Hurricane Milton leaves four dead in eastern Florida

At least four people have died, including one person in a mobile home community, after Hurricane Milton lashed the US state of Florida.

Officials from St Lucie County, on the east coast, said the deaths were the result of at least two tornadoes that hit the area before Milton itself arrived late on Wednesday.

More than three million homes and businesses across Florida have been left without power as a result of the storm, according to state Governor Ron DeSantis, and buildings including a top baseball stadium have been damaged.

Some areas on the west coast saw 18in (45cm) of rain. DeSantis said flooding remained possible in the coming days.

Nonetheless, what Florida experienced was “not the worst-case scenario”, DeSantis said. He added that some 80,000 people stayed in shelters overnight.

Ahead of the hurricane’s arrival, there were warnings that the Tampa Bay area, on the west coast, could experience record storm surges of about 10-15ft (3-4.5m).

In her own briefing on Thursday morning, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor voiced relief that her city had not seen the type of storm surge that was feared.

Elsewhere in the state, surges were still several feet high – meaning that a wall of seawater was driven onshore by hurricane-force winds.

Castor said the situation was “not over” in her densely populated city. “When high tide comes in, rivers are going to flood all over Hillsborough County, not just in the city of Tampa,” Jane Castor said.

Castor and other officials have spent days urging people in Milton’s path to flee their homes or risk death. Evacuations were ordered up and down the west coast as forecasters spoke of a once-in-1,000-year amount of rainfall for some areas.

Milton eventually made landfall as a category three storm on Wednesday evening local time, bringing 124mph (200km/h) winds. Earlier in its life, it was categorised more than once as a category five hurricane – which denotes the most powerful type of storm.

It was preceded by several tornadoes, which can sometimes accompany a hurricane.

Twelve of these tore through St Lucie County, police told a CBS-affiliated news station. “This is like nothing we’ve seen,” a sheriff said.

The four deaths in the county included at least one at the Spanish Lakes Country Club Village near Fort Pierce.

In the west of the state, the water supply has been cut in coastal St Petersburg, after officials were forced to shut down the system due to hurricane damage.

Officials say the shutdown is expected to last “until the necessary repairs can be completed” and this can only be done when it is safe for crews to be outside.

Elsewhere in the city, parts of the roof of a Major League Baseball stadium belonging to the Tampa Bay Rays were ripped off.

Meanwhile, a crane crashed into the Tampa Bay Times newspaper building, but the publication itself wrote that nobody was inside at the time.

In Tampa itself, police said they had rescued 15 people – including some children – from a local house after a tree crashed onto it.

One of those who found themselves waiting for power to be restored was Chynna Perkins, who told the BBC she had chosen not to evacuate, partly out of fear that she and her husband would not find accommodation suitable for their two large dogs.

She said her anxiety was “through the roof” as the storm hit, but they weathered it.

As well as the 3.4 million knocked off the power grid in Florida, there were thousands of others in Georgia and nearby North Carolina, which experienced the outer edges of the storm.

The arrival of Milton comes two weeks after the south-eastern US was pummelled by Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people and left many more missing. Clean-up operations are ongoing.

Hurricane Milton is now heading eastwards towards the Atlantic.