TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – In Tallahassee, more than 200,000 people are directly in Hurricane Helene’s path, causing many residents in Leon and Levy counties to evacuate.
As Hurricane Helene barrels toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, rain is pouring down and waves are crashing in anticipation of the storm’s arrival.
Millions of people across the state are under mandatory evacuation orders, with the impact of the storm expected to stretch across several states.
Deanne Criswell, an administrator with FEMA, urged Florida residents and visitors to stay informed.
“I need everybody to pay attention to their local officials; they are going to have the best information on the specific risks where you are,” Criswell said.
The massive storm, with its eye clearly visible from satellite images, strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday night. The Big Bend region of Florida could see a storm surge of up to 20 feet, posing a significant threat to coastal communities.
Phil Prescott, a resident of Cedar Key, noted that many locals have heeded the evacuation warnings.
“The fear factor is pretty significant. So the good news is more people than ever have left,” Prescott said.
Already, tens of thousands of customers have lost electricity, with utility crews working around the clock to restore power.
Torrential rains and strong winds from Helene have already pummeled Naples overnight, leaving streets underwater. Similar scenes are unfolding in St. Petersburg, while in Tampa, waves from the bay are crashing onto roadways. Traffic cameras in the area captured violent shaking as the city braces for a storm surge of up to 8 feet.
“I got a bad feeling about this one. We’ve never taken that direct hit,” Tallahassee resident Chris Osmar said.
“We will have countless downed trees, we will have structural damage, we will have loss of power,” Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey said. “Yes, if our community remains central in Helene’s path as forecasted, we will see unprecedented damage like nothing we have ever experienced before as a community.”
“Being on the water, this is a different ballgame, obviously, because you don’t know with the storm surge what you’re going to come back to, what you’re going to lose,” resident Jon Turner added.
Local 10′s Christian De La Rosa was in Apalachicola Thursday morning as the waters were rising.
The area was getting a break around noon, but earlier in the morning the outer bands of Hurricane Helene were bringing heavy winds and rain to the area, flooding nearly every street.
In downtown Cedar Key, a town right on the Gulf Coast, residents are packing up and boarding up storefronts, trying to save whatever they can from imminent damage.
“It’s a lot and quite frankly, I’ve been in Florida my whole life -- rarely am I nervous about a hurricane. I’m nervous,” Michael Holley, of Cedar Pizza & Subs, said.
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