(VOR News) – Tropical storm Milton, which is now off the coast of Mexico, has the potential to quickly strengthen into a powerful hurricane before making landfall on the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast in the middle of the week, according to a warning sent out on Sunday to residents of Florida.

They were warned that by the middle of the week, the tropical cyclone would potentially reach landfall.

Extreme severity of tropical weather Early on Sunday morning, the National Hurricane core in Miami stated that Hurricane Milton’s core was roughly 860 miles (1,385 kilometers) west-southwest of Tampa, Florida. This data was provided by the National Hurricane Center.

With a maximum sustained wind speed of sixty miles per hour (95 kilometers per hour), it was moving eastward at five miles per hour.

Despite his slow progress, Milton’s center is expecting big things.

The possibility that a powerful hurricane posing a threat to human life would make landfall along Florida’s west coast early this week is beginning to edge upward. It is expected that the hurricane will continue to move eastward.

In preparation for the storm’s possible impact along Florida’s coast, Governor Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency in 35 counties throughout the state.

DeSantis asked the Florida Division of Emergency Management and the Florida Department of Transportation to make sure that all personnel and resources are coordinated to support local governments in their efforts to speed the debris removal process.

Since that many of those counties are still recovering from Hurricane Helene, this request was made with special regard for the unique situation.The Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, the Florida Peninsula, the Florida Keys, and the northwest Bahamas are warned to keep a careful eye on the system’s development, per the hurricane center.

A significant amount of rain is predicted for Sunday, before the storm. It is possible that this precipitation, along with the present rainfall Milton is experiencing, would cause streets and canals across the state of Florida to flood.

Forecasters said this rainfall was expected to happen on Sunday. As much as thirty centimeters, or one foot, of rain was predicted for certain areas on Wednesday night, according to weather projections.

There is an increasing chance that parts of the Florida Peninsula’s western coast might be vulnerable to potentially fatal storm surge and wind impacts starting late on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Tropical storms are more likely to occur as the sun rises.

“It is imperative that residents of these regions make certain that they have their hurricane plan in place, that they adhere to any advice that is provided by local officials, and that they check back for updates to the forecast,” the center said in a press release.

Emergency personnel in the Southeast of the United States have not given up searching for those who have not been located in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which left a catastrophic trail of damage extending from Florida to the Appalachian Mountains. There has been a long-term search. As a consequence, there is now more activity during the Atlantic hurricane season.

There is an increasing chance that parts of the Florida Peninsula’s western coast might be vulnerable to potentially fatal storm surge and wind impacts starting late on Tuesday or Wednesday. The more the sun rises, the more likely it is that this will happen.

“It is imperative that residents of these regions make certain that they have their hurricane plan in place, that they adhere to any advice that is provided by local officials, and that they check back for updates to the Storm forecast,” the center said in a press release.

Following Hurricane Helene, which left a deadly trail of destruction spanning from Florida to the Appalachian Mountains, rescue workers in the Southeast Storm of the United States have not given up looking for people who have not been found.

The search has been going on for a while. The amount of activity that occurs during the Atlantic hurricane season has increased as a result.

SOURCE: AP

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(VOR News) – Sarah Jacques struggled to adjust to a small Alabama city in the southernmost Haitian Appalachian mountain range from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

The 22-year-old adjusted to quiet after a year. Jacques worked at a car seat manufacturing, founded a Creole-language church, and liked Albertville’s safety after her country’s political unrest.

Jacques said additional hurdles have arisen after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate made false claims about Haitian immigration in Springfield, Ohio, creating crime and “eating pets.”

“People would wave at us, say hello, when I first arrived, but now it’s not the same,” Jacques said in Creole via a translator. “People see you and seem either quiet or scared.” In this hostile context, nonpartisan Alabama religious leaders, law enforcement, and citizens took Springfield’s outcomes as a warning. Little US towns are welcoming Haitians.

Haitian migrants supported President Joe Biden’s 2023 proposal to admit 30,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelans every month for two years and allow work. The Biden administration may let 300,000 Haitians stay until February 2026.

In 2023, Alabama had 2,370 Haitians. As of now, there are unknown numbers in Alabama.

The immigration debate is ancient, says Albertville mayor’s executive assistant Robin Lathan. Immigration has increased for over 30 years. The city doesn’t track Haitian migration, but Lathan said “it seems there has been an increase over the last year, in particular.”

Last year, 34% of Albertville’s 5,800 students learned English as a second language, up from 17% in 2017. An August Facebook post of people getting off a bus to work at a poultry company aroused fears that it was hiring illegal immigrants, weeks before Springfield made national headlines.

The chicken producer told The Associated Press that all its workers may lawfully work in the U.S. At a public meeting, some neighbors asked about the federal program that allows Haitians to work in Alabama legally, while others called for landlords to “cut off the housing” and said the migrants have a “smell to them,” according to audio recordings

These remarks touched Albertville community organizer Unique Dunson, 27. “Every time Albertville gets a new influx of non-white people, there seems to be a problem,” Dunson said.

Dunson community store distributes gifts. With national tensions rising, she put English, Spanish, and Creole “welcome neighbor glad you came” billboards throughout town.

Dunston said the billboards “push back” against migrant hate. John Pierre-Charles said he knew Albertville Haitians only from relatives. Within 14 years, his Creole-language church Eglise Porte Etroite went from seven members in 2010 to 300. He’s adding English, drivers’, and podcast studios to the church for growth.

Pierre-Charles deems the past few months “the worst period” for Albertville’s Haitians.

“I can see some people in Albertville who are really scared right now because they don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Pierre-Charles. Some fear Haiti deportation. People fear not knowing others’ emotions.

After August public meetings, Pierre-Charles wrote to city officials requesting more housing and food to help his growing community adapt economically and culturally.

“That’s what I’m trying to do, to be a bridge,” Pierre-Charles said. He cooperated. Gerilynn Hanson, 54, hosted the first session to answer Albertville residents’ valid migration questions in August. Hanson is going to “focus on the human level.”

In September, Hanson, an electrical contractor and Trump supporter, created a foundation with Pierre-Charles and other Haitian community leaders to address the demand for permanent housing and English language instruction.

“We can look at (Springfield) and become them in a year,” Hanson said of the city’s hate and threats. “We can watch without acting. We could make everyone productive and talkative.”

Even places with less than 0.5% Haitian population have state event issues.

Sylacauga residents question Haitian immigrants in public forum footage. Only 60 Haitian migrants dwell in the 12,000-person town southeast of Birmingham, officials say.

Open Door Baptist Church in Enterprise, Alabama, discussed Enterprise’s growing Haitian community in September. Many cars are parked there. After the accident, Ma-Chis Lower Creek Indian Tribe chairman James Wright sympathized with the Haitians departing but worried migrants would affect Enterprise’s “political culture” and “community values.”

Other guests called Haitian immigration “lawless” and “dangerous.” To calm migratory anxieties, some arrived. Chief Michael Moore says Haitians haven’t increased enterprise crime.

“I think there were quite a few people there that were more concerned about fearmongering than the migrants,” Moore told AP.

Moore said his department encountered Haitian migrants in unlawful dwellings but rectified the issue by engaging them. Since then, his department hasn’t received reliable migrant crime complaints.

Moore said, “I completely understand that some people don’t like what I say because it doesn’t fit their own personal thought process.” “But those are facts.”

SOURCE: AP

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Homeowners Hit By Hurricane Helene Face The Grim Task Of Rebuilding Without Flood Insurance

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A week after Hurricane Helene devastated the Southeastern United States, residents in the hardest damaged areas are wondering how they will pay for the water damage caused by one of the deadliest storms to hit the mainland in recent history.

The Category 4 storm that hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on September 26 has dropped trillions of gallons of water across numerous states, leaving a devastation trail that stretches hundreds of miles inland. According to the National Hurricane Center, more than 200 people have died in what is now the deadliest hurricane to strike the continental United States since Katrina.

Western North Carolina and the Asheville area were particularly heavily struck, with water destroying buildings, roads, utilities, and property in ways that no one expected, let alone prepared for. Inland areas in Georgia and Tennessee were also flooded out.

The Oak Forest neighborhood in south Asheville stands up to its name, with trees towering over 1960s ranch-style houses on spacious lots. But on September 27, as Helene’s leftovers passed across western North Carolina, many of those trees fell, occasionally hitting houses.

Julianne Johnson said she was walking upstairs from the basement to help her 5-year-old son pick out clothes when her husband started yelling about a massive tree falling crosswise across the yard. The tree mostly avoided the house, although it did crush a portion of a metal porch and damage the roof. Then, Johnson claimed, her basement flooded.

Homeowners Hit By Hurricane Helene Face The Grim Task Of Rebuilding Without Flood Insurance

On Friday, a blue tarp was secured to the roof with a brick. The sodden carpet that the family had taken out sat on the side of the house, awaiting disposal. Johnson stated that she was unable to file a house insurance claim until four days after the storm due to a lack of cell phone connection and internet.

“It took me a while to make that call,” she explained. “I don’t have an adjuster yet.”

Roof and tree damage are typically covered by the average house insurance policy. Johnson, like many homes, does not have flood insurance, and she is unsure how she would pay for that portion of the damage.

Those recovering from the storm may be startled to hear that water damage is a separate issue. Insurance professionals and experts have long warned that home insurance often does not cover flood damage to a home, even though flooding can occur anyplace it rains. Flooding is caused by more than just seawater seeping into the land; it also includes water from banks, mudflows, and excessive rainfall.

However, most private insurance firms do not offer flood insurance, making the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program the principal supplier of coverage for residential homes. Congress established the government flood insurance program more than 50 years ago after many private insurers discontinued issuing policies in high-risk areas.

According to FEMA’s most recent data, North Carolina has 129,933 such policies in place, however, the majority of that protection will likely be located on the coast rather than in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Helene inflicted the most damage. In comparison, Florida has over 1.7 million flood policies in place across the state.

Charlotte Hicks, a flood insurance expert in North Carolina who has led flood risk training and educational outreach for the state’s Department of Insurance, believes that many Helene survivors will never be fully compensated. Without flood insurance, some people may be able to rebuild with the assistance of charitable organizations, but the majority would be left to fend for themselves.

“There will absolutely be people who will be financially devasted by this event,” Hicks said to the audience. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Some may face foreclosure or bankruptcy. Entire neighborhoods will most likely never be restored. According to Hicks, there has been widespread water damage, and for others, mudslides have even stolen the land where their house once stood.

Meanwhile, Helene is proving to be a more manageable disaster for the private home insurance market, as those policies typically only cover wind damage from storms.

This is a relief for the sector, which has been under increasing pressure from other worsening climate disasters like wildfires and tornadoes. Nowhere is the declining private market due to climate instability more visible than in Florida, where many companies have already stopped offering coverage, leaving the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corporation as the state’s largest insurer.

According to Mark Friedlander, a representative for the Insurance Information Institute, Helene is a “very manageable loss event,” with insurer losses estimated to be between $5 billion and $8 billion. This is in comparison to the insured losses from Category 4 Hurricane Ian in September 2022, which were anticipated to cost more than $50 billion.

According to Friedlander and other experts, less than 1% of the inland communities that saw the most catastrophic flood devastation have flood insurance coverage.

“This is very common in inland communities across the country,” Friedlander explained. “Lack of flood insurance is a major insurance gap in the U.S., as only about 6% of homeowners carry the coverage, mostly in coastal counties.”

Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, said the photos of flood destruction in North Carolina horrified her, despite decades of witnessing the difficult recovery journeys of natural disaster survivors.

“This is a significant situation in terms of people being disappointed. They will be disappointed in their insurers as well as FEMA,” Bach stated. “FEMA cannot match the kind of dollars private insurers are supposed to be contributing to the recovery.”

Homeowners Hit By Hurricane Helene Face The Grim Task Of Rebuilding Without Flood Insurance

This Monday, FEMA said that it could handle Helene’s urgent needs, but warned that it does not have enough resources to last through the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, despite the fact that most hurricanes occur in September and October.

Even if a homeowner has it, FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program only provides up to $250,000 for single-family houses and $100,000 for possessions.

Bach stated that in addition to homeowners educating themselves on what their policies cover and do not cover, the solution is a national catastrophe insurance program that functions similarly to the Affordable Care Act for health insurance.

Following Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the state of North Carolina began requiring insurance agents to take a flood insurance class so that they could appropriately advise their clients on the risk and available policies, according to Hicks. The state also requires home insurance policies to clearly mention that they do not cover floods.

“You can’t stop nature from doing what nature is going to do,” Hicks pointed out. “To believe that things will never be this awful again is a hazardous assumption. Many people underestimate their risk of flooding.

SOURCE | AP