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At Least Nine People Dead After Milton Lashes Florida; St. Lucie County Hit by 3 Tornadoes in Less than 25 Minutes; Milton Brushing the East Coast; At Least 5 People Killed in St. Lucie County Tornadoes; Florida Governor Gives Update on Hurricane Milton Destruction. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired October 10, 2024 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[15:00:49]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Thank you so much for joining us on CNN NEWS CENTRAL. We're coming to you live from Treasure Island, Florida, on the state's Gulf Coast, where Hurricane Milton left a wide swath of devastation. I'm Boris Sanchez joined by my colleague, Brianna Keilar, in Washington, D.C. for us.

We confirmed moments ago that at least eight people have been killed in the Sunshine State as a result of Hurricane Milton. And what stands out about this storm is the diversity of the damage. You're talking about a powerful storm surge that sent boats flying in certain communities. You're talking about dangerous rainfall that inundated other neighborhoods. And on top of that, wind damage that has caused severe structural issues throughout the state of Florida.

First, I want to show you water rescues in Clearwater, Florida. This is one of many scenes that we've watched play out today. We actually got to witness some of these water rescues firsthand. This is in Pinellas County.

And in this apartment complex we're showing you, several hundred people had to be evacuated. I spoke to a woman there named Ann (ph), who said that in the middle of the night, her first floor condo was totally inundated. Water reached up to her chest. She actually had to rush out. She was able to get to a neighbor's apartment up on the second floor and there she was able to ride out the storm.

But I spoke to other folks who simply ran out with nothing, they - just the clothes on their bodies as the floodwaters were going into that complex. Fortunately, though, as we heard from local officials, no fatalities there, no serious injuries. Floodwaters fortunately there have receded.

But in other areas, they are still very high. In neighboring Hillsborough County, at least two to three feet of water in some areas. The sheriff there about an hour or so ago telling me they've conducted more than 200 evacuees, including a miraculous one. A young boy found - a 14-year-old boy found floating on a fence. Deputies came across him and he signaled to them for help. They were able to get him the help that he needed.

Aside from that, zooming out as we look over to the southeast portion of the state of Florida, we saw enormous tornado damage literally lifting up a semi truck off the highway and slamming it into trees. Aside from that, it tore into several communities and claimed lives. At least five people killed in St. Lucie County.

We should note those tornadoes touched down hours before Milton made landfall. So this was happening even as the hurricane was still off the coast of Florida. You're looking at video now of a confirmed tornado touching down in that county. We're going to take you there in a moment.

But one other thing I wanted to show you, the power of the winds as this category three storm made landfall in the Sarasota area nearby in St. Petersburg, just a few miles north, Tropicana Field, the home of Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays, the roof of that stadium left in tatters. Not much left to show you there.

However, it's important to point out, this is a huge problem for the emergency response in part because this was a command center for emergency responders. They were not only storing resources there, but it was a shelter for them as well. As you look at this impressive video, you see inside the stadium, you see the baseball diamond, the clay of the field covered in portions of the roof. Fortunately though, we were there earlier, it looks like the neighboring community was largely unscathed except for the damage that we see obviously to the baseball stadium.

I mentioned a moment ago the majority of the casualties that we've learned about, the eight people killed after Hurricane Milton coming in St. Lucie County. We find CNN's Brian Todd there. He arrived on the scene a short time ago.

And Brian, you were showing us the power of this - the winds and the tornado damage from Hurricane Milton.

[15:05:05]

The way it picked up that semi-truck and shoved it off to the side of the road. What more are you seeing now Brian?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, Boris, as my team and I are kind of scoping around this area of St. Lucie County, I can show you another example of just the devastation that those tornadoes kind of wrought on this area. This is the Lakewood Methodist Church here just north of Fort Pierce. And take a look, you mentioned Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, kind of a similar phenomenon here. Look at the roof being taken off, at least partially taken off of the Lakewood church here. And there's - if I go to the left here, our photojournalist, Manny Climaco, is going to kind of zoom into the damage in the back of the church there, just incredible.

