Hurricane Milton: More than 100 Kiwis caught in deadly Florida storm as gales destroy homes, catastrophic flooding

“We haven’t even seen the effects of Hurricane Milton yet,” said St Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson.

“Right now, we’re focused on, you know, no matter how the storm comes, we’re going to rescue as many people as we can.”

He described cars being lifted up and turned upside down, some moving hundreds of feet.

“I can tell you that in some of these places there is nothing left but foundations.”

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) spokesperson said 116 New Zealanders had registered with SafeTravel as being in Florida as of Thursday afternoon New Zealand time.

The spokesperson noted that this number “does not represent the actual number” and only applies to those who have registered with SafeTravel.

The New Zealand Embassy in Washington has not received any requests for consular assistance, but Mfat encouraged all New Zealanders in the state to register for information.

Waikato mother Megan Harris, who was sheltering on the 14th floor of a hotel in Orlando, Florida, from the “catastrophic” storm, told Herald shortly after 11pm local time (4pm NZT), winds were becoming “very strong”, causing significant movement of signs and trees.

“(It’s) starting to feel like we’re in a hurricane,” she said.

”(The) rain and wind on the windows are very noisy.

”The windows are vibrating in the wind. It’s like they were made to be flexible.”

She said Orlando was given an 8pm curfew and a flood warning until 2am local time.

Harris was visiting Florida with her daughter’s dance troupe and is there along with 24 girls ages 15 to 18 and other mothers.

She said “the children are in good spirits.”

“The worst will happen in the early morning hours, so it (could) be a long night,” she said.

She said they were warned by the hotel that they would have to take shelter in bathrooms, hallways and stairwells if the storm became “strong.”

Meanwhile, a Kiwi from Wellington, who did not want to be named, settled in with his family at the flooded Reunion Resort & Golf Club in Orlando.

At around 10:30 p.m. local time, he said the rain “increased a few levels.” He said it wasn’t hurricane strength yet, but “I can feel it building every few minutes.”

“We’re from Wellington and it looks like a windy day in Wellington.”

After midnight local time, Orlando Police and the Orlando Fire Department were pulled off the roads to take shelter as high winds ravaged the city.

Waikato woman Megan Hyland fled Orlando on Wednesday afternoon fearing she would be trapped.

The trip out of danger to Atlanta took 11 hours in heavy traffic, twice the normal time.

She said the hotel lobby was packed with “stressed out” people when she left.

“It was like Noah’s Ark.”

State Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said rescue crews responded to structural collapses after tornadoes struck the state before Hurricane Milton made landfall.

“We’re getting somewhere in the neighborhood — these are very, very rough numbers right now — about 125 homes that have been destroyed, mostly mobile homes,” Guthrie said Wednesday night local time.

The US National Hurricane Center previously described Milton as a “catastrophic” and “dangerous” major hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph, placing it at the highest level of the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale – a hurricane category 5.

At 11pm local time on Wednesday, the center of the storm was about 75 miles southwest of Orlando. Its maximum sustained winds were about 170 km/h, making it a Category 2 hurricane. It was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane around 1 a.m. on Thursday.

US President Joe Biden previously said the storm was expected to be one of the most destructive hurricanes in Florida in more than a century, with the potential to destroy entire communities.

Benjamin Plummer is an Auckland-based reporter covering breaking news. He worked for the Herald since 2022.