American authorities on Tuesday increased calls to evacuate before the arrival of Miltonan “extremely dangerous” hurricane which is due to make landfall during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, and which could be “the worst storm” to hit this peninsula “in a century”, according to Joe Biden.
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“The entire Florida peninsula is under some form of watch or alert,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned that Milton was an “extremely dangerous hurricane”, category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale – after being classified as a category 4 earlier in the day.
Milton could be “the worst storm in Florida in a century,” Joe Biden said on Tuesday, on the sidelines of a meeting with his advisers at the White House to take stock of preparations.
“You must evacuate now, it’s a matter of life and death,” the American president also told residents of the third most populous state in the United States.
His vice-president Kamala Harris followed suit by asking residents to “take local officials seriously”.
“Floridians, you are tenacious people who have suffered a lot, but this is going to be different,” warned the Democratic candidate in the November 5 presidential election on ABC.
A sign of the seriousness of the situation, the White House announced that Joe Biden had decided not to go as planned at the end of the week to Germany and then to Angola.
“Mortal danger”
The hurricane, which is moving from southwest to northeast in the Gulf of Mexico, is expected to make landfall in Florida overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.
Before that, “devastating waves” and a “life-threatening storm” are expected Tuesday along the northern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the NHC warned.
Climate change makes rapid intensification of storms more likely and increases the risk of more powerful hurricanes by warming sea and ocean waters, scientists say.
Temperatures in the North Atlantic have been continuously evolving for more than a year at record levels of heat, according to data from the American Meteorological Observatory (NOAA).
“I can say this without any dramatization: if you choose to stay in one of the evacuation zones, you will die,” Jane Castor, the mayor of the large city of Tampa, Florida, said on CNN on Monday.
According to weather expert Michael Lowry, “if the worst forecasts materialize for the Tampa Bay region, coastal flooding caused by Milton could be double those observed two weeks ago Helene“.
“Milton strengthened on Monday at a breakneck pace”, one of the “fastest ever observed in the Atlantic basin”, he added.
Generators, food, water and tarps are being distributed across Florida and many residents plan to leave.
“Irresponsibility”
In Tampa, dozens of cars line up to collect sandbags to try to protect their homes from expected flooding.
Chicago resident John Gomez decided to come to Tampa to watch over his vacation home during the hurricane.
“If I’m in Chicago and something happens, there’s nothing I can do,” the septuagenarian who came to collect sand told AFP.
In line, Luis Santiago says he fears that “everything will be flooded”.
His house is located near the coast, in an evacuation zone decreed by the authorities, and this 43-year-old man wants to protect it before heading inland to escape danger.
The southeastern United States is only just recovering fromHelenea devastating hurricane that caused widespread flooding and damage in half a dozen states, killing at least 234 people.
In the middle of the presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump was quick to accuse the federal state, led by Democrats, of having done too little, too late, to provide assistance to the victims ofHelene.
The Republican had notably accused the Democrats of having “stolen money” from the federal natural disaster response agency (Fema), “in order to be able to give it to their illegal immigrants”.
Her rival in the November 5 election, Kamala Harris, castigated these statements on Tuesday. “This is the height of irresponsibility and frankly insensitivity,” the vice-president said on ABC.
She had already accused the ex-president of “playing political games” around the hurricane Helene.
