Time running out in Florida to flee Hurricane Milton

Sarasota, United States: Florida residents fled or defied warnings and hunkered down in the final hours Wednesday before Hurricane Milton, a let...

Sarasota, United States: Florida residents fled -- or defied warnings and hunkered down -- in the final hours Wednesday before Hurricane Milton, a lethal Category 4 storm, pummels the Gulf Coast and tears across the state.

Milton was downgraded by the US weather service from top-level Category 5 to a 4 early in the day.

However, that will not much change the ferocity of the wind and height of tidal surges inundating the heavily populated and low-lying coast, with the cities of Tampa and Sarasota right in the storm's expected path.

"I am nervous. This is something we just went through with the other storm -- ground saturated, still recovering from that," Sarasota resident Randy Prior, who owns a pool business, told AFP.