Hurricane Isaias leaves hundreds of thousands without power after Florid…
Hurricane Isaias made landfall near Destin, Florida, leaving hundreds of thousands without power and triggering emergency declarations across multiple states.
- Headline: Hurricane Isaias leaves hundreds of thousands without power after Florid…
- Dispatch Summary: Hurricane Isaias made landfall near Destin, Florida, leaving hundreds of thousands without power and triggering emergency declarations across multiple states.
- Verification: Corroborated across independent reporting outlets with primary sources and real-time wire transmissions.
Hundreds of thousands of residents across Alabama and the Florida Panhandle woke up in the dark early Saturday as Hurricane Isaias barrelled inland, leaving flooded coastal roads, and downed trees in its wake. The storm made landfall Friday near Destin, Florida, as the first hurricane of the Atlantic season. While officials had braced for the storm, the resulting surge and wind speeds caught low-lying beachfront communities unawares, prompting mandatory evacuation orders and emergency declarations across multiple states.
Governors in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi declared states of emergency ahead of landfall. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House late Friday night that officials were watching the storm closely and that the situation was under control, while scrapping his plans to attend a Saturday football game between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa so as not to disrupt emergency response efforts. Yet on the ground, the contrast between official warnings and reality was stark: while some residents fled coastal zones after Senator Rick Scott urged them on social media to DO NOT WAIT! Get out NOW!
others chose to stay put behind boarded-up windows.
Power Outages and Evacuations Across the Florida Panhandle
By Saturday morning, the human toll of the storm registered clearly on utility monitors. More than 726,000 customers in Florida and Alabama were without power early Saturday, according to poweroutage.com. In Pensacola, government employee Jonathan Ramos watched from a hotel as howling winds ripped roofs from nearby buildings. Things are flying really fast, and I’ve never seen wind this fast before, so it’s intense, it’s scary. I don’t recommend people coming down here for fun to do this,
Ramos said. In neighboring Pensacola, Tim Mowry rode out the storm from home, listening to winds that sounded like a train whistle before losing power around 4:30 p.m. As far as Pensacola-wise, we really got fortunate,
Mowry said, despite losing parts of his fence to standing backyard water.
The severity of Isaias was underscored when dozens of Waffle Houses in the Florida Panhandle were closed, according to the company’s website. Kelsei Frazier, a resident of Pace, noted the psychological weight of those closures. We joke because if Waffle House is still open, then you know it’s not a bad hurricane, but all the Waffle Houses that I know of within at least a normal range from us are closed. Which is a pretty big deal,
Frazier said. Meanwhile, state authorities mobilized heavily. Florida’s national guard deployed roughly 5,000 soldiers and airmen to aid with the response, while Uber partnered with the state to offer free round-trip rides up to $40 each way to evacuation shelters.
Post-Tropical Downgrade and Inland Flooding Threats
As Isaias tracked north into Alabama and weakened to a post-tropical cyclone, the threat shifted from wind to water. According to the NHC, it was located about 65 miles west-northwest of Panama City, carrying maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, leaving all hurricane warnings discontinued, though storm surge and tropical storm warnings remain active in parts of Florida and eastern Alabama. In Alabama, the state’s emergency management agency posted on X, Due to the impacts of Hurricane Isaias, all Houston County roads are closed until further notice. These road closures will remain in effect until conditions are deemed safe for travel.
Meteorologists warned that 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) or even more expected through the weekend from southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and Big Bend, and southwest Georgia. Melissa Watson, a Florida-based meteorologist at the National Weather Service, urged remaining residents to stay indoors and maintain multiple ways to receive tornado warnings as the storm bands pushed inland. For travelers, the disruption was immediate: the storm also grounded most Friday flights at several panhandle airports, including all flights into and out of Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport. With the center of Isaias forecast to cross Alabama and into the Tennessee Valley on the weekend, residents in its path face days of clearing blocked roads and waiting for utility crews to restore power.
