Hurricane Idalia made landfall west of Florida and quickly moved north. After reaching Tier 4 on its way, it was downgraded to Tier 1 upon landing, which doesn't mean it stopped carrying a load of danger.
"The threat is real, we are very concerned about what might happen," stressed the mayor of Savannah, the monumental city of Georgia.
Although there was enormous fear, its impact seemed much less tragic than that of Irma last year. But, perhaps because of what was learned then, precautions were intensified in the face of a hurricane that was extremely dangerous due to the record high temperatures in the ocean in times of global warming caused by the hand of humans.
But despite its loss of power, the Idalia slammed into Florida with winds of 125 mph, which later dropped to 90 in the Big Bend area as the peninsula curves to meet the Panhandle, the westernmost territory, which had never experienced such a hurricane in more than a century.
Although there was not so much desolation, Deanne Criswell, head of FEMA (the federal emergency agency), made a plea to citizens: "Do not venture out of the house."
Cities to the south such as St. Petersburg and Clearwater, popular beach locations, were spared from the direct impact registered in nearby areas where destruction predominated – dismantled homes, broken or uprooted trees, overturned cars – and flooding of houses and roads due to the amount rainwater and sea level rise. There were highways that turned into rivers or lakes, impassable.
At least two deaths were attributed to this storm shortly after it broke out. The two deaths were registered in traffic accidents caused by the weather, the authorities confirmed.
Florida's problem became the same one that Georgia later faced, looming over both Carolinas, on tornado alerts. Despite the degradation, the National Hurricane Center insisted on the alert for the catastrophe due to these sustained winds and the rise in the tide.
"This is our concern, we are facing inland flooding of several kilometers," insisted Lt. Scott Tummond of the Levy County Sheriff's Office. Evacuation orders, at least partially, affected 30 of Florida's 67 counties. Some 260,000 users were without power supply in their homes.
Some areas suffered floods from 3.6 meters to almost 5 meters, with waves of devastating capacity, according to the aforementioned center. The emergency services had to carry out numerous rescue services of trapped people.
Once the worst was over, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the affected airports would reopen between Wednesday night and Thursday. More than 900 flights were affected in his state and in Georgia. The governor indicated that they were still assessing the damage. He qualified, however, that the National Guard had been deployed to search and rescue possible missing persons.
The rise of the Crystal River caused an area of houses of poor citizens to be completely flooded. The 911 emergency service was suffering from another flood, that of calls from people trapped in their homes by the flood.
The area of worst impact moved towards the south of Georgia, with winds of 136 kilometers per hour, and continued on its route towards Savannah. Governor Brian Kemp stressed the "strong impact" that the state could suffer. More than 70,000 people had already been left without electricity.
