Hurricane Idalia slammed into Florida’s Big Bend region on Wednesday, an “extremely dangerous” category three storm that has forced millions of people to evacuate or move to shelters.
Idalia gained strength as it moved through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and produced damaging winds and torrential rain.
The police authorities announced that two people lost their lives in two accidents caused as a result of extreme weather conditions.
In an accident, in the Pasko area, a 40-year-old man lost his life after losing control of the vehicle and crashing into a tree.
While a 59 year old, in the Alachua area. He died after crashing into trees as a result of extreme rains.
At 7:45 a.m. local time in Florida, the hurricane hit the coast of Keaton, in the Taylor area of the city of Tallahassee, with 13,000 inhabitants. The city lies in the center of the Big Bend region.
Most of Florida’s 21 million residents, and many in the neighboring states of Georgia and South Carolina, were under hurricane warnings and received other storm-related notices. A state of emergency has been declared in all three states.
In the early hours of Wednesday, the authorities said that the storm went to category three, then four. But then the storm’s strength weakened, falling back to category three.
Idalia downgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane early Tuesday, a day after it passed west of Cuba, where it damaged homes, caused power outages, flooded villages and prompted mass evacuations.
It was the fourth major hurricane to hit Florida in the past seven years, following Hurricanes Irma in 2017, Michael in 2018 and Ian, which peaked at Category 5 last September./VOA
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