Man clings onto cooler 30 miles from coast after Hurricane Milton dragged him out to sea

A Coast Guard helicopter crew rescued a man who was left clinging to an ice chest in the Gulf of Mexico after his fishing boat was stranded in waters roiled by Hurricane Milton.

The agency estimated the man had survived winds of 75 to 90mph and waves up to 25 feet high during his night on the water.

‘This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,’ Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Dana Grady said.

Despite the destruction, many people expressed relief that Milton was not worse. The hurricane spared Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialised.

Hurricane Milton has blown into the Atlantic, leaving a trail of death and destruction across Florida.

While residents grapple with the scale of the damage, Milton has been downgraded to a ‘hurricane-force extratropical low’ rather than a hurricane.

Roofs, walls, homes – they’re gone. Palmetto, a city of 13,000 people between Tampa and Sarasota, is just one of the places hit.

Across Florida, people are finding their homes stripped of shelter due to the wind and waters of Hurricane Milton.

There’s nothing now to keep out rain until repairs are complete.

Given the scale of the damage, people may be waiting weeks until they can return home.

It’ll take a whole new crane and several days to remove a crane that’s crashed through the roof and walls of the Tampa Bay Times building.

Repairs will take even longer.

Authorities in St Petersburg say they didn’t have time to take down the crane before Hurricane Milton arrived.

Boats are a strange sight on residential streets.

It’s not just sea-faring vessels washed ashore though.

The roads are full of small boats ferrying survivors to safety after they found themselves stranded in homes now submerged by water.

Roughly 430 people were rescued from an apartment building in Pinellas County, home to Clearwater and St Petersburg on the west bank of Tampa Bay.

‘Some of the water was as high as the second-floor balcony’, said County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri.

‘I was sure – and I’m glad I was wrong – that we were going to see some casualties out of that.’

Entire homes were washed away or dislodged from their foundations in the storm surge brought by Hurricane Milton.

Yachts have been left ashore after flooding receded, while trees have been bent where they stand by the force of the water.

President Joe Biden hit out at his election rival Donald Trump, accusing him of ‘reckless, irresponsible and relentless disinformation and outright lies’.

Trump claimed federal funds had been diverted from disaster relief to people who entered the country illegally.

A maximum of $750 – or £575 – is available for urgent requirements like food, nappies and baby formula.

But ‘it’s a lie to suggest that’s all they’re going to get’, Biden claimed, saying: ‘It’s just bizarre. They got to stop this.

‘They’re being so damn un-American with the way they’re talking about this stuff.’

He added: ‘Mr President Trump, former president Trump, get a life, man. Help these people.’

Flights were grounded and theme parks were locked down as Hurricane Milton approached Florida.

Now it has passed and the damage has been assessed, theme parks and airports are starting to reopen.

On Friday, Disney will reopen its four theme parks and shopping centre, and Universal Studios’ theme parks and attractions will resume ‘normal operation’.

Tampa Airport requires repairs but flights are due to resume at 8am on Friday.

It was like a scene from Titanic when a teen was pulled from the water in Tampa, Florida.

They were perched on a plank of wood mostly submerged in the murky floodwaters engulfing surrounding homes and cars.

No one else can be seen except the teen and two men, including a sheriff, who came to their rescue on a boat.

As they neared, the teen slipped into the water and swam towards them, chucking their shoes in the process.

The sheriff then pulled them aboard.

Sinkholes have appeared across Florida since Hurricane Milton made landfall.

‘Neighbours here were awaken by the sound of water crashing’, a FOX35 reporter Caroline Coles said at the site of sinkhole in Orange County, Florida.

A burst water main has been blamed for the damage to the road in the Chandler Estates neighbourhood of Apopka in the middle of the state.

It’s left the road impassable in the city home to 55,000 people.

Authorities turned off the water supply to prevent further damage.

‘It’s a little bit scary when you drive on that road every day’, one resident said.

A sinkhole also appeared on Highway 17-92 in Volusia County, on the east coast, where flooding occurred.

Four more deaths have been confirmed, three of them in Volusia County, home to the seaside resort of Daytona Beach and its barrier island.

One person died when a tree fell through the roof of their home during Hurricane Milton.

Rescue workers had to carry people through water when floods submerged homes in the county, while others evacuated on small boats.

A fifth death has also been confirmed in St Lucie County, where tornadoes ripped through a retirement village.

Eight of the 10 deaths so far have been on the east coast of Florida, where evacuation orders were not in place.

Barking emerged from the wreck of a mobile home on Thursday morning.

When residents and CBS News reporters sifted through the tangled mess of wood, they found a dog called Benji.

It had been missing since it fled the neighbouring home where its two owners died during a tornado on Wednesday night.

The death toll is likely to rise as rescue teams clear the rubble, but so far six people are confirmed to have died.

Four of them were killed by tornadoes tearing through a retirement community made of mobile homes in Florida.

At least 12 high-strength tornados hit the area around Spanish Lakes Country Club Village near Fort Piece in the space of 20 minutes.

CCTV footage shows entire branches being ripped from trees when one of the 27 tornadoes to hit St Lucie County touched ground.

It is on the opposite coast to where the storm made landfall hours later, so residents had not been ordered to evacuate.

Two people died in St Peterburg in the Tampa Bay area, one of which was a ‘medical’ incident’ while the other was ‘found in a park’, Chief of Police Anthony Holloway said.

The latest satellite images show Florida emerging from beneath the clouds of Hurricane Milton as it blows across the Atlantic, just north of The Bahamas.

It’s left towns and cities littered with toppled trees, dislodged roofs, shattered windows, furniture, and even entire homes washed away by storm surges.

Millions of people have been left without power, which will take weeks or months to restore in some places.

Bradenton Police Chief Melanie Bevan said the situation in her town is bleak.

She told BBC Radio: ‘What we’ll probably be finding in the morning are bodies.

‘I don’t think it’s going to be rescue once the storm subsides … it’s going to be recovery.’

‘It’s pretty ugly out there.’

American football fans in the UK might be disappointed to know the Jaguars have delayed their flight to London due to inclement weather.

A spokesman for the Florida-based NFL team said the Jaguars’ flight was ‘slightly’ delayed due to weather.

They’ll still face off against the Bears in London on Sunday.