Tom Garcia surveyed the damage to an apartment block on the coast road in Mexico Beach, Florida, pacing along in his walker through the debris on Friday. He said he hadn’t heard from his daughter and 90-year-old mother since Wednesday morning, when Hurricane Michael tore the small Gulf Coast community in the Florida Panhandle.
Search and rescue teams from south Florida combed through dozens of destroyed buildings, some knocked by the massive sea swells clean off their foundations, some obliterated altogether.
Mexico Beach described by its mayor, Al Cathey is a quiet “cozy, family oriented town,” which he added ” hardly exists” anymore. No one in the town has cell phone service, phone service or internet.
Local 86-year-old man Bill Shockey stayed at his house when the storm hit and the hurricane swells crashed water 1500 feet inland, flooding his enitre house.
Hector Morales, a cook at a local restaurant, pointed to a boat tethered to a palm tree in front of a neighbor’s house, by his old mobile home. Morales squeezed out the door in flood water and swam with a dog to the boat and held on for dear life.
Search-and-rescue teams found at least one body in Mexico Beach, the ground-zero town nearly obliterated by Hurricane Michael, an official said Friday as the scale of the storm’s fury became ever clearer.
The death toll across the South stood at 13, not counting any victims in Mexico Beach. Search-and-rescue teams found one body in Mexico Beach, the ground-zero town nearly obliterated by Hurricane Michael, an official said Friday as the scale of the storm’s fury became ever clearer.
