Florida begins to assess damage after Hurricane Idalia: Live updates

Daniella Silva

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Workers were busy clearing mud and debris from streets and roads the morning after Idalia brought some of the highest tides on record to Charleston Harbor.

Dark brown mud, leaves, branches and sea shells coated some streets this morning around the Battery, where waters breached the wall and filled streets shin deep last night. Tiny crabs moved quickly on the walkway.

Alex Garcia, 55, shoveled swamp grass and downed branches from the streets around homes as Jesus Selvas, 47, cleared debris with a leaf blower near a downed metal construction fence.

“Truthfully, it’s impressive, everything that’s left,” Garcia said in Spanish. “There’s a lot of garbage to clean up. Lots of people are going to be busy today.”

Nearby, city workers removed a large log with a mini track loader and raked the streets.

While Charleston was largely spared the worst of the storm, officials were assessing any damage as people cleaned streets to return to normalcy.

“Everything was flooded here, all the streets and boardwalk,” Selvas said. “This is going to take days to clean. The dirt left behind is ugly.”

D.J. Hampton, president and CEO of Trident United Way, said the organization received almost 490 calls in the last 36 hours related to the storm, including people looking for shelter and food.

“We’re really grateful that we were spared the worst of the Idalia,” he said, but the organization was assessing community needs.

He said several staff members were “severely impacted“ by the storm after losing power and being near flooded roads.

“Today, locally is about assessing and cleanup that we need to do to support our own community after the storm,” he said, adding that advocacy groups were also now turning to how they could help neighboring states, such as Florida, where the storm brought destruction to coastal communities.

Marlene Lenthang

A person died in Lowndes County, Georgia, from a tree falling on a vehicle, James C. Stallings, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, said today.

“We do have one reported fatality in Lowndes County,” he said in a storm briefing. “Other than that, there are a lot of minor injuries that have occurred, storm-related injuries.”

The victim was not named and officials said their thoughts are with the victim’s families.

That brings Idalia's known death toll to three. Two people died in weather-related car accidents in Florida, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

Marlene Lenthang

The center of Tropical Storm Idalia is now moving east of the North Carolina coast, forecasters said in an 11 a.m. update.

Strong winds and storm surge are occurring in the eastern part of the state, and an earlier tropical storm warning has been discontinued west of Cape Fear.

Idalia is now located about 85 miles southeast of Cape Lookout, traveling east at 20 mph with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph.

As Idalia swirls into the Atlantic, its effects will still be felt in North Carolina where moderate river flooding, strong winds and coastal flooding will continue today.

Molly Roecker

President Joe Biden called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this morning, saying he signed a major disaster declaration and ordered all available federal resources to aid with Idalia response efforts.

“The president reiterated that the people of Florida have his full support as they recover from the storm,” the White House reported in a statement.

NBC News

Marlene Lenthang

Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a hurricane briefing this morning that 40 rescues were reported last night, with 29 done by the state’s National Guard.

Several agencies are assisting with medical evacuations and conducting welfare checks as locals emerge after bunkering down amid Idalia.

The state is prioritizing clearing roads and restoring power as about 146,000 remain in the dark, DeSantis said. State officials said in the briefing that every available lineman is working on restoring power, especially in the hard-hit Big Bend area.

The governor praised local officials and residents for heeding evacuation warnings.

"I think citizens responded very appropriately and then to be here where you have a storm hitting at close to 130 mph, just under a Cat 4, and not, as of now, have any reported fatalities, is probably something that most people would not have bet on four or five days ago knowing how strong the storm was going to get," DeSantis said.

Erin McGarry

Rain and gusty winds are battering parts of the North Carolina coast, with Idalia expected to move offshore today.

The system will maintain tropical storm strength through the day before gradually weakening tomorrow and Saturday.

For now, rain bands and gusty winds are battering the coast from Wilmington up to Norfolk, with flash flooding, urban flooding and river flooding all possible.

Marlene Lenthang

President Joe Biden approved South Carolina’s emergency declaration today and ordered federal assistance to aid in Idalia response efforts.

The action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts in the state.

Marlene Lenthang

Tropical Storm Idalia will move offshore of North Carolina today, and on its way out it's dumping heavy rain in the eastern part of the state, forecasters said.

Idalia was about 65 miles southeast of Wilmington in North Carolina around 8 a.m. ET, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph, the National Hurricane Center said in an update.

The National Weather Service office in Raleigh earlier warned that isolated flash flooding was possible over the eastern Sandhills and the coastal plain, as well as gusty winds of 35-40 mph over the Sandhills this morning.

"In the forecast track, the center of Idalia will move just offshore of the coast of North Carolina today. Idalia will then move eastward over the western Atlantic into the weekend," the weather service said in an 8 a.m. ET update.

Marlene Lenthang

As Idalia continues to make its way across the Southeast, two other named storms are churning in the Atlantic Ocean as well.

Hurricane Franklin, located about 200 miles north-northeast of Bermuda, is moving further away from the island and is causing dangerous surf and rip current conditions along the Eastern Seaboard, with its maximum sustained winds of 100 mph.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Jose formed overnight and is located about 800 miles east-southeast of Bermuda, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, moving north at 5 mph.

