Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service.

We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. A roof ripped off a

baseball stadium, a crane that crashed into the offices of a newspaper,

the shelter over a petrol station lying on its side in a street full of water.

Just some of the damage caused by Hurrick and Milton as it pummeled the US state of

Florida overnight. The storm has now moved into the Atlantic, but it is still

producing dangerously strong winds and huge amounts of rain over land.

And the impact of those, as well as a number of tornadoes, is only now becoming apparent.

Several people are reported to have been killed, millions

are without power, many others are without running water. Milton made landfall last night

close to Sarasota, south of the city of Tampa packing winds of over 200

kilometers an hour.

Melanie Bevan is, Chief of Police in Bradenton to the south of Tampa.

This is what she told us during the night.

The first few hours we were getting significant winds, but this second half boy it's it is punching us hard and we're getting 110 mile of gust. We see roofs flying trees flying around. it's pretty ugly out there.

If people chose poorly and they stayed in their homes that were ill-equipped to handle storm surge

and wind, what will probably be finding in the morning are bodies. We saw somebody riding their

bike down the road. We still see a car from time to time. Those conditions are incredibly, incredibly

unsafe and I just got to assume that those are one of the 10% of the dumbest people in the world.

Within the past hour, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis has been speaking.

Around 830 last night,

Milton, Hurricane Milton, made land fall near Siesta Key

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