‘Planet Earth is really messed up right now’: Floridians struggle after 2 major hurricanes

More than two million Floridians are still without power after Hurricane Milton tore through the state. The storm has been tied to at least 10 deaths and state officials say more than 1,600 individuals were saved by search and rescue teams. As many have returned home to assess the damage, William Brangham reports on what life is like for those who faced a one-two punch from both Milton and Helene.
Amna Nawaz:
Welcome to the “News Hour.”
More than two million Floridians still have no power tonight after Hurricane Milton tore through the state, while many others have returned home to assess the damage.
Geoff Bennett:
The storm has been tied to at least 10 deaths. State officials say more than 1,600 people were saved by search-and-rescue teams.
William Brangham reports on what life now looks like in communities that have faced a one-two punch from both Milton and Hurricane Helene.
William Brangham:
Matthew King and his family are deciding which of their precious memories to keep and which have to be thrown away. Nearly everything from their grandmother’s home in Bradenton, Florida is molding, soaked by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago and then pounded by Hurricane Milton two days ago.
King was here with his dad and grandmother. The night Helene rolled in.
Matthew King, Florida Resident:
We weren’t sure if it was going to, like, drown us or not. So we had to start packing our bags up on the beds, tables, whatever was a high point in the house, and then get suitcases ready. And by the time we were ready to get out, the water was already coming through the doors.
It was coming through the walls. It was starting to flood the living room and all that. Yes.
William Brangham:
That must have been terrifying.
Matthew King:
For sure. But everybody made it out. We got the dogs. We got the people. Anything else can be replaced.
William Brangham:
They started cleaning up, but then Milton hit, raining tree branches onto the house and backyard. They now have to decide if this is a home they can save or even a region they want to stay in.
Matthew King:
Like, if this is just a one-time thing, yes, I’d say it’s worth it. But these storms are getting worse every year. It’s not like it was before, where we get a bad storm every 10 years and it would never hit us directly.
William Brangham:
The Kings are like thousands of other families across the state, just starting the long road to recovery and unsure of the future.
Thousands of National Guard troops have been deployed to address infrastructure damage, including to many roads and drinking water systems. Multiple gas stations also remain closed, and the overall cleanup is expected to take weeks, perhaps months.
Today, President Biden said he will visit Florida this weekend and that he will press Congress for more funding, given that this disaster may cost at least $50 billion.
Joe Biden, President of the United States: Everyone in the impacted areas should know we’re going to do everything we can to let you — help you pick back up the pieces and get back to where you were.
William Brangham:
In Lakeland, residents of the Buccaneer Bay mobile home community can’t start picking up those pieces, not until they get rid of all the floodwater.
Resident Laura Montgomery has lived here for seven years, but this storm might be the end for her.
Laura Montgomery, Florida Resident:
I’m done. I’m done with hurricanes. We’re going to move out of state.
William Brangham:
Is that right?
Laura Montgomery:
Yes. We’re going to see what FEMA will give us, because these trailers are so old, we can’t even get homeowner’s insurance on them.
William Brangham:
Oh, so you have no insurance at all?
Laura Montgomery:
No, no insurance.
William Brangham:
Right behind her, Ken Murray was rowing his 80-year-old mother to safety. They have lived here for six years. Her health isn’t great, and even as the water rose up in their trailer on the night of Milton, she did not want to leave.
The next day, Murray finally persuaded her.
Ken Murray, Florida Resident:
She didn’t want to.
William Brangham:
And it’s hard to push your mom to do things your mom doesn’t want to do.
Ken Murray:
Yes. I think we all have that problem.
(Laughter)
William Brangham:
Murray’s truck is almost out of gas, as are many of the nearby stations, and he wasn’t sure where they were going to sleep that night.
Diane Harrison, Florida Resident:
Sea level is rising. Florida is not a good place. Real estate here is quite wet.
William Brangham:
Diane and Robert Harrison have been stuck in their home since Milton came through, a little island stranded in the middle of their street.
Robert Harrison, Florida Resident:
Every storm seems like it’s a little worse than the last one. If that’s what the climatologists and science people call the effects of global warming, then OK. But whatever the cause, the effect is, it’s getting uglier and uglier every storm season.
And there’s no fix for it that I see from where I’m sitting at…
Diane Harrison:
It’s a global…
Robert Harrison:
… except to try and find some place that’s a little less inhospitable.
Diane Harrison:
When’s that mother ship coming?
William Brangham:
The one from outer space?
Diane Harrison:
Yes, because planet Earth is really messed up right now.
(Laughter)
William Brangham:
So, absent the idea of some mother ship coming down to save humanity, we are going to have to come to grips with this, Floridians, people across this country, with the idea that we are going to see more of these serious disasters, many of which are exacerbated by climate change, and that this is part of our new reality going forward — Geoff.
Geoff Bennett:
And, on that point, William, we’re seeing more data about the connection between climate change and these destructive storms. What do scientists believe is the linkage?
William Brangham:
That’s right, Geoff.
This is a field of science called attribution science. How much can you attribute climate change to any one given disaster? And skeptics of this idea, including the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who was saying, why do you always have to talk about climate change with regards to hurricanes, we have always had hurricanes, that is true.
We have always had droughts. We have always had hurricanes. We have always had wildfires. The science is showing, though, that climate change can make these things worse, can exacerbate them. For one example, when a hurricane enters the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean and hits abnormally warm ocean waters, which is driven by human-driven climate change, it can make those storms more intense and make them accelerate more quickly.
That is a proven fact. There are two new recent studies, one by the Imperial College of London, one by World Weather Attribution, both showing that this most recent hurricane was, by significant percentages, dropping more rain, blowing more wind, and causing more damage to the residents of Florida.
And this is an increasing focus of scientists, but we are now seeing that all of the people around me are paying the price for that.
Geoff Bennett:
Shifting our focus a bit, we have been reporting all week on the swarm of misinformation and disinformation around these two disasters.
Now there are reports of extremist groups that are showing up to help with the recovery work. Tell us about that.
William Brangham:
That’s right, Geoff.
In addition to the — as we have reported, this torrent of misinformation and lies about FEMA and the federal response and who created these hurricanes, as if that’s actually something someone could do, The Wall Street Journal reported that a group known as Patriot Front, which is a racist white supremacist organization, was sending groups of its members down here to a local community to do recovery work.
And they were filming themselves marching around doing — helping people clean their yards and posting these videos to say, where is your government? Where are your local leaders? In fact, we are the people here to protect you, not them.
And we were asking about, well, what is driving some of this? We spoke to a gentleman named Moustafa Ayad. He’s at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. And he told one of my colleagues how groups like this take these fissures in our society and try to sow distrust and division and choose every opportunity they can to try to get and turn Americans against each other.
And, again, this is all happening to people around us right now who are at their most vulnerable. And the last thing they need is to be lied to and misled. But that is what we are seeing in today’s society.
Geoff Bennett:
William Brangham in Bradenton, Florida, for us tonight.
William, thank you.
William Brangham:
Thanks, Geoff.