Chantal Da Silva

More than 300,000 utility customers across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas continued to be without power early this morning amid Idalia's devastation.

More than 149,000 customers were still without power in Florida around 7:30 a.m. ET, while more than 109,000 were affected by outages in Georgia, according to Poweroutage.us.

In South Carolina, power was out for more than 25,000 utility customers, while more than 29,000 were impacted in North Carolina.

Efforts to restore power have been underway, with some of the tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Florida already reconnected after Idalia made landfall in the Big Bend region.

Patrick Smith

Flooding and heavy rainfall continue to cause life-threatening conditions in parts of eastern North Carolina, the National Hurricane Center has warned.

"A Storm Surge Watch means there is a possibility of life-threatening inundation, from rising water moving inland from the coastline in the indicated locations," it said in a 5 a.m. ET update.

A tropical storm warning is in effect, from the South Santee River to the Virginia border, as well as Pamlico and Albemarle sounds, and a storm surge warning covers coastal communities, including Beaufort and Ocracoke inlets.

The storm is expected to move east beyond the North Carolina coast at some point today — but tropical storm winds at its center could still reach 185 mph. Tornadoes are also possible in the area, the hurricane center said.

Patrick Smith

Some of the thousands of households without power as a result of Idalia have been reconnected.

In Florida 143,000 customers remain without power, compared to some 150,000 late yesterday, according to the tracking website Poweroutage.us as of 4 a.m. ET today.

In Georgia 118,000 customers are without power, a reduction from 149,000 overnight.

More than 50,000 customers are without power in the Carolinas, according to Poweroutage.us.

A pickup truck sits halfway into a canal in Horseshoe Beach, Fla., after the passage of Hurricane Idalia yesterday.

Tom Llamas

PERRY, Florida — Many homes here didn't stand a chance.

Devastating winds and a storm surge combined to make Idalia the strongest weather event to hit the Big Bend in more than a century, with some communities completely cut off.

One family in Perry survived massive trees crushing their home. Summer, holding her baby, Amelia, while sheltering in her car, said: "It was kind of terrifying, honestly."

Her husband, Brandon, heard a tree snap and jumped on top of his family to protect them. "It was what anyone would do," he said.

The Associated Press

Officials in Bermuda warned that Idalia could hit the island early next week as a tropical storm.

Bermuda was being lashed today by the outer bands of Hurricane Franklin, a Category 2 storm that was on track to pass near the island in the North Atlantic.

Phil Helsel

A photo from the South Carolina coastal community of McClellanville showed roads the fire district estimated to be flooded 2-3 feet.

The photo was shared on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, by the Awendaw-McClellanville Fire District, which estimated the depth. Answering the National Weather Service in Charleston, the fire district said the flooding was believed to be from storm surge.

Chantal Da Silva

Tropical Storm Idalia was about 20 miles southwest of Myrtle Beach, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph around 2 a.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center said in an update.

The storm continued to move northeast at 21 mph, it said.

Claire Cardona

Tampa International Airport announced it intends to resume its full operations at 3 a.m. today.

It reopened to arriving flights yesterday afternoon after Idalia had moved away from the area.

Though the airport had some flooding, there was no serious storm damage, it said.

Normal operations are also expected to resume today at Tallahassee International Airport.

Phil Helsel

Idalia remained a tropical storm late last night and was producing “very heavy rain” in South Carolina, the National Hurricane Center said in an update.

The center of the storm was around 15 miles north-northwest of Charleston at 11 p.m., the agency said. It had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph.

Some storm surge warnings were discontinued, but a storm surge warning remained for a stretch of the South Carolina coast from the Savannah River to the South Santee River, which includes Charleston.

The storm is expected to move offshore sometime today, according to the hurricane center.

Antonio Planas

Satellite images illustrate the damage in Florida’s Big Bend where Hurricane Idalia made landfall.

The Category 3 storm made landfall near Keaton Beach with sustained wind speeds topping 125 mph just before 8 a.m. yesterday.

Idalia flooded streets, downed power lines, snapped trees, destroyed homes and brought activity to a halt for a time yesterday.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

Florida had feared the worst while still recovering from last year’s Hurricane Ian, which hit the heavily populated Fort Myers area, killing 149 people in the state. Unlike that storm, Idalia blew into a very lightly inhabited area known as Florida’s “nature coast,” one of the state’s most rural regions, which lies far from crowded metropolises or busy tourist areas and features millions of acres of undeveloped land.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t do major damage. Rushing water covered streets near the coast and unmoored small boats, and nearly a half-million customers in Florida and Georgia lost power.

In Perry, the wind blew out store windows, tore siding off buildings and overturned a gas station canopy. Heavy rains partly flooded Interstate 275 in Tampa, and wind toppled power lines onto the northbound side of Interstate 75 just south of Valdosta, Georgia.

Less than 20 miles south of where Idalia made landfall, businesses, boat docks and homes in Steinhatchee, Florida, were swallowed up by water surging in from Deadman’s Bay. Police officers blocked traffic into the coastal community of more than 500 residents known for fishing and foresting industries.