Video: Hudson, Florida, residents warily eye water levels as Tropical Storm Debby passes
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A 13-year-old boy in Florida was crushed to death after a tree fell onto a mobile home during Hurricane Debby Monday morning, the Levy County Sheriff’s Office said.
Deputies were called to the home around 8 a.m. for reports of a downed tree and confirmed the teen had been “crushed inside the home.”
“Our thoughts and prayers are with this family as they deal with this tragedy. We encourage everyone to use extreme caution as they begin to assess and clean up the damage. Downed powerlines and falling trees are among the many hazards. One life is too many. Please be safe,” the sheriff’s office said.
As Debby was impacting the Tampa area early Monday morning, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office says a semi-truck driver died after losing control on a wet roadway.
According to authorities, the truck ended up teetering on a guardrail on Interstate 75 before tipping over. The cab then became submerged in the Tampa Bypass Canal. The driver, a 64-year-old man from Mississippi, was found dead in the cab after emergency crews recovered the semi.
As of early Monday afternoon, no additional deaths related to Debby had been reported.
Debby became a hurricane late Sunday night as it approached the Big Bend Region of Florida, but has since been downgraded to a tropical storm after making landfall on Monday.
The storm made landfall as a Category 1 storm near Steinhatchee, a tiny community of less than 1,000 residents along northern Florida’s Gulf Coast. It had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and was moving north-northeast at 10 mph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
The storm came ashore in one of the least populated areas of Florida, but forecasters warned heavy rain could spawn catastrophic flooding in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia.
The small community where Hurricane Debby made landfall is roughly 20 miles from where Hurricane Idalia crashed ashore less than a year ago.
“Two in less than a year is pretty bad,” Chris Williams, a local marina operator, said. “You do everything you can possibly do to prepare. And when you’ve done that, clean up and put it back together and move forward.”
Forecasters said storm surge was expected to be the biggest threat for Florida, with 6 to 10 feet of inundation above ground level predicted in part of the zone near the Big Bend.
“That part of the coast is a very vulnerable spot,” John Cangialosi, a hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center, said Monday. Some areas, including Sarasota and Manatee counties, have already received 10 to 12 inches of rain.
Nearly about 300,000 customers were without power in Florida and Georgia on Monday, according to PowerOutage.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
