Hurricane Milton live updates: storm still producing hurricane-force winds as it moves off Florida’s east coast

Fatalities have been reported on Florida’s east coast, after a tornado ripped through a retirement community in St Lucie county.

One eyewitness, Doug Anderson, told local newspaper TCPalm that “I saw a truck knocked sideways. I followed the wreckage into Spanish Lakes. It looked like someone had dropped a weight from the sky and flattened a bunch of houses. One of the last houses I went to looked like it had been ripped in half. The people were out front crying. It was very heartbreaking to watch.”

Anderson, a Lakewood Park resident, told the paper he spent about five hours on the scene trying to help, and witnessed numerous people with injuries.

St Lucie county sheriff Keith Peterson earlier said of the location “Our deputies are out here. The Fire District is out here. We’re going through the rubble. We’re trying to recover anybody that we can, provide whatever help that we can.”

Speaking to ABC News, meteorologist Kevin Musso has described the impact of Hurricane Milton compared to the forecast as a “mixed bag”. He said forecasts about the strength of the hurricane when it made landfall, and the location of the landfall, were “pretty good”, but that there is more that needs to be assessed.

He told viewers “the question about the storm surge will really have to wait to be verified once we get to sunrise, get past these evening hours, and get into daylight.”

Musso also said that the number of tornadoes associated with the hurricane had “exceeded expectations”. “Tornadoes happen,” he said, “but these were exceptional.”

Here is some CCTV footage of CCTV showing Hurricane Milton flooding in a Fort Myers restaurant.

The US National Hurricane Center reports that Hurricane Milton has completed its transit of Florida, and has moved off the state’s east coast. However, the center warns that it is still producing “hurricane force winds and heavy rainfall in east-central Florida”.

In an earlier update the center said Milton still had a consistent wind speed of 85 mph (140 kph). About 3 million customers in Florida have been left without power, and there are reports of fatalities as rescue and recovery operations get under way.

Milton earlier made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, swerving south and missing a direct hit on Tampa in Hillsborough County.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office has said “post-storm recovery efforts have begun”. Danny Alvarez, the public information officer for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, earlier said it had been difficult for crews receiving 911 calls but unable to deploy while winds were consistently about 40 mph.

St Petersburg residents could no longer get water from their household taps because a water main break led the city to shut down service, and a construction crane collapsed, falling into a building in the city. Streets in downtown Gulfport were under water.

About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane even made landfall, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management said, while authorities in St Lucie County said there had been more than one fatality.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office has posted to Facebook that it is beginning recovery efforts. It said:

Post-storm recovery efforts have begun in some parts of our county. Please stay home, as we have received reports of downed trees and flooded streets. Your safety is our priority.

The number of customers without power in Florida has passed 3 million.

It has just gone 4am in Florida, and the latest update from the National Hurricane Center reports that Hurricane Milton is moving north-east at 18mph with sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph).

Here is a video clip of a crane collapse in Florida caused by Hurricane Milton.

Bill Litton, the emergency management director for Osceola County, south of Orlando, has said over 1,400 people were in shelters in the county as of early Thursday morning, the New York Times reports.

Max Chesnes, reporting for the Tampa Bay Times from downtown Gulfport in Florida, states that “There are a few flooded streets in the city under less than a foot of water,” noting that is “far from what the worst case forecasts called for.”

However, in a sign of how Florida has been hit by two hurricanes in the space of a few days, he posted a picture of debris that had not been cleared from the impact of Hurricane Helene now being soaked in the floodwaters from Hurricane Milton.

The NWS National Hurricane Center in Miami has issued an update on Hurricane Milton, which it says now has maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph), and is 30 miles (45 km) off Orlando and 20 miles (30 km) off Cape Canaveral.

WINK News meteorologist Matt Devitt has described one of the effects of Hurricane Milton being the “worst tornado outbreak I’ve seen in Southwest Florida in a long time,” adding “there was “horrible damage and devastation from outer bands ahead of Milton.”

Witnesses have told CNN that a crane collapsing in St Petersburg due to Hurricane Milton sounded like “a mix of thunder booming, and the metal screeching sound of a train wreck.”

Resident Makenna Caskey told the news network it came down and hit a building opposite her apartment, and she said it felt like “a massive rumbling tremor that shook our whole building.”

The Tampa Bay Times reported that the crane collapsed near its own office in St Petersburg and that there was “a strong smell of gasoline in the air and the faint sound of alarms ring out.”