Hawaii resident rides out Hurricane Michael in FL
“Waters throughout the whole area. Winds blowing pretty good."
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Among the people riding out Hurricane Michael in Florida is Hawaii resident Charles Owens.
Owens, who works for the Hawaii Department of Public Safety, flew to the sunshine state earlier this week to help his grandfather and extended family endure the storm.
Hurricane Michael made landfall on the Florida Panhandle just shy of a category 5 hurricane Wednesday.
Owens and his family, were in Wakulla County just south of Tallahassee. It’s an area that avoided the most severe impacts from the storm.
Luckily, he and his family are uninjured and their home withheld strong wind gusts. He took to Facebook Wednesday showing the flooded streets and hours without power.
“Waters throughout the whole area. Winds blowing pretty good. It’s filling up. The streets are covered,” Owens said. “We got heavy rain all morning and we’ve gotten high winds. We did go out and see the surge coming in earlier.”
“People are coming back out to clean up and move the heavy debris that’s still floating. The water came in about 18 inches. You can see behind me. That’s the street going down,” he said referencing the road fronting his family’s house which now looks like a shallow river.
Owens says the storm knocked out power in the area. It’s reported to be one of more than 320,000 power outages in Florida since the storm hit.
Owens is grateful he and his family are alright, but acknowledged that other Florida residents, “Did not do so well.”
So far, the storm is being blamed for at least one death in Greensboro where a man died when a tree fell on a home, CNN reported.
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