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The mayor of Tampa, Florida, has issued a stark warning that anyone who remains in the city as Hurricane Milton approaches will "die."
Hurricane Milton intensified into a Category 5 storm — the most severe classification — in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday. It later weakened to an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm and is expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday evening.
Evacuation orders were issued Monday for several Florida counties in its path.
"There's never been one like this," Mayor Jane Castor, a Democrat, told CNN Monday, adding that Hurricane Helene, which caused huge damage in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, was "a wake-up call."
Asked for her message to anyone who believed they could stay put and "ride out" the storm, Castor said, "This is literally catastrophic, and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever — if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you're gonna die."
"Anyone who was born and raised in the Tampa Bay area has never seen anything like this," she added.
The National Hurricane Center recorded Milton's top wind speed of 180 mph Monday, but this slowed to around 155 mph Tuesday, reducing the storm to a "powerful" Category 4 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said.
"While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida," it said in a public advisory note.
Florida highways were jammed with people attempting to leave after the evacuation orders.
The storm comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene, the damage from which is already stretching the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Moody's Analytics projected that damage from Helene alone could total $34 billion.
Hurricane Helene killed 12 people in the Tampa Bay area, the Associated Press reported, and over 200 more across the southeastern United States.
Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, said Monday that debris from Helene must be cleared to avoid it being kicked up again by Milton.
