Fema officials say they expect fatality count to climb as rescuers focus efforts in cities along the Florida Panhandle

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The death toll from Hurricane Michael’s rampage across the south-eastern United States rose to at least 18 as rescue crews spread out across the devastated Florida Panhandle in search of more victims.

Hurricane Michael: scenes of destruction reveal scope of storm's force Read more

Fears were growing for an untold number of people who defied orders to evacuate before the monster storm slammed into the coast on Wednesday with 155mph winds and obliterated several waterfront communities.

There is no cellphone signal or power in many of the worst-affected areas and officials believe residents still unaccounted for could be trapped in wreckage in cut-off areas. Searchers found one person dead in the rubble of Mexico Beach, said Joseph Zahralban, Miami’s fire chief. Three additional deaths were reported in Marianna, in Jackson county, Florida, Sheriff Lou Roberts told a news conference on Friday afternoon.

“I expect the fatality count to climb today and tomorrow,” Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), told CNN. “Hopefully it doesn’t rise dramatically but it does remain a possibility.”

Five deaths were confirmed overnight in Virginia, adding to four reported from Florida and one each in North Carolina and Georgia, where an 11-year-old girl was killed when a carport ripped off by the wind crashed into her home. North Carolina authorities later said a car smashed into a tree felled by Hurricane Michael, killing two more people.

Donald Trump announced plans to visit two of the storm-ravaged states in a lunchtime tweet. “People have no idea how hard Hurricane Michael has hit the great state of Georgia. I will be visiting both Florida and Georgia early next week. We are working very hard on every area and every state that was hit – we are with you!” the president wrote.

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Rescuers were focusing on a number of cities along the Panhandle that were swamped by Michael’s six to 14ft storm surge then battered by catastrophic winds only 2mph short of maximum category 5 status. From Panama City Beach to Apalachicola 60 miles to the east, the storm reduced thousands of houses, mobile homes and other buildings to matchwood.

Helicopter footage showed only small handfuls of structures still standing in Mexico Beach, where Michael made landfall. Roads were blocked and across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia more than 1.5 million remained without power, according to poweroutage.us.

Florida’s governor, Rick Scott urged anyone in need of assistance to sit tight. “The Florida national guard is working its way into the most impacted areas,” he said in a tweet. “They’re coming with 13 helicopters, 16 boats and 1,000 high-water vehicles. Help is on the way.”

Florida emergency officials say they have rescued nearly 200 people and checked 25,000 structures since Hurricane Michael battered the state this week.

In a briefing at the state emergency operations center in Tallahassee on Friday evening, authorities said they had wrapped up their initial rapid searches and had begun more-intense searches including inspecting collapsed buildings.

Mark Bowen, head of emergency management for Bay county, said restoring critical services was a question of starting again. “Everything that people depend on for their daily lives has not just been disrupted, it’s been absolutely destroyed,” he told CNN.

Bowen said he believed tens of thousands of residents had not evacuated. “I do expect we are going to find that kind of bad news,” he said.

Federal rescue and relief workers were arriving in the region following Trump’s disaster declaration, using dogs, drones and GPS devices to locate and reach survivors.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Panama City, Florida, on 11 October. Michael was the third strongest storm on record to hit the continental United States. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

“We prepare for the worst and hope for the best. This is obviously the worst,” said Stephanie Palmer, a Fema firefighter and rescuer from Coral Springs, Florida.

Many of the injured were taken to hard-hit Panama City, 20 miles (32km) north-west of Mexico Beach. Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center treated some but the hospital evacuated 130 patients as it ran on generators, after the storm knocked out power, ripped off part of its roof and smashed windows, according to a spokesman for the hospital’s owner, HCA Healthcare.

Much of downtown Port St Joe, 12 miles east of Mexico Beach, was flooded after Michael snapped boats in two and hurled a large ship on to the shore, residents said.

“We had houses that were on one side of the street and now they’re on the other,” said Mayor Bo Patterson, who watched trees fly by his window as he rode out the storm in his home seven blocks from the beach. Patterson estimated 1,000 homes were completely or partially destroyed in the town of 3,500 people.

In Apalachicola, about 30 miles east of where the storm made landfall, a little less than half of the 2,200 people stayed and rode out the storm, residents said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this craziness,” said Tamara’s Cafe owner Danny Itzkovitz, 54, as he was busy grilling burgers. “We’ve had storms before – in ’05 we had four or five in a row. I didn’t even take the boards off my window. But, holy smokes, this one kicked our butt.”

With a low barometric pressure recorded at 919 millibars, a measure of a hurricane’s force, Michael was the third-strongest storm to hit the continental US, behind only Hurricane Camille on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969 and the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 in the Florida Keys.

Hurricane Michael: everything you need to know on the record-breaking storm Read more

Emergency services carried out dozens of rescues of people caught in swiftly moving floodwaters in North Carolina on Thursday. The number of people in emergency shelters was expected to swell to 20,000 across five states by Friday, said Brad Kieserman of the American Red Cross.

Brad Rippey, a meteorologist for the US agriculture department, said Michael severely damaged cotton, timber, pecan and peanut crops, causing estimated liabilities as high as $1.9bn and affecting up to 3.7m crop acres (1.5m hectares).

Michael also disrupted energy operations in the Gulf of Mexico as it approached land, cutting crude oil production by more than 40% and natural gas output by nearly a third as offshore platforms were evacuated.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting