Recovery efforts stretched across the Southeast on Monday after Hurricane Isaias tore through the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 storm, leaving at least four people dead, hundreds of thousands without electricity and floodwaters rising in the North Carolina mountains.
Isaias made landfall near Destin, Florida, late Friday with 105-mph winds. Two deaths were confirmed in Florida’s Escambia County — a woman killed when a tree fell on her home, and a man who died of carbon monoxide poisoning after running a generator inside his garage; four family members, ages 4 to 72, were hospitalized. In Alabama, a falling tree crushed a home in Birmingham’s Huffman area and a driver died in a crash involving a downed tree in Barbour County, according to state emergency officials.
Power crews race the clock
Nearly 900,000 customers lost power at the storm’s peak across Florida, Alabama and Georgia, and hundreds of thousands remained without electricity into the weekend as utility crews worked through downed lines and debris. Florida deployed nearly 400 State Guard personnel for route clearance and damage assessment, and Governor Ron DeSantis said about 16,000 linemen had been staged ahead of landfall. As the storm’s remnants pushed northeast, heavy rain triggered flooding and landslides in North Carolina on Sunday, with flood watches extending into the Mid-Atlantic, according to Weather.com’s storm coverage.
The long tail of the storm
Relief groups including Convoy of Hope began distributing supplies to the hardest-hit communities, while forecasters warned of lingering flash-flood and tornado risks. The storm tore the roof off a Pensacola hotel, destroyed a Destin boathouse and ripped away part of a Panama City Beach high-rise facade. For Gulf Coast residents the cleanup is only beginning — and officials are urging anyone running a generator to keep it far from the home, after carbon monoxide claimed yet another post-storm life.
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