You know, again, illustrating the force of these tornadoes as they came through here. What I can tell you is as we kind of come over here and I'll show you some damage in the neighborhood here to my left, your right, there are some houses back here that again had portions of roofs torn off.

From what we have seen, Boris, you know, some tornadoes go through a given area and they cut kind of a wide swath of destruction and you can see a clear path of where they came through. These appear to be different from what our teams have observed here on the ground. These appear to be tornadoes that kind of touched down in specific places, then kind of lifted up, touched down in other places, lifted up, so there was - the damage is a little bit more sporadic.

You don't see, like, widespread whole neighborhoods kind of crushed. You see kind of just little pockets of places that were devastated. The sheriff here, Keith Pearson, says that the area where the fatalities occurred, it is - the name of it is Spanish Lakes Country Club Village. He says it is a modular home community for people who are 55 years and older.

We can tell you that - we know that it's in this direction, but the media is not being allowed access into that community because they're still trying to assess some damage, still possibly looking for other victims and other sensitivities that are going on there. We're not allowed to get into that area, which is just beyond those trees right there.

But again, officials here just kind of coming through and trying to come to grips with this. And again, I'll - we'll just take you right back into the - just to a, you know, quick zoom in shot of that church. Just imagine a tornado coming in and just taking that off within a span of a couple of seconds. And you get a sheer sense of that power, in addition to those two tractor trailer trucks that we showed you last hour that were just kind of tossed off the road as if they were little toy trucks by this tornado.

Again, we can confirm five people dead in this county - at least five. That's according to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Damage still being assessed here, Boris?

SANCHEZ: Yes, tragic to think about what those families have to experience learning that their loved ones were lost as a result of this storm, really an impressive damage there. Brian Todd live from St. Lucie County, Florida.

Thank you so much, Brian.

We mentioned a few minutes ago that there were still water rescues ongoing. I spoke with the sheriff of Hillsborough County a short time ago and said that they were still finding folks, including a 14-year- old boy. They posted this on social media, a video of this 14-year-old boy floating in floodwaters on top of what appeared to be a fence. He's fortunate that he was rescued.

I want to go live to Isabel Rosales, who's in Hillsborough County, and she's been watching these rescues since very early this morning. Isabel, we understand more than 130 people were rescued from a specific place that had been designated as a shelter, right?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. This was their first priority, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, to come here to this one story building, Great American Assisted Living, where residents found themselves suddenly encountering water, water coming through their air vents and then piling up and coming up to their knees.

And these are people on medication, on oxygen tanks, people who some use wheelchairs, walkers, some are bedridden. They couldn't manage to get out of here, so they waited overnight and hours in the cold floodwaters for the sheriff's office to come in these amphibious vehicles and to get them out.

Now, to the point that you were making, Boris, this is actually not an evacuation zone. This is not an area of Hillsborough County, the university plaza area by the University of South Florida that has ever seen anything like this. So people actually came from Bradenton in Manatee County to here to take cover from the storm, anticipating that they would get harder hit in Bradenton. And then this thing unexpectedly happened, flash flooding.

So over 135 of them rescued, one of them, her name is Teresa. This is what she told me.

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TERESA, RESCUED ASSISTED LIVING RESIDENT: Well, I was in bed, obviously, and then I didn't realize it was flooded at first. And then I heard a crash and I had a - I mean, a refrigerator in there and a microwave on top of it. It just blew out.

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It's on the floor. I mean, it was coming up in my bed, to the edge of my bed. I mean, it got on, you know, it was just terrible and the water was so cold.

ROSALES: That sounds terrifying.

TERESA: The water was so cold. Yes. Man, it's just - and I'm missing a shoe, my brace shoe and I don't know where it is (INAUDIBLE) floating around somewhere, yes. But ...

