By Rhea Rose Abraham, Rajveer Pardesi and Marianna Parraga
Oct 10 (Reuters) – Two people died and about 800,000 Florida, Alabama and Georgia residents were without power after Hurricane Isaias made landfall early on Saturday, weakening to a post-tropical cyclone, according to local authorities and electricity monitoring services.
Authorities in Florida had received no search and rescue requests shortly after landfall in a sign of limited impact, Governor Ron DeSantis said. But hazardous conditions remained and storm surges, flash flooding, damaging winds and a risk of tornadoes across parts of the US Southeast were expected, the National Hurricane Center said.
The tornado threat is expected to continue on Saturday across parts of the Florida Panhandle, Georgia and the Carolinas, the NHