A new hurricane heading toward Florida threatens to strengthen today, amid a dispute over federal aid for disaster victims following Hurricane Helene’s devastating pass through the southeastern United States a week ago. Milton, which is located in the Gulf of Mexico, is currently considered a Category 1 (out of 5) hurricane. It is forecast to become a “major hurricane” (category 3 and above) on Monday, before making landfall on Florida’s west coast mid-week, the US Hurricane Monitoring Agency (NHC) warned. The NHC forecast is causing concern in Florida and the rest of the American Southeast, much of which has been devastated by Helene’s passage. “Right now, we’re still cleaning up the damage caused by Helene,” the mayor of the coastal city of Tampa, Jane Castor, told CNN, adding that imagining rain from another storm was “hard enough, let alone the damage caused by storm and wind.”
Authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders for parts of Pasco County and Anna Maria Island, near Tampa, starting Monday, while a handful of other communities asked residents of certain types of buildings, such as care facilities in the long term, to evacuate. Faced with the threat posed by Milton, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis extended the state of emergency declared the previous day to several locations on Sunday: 51 out of 67 counties are now affected. Relief efforts are still underway to help the many victims of Hurricane Helene, the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Katrina in 2005. Helene, which became a Category 4 hurricane, killed at least 226 people in a half a dozen southeastern states, including at least 14 in Florida, and caused destructive flooding. By warming seas and oceans, climate change makes rapid intensification of storms more likely and increases the risk of hurricanes more powerful, according to scientists.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned in late May that this year’s hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November, is shaping up to be extraordinary, with the possibility of four -seven hurricanes of category 3 or more. “We are fully prepared” to deal with Hurricane Milton, said Deanne Criswell, Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), on Sunday, who wanted to reassure critics. «We started preparing for this several days ago. We will distribute resources to meet the needs” of the population, he said during an interview with ABC, adding that teams were already on site. On Sunday, President Joe Biden called on “all Florida residents to listen to local officials and prepare accordingly.” Reiterating his commitment to supporting the disaster-stricken Southeast regions “for as long as necessary,” he also announced in a press release the deployment of 500 additional troops to North Carolina, the state hardest hit by Hurricane Helene ( at least 118 deaths). In total, 1,500 soldiers were mobilized, in addition to thousands of first responders and members of the National Guard, a reserve force.
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