Florida Panhandle flies after Hurricane Michael's deadly attack

Beyond lives and homes, the storm has taken over hubs, like two oaks long used as a meeting and discussion place in Greensboro, a small town in Gadsden County, Florida. By the end of the storm, they had fallen to the ground.

One of the four dead in Gadsden County was a Greensboro man who had a heart attack on Thursday morning. The rescuers, confronted with a pile of debris, could not reach it immediately, but their neighbors and other people rushed inside with chainsaws and tractors, dismissing them. branches of trees to make their way.

"This city was destroyed in less than 24 hours, but it took us 12 hours to bounce back stronger than ever," said local firefighter Jay Stiles. "Citizens came together."

Reaching Greensboro was difficult because Interstate 10 was closed in many places, blocked by debris. Crossing the Panhandle was difficult everywhere.

In Carrabelle, on the coast, even two National Guard trucks had to turn around when they came across a barricade of fallen trees and ruined buildings. Just before this impasse, which made communities like Apalachicola and Eastpoint inaccessible from one direction, the storm had dug a road as if an earthquake had also struck.

In front of a quilting paper mill in Springfield, 70-year-old Michael Williams stood shirtless in his yard with a sign saying "HELP." No matter what. Food. Water."

Williams, who is disabled, said he thought the storm was coming and going quickly. He had not stocked up on supplies for himself, an 8-year-old boy and an autistic woman he cares for. A tangle of fallen trees had blocked his truck. He was stuck, he said, and desperate. Someone had given him cans of ravioli and he had said that he had made a campfire to warm him to the outdoors.

Regarding the sign, he said, "I saw people on the road doing that and now I understand why they do it."

The effects of the storm hit the panhandle. In the city of Marianna, more than 60 kilometers northeast of Panama City, roofs were torn down, pines collapsed and piles of brick and debris scattered in the downtown streets.

"All power lines are down and there are trees everywhere," said Leroy E. Wilson, Jr., who drove from his home outside Marianna to Dothan, Ala. "It's the worst storm we've had in this area. It was really bad.

David Bishop, who went to town on Thursday to check on his parents, said chain saws were "the flagship product here."

Florida suffered the greatest damage, but Georgia also suffered significant damage, including Michael suffered after being weakened by a hurricane category 3, with winds of at least 111 km / h.

Although southwestern Georgia is sparsely populated, state officials reported at least one death, an 11-year-old girl whose home was hit by a flying carport, and said that The storm had devastated the farmland that feeds the economy of rural Georgia.

"Our worst dreams are coming to fruition," said Gary W. Black, state commissioner for agriculture, who had seen images of cotton harvested by a farmer on Wednesday, before the hurricane struck. Georgia.

"This morning, you can not say where he stopped the harvest and where the rest was harvested by the storm," Black said.

President Trump, speaking to the White House about the growing devastation in the south of the country, said the country had "not witnessed such destruction for a long time".

But this week, after winds of 155 km / h, much of the city was in ruins. There were few residents and fewer tourists.

Mr. Bailey, the former mayor, and his wife had weathered the storm under his house in a kind of hold that he had built. The house itself was left largely roofless and uninhabitable. On Thursday, he was riding a bicycle, trying to collect the pieces in his mind.

"What I see is absolutely stupid and ridiculous," he said. "The houses that have been here forever have gone away."

Authorities did not allow visitors to go to town because the roads were barely passable, but convoys of military trucks and Humvees were moving there, while search and rescue teams were wearing safety helmets, even though there were often no doors. search for survivors and bodies.

By late morning, two New Orleans firefighters could be seen searching the second floor of an elevated house whose face had been torn by the wind. From ground level, rescuers looked like dolls in a dollhouse.

They finally got off, hatchets in hand, and spray painted a well-known "X" symbol of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina's horror. The firefighter wrote in painting the name of the research team, the date on which the place was raided and the number of bodies inside. In this case, the firefighter painted a big zero.

Then it was a pass to the next house. They took care not to even enter the houses that leaned to one side. There was neither gas nor electricity. Whistling house alarms were constantly chirping like electric cicadas.

The New Orleans rescue team said it had not found any bodies by Thursday noon, but that searches take time. Rescue teams usually delineate the areas in which they are assigned, and teams march from block to block, announcing their presence by screaming to see if anyone meets the rubble. To save time, rescuers do not approach each home and instead look for signs that someone could have stayed home during the storm – a car in a driveway, a generator running – and decide to get closer or not.

The few people who were in the area said they knew it was the first phase of a recovery that would take years.

Nate Odum, 53, the owner of the heavily damaged local marina, said some people may have been scared enough to leave permanently. But he was confident that Mexico Beach would come back. If he was cursed to be in a hurricane zone, he was also blessed.

There were a lot of rich fishermen in the southeast, he said, and they would be drawn here as long as there were dolphins, wahoo and fin tuna to catch.

"We are the porch of some of the best fishermen in the Gulf," he said. "You just have to take it from day to day."