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Hurricane Michael continued to hit the southeast, hitting states with heavy rains, wind and floods. Michael, the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the region, touched down Wednesday and continued to hit the north, wreaking havoc and causing emergencies as he moved into the region. The darkness concealed the full extent of the damage up to now. A second death, allegedly caused by debris in a mobile home and killed a child, was reported early Thursday.
Check out the latest news from Capital Weather Group here and follow the path of the storm here.
3:30 pm: Apple's CEO, from the Gulf Coast, pledges to help boost the economy.
On Wednesday night, Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, pledged for the company to contribute to recovery and relief efforts. "I grew up on the shores of the Gulf, near Pensacola and Mobile, and this region occupies a special place in my heart," he wrote on Twitter. "This has never been as true as today."
Cook grew up in Robertsdale, Alabama, a town of about 5,200 people located about halfway between Mobile and Pensacola, Florida. His father worked in the shipyards of Mobile and his mother in a pharmacy.
Although Cook described himself as "a proud son of the South," his relationship with the socially conservative community in which he grew up is complicated. When Cook became gay in 2014, Robertsdale Mayor Charles Murphy suggested that he should have kept his sexual orientation private. "Tim did a good job with Apple. We are very proud of the achievements he has made, "he told Reuters. "Sometimes people's personal lives must remain personal."
The Washington Post's Todd Frankel traveled to Robertsdale in 2016 and said that Cook's name was not on the city's welcome sign, on the booklets of the Chamber of Commerce or in his former high school. An ex-classmate hypothesized that the lack of recognition could be related to Cook's defense of gay rights.
–Antonia Farzan
02:00: Seminole County, Georgia officials confirm a second storm-related death.
Hurricane Michael's violent winds resulted in the death of an 11-year-old girl in Seminole County, Georgia, said Travis Brooks, director of EMA, at the Washington Post earlier. Thursday morning. The girl was in a retirement home in an unincorporated area of the county near Seminole Lake near the Florida-Georgia border. According to what officials have been able to determine, according to Brooks, it would appear that a metal carport used to store the boats was lifted into the air by gusts of wind and s & # 39; Is reversed. When he landed, his legs crashed against the roof of a nearby mobile home and hit the girl in the head.
"It looked like a war zone," Brooks said, adding that it had taken deputies from the Seminole County Sheriff's office virtually all day to get to the mobile home because of the "bad weather." state of the roads in the area. Death is the second known fatality related to Hurricane Michael, who has since been downgraded to a tropical storm.
–Antonia Farzan
13:30: Michael weakens under the effect of a tropical storm on south-central Georgia.
After crashing the Florida coast, Hurricane Michael was weakened when he crossed south-central Georgia on Wednesday night. By midnight, maximum winds had dropped to 70 mph, which had led forecasters to reclassify it to a tropical storm. Heavy rains should continue to wet Georgia until the early hours of the morning, with a threat of sudden floods during the night.
Meanwhile, Waffle House, located near the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee, was open at 12:28 pm, with waiting lines. FEMA officials used the Waffle House Index to measure the damage caused by the storm: as the restaurant chain is omnipresent in the south-east and rarely stops in extreme weather conditions, see Waffle House closed before a storm indicates becoming extremely bad. If the Waffle House has not reopened after the storm, FEMA believes this is a sign that the area has suffered considerable damage.
On Wednesday morning, a Waffle House spokeswoman announced the closure of 30 restaurants in Florida and Georgia in anticipation of Hurricane Michael, including along the Florida Panhandle, between Panama City and Destin. This was a clear warning that the storm had to be taken seriously.
–Antonia Farzan
10:35 pm: Stunning Florida visuals
Before the sun set and the sky turned blue at night, those in the path of Hurricane Michael shared a glimpse of what some described as the worst damage from a hurricane. "We are sort of crushed," Franklin County Sheriff J.J. Smith told the Washington Post. "It's horrible."
Here are three photos that capture the fear of such a storm.
A car caught in floodwaters in Panama City, Florida (Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post)
Jason Phipps examines his family's roofless apartment after Hurricane Michael made landfall in Panama City, Florida (Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post).
– Keith McMillan
10:05 PM Storm hunters say shocked by the damage
Images of destruction in Florida's coastal cities circulated widely Wednesday night, shocking, even storm hunters and seasoned observers. Smith, the sheriff of Franklin County, a coastal strip south of Tallahassee, told CNN that the county was almost isolated after most of the main roads had been rendered impassable by floods and logging. ; trees.
"It's bad," he said. "We went through hurricanes, but never where we were completely isolated."
Linda Albrecht, a counselor in Mexico Beach, told the network about leaving her house with only a few essentials.
"It sounds like a nightmare," she says. "Looking at the pictures, I think there's no more houses left in this city."
– Eli Rosenberg
8:16 pm: The local TV channel is eliminated but continues to report
The storm ended the broadcast of the Panama-based WMBB channel after the loss of power from the television channel, one of more than 263,000 customers in Florida out of memory. But that did not stop the journalists from publishing the report.
Journalist Peyton LoCicero went to Periscope, an app that allows people to stream an audience to an audience from a mobile phone, in order to provide updates on the storm. She spoke from the parking lot of a destroyed gas station in Walton County, tilting the camera to show the mess around her. The awning of the station crashed to the ground.
"I wanted you to know exactly what was going on," she said, referring to a curfew in nearby Bay County due to concerns about looting caused by blackouts.
More than 17,000 people listened to the show, including Senator Marco Rubio, who shared LoCicero's impromptu story on Twitter.
– Eli Rosenberg
19h55: First confirmed fatality of the storm
The Gadsden County Sheriff's Office said a man was found dead at his home in a small town near Tallahassee after a tree fell through the roof. Sgt. Angela Hightower did not identify the man, but stated that he had been found at his home in Greensboro around 6 pm.
– Eli Rosenberg
19:01: Storm begins to cross Georgia, sending tornado warnings in at least three counties
The eye of Hurricane Michael began crossing southwestern Georgia on Wednesday night – the first major hurricane to reach the state since the 19th century, according to local reports.
According to the National Weather Service, wind gusts of about 60 mph have been reported in towns near the Georgia-Alabama border. A dangerous storm surge continued along Florida's panhandle; a national ocean service station at Apalachicola reported 5 feet of water above the ground.
Tornado warnings were issued on Tuesday night in counties close to hurricane Georgia, after at least two people formed in Florida. Officials issued brief tornado warnings for Fulton, Douglas and Cobb counties. More than 40,000 people have lost power across the state.
– Eli Rosenberg
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