Rescue teams, hampered by power and phone outages, used cadaver dogs, drones and heavy equipment to search for hundreds of people unaccounted for in devastated communities across the Florida Panhandle.
“I’ve watched on television, thinking of what others have experienced, like in the Carolinas and Texas,” Mexico Beach Mayor Al Cathey told reporters referring to hurricanes this year and last. “But it’s different when you walk down and see this, and your emotions run away. This is just a small unique coastal community.”
No other information was available about the deceased man found in Mexico Beach, said Joseph Zahralban, Miami’s fire chief and the task force leader of a search and rescue unit. He said it was unclear if the man was living alone or with a family.
Three deaths were reported in Marianna, in Jackson County, Florida, Sheriff Lou Roberts told a news conference in the afternoon on Oct. 12.
The dead include at least eight people in Florida, five in Virginia, three in North Carolina and one in Georgia.
The number of fatalities is expected to rise as rescuers go door to door and comb through the rubble in Mexico Beach and other Florida coastal communities such as Port St. Joe and Panama City, said Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The Houston-based volunteer search-and-rescue network CrowdSource Rescue said its teams were trying to find some 2,500 people who were either reported missing or were stranded and in need of help in Florida, co-founder Matthew Marchetti said.
Social media websites were filled with messages from people trying to reach missing family members in Florida’s Bay and Gulf Counties.
Dogs and Bulldozers
FEMA crews have been using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to push a path through debris to allow rescuers to probe the rubble with specially trained search dogs.More than 1,700 search and rescue workers have been deployed, Governor Rick Scott’s office said in a statement, including seven swift-water rescue teams and nearly 300 ambulances.
Michael crashed ashore near Mexico Beach on Oct. 10 afternoon as one of the most powerful storms in U.S. history, with winds of up to 155 moh (250 kph). It pushed a wall of seawater inland, causing widespread flooding.
The storm, which in less than two days grew from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, tore apart entire neighborhoods in the Panhandle, reducing homes to naked concrete foundations or piles of wood and siding.
Except for the emergency-911 system, authorities in Bay County, the epicenter of the disaster, were virtually without telephone or internet service until late in the day on Oct. 12, making communications internally and with the public difficult.
“We didn’t have anything,” said Ruth Corley, a spokeswoman for the Bay County Sheriff’s Department. “We’ve been writing things down on pieces of paper. We’re doing what we can with the minimal media that we have.”
Rebuild Right
FEMA’s Long urged communities such as Mexico Beach, where many homes were pulverized by 12 to 14 feet (3.7 to 4.3 meters) of storm surge, to rebuild to withstand future storms.“It’s OK if you want to live on the coast or on top of a mountain that sees wildfires or whatever, but you have to build to a higher standard,” he said. “If we’re going to rebuild, do it right.”
By Oct. 12 morning the remnants of the storm were located about 275 miles (445 km) southwest of Nantucket, Massachusetts, with maximum sustained winds of 65 miles (100 km) per hour.
More than 940,000 homes and businesses on the U.S. East Coast were without power on Oct. 12 and it could be weeks before power is restored to the most damaged parts of Florida.
The number of people in emergency shelters was expected to swell to 20,000 across five states by Oct. 12, said Brad Kieserman of the American Red Cross. The Coast Guard reported rescuing 129 people.
Even as rescuers searched the rubble for survivors or the deceased, some residents of Mexico Beach were nervously trickling back on Oct. 12, expressing hope the place, nicknamed “the Forgotten Coast,” would not change too much as it rebuilds.
“It was the perfect beach town. Not all of that commercialism,” said Dottie Sinclair, 57, a nurse, adding a Subway fast-food restaurant was the only commercial chain.
“I don’t think it will ever be the same,” said husband Danny Sinclair, 64, who is semi-retired. “People will just pack up and leave.”
