Emergency crews launched airboats into submerged streets on Wednesday to rescue central Florida residents trapped by rising floodwaters from a stalled Tropical Storm Fay, which soaked the state for a third consecutive day.
Fay formed over the weekend in the Atlantic and was blamed for 20 deaths in the Caribbean.
Fay skipped almost harmlessly over the island chain, but stalled over the peninsula on a second swing through Florida. There, it has done the most damage.
On Wednesday, officials reported flooding in hundreds of homes in Brevard and St. Lucie counties, some by up to 1.5m of standing water. In three towns, rising waters backed up sewage systems. It wasn’t immediately clear how many residents had been displaced or were stranded, but county officials reported making dozens of rescues.
The Florida National Guard mobilized about a dozen guardsmen and some high-water vehicles to assist with damage assessment and help with evacuations, spokesman for the Florida Department of Military Affairs John Myatt said.
By Wednesday evening, the storm’s center had moved over the Atlantic Ocean, and its winds were picking up speed.
Forecasters expected the storm to strengthen before turning back toward the mainland yesterday, when it will probably hit Florida for the third time this week. But National Hurricane Center meteorologist Corey Walton said it was unlikely the storm would gain enough energy over the water to reach hurricane strength.
Forecasters originally expected Fay to energize over the ocean and possibly become a hurricane before landing in Florida for the third time later this week.
Tom Christopher, St. Lucie County emergency management coordinator, said between 85 and 140 people were rescued by boat or high-clearance vehicles by Wednesday afternoon. He said no more were stranded, though other families seemed to be stuck without a way to leave.
At 11pm on Wednesday, the storm was just off Florida’s east coast, about 56km southeast of Daytona Beach. Its maximum sustained winds were 96.5kph, and it was expected to move slowly toward the northwest overnight.
Gill said hundreds of homes had been flooded, though a count was incomplete.
The rain was welcome in dry Florida and Georgia cropland, but could also hurt farmers’ production. Forecasters predicted parts of northern Florida could get 25cm to 38cm of rain, while southern Georgia could receive 7cm to 15cm.
Before moving east, the storm flooded streets in Naples, downed trees and cut power to some 95,000 homes and businesses. Tornadoes spawned by the storm damaged 51 homes in Brevard County, southeast of Orlando, including nine homes that were totaled. In the Keys, officials estimated 25,000 tourists evacuated.
DISPUTED WATERS: The Philippines accused China of building an artificial island on Sabina Shoal, while Beijing said Manila was trying to mislead the global community The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure Beijing does not carry out reclamation activities at Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Reef), its spokesperson said yesterday. The PCG on Saturday said it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship’s deployment in the middle of last month, the PCG said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped
Experts have long warned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) going rogue, but a new research paper suggests it is already happening. AI systems, designed to be honest, have developed a troubling skill for deception, from tricking human players in online games of world conquest to hiring humans to solve “prove-you’re-not-a-robot” tests, a team of researchers said in the journal Patterns on Friday. While such examples might appear trivial, the underlying issues they expose could soon carry serious real-world consequences, said first author Peter Park, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specializing in AI existential safety. “These
The most powerful solar storm in more than two decades struck Earth on Friday, triggering spectacular celestial light shows from Tasmania to the UK — and threatening possible disruptions to satellites and power grids as it persists into the weekend. The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun — came just after 4pm GMT, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. It was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged
Using virtual-reality (VR) headsets, students at a Hong Kong university travel to a pavilion above the clouds to watch an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated Albert Einstein explain game theory. The students are part of a course at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) that is testing the use of “AI lecturers” as the AI revolution hits campuses around the world. The mass availability of tools such as ChatGPT has sparked optimism about new leaps in productivity and teaching, but also fears over cheating, plagiarism and the replacement of human instructors. Pan Hui (許彬), a professor of computer science who is leading