Residents return to find homes gone, towns devastated in path of Idalia
CTV
Hurricanes and tropical storms are nothing new in the U.S. South, but the sheer magnitude of damage from Idalia shocked Desmond Roberson as he toured what as left of his Georgia neighbourhood.
Hurricanes and tropical storms are nothing new in the U.S. South, but the sheer magnitude of damage from Idalia shocked Desmond Roberson as he toured what as left of his Georgia neighbourhood.
Roberson took a drive through Valdosta on Thursday with a friend to check out damage after the storm, which first hit Florida as a hurricane and then weakened into a tropical storm as it made its way north, ripped through the town of 55,000.
On one street, he said, a tree had fallen on nearly every house. Roads remained blocked by tree trunks and downed power lines, and traffic lights were still blacked out at major intersections.
"It's a maze," Roberson said. "I had to turn around three times, just because roads were blocked off."
The storm had 90 mph (145 kph) winds when it made a direct hit on Valdosta on Wednesday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said.
"We're fortunate this storm was a narrow one, and it was fast moving and didn't sit on us," Kemp told a news conference Thursday in Atlanta. "But if you were in the path, it was devastating. And we're responding that way."
One Georgia resident was killed when a tree fell on him as he tried to clear another tree from a road.
With their Los Angeles-area homes still smoldering, families return to search the ruins for memories
Since the flames erupted in and around Los Angeles, scores of residents have returned to their still smoldering neighborhoods even as the threat of new fires persisted and the nation's second-largest city remained unsettled.
A fast-moving fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday night, threatening one of Los Angeles' most iconic spots as firefighters battled to get under control three other major blazes that killed five people, put 130,000 people under evacuation orders and ravaged communities from the Pacific Coast to inland Pasadena.