Hurricane Michael: Long road to recovery after storm leaves 18 dead, thousands missing and a trail of destruction across southeastern US

‘It’s still dangerous out there,’ says Florida governor

Millions in the southeastern United States are facing the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, with officials predicting a long road to recovery as the death toll rose to at least 18.

Michael, which hit the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of up to 155mph, left thousands of people reported missing as it moved eastward away from the US coast.

Just under 750,000 people were without power in the affected areas from Florida through to Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, according to the US PowerOutage website.

On Saturday search and rescue teams used cadaver dogs, drones and heavy equipment to hunt for survivors in the rubble. One body was recovered in Mexico Beach, Florida, as volunteers went door-to-door checking homes.

In Panama City a looter was shot dead by a state fire marshal after trying to steal a police car, it was reported by the NBC-affiliated TV station WPMI.

About 4,000 members of Florida’s national guard have been called up to deal with the storm and nearly 2,000 law-enforcement officials have been sent into the Panhandle.

Rescue teams made up mostly of off-duty police officers and firefighters said they had found more than 520 of the 2,100 reported missing since Michael crashed ashore near Mexico Beach.

“We expect that number to go up dramatically today,” said Matthew Marchetti, co-founder of the Houston-based CrowdSource Rescue. “Volunteers are working side-by-side with first responders. They are cutting holes in roofs. They try to take a picture so we can call the family and tell them we made contact.”

A diabetic mother and daughter were trapped in a closet in a mobile home damaged by the storm in Panama City for two days before being freed, according to rescuers.

Taylor Fontenot, 29, a roofing contractor who founded 50 Star SAR, a volunteer search and rescue organisation, said: "We had another lady who was on her last tank of oxygen. No cell phone, no power, no nothing. There are people out here on dialysis, but there is no power."

Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed by the hurricane, which pushed storm surges of up to 14ft (4.3m) in some areas. Michael brought winds that ripped roofs from buildings and tore through walls, leaving behind, in some cases, nothing but the skeletons of structures and images of devastation where whole neighbourhoods once stood.

Florida governor Rick Scott, who put his campaign for US Senate on hold to handle the aftermath of the storm, began touring areas affected soon after the storm moved through – and stressed that recovery efforts could take a while.

“It’s still dangerous out there. There are still a lot of downed power lines – a lot,” Mr Scott said during a stop on one of his tours on Friday. “There’s still a lot of weak structures so we have to be very careful.”

Hurricane Michael was one of the most intense storms to make landfall in America in decades, and estimates indicate that damages could range from anywhere between $4.5bn and $8bn (£3.4bn to £6bn).

In Mexico Beach and Panama City Beach, Florida – communities that felt the worst of the storm – entire neighbourhoods were torn down after the storm smashed through the area, leaving behind rubble and the occasional home or business that somehow survived. Further inland and away from the worst of it, however, roofs were still torn to shreds and communities hit hard.

Nearly 300 people were said to have defied evacuation orders in Mexico Beach, a town of 1,000. It was not clear if any of them managed to get out at the last minute, or if they had survived the devastation of the storm.

In addition to homes, businesses, office complexes and vehicles, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida was heavily damaged. Aerial footage showed that aircraft left behind out of necessity had been covered in debris after the roofs of hangars were torn from the buildings. Expensive F-22 Raptors may be among those jets left behind and potentially damaged, according to reports.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator Brock Long said that as workers continue to sift through debris in search of missing people and bodies, he expected the death toll to rise in the region.

“I expect the fatality count to climb today and tomorrow as we get through the debris and I’m very frustrated by that,” Mr Long said on CNN.

“We seem to not learn this lesson in this country and you know, these guys behind us, they get to deal with the aftermath,” Mr Long added. “They’re often the source of blame when everything goes wrong after disasters and it’s a vicious cycle. A bigger Fema’s not the answer. Building codes, resiliency, pre-disaster mitigation is the answer.”

Mr Long continued to say that people often ignore evacuation orders – which were issued in areas expected to be hit hardest by Michael – and that comes with the cost of lives.

“The bottom line is when we ask people to evacuate, and the governor asked people, and we even used the wireless emergency alert system to warn people that the ocean was going to rise and do this type of destruction, people still failed to heed the warnings and they’ve lost their lives,” he said.

Donald Trump issued a disaster declaration in Florida, where much of the damage was initially seen. Mr Trump also said that he planned to visit affected areas some time in the next week.

“People have no idea how hard Hurricane Michael has hit the great state of Georgia. I will be visiting both Florida and Georgia early next week. We are working very hard on every area and every state that was hit – we are with you!” Mr Trump tweeted on Friday afternoon.

A massive effort to handle the aftermath of Michael has been mobilised comprising workers from across the country. Some 3,000 personnel from Fema have been deployed in the region, and 30,000 workers have been sent to restore power. Around 3,500 Florida National Guard troops were activated to conduct mostly high-water and search-and-rescue operations.

Hurricane Michael was the most intense storm to hit the Florida since 1992, when Hurricane Andrew hit the state’s southeast coast as a category 5 storm. Around 127,000 homes were destroyed or damaged then, costing $26.5bn. At the time, Andrew was the costliest storm in American history.

Additional reporting by agencies