FORT PIERCE/ST. PETERSBURG, Florida: F lorida on Friday was clearing downed trees and power lines and mopping up flooded neighborhoods after Hurricane Milton roared through leaving at least 16 people dead.
While Milton did not trigger the catastrophic surge of seawater that was feared in Florida, one of many states hit by Hurricane Helene about two weeks ago, the clean-up operation could take many weeks or months for some people.
“It opens your eyes to what Mother Nature can do,” said Chase Pierce, 25 of west St. Petersburg, who, with his girlfriend, saw transformers blow up, sparks fly and a power line fall in the back yard.
The fifth-most-intense Atlantic hurricane on record, Milton could cost insurers alone up to $100 billion, analysts say.
The White House pledged government support as the full extent of the damage was still being surveyed.
But Republican Donald Trump, who trails Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris according to recent Reuters/Ipsos polling ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election, attacked his opponents for their handling of storm recovery efforts.
“The federal government ... has not done what you are supposed to be doing, in particular, with respect to North Carolina,” he said on Thursday. North Carolina was hard-hit by Helene, and Trump faces a tight battle against Harris there.
Harris, who has said Trump is spreading lies about the government’s response, hit back at the politicization of the issue during a town hall event on Univision on Thursday.
“Sadly, we have seen over the last two weeks, since Hurricane Helene, and now in the immediate aftermath of Milton, where people are playing political games,” she said, without naming Trump.
Politicians of both stripes are deeply aware of how Republican President George W. Bush’s approval ratings fell after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 and never recovered from a response deemed inadequate by many at the time.
The Biden administration said the Federal Emergency Management Agency will need additional funding from Congress, where the Republicans control the House and Democrats control the Senate, and urged lawmakers, who are on recess, to act.
DEADLY TORNADOES
Floridians say they came through a double disaster.
While Milton came ashore on the state’s western coast on Wednesday evening, some of its worst havoc was wrought more than 100 miles (160 km) away along the state’s eastern shore.
There were at least 16 hurricane-related deaths, CBS News cited the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as saying.
In St. Lucie County, an advance flurry of tornadoes killed several people, including at least two in the senior-living Spanish Lakes communities, according to local officials.
Between Siesta Key and Fort Myers Beach, peak water levels reached 5 to 10 feet (1.5 to 3 m) above ground level, according a preliminary analysis posted by the National Hurricane Center.
Some 2.75 million homes and businesses in Florida overall were without power late on Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Some have been waiting days for power to be restored after Hurricane Helene hit the area.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis cautioned on Thursday that although the state had avoided the “worst-case scenario,” the damage was still significant.
Florida counts cost of Hurricane Milton amid political storm
https://arab.news/59f2a
Florida counts cost of Hurricane Milton amid political storm
- While Milton did not trigger the catastrophic surge of seawater that was feared in Florida, the clean-up operation could take many weeks or months for some people
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