ROSALES: Yes, I can see you're, you know, tearing up a bit, thinking about those moments. I'm so sorry, you went ...

TERESA: It's scary. Scary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROSALES: And Boris, this is what is the reality for residents here in this community. If they didn't hitch a ride with the sheriff's office, they're essentially bunkering down up on the second floor and they're going to have to determine, are they going to wait for these water levels to recede, who knows when that will happen?

Or I've seen so many families wading through the waters, children on top of the father's shoulders. I saw a father with a bicycle trying to get through the floodwaters that way, the kid up on the handles. Some of them taking clothes, shoes, whatever they can carry to get out of here.

And I'll also mention this. The sheriff, he - Chad Chronister, started his rookie years, his career here in this area. He was choked up talking to me, saying this is something he has never seen. And it broke his heart to see this community so deeply affected. Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes, Isabel, as the sheriff put it, these folks don't have much and they lost everything. Really powerful to listen to Teresa's story there. Isabel Rosales from Hillsborough County, thank you so much for that update.

We want to get some new information now from another area that's been impacted by Hurricane Milton. We're talking about Venice, Florida, and we're joined by the mayor of Venice, Nick Pachota, joining us now live.

Mayor, thank you so much for being with us. Just give us a sense of what you're seeing there in Venice and how Hurricane Milton affected your community.

NICK PACHOTA, MAYOR, VENICE, FLORIDA: Boris, thank you for having me on. You know, of course, everyone's been affected all over across the state and we've got some of the similar stories. We've lost, you know, structures and there's been, you know, the still standing water in some of our streets. You know, our airport was impacted. We've got, you know, just impacts all across the community. Power lines are down. Our tactical first and teams have gone out.

They've gotten main arterials open into the city so that we can at least get responders to homes. So that way, if there's anybody that needs, you know, medical assistance or anything like that, we have life safety taken care of. We're working on getting utilities restored to the community, but, you know, it's pretty devastating.

SANCHEZ: Yes, Mayor. On that question of life security, I wonder if you have any update for us, perhaps if there were any folks with serious injuries or any casualties as a result of Hurricane Milton.

PACHOTA: As of right now, I haven't heard of any casualties in our specific jurisdiction. I know we did have, you know, a significant increase in 911 calls after the storm had passed. You know, people have to remember they're the - those that did stay, you know, they're tempted to go outside and start working on their property and it causes a lot of different things, you know, traumatic injuries, lacerations, you know, bee stings, things that normally wouldn't be such a big deal. But when there's a delay in response, it can actually become pretty life-threatening.

So we're just really encouraging people to stay inside, you know, shelter in place, continue to do that. That way we can keep the call volume down.

SANCHEZ: Yes, it's so important to keep those resources handy, especially at times like this. You don't want to be putting first responders at risk for something that could have totally been avoided.

Mayor Nick Pachota, thank you so much for giving us an update from Venice, Florida.

PACHOTA: Thank you, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course. We've been monitoring the widespread devastation from Hurricane Milton here from Treasure Island, an area that was badly battered by Hurricane Helene. We've been watching residents and business owners starting to come back to this community to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately, at least here on Treasure Island, folks are breathing a sigh of relief. The storm here, not quite as bad as you've seen in other areas. Nevertheless, they are going to have a long road to recovery, as you can see behind me.

Stay with CNN NEWS CENTRAL. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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[15:18:48]

SANCHEZ: We want to get you an update on what Hurricane Milton, now a post-tropical storm, is doing. Clearly, this was an unprecedented storm. It started out as a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico, rapidly intensified to a Category 5, then hit the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 3 and continued moving on. I want to go straight to the Weather Center now with CNN's Elisa Raffa.

Because Elisa, there are still parts of the East Coast that are feeling this, right?

ELISA RAFFA, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. And the East Coast, after it made landfall on the West Coast last night, that's how far reaching these impacts have been. We still have some wind gusts and some onshore flow. Charleston right now with wind gusts at 32 miles per hour. St. Simons Island as part of Southern Georgia, still with gusts up to 30 miles per hour as well. Jacksonville, also with these wind gusts to 30 miles per hour and, again, that onshore flow.

