Hurricane Michael: Storm veers offshore leaving devastation and desperate rescue efforts as death toll rises

At least 17 people have died in the wake of Hurricane Michael, one of the most intense storms ever to hit the United States mainland. As it moves offshore, Michael left behind scenes of mass devastation.

The death toll is expected to rise in the coming days, or even weeks, in the large swath of the American southeast where Michael’s winds and rains pushed storm surges up to 14 ft and tore homes and businesses to shreds. The deaths include at least five in Virginia and eight in Florida.

Michael may have left American shores, but Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator Brock Long says that he expects more bodies to be discovered as search and rescue efforts continue across Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Officials are also working to restore power and services to more than 1.4 million customers who have been left in the dark by the hurricane.

“We’re still in life-safety mode,” Mr Long told CBS News on Friday. “We’re not even close to having discussions on rebuilding yet.”

Hurricane Michael made landfall on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of up to 155 mph – just shy of the threshold to be considered a Category 5, the most intense designation.

In Mexico Beach and Panama Beach, Florida – communities felt the worst of the storm – entire neighbourhoods were levelled after the storm smashed through the area, leaving behind rubble and the occasional home or business that had somehow, improbably remained intact. But far inland from there, too, the storm topped walls and tore off roofs.

Search teams continue to pick their way through the ruins of Mexico Beach, a city of about 1,000 people - they uncovered the first body in the rubble on Friday.

State officials said that by one count, 285 people in the area defied mandatory evacuation orders and stayed behind. Whether any of them got out at some point was unclear.

State emergency officials said they have received thousands of calls asking about missing people, but confirmation of those missing has been hampered by a lack of mobile phone service.

Governor Rick Scott said state officials still “do not know enough” about the fate of those who stayed behind in the region.

“We are not completely done. We are still getting down there,” the governor added.

All told, 325,000 people were told to evacuate by local authorities as Michael approached, with six states declaring emergency declarations in anticipation of the storm. Of those told to evacuate, an estimated 6,000 people sought refuge in about 80 shelters that were opened up in the states in Michael’s direct path.

Emergency officials said they had done an initial “hasty search” of 80 per cent of the stricken area, looking for the living or the dead.

Workers have been mobilised from across the country as well, with 3,000 personnel from Fema deployed in the region, 30,000 workers mobilised from across the country to help restore power and 3,500 Florida National Guard troops activated to conduct mostly high water and search-and-rescue operations.

“We spent all night doing search and rescue, we’re going to spend all day doing search and rescue. We’ve got a massive flow of people going down to coast to try to be helpful,” Mr Scott, who suspended his campaign for Senate to deal with the storm, had told CNBC on Thursday.

“Right now I’m focused on search and rescue,” Mr Scott continued. “We’ll get to recovery, but right now I want everybody to be safe”.

Recovery could have a hefty price tag when all is said and done: Boston-based Karen Clark & Company, an insurance company that produces models for catastrophes, has estimated that Michael may cause $8bn in insured losses alone. That includes insured properties against wind and storm surge damage in residential, commercial, and industrial properties. Cars and other vehicles are also included in that figure, but it does not include losses covers by the National Flood Insurance Programme.

President Donald Trump is expected to make a trip to Florida to view the devastation, and has issued a state of disaster in Florida after Michael made its way through the area. He has said that he expects to make a trip sometime either on Sunday or Monday, and recognised that some areas may have particular challenges in front of them.

“Some of the areas are very poor,” Mr Trump said this week during a briefing with homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Mr Long. “It’s not easy for a person without the necessary money to leave.”

“This was a small storm they never thought would grow into a monster,” Mr Trump continued. “It’s almost the entire size of the Gulf [of Mexico]”.

Hurricane Michael was said to have been the most intense storm to hit Florida since at least 1992, when Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida’s southeastern coast as a Category 5 storm. That storm left around 127,000 homes damaged by winds, and was then the costliest natural disaster in US history with a cost estimated at $26.5bn.