Rescue operations underway as weaker Hurricane Idalia turns its fury on Georgia

Authorities in Florida are carrying out damage assessments as rescues of trapped residents were underway in southern Georgia in the wake of Hurricane Idalia.

Hurricane Idalia has unleashed devastation along the Gulf Coast. Source: AAP / Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich

Key Points

• Idalia unleashed destructive winds and torrential downpours along Florida's Gulf Coast.
• Surge warnings were posted for hundreds of kilometres of shoreline.
• Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said no fatalities had been confirmed.

Hurricane Idalia has ploughed into Florida's Gulf Coast with howling winds, torrential rains and pounding surf, then weakened as it turned its fury on southeastern Georgia.

Hours after Idalia slammed ashore on Wednesday as a powerful Category 3 hurricane at Keaton Beach in Florida's Big Bend region, packing winds of about 200km/h, authorities were still trying to assess the full extent of damage in the hardest-hit areas.

Authorities said residents in vulnerable, low-lying areas had heeded evacuation orders and warnings to move to higher ground. Source: AAP / Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich

Video footage and photographs from the region around Idalia's landfall showed ocean waters washing over highways and neighbourhoods swamped by extensive flooding at midday. Power outages were widespread.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said no fatalities had been confirmed and that it seemed most residents in vulnerable, low-lying areas had heeded evacuation orders and warnings to move to higher ground.

But the Florida Highway Patrol reported earlier in the day that two motorists died in separate rain-related crashes on Wednesday morning.

DeSantis later said state authorities were investigating one unconfirmed storm-related traffic death.

Insured property losses in Florida were projected to run $US9.36 billion ($14.43 billion), investment bank UBS said in a research note based on preliminary estimates.

Still, Idalia appeared from early reports to have been far less destructive than Hurricane Ian, a Category 5 storm that struck Florida last September, killing 150 people and causing $US112 billion ($173 billion) in damage.

The governor said that as many as 565,000 utility customers had lost electricity at some point during and after the storm.

About 320 kilometres to the south, at least 75 people were rescued from floodwaters in St. Petersburg, Florida, municipal officials said on social media, with a video showing two emergency workers in a small boat plying submerged streets through heavy rains.

Daniel Dickert wades through water in front of his home where the Steinhatchee River overflowed on Wednesday, 30 August 2023, in Steinhatchee, Florida, after the arrival of Hurricane Idalia. Source: AAP / Douglas R Clifford

As predicted, Idalia crossed Florida's shoreline in the heart of its largely rural Big Bend region, where the state's northern Gulf Coast panhandle curves into the western side of the Florida Peninsula.

The area is roughly bounded by the cities of Gainesville and Tallahassee, the state capital.

The same region, featuring a marshy coast threaded with freshwater springs and rivers, was devastated by a major hurricane in 1896.

Feeding on the warm, open waters of the Gulf of Mexico as it churned toward Florida, Idalia gained strength after skirting western Cuba on Monday as a tropical storm.

Source: Reuters / NOAA

The hurricane unleashed destructive winds and torrential downpours that were forecast to cause flooding up to five metres deep along Florida's Gulf Coast.

Some 12 hours after landfall, the governor said no drowning victims had been found caught in the storm surge.

Florida's Gulf Coast, southeastern Georgia and eastern parts of North and South Carolina were forecast to receive 10-20cm of rain through Thursday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned.

By early Wednesday afternoon, Idalia's centre had left Florida and moved into Georgia. The storm's most dangerous feature, officials warned, was a powerful surge of wind-driven seawater that flooded low-lying areas.

By midmorning, a storm monitoring station in Steinhatchee, 30 kilometres south of Keaton Beach, showed waters reaching 2.4 metres, well above the 1.8 metres flood stage.

Idalia attained Category 4 intensity on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale early Wednesday before landfall, but by 7am had weakened into Category 3, the NHC said.

As it entered southeastern Georgia, Idalia's wind speeds ebbed to 145km/h, reducing the tempest to a Category 1 storm. By 5pm, it weakened further into a tropical storm.

At the White House on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden said he and DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in the 2024 presidential election, were "in constant contact" about storm preparations.

Idalia barreled into the northwest Florida coast as a powerful Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday morning, the US National Hurricane Centre said. Source: Getty / Chandan Khanna

Biden said they shared a desire to help Floridians. "This is not about politics, it's about taking care of the people of the state," Biden told reporters.