Residents of the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama began cleaning up on Sunday after Hurricane Isaias, the first Atlantic hurricane of the season, came ashore as a Category 2 storm near Destin, Florida, on Friday. At least four deaths have been linked to the storm. Its remnants moved north, bringing the risk of flash flooding to the central Appalachians and the mid-Atlantic region, while Rachel, a former tropical storm, sent powerful waves onto the coast of Southern California.
About 356,000 customers remained without power in southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle on Sunday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.com, down from nearly 800,000 at the storm's peak. (The Guardian cited a slightly higher figure of about 396,000 earlier in the day.) Sarah Gatewood, a spokesperson for Florida Power & Light, said crews from across Florida and more than two dozen other states had been mobilised. In Florida's Escambia County, a woman was killed when a tree fell on her home, and a man died from carbon monoxide fumes from a generator running in his garage; four of his relatives were treated and expected to survive. In Alabama, one person died when a tree hit a house in Birmingham, and another died in a crash involving a downed tree in Barbour County.
The damage was concentrated along the Gulf Coast, a tourist region of high-rises and resorts. Winds blew the roof off a Pensacola hotel, flattened a boathouse in Destin and tore part of the facade from a high-rise in Panama City Beach. Pensacola's airport, Florida's 10th-largest, was closed indefinitely because of damage. Mayor DC Reeves warned of drinking water shortages and a boil-water advisory. Hundreds of cars queued at a United Cajun Navy volunteer distribution site; one resident, Yvette Haro, said she arrived at 5 a.m. after supplies ran out the day before. Presidents' emergency declarations covering Florida, Alabama and Georgia have opened the way to federal aid, and the US Energy Department authorised emergency crude oil exchanges from the strategic petroleum reserve because of supply disruptions.
Farther north, heavy rain overflowed rivers in western North Carolina. Rescuers helped two campers and their dog caught by rising Catawba River waters in Burke County, and McDowell County reported five landslides and voluntary evacuations but no injuries. The National Weather Service said tornadoes were possible in parts of Virginia and North Carolina, with dangerous surf and rip currents continuing along the Gulf and southeastern Atlantic coasts. The Guardian noted this was the first hurricane to make landfall in the continental US in two years.
On the Pacific side, Rachel became a post-tropical cyclone and dissipated over Las Vegas after drenching the Southwest. Waves battered a century-old boardwalk on the Long Beach peninsula, forcing evacuations; officials red-tagged eight buildings as unsafe, and Mayor Rex Richardson called the impacts "unprecedented." The area was already damaged by Hurricane Marie in September. Meanwhile, Hurricane Simon, a Category 4 storm, was pounding Mexico's Pacific coast, with life-threatening flooding and mudslides forecast.
The back-to-back storms show how quickly recovery can be overtaken by new hazards, as communities on both coasts face loss of power, water and housing at the same time.