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Communities across Florida and Alabama are in cleanup mode in the wake of Hurricane Isaias. At least four people were killed. The storm has left a wide swath of damage, and so far, around 400,000 customers are without electricity. NPR's Debbie Elliott has this look at how the recovery is going in the Florida Panhandle town of Milton.
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DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Water hose in hand, Roger Milstead is crouched under the upturned root of a sprawling oak tree. The root span is three times his size.
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ELLIOTT: He's spraying it off to loosen rocks embedded in the muddy tendrils.
ROGER MILSTEAD: 'Cause I got to get my chainsaw in there and cut the roots, and rocks and chainsaws don't mix.
ELLIOTT: Milstead and his wife, Karen, were in their east Milton home when winds from Isaias started pounding the property.
R MILSTEAD: Stuff started flying away. I had a big carport cover right here. It's now over there in the woods.
KAREN MILSTEAD: It stood up and came down and stood up and then came toward the house, and then it took off (laughter).
ELLIOTT: The mangled metal shed is now wrapped around the top of a tree. Milstead figures he's got about 12 downed trees that he needs to clear, two of them on top of his shop and a back shed.
R MILSTEAD: But the house is fine, and we're fine, so that's what's important to me.
K MILSTEAD: We're good.
ELLIOTT: A car pulls up in the front yard.
R MILSTEAD: This is our friends, Jackie and Denise. They live down by the airport.
ELLIOTT: Denise Cannon is still shaken up by the whole experience.
DENISE CANNON: It's a sound like I can't even begin to describe other than howling. And then all of a sudden it got real still, and you could hear like a swoosh, swhoosh, swoosh. It was very eerie sounds, yes. Scary. We went into the bathroom because it was like, you know, we thought the whole roof of our house was going to come off.
ELLIOTT: Cannon says it's hard to see the path Hurricane Isaias cut through Milton.
CANNON: It's pretty devastating everywhere. I couldn't help it. I just broke out crying because it's just like, wow. It's just rooftops are off and everything.
K MILSTEAD: Yeah. This is the first time.
CANNON: This is the first time I've ever been through one. So, yeah, it's pretty emotional.
ELLIOTT: Milton is a quaint and leafy town northeast of Pensacola, and it's the Santa Rosa County seat. Now it's a big mess. Mature pines and oaks are down everywhere you look, some uprooted, others snapped in two like a matchstick. They're on houses and yards and over roads. Power lines dangle from bent poles. Signs and billboards are missing from their posts, and the roofs of some businesses litter their parking lots.
JOHN E REBLE: What we're seeing is a result of wind, and it was shocking how strong the winds were in this area.
ELLIOTT: John E. Reble is Milton's fire chief and director of emergency preparedness. He's shocked because the city is nearly 50 miles northwest of where the hurricane made landfall. He says it's like every other tree is destroyed.
REBLE: And a fair bit of structural damage from trees down and stuff being thrown around. It's pretty rough. We've got a lot of road blockage. Very few roads were passable.
ELLIOTT: This weekend, he says the priority has been to get roads cleared so that emergency vehicles can get around and to restore essential services like power and water. Then he says the long haul to cleanup will begin.
REBLE: We've dealt with this kind of thing before, and we'll get through it, but a lot of work right now.
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ELLIOTT: The hum of generators is in the air, and chainsaw crews are cutting trees from the roads. National Guard troops direct traffic at intersections where the red lights are out, and linemen are out with their bucket trucks to restring the power grid. Denise Cannon says the whole Hurricane Isaias experience has her counting her blessings.
CANNON: Praise God is all I can say. Praise God. Praise God.
ELLIOTT: Her friend, Karen Milstead, says they've got to press forward.
K MILSTEAD: Clean up and go on.
ELLIOTT: That could take a while.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Milton, Florida. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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