Month: October 2024

Hurricane Milton made landfall on Florida’s west coast Wednesday night as a Category 3 hurricane, bringing with it life-threatening storm surge, powerful winds and flooding rains.

Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, Wednesday night at about 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph.  It has since weakened to a Category 1, with the storm continues to move across the Florida peninsula and by early Thursday, was mostly over the Atlantic Ocean

According to the National Hurricane Center, as of 5 a.m. Eastern Time, Milton had maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour and was moving off Florida’s east coast. Milton’s center was some 10 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral.   However, forecasters warn that the effects of Milton could still cause potential flooding in parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast with storm surge as high as 3 to 5 feet.

As of press time, more than 3.25 million customers were without power in Florida early Thursday, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.

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Per The Associated Press, officials confirmed Wednesday that five people were killed after a small plane crashed during takeoff from Santa Catalina Island off the Southern California coast on Tuesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday the twin-engine Beechcraft 95 crashed shortly after it departed from Catalina Airport in Avalon at around 8 p.m. on Tuesday. The FAA said later in an their online incident report that the crash occurred under “unknown circumstances” during takeoff, and those killed were the pilot and four passengers. The names of the victims, their relation to one another and the flight’s destination were not released.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office said confirmed that five adults were found dead at the scene in rugged terrain about a mile (1.6 kilometers) west of the airport, sharing in a statement that their Avalon station received a 911 emergency notification from a cell phone indicating that its user had been involved in a collision with possible injuries and provided GPS coordinates.  According to the Sheriff’s Department’s news release, joint search and rescue team comprised of Avalon station deputies, Los Angeles County Fire Department, Avalon Search and Rescue and Avalon City Fire Department members found the plane about a mile west of Catalina Airport.

Santa Catalina Island, part of the Channel Islands, is located about 22 miles southwest of Los Angeles. Catalina Island Airport has a single, 3,000-foot-long runway and occupies a 1,602-foot-tall mountaintop at the center of the island. The airfield is known as the Airport in the Sky because of its precarious location at an elevation of 1,602 feet (488 meters) on the island about 25 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. It has a single 3,000-foot runway. About 4,000 residents live year-round on Santa Catalina Island.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will continue the investigation into the cause of the crash.

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