carolina over their banks, reflooding areas that were drenched by Hurricane Florence. At least five people are dead as far north as Virginia, where Michael brought fallen trees, downed power lines, and heavy rains.
According to ABC News, most 911 calls in the area of the storm’s greatest impact are still going unanswered. Emergency services have prioritized the block by block search for the missing, and potentially injured, among the ruined houses and debris that remains in Mexico Beach and neighboring communities. The Coast Guard has rescued at least 60 people who were trapped in areas inaccessible because of flooding, debris, and washed out roads.
In Virginia, heavy rains from Michael brought dangerous flooding in near the city of Roanoke, where closing roads across the city and four people are known to have drowned. At least three storm-related deaths have been logged in North Carolina. The way in which Michael moved rapidly inland while still a strong Category 4 storm, brought hurricane force winds to areas that had not seen such a storm in at least a century, greatly increasing he number of downed trees and the amount of damaged infrastructure. Many of these areas also did not have building codes that required homes to be prepared for hurricane-force winds.
The Washington Post reports on members of a National Guard unit, many of them with family and friends in the area, entering Mexico Beach only to find that the “devastation was nearly unfathomable.”
Many of the Guard coming into the area are veterans of multiple hurricane rescue and clean up operations, but that didn’t prepare them for what they found at the center of Michael’s path.
“There’s not a word in the dictionary to explain how bad it was,” Jett said. “It’s like the end of the world. . . . It’s amazing anybody’s still alive, still standing. . . . In the blink of an eye it’s all gone. It’s horrible.”
As of Friday evening, some areas had still not been reached by emergency teams. And the
horrible stories of the storm and its aftermath are just beginning to emerge.
In the much larger town of Panama City, nearly every home and business suffered substantial damage. Expectations are that even many buildings that rode out the storm, may need to be knocked down and replaced as rebuilding in the region begins. For the moment, a million people across three states are still without power and emergency services are struggling to clear and repair roads in order to get food and water to survivors of the storm.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump held another rally on Friday night in Ohio. He praised Robert E. Lee, but it’s not clear he mentioned Hurricane Michael. This is the second rally Trump has held since the storm hit. He has another rally scheduled in Kentucky on Saturday night.