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1.4 million customers are still waiting to have their power turned on again in Florida. That represents significant progress, though, since more than 3 million lost power during Hurricane Milton. President Biden has signed a major disaster declaration for Florida, which allows FEMA aid to flow to people in 34 counties affected by the hurricane. NPR's Martin Kaste has been following recovery efforts in the Tampa Bay area.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Two full days after Milton, Floridians on Gulf Coast are getting a clearer picture of the damage. The most dramatic destruction is right on the coast around Sarasota, but more broadly around Tampa Bay, it's mostly shredded roofs and downed trees. The two most common problems are power outages and a shortage of gas. And those two problems are connected when gas stations don't have power to run their pumps.
JACK CABRERA: I've been here for an hour now.
KASTE: Jack Cabrera is near the head of a line of cars that stretches down the highway at one of the few functioning gas stations in the inland residential area just east of Tampa.
CABRERA: They said they got a shipment in at like 3 in the morning, and then everybody wakes up and they come here, so. There was someone that walked by earlier that said that they were going to start running out soon. I'm just going to see if I can get some, you know.
KASTE: Around the same time this morning, Governor Ron DeSantis was holding a press conference a few miles away in Plant City at one of the emergency fuel depots that the state has set up.
RON DESANTIS: These are free for people. You get - we're doing ten gallons a customer, so you go, you get it, and you could be on your way.
KASTE: Looking at the broader picture of where the damage is, DeSantis says the Tampa Bay region did not get the huge storm surge that some had feared.
DESANTIS: But what you ended up seeing is just massive - on the north side of the storm, huge amounts of water. You did have wind, of course. And so that created inland situations.
(SOUNDBITE OF FAN BLOWING)
KASTE: That's a fan boat from the sheriff's department patrolling Williams Boulevard in Lithia. It's one of the streets flooded by the Alafia River. Terry Rudd's house is on one of those streets. He says the house came through the storm OK - at first.
TERRY RUDD: So I came back home Thursday afternoon, you know, so I could get cleaning up and everything. And then my sister is coming home like 7:30, 8 o' clock at night. She's saying, you have to get out of there. The river is going - rising like crazy.
KASTE: So he evacuated his house again, this time fleeing the river, not the storm. Now Rudd and his extended family are back here in a parking lot on the edge of the flooded neighborhood. They're pumping up kayaks.
TIFFANY NAGY: OK, so what we're going to do is we got these blown up, and we're just going to get on them, and we're just going to go down, and we're going to see how far the water actually got up.
KASTE: Tiffany Nagy is one of his family members, and she says the house, which they haven't yet seen, has a lot of sentimental value for the whole family, especially those who are in the military.
NAGY: This is where we grew up when we were stationed everywhere. This is where we grew up. This is where we would come home to.
KASTE: And they launched their kayaks into the murky waters of Williams Boulevard to find out. She later texts that the water did get into the house's living room. But all in all, this kind of flooding has been limited to certain areas north and east of Tampa. For most people, the main concern is getting power back, cleaning up debris and dealing with some of the more Floridian side effects of a major storm.
CHRIS ERNST: That would be an alligator swimming around our retention pond. He's a good size.
KASTE: Chris Ernst lives just across the road from the flooded neighborhood. The houses here did not flood, but the rising river has pushed this kind of wildlife into their front yards.
ERNST: Because normally, we don't see them through here. In fact, earlier this year, this was completely almost dry.
KASTE: But just then, his daughter, who's come along to look at the alligator, shouts and points out a more welcome arrival - a couple of cherrypicker trucks, bringing the hope that their power will soon be turned back on. Martin Kaste, NPR News, Lithia, Florida. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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