Florida reeling after major impacts from Hurricane Milton

AccuWeather

Storm chaser Aaron Jayjack reports a messy cleanup ahead for Punta Gorda, Florida, after Hurricane Milton brought high winds, storm surge and flooding. The city streets are covered in mud and debris.

Transcript

00:00we've kind of a lot of the water is receded you can see we're just in this

00:03sludge sludge everywhere this mud is everywhere left over from the storm

00:08surge last night water still flowing in fact you can see they're starting to

00:12come through right now try and clear some of this this mud and stuff out the

00:15debris trying to push it into the sewer system but if you come over here you can

00:19see these steps here where we are standing here at this business now this

00:24is about five feet and four plus maybe a little more than five feet off of the

00:28ground here where we're at on the sidewalk maybe down another six inches

00:32down to the street level and we're probably five to six feet above sea

00:37level at this location so you can see that we probably had around that 10 foot

00:41of surge maybe more here in Punta Gorda just like as I mentioned there is mud

00:46everywhere this is what they're dealing with now in Punta Gorda Florida quite a

00:52difficult situation to deal with cleanups going to take some time you

00:56know probably be helpful of a nice rainstorm came through here in the next

01:00few days to try and help wash some of this mud out but besides the mud lots of

01:03tree debris here through here we saw some street signs down as well and one

01:08weird thing we haven't had a chance to go look at yet we're probably gonna make

01:11our way next is the the homes that are off to the to the southwest of our

01:14location here some residential homes that just got done dealing with the

01:19surge problems from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago in fact they still had piles of

01:23debris out in front of their homes and now here we are yet again another major

01:27hurricane causing significant storm surge here in Punta Gorda Florida and

01:33you have been dealing with people out and about I'm sure this morning or maybe

01:37trying to start to come out what has been their reaction to all this yeah you

01:46know we've we stayed in this hotel here where a lot of the residents that are in

01:50the homes here to the southwest retreated to to stay to get you know a

01:53higher ground because it is slightly higher ground here and they're all

01:57coming out you know some of the cars that were in the parking lot were

01:59actually underwater last night as a storm surge came in so you know there's

02:04see some some disappointed looks on folks faces people kind of just walking

02:08around you know trying to just assess the scene for themselves I think there

02:11some people kind of kind of shocked to see how much mud and whatnot has been

02:15left in place behind all the storm surge but you know there people are

02:20there's lots of traffic moving now traffic's moving around I think the

02:23water is receded enough at least for the majority of the town here that people

02:27can start moving around they can start bringing in help bring in emergency

02:31personnel to help clear out some of the stuff see if anybody needs rescues but I

02:35think for the most part you know they're probably people are probably okay here

02:40they're probably not any life life-threatening situations here put the

02:45Gorda fortunately we did have some strong wind but the main event here for

02:49this hurricane was definitely that big-time storm surge event that came

02:53rushing in here like a like a wall of water

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