Hurricane Milton was destructive and deadly in Florida, but fortunately not as bad as was expected.

I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Thursday, October 10th. Hurricane Milton barreled across Florida yesterday and into today.

The storm did head back out into the Atlantic today, but left at least four people dead in Florida.

The hurricane knocked out power for about 3 million people in the state.

The storm generated about 150 tornadoes in Florida and the four lives that we know of that were lost were lost due to those tornadoes.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke at a press conference this afternoon and told Floridians and the press that people are working 24-7 in order to respond to the needs of the storm and in preparation that led up to the storm hitting Florida.

There was a lot of concern over the deadly storm surge that was expected to hit Tampa,

but fortunately the situation was not as bad as was expected as the governor explained.

The storm did weaken before it hit land and then it did bear further to the east and south of Tampa Bay.

So I think a lot of what they had was the wind suck water out of Tampa Bay.

You did have storm surge in Sarasota, Venice, Charlotte Harbor, and all the way down the

west coast of Florida and some significant storm surge, but not the worst case scenario of what we were looking at.

I mean...

In North Carolina, many people are still without power and the road to recovery remains very long.

The Daily Signal intern, Christina Lewis, spoke with the

president of Samaritan's purse, Franklin Graham yesterday, about their recovery efforts. Samaritan's purse is headquartered in Boone, North Carolina.

That's one of the areas that was hit hardest by Hurricane Helene.

And because of the proximity that they have to Asheville, North Carolina, and those regions in the mountains,

they were able to mobilize very, very quickly.

Graham said Samaritan's purse is working with the government to deliver aid and meet needs across the region.

And he told one story of how much impact even a small amount of resources can have on the locals there right now.

One of our staff gave a lady a gallon of water.

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