More than 100 seniors rescued from assisted living center amid Hurricane Milton flooding

More than 100 seniors were rescued Thursday from an assisted surviving facility successful Tampa aft Hurricane Milton flooded the area.

Emergency unit pulled 135 radical from Great American Assisted Living astatine Tampa, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said successful a Facebook post.

Videos showed water had inundated the installation and surrounding streets, with cars flooded and archetypal responders traveling by raft and airboat.

“This is bonzer to spot this benignant of flooding, particularly successful this benignant of area,” Sheriff Chad Chronister said successful the video. “The University of South Florida country is usually a adust area. To spot this unprecedented flooding, I tin lone ideate however scary it was.”

Emergency unit passim the portion worked overnight and into the greeting to respond to calls for assistance aft Milton made landfall astir 8:30 p.m. Wednesday adjacent Siesta Key successful Sarasota County.

At slightest 10 radical were killed, and millions passim the authorities remained without powerfulness connected Thursday morning.

“We don’t person confirmed reports of different fatalities passim the remainder of the state, but we whitethorn arsenic the time goes on,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said.

The politician compared the storm’s archetypal interaction to Hurricane Ian successful 2022 and Hurricane Irma successful 2017. Ian killed 150 radical successful Florida, portion Irma killed 84 people. Ahead of each 3 storms, millions of radical evacuated from unsafe areas.

Milton besides caused important harm to the state’s infrastructure and ripped parts of the extortion disconnected Tropicana Field, location of the Tampa Bay Rays.

By Thursday afternoon, Milton was already disconnected the seashore into the Atlantic Ocean and had been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone.

“On the forecast track, the halfway of Milton volition proceed to move distant from the eastbound seashore of Florida and walk northbound of the northwestern Bahamas this afternoon,” National Hurricane Center forecasters wrote.