So we're still looking at some storm surge possible, three to five feet from Daytona Beach up into Southern Georgia, one to three feet from Savannah to Charleston. That could cause some inland flooding. Plus, we also have rip currents on all of these beaches as well, so really advising people not to go anywhere near the water, so still feeling these impacts.

[15:20:07]

We're also still looking at more than 3 million people in the dark, because the wind field from Milton was 250 miles wide when it made landfall, so that takes those winds and really knocks down a lot of trees and power lines and it's still with a lot of the peninsula without power.

I mean, some of these wind gusts, 107 miles per hour in Venice, Florida. Sarasota, 102 miles per hour at the peak. Even St. Petersburg, wind gusts a hundred miles per hour when it made landfall.

The tornadoes have also been a really incredible problem today, picking up all the damage from that. Tornadoes in a landfalling hurricane are common, but they're weak and they're brief, and they don't look like this. This is what the hurricane director called supercharged.

We just don't see tornadoes like this in landfalling hurricanes. In fact, there was a record of 126 tornado warnings issued across the state yesterday. That sets a record for the most warnings issued for the state of Florida, and it breaks the record from Hurricane Irma that made landfall in 2017 with 69 warnings, and even the record from Helene two weeks ago for just how active the tornado part of this has been, 126 warnings again in a day.

The rain has also been a problem. It continues to be a problem with the residual flooding. This footprint of rain totals more than a foot. A lot of our reporters have been around the Tampa area, and it is because of the heavy rain that there was that flooding, and you cannot evacuate from that. Boris.

SANCHEZ: A hundred and 20 plus tornado warnings in a single day just gives you an idea of the kind of power that Hurricane Milton represented and the kind of devastation as well. Elisa Raffa from the Weather Center, thank you so much.

On that point about the devastation, we have now just learned that at least nine people were killed as a result of Hurricane Milton. That death toll steadily climbing up as officials get access to places that were previously inaccessible and they get a clearer picture of the damage. One of the hardest hit areas from the perspective of the human cost of this storm is St. Lucie County and we want to discuss some of the lives lost there as a result of a tornado - because of that tornado with Cathy Townsend. She's one of the Board of County Commissioners for St. Lucie County.

Commissioner, thank you so much for being with us.

What can you tell us about the five people, at least five, that were killed in your community?

CATHY TOWNSEND, COUNTY COMMISSIONER CHAIR ST. LUCIE COUNTY, FL: So it happened at North County in a park up there called Spanish Lakes, and they were making arrangements to evacuate, but this came quicker than we were thinking. We were prepared for about an eight o'clock landfall of the hurricane, and this came sooner when the hurricane or the tornado started coming through. So unfortunately, there were quite a few residents there that had not evacuated and gotten out yet. They were still in the process.

When it did touchdown, there were multiple, probably 50 percent of that park that had been devastated. We immediately went in under search and rescue, and we were opening up shelters and getting people to where they had to be, and we have confirmed five deaths, and there are four still currently in the hospital that we are aware of, and there were three from the Holiday Pines subdivision across the street, the three of those homeowners over there were also taken to the hospital.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Our hearts go out to not only those killed, but those that are now in the hospital trying to recover from this tornado. I'm wondering, Cathy, you mentioned the speed at which the hurricane made landfall is something that caught folks off guard. It certainly caught us off guard. We were bracing for landfall way later in the evening yesterday and it was approximately at late 8:40 PM that the hurricane touched down. Can you tell us what kind of preparations were underway? Were you aware that tornadoes could touch down as far as your county?

Because, obviously, if you're anticipating that the storm is going to make landfall out west, it's not totally clear that all the way across the state, some 200-ish miles away, you were going to see something like that.

TOWNSEND: So we were pretty much prepared for the hurricane. Most of the county had put up shutters. They had their hurricane supplies, and we were ready. And then about 4 o'clock, the first warning came through, and it actually happened in our west county, out by Emergency Operations Center. And it was tracked coming in from the south out of Wellington and Martin County area.

And then after that, it was multiple tornadoes that took place within the next 45 minutes. We know currently, to date, there was 12. We believe there was probably a few more than that. We're still trying to decide and count how many actually came through. It was unheard of. We've never had this happen.

[15:25:02]

And so, like I said, the people that were in mobile homes and people on the islands, they had made arrangements to evacuate. They were getting their things together. They were planning on being out of there by 6 o'clock, because we were all predicting an 8:00 - 8.30 landfall here of the hurricane and so, it did catch a lot of people off guard.

SANCHEZ: That is just heart-wrenching ...

TOWNSEND: We've never had this many ...

SANCHEZ: ... to think about those folks that were planning to leave.

TOWNSEND: It is, and ...

SANCHEZ: Is that right, Cathy?

TOWNSEND: It is and, unfortunately, there was, you know, there was animals involved in this, too. And there's ...

SANCHEZ: Yes.

TOWNSEND: ... you know, there's been - their lives taken as well as the animals. And then there were people that were being taken and relocated that didn't want to leave their animals there. So, we have a hurricane shelter that allows pets. So, we were trying to get them there, so that we didn't have to separate them, because they were already going through enough.

So, we're pretty much stabilized right now. The EMTs, and fire department and sheriffs are still over there. Of course, you know, the first tornado that came through and touched down - touched down at our sheriff's office on Midway Road, middle of our county. That was the first tornado.

SANCHEZ: Wow.

TOWNSEND: It took out the - a mechanic shop out back. And then from there, it just continued to head north. And then it just picked up on areas. And after that, like I said, there was a lot of more tornadoes behind that.

SANCHEZ: Cathy Townsend, we're so sorry for what your community is dealing with, but we're grateful for you bringing us this update. And if there's anything we can do to facilitate this, please let us know.

TOWNSEND: Just keep everybody in our prayers and your prayers, we appreciate it. Thank you for bringing awareness to the county and letting everybody pray for everybody here. Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Thank you so much, Cathy.

We want to go straight to Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, who is giving a briefing in Sarasota, not far from where the hurricane touched down. Let's listen.

GOV. RON DESANTIS, (R) FLORIDA: ... seven days a week. So, if you need help or you need some resources, like maybe helping hand with some things around your house or maybe some things with some supplies, you know, we've got all these organizations that come to help in the - subsequent to these storms. They're all plugged into Hope Florida.

So, you can call 1-833-GET-HOPE - 1-833-GET-HOPE and Activate Hope is the disaster arm for Hope Florida and that is up and running. We also have small business loans available. So, we have $50 million. It's interest-free, very forgiving payment options. So, if you need cash as a business, you can apply for up to $50,000. If you're agriculture and aquaculture, you have up to a hundred thousand. And if you're citrus and cattle, you have up to $150,000. So, please take advantage if you want. If you want to apply for that, you go to FloridaJobs.org/EBL.

We also are accepting donations for the Florida Disaster Fund. This is a charitable, tax-deductible donation, a hundred percent of the proceeds go to helping victims of both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. And so, if you want to do that, you can go to floridadisasterfund.org - floridadisasterfund.org.

I want to thank everybody who's worked really hard. We're still assessing the damage from this storm. I mean, I think clearly, just going around, that there was damage from it. I think in some areas ...

SANCHEZ: We've been listening to Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, giving us an update on the damage from Hurricane Milton. The Governor there offering help to residents of Florida, offering resources, as well as saying that the process of assessing damage is still underway. As we watch the death toll steadily climb from Hurricane Milton, it is now confirmed that nine people lost their lives as a result of this very powerful storm. We're going to continue digging for updates from the Sunshine State. We'll bring you the very latest as we get it. Stay with CNN.

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