Hurricane Milton caused estimated $50bn of damage: Biden

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden said Hurricane Milton caused an estimated $50 billion in damage as it slammed into Florida, triggering flooding and destruction, and killing at least 16 people.

“Experts estimate... that it caused damages of around $50 billion,” Biden told reporters after a hurricane response briefing at the White House.

Nearly 2.5 million households and businesses were still without power, and some areas in the path cut through the Sunshine State by the monster storm from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean remained flooded.

Milton crashed into the Gulf Coast late on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, smashing communities still reeling from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, which killed 237 people across the US southeast, including in Florida.

On Siesta Key, a beautiful barrier island near Sarasota where the storm made landfall, Milton left a desolate landscape.

Some streets were still flooded on Friday. Fallen trees and debris -- sofas, beds, chairs and appliances, much of it left behind by Helene -- were strewn haphazardly on roadsides.

Resident Mark Horner, who moved there six years ago, said while his house was largely spared, the island “got hit really hard” and people were reassessing the future.

But the 67-year-old sounded a note of optimism, telling AFP: “Our paradise will come back. It´s just a little shocking to absorb it.”

Tornadoes, not floodwaters, were behind many of the storm´s deaths.

In Fort Pierce, on Florida´s Atlantic coast, four people died in a tornado spawned by Milton.

“They did find some people just outside dead, in a tree,” 70-year-old resident Susan Stepp told AFP. “I wish they would have evacuated.”