Road to recovery Reeling Florida counts the cost of double hurricane strike

More than just clouds were swirling when a tropical disturbance that would become Hurricane Milton formed in the south-western Gulf of Mexico, beginning its inexorable advance towards a strike on Florida's west coast.

- Richard Luscombe

As its winds picked up, so did familiar feelings of anxiety and dread across a state still reeling from the impact of another monster storm, Hurricane Helene, barely a week earlier. Ultimately, the densely populated cities of Tampa and St Petersburg were spared the apocalyptic scenario some had forecast. But places elsewhere along the Gulf coast saw unprecedented levels of devastation.

Between them, the two deadly cyclones have so far cost about 250 people their lives, thousands more their homes, and left millions of Florida residents and businesses without power, many of them possibly for weeks to come. The double blow left Florida reeling, and there will be no quick recovery.

"Just when you started getting a little bit of normalcy after Helene, when things started to maybe stabilise, you turned around and had to deal with this other menacing storm, Hurricane Milton," Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, said last Friday at yet another of a succession of briefings he has conducted in the most affected areas.

"We did not get the worst-case scenario, but we did get hit, and we're going to have to work to bounce back."

DeSantis was talking about both the immediate response to the back-to-back disasters, and the longer-term recovery that Florida's experience as the nation's most vulnerable state to hurricanes has shown will be lengthy and costly.