TAMPA, Fla. – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that one person died after a sign fell onto a car traveling on Interstate 4 near Ybor City in the Tampa area.
“So that just shows you that it’s very dangerous conditions out there,” the governor said in a news conference Thursday night. “You need to be, right now, just hunkering down. Now is not the time to be going out.”
The governor did not provide additional details about the incident or the victim. He expressed concern that, due to the severity of the storm, more fatalities could be reported.
Read: US Coast Guard Rescues Man And Dog Stranded In The Florida Gulf During Hurricane Helene
“We wake up tomorrow morning, the chances are there will likely have been more fatalities. It’s just when a storm is this big and this strong, there’s so many different things that can happen,” he said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warns that Hurricane Helene’s destructive hurricane-force winds, reaching a maximum of 140 mph, will impact areas well beyond its landfall in Taylor County.
“I would imagine that you’re going to see a lot of wind damage, probably in the northern part of the state,” the governor said in a news conference in Tallahassee Thursday night. “I do think there’ll be some wind damage because the gusts were out, but I don’t think it’s going to be like we saw with Ian or Michael, for places that weren’t in the eye of the storm, in terms of that level of wind damage.”
Read: Shell Point Road East And US 41 North Intersection In Ruskin Closed To Flooding
These dangerous winds, extending up to 60 miles from the storm’s center, are expected to cause damage and downed trees across multiple counties to both the east and west.
Additionally, tropical storm-force winds, spanning a vast area 300 miles from the center, threaten a much wider region.
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