Michael death toll rises to 17, one body found

Searchers on Friday found the first body in the rubble of the Florida coastal town of Mexico Beach, which was nearly obliterated by Hurricane Michael, as the toll from the historic storm rose to at least 17 and was expected to rise.

Rescue teams, hampered by power and phone outages, used cadaver dogs, drones and heavy equipment to search for hundreds of people unaccounted for in devastated communities across the Florida Panhandle.

"I've watched on television, thinking of what others have experienced, like in the Carolinas and Texas," Mexico Beach Mayor Al Cathey told reporters referring to hurricanes this year and last. "But it's different when you walk down and see this, and your emotions run away. This is just a small unique coastal community."

No other information was available about the deceased man found in Mexico Beach, said Joseph Zahralban, Miami's fire chief and the task force leader of a search and rescue unit. He said it was unclear if the man was living alone or with a family.

Three deaths were reported in Marianna, in Jackson County, Florida, Sheriff Lou Roberts told a news conference on Friday afternoon.

The dead include at least eight people in Florida, five in Virginia, three in North Carolina and one in Georgia.

The number of fatalities is expected to rise as rescuers go door to door and comb through the rubble in Mexico Beach and other Florida coastal communities such as Port St. Joe and Panama City, said Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The Houston-based volunteer search-and-rescue network CrowdSource Rescue said its teams were trying to find some 2,500 people who were either reported missing or were stranded and in need of help in Florida, co-founder Matthew Marchetti said.

Social media websites were filled with messages from people trying to reach missing family members in Florida's Bay and Gulf Counties.

Marchetti said his volunteer search teams, consisting mostly of off-duty police officers and firefighters, also had rescued or accounted for 345 others previously reported to CrowdSource Rescue since Michael struck on Wednesday.

Dogs and bulldozers 

FEMA crews have been using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to push a path through debris to allow rescuers to probe the rubble with specially trained search dogs.

More than 1,700 search and rescue workers have been deployed, Governor Rick Scott's office said in a statement, including seven swift-water rescue teams and nearly 300 ambulances.

Michael crashed ashore near Mexico Beach on Wednesday afternoon as one of the most powerful storms in US history, with winds of up to 155 miles per hour (250 km per hour). It pushed a wall of seawater inland, causing widespread flooding.

The storm, which in less than two days grew from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, tore apart entire neighborhoods in the Panhandle, reducing homes to naked concrete foundations or piles of wood and siding.

Except for the emergency-911 system, authorities in Bay County, the epicenter of the disaster, were virtually without telephone or internet service until late in the day on Friday, making communications internally and with the public difficult.

"We didn't have anything," said Ruth Corley, a spokeswoman for the Bay County Sheriff's Department. "We've been writing things down on pieces of paper. We're doing what we can with the minimal media that we have."

She said local television stations were knocked off the air for two days, and authorities were relying on the Gulf State College radio station to broadcast public service bulletins. Search teams were going door-to-door looking for victims.

(Source: Reuters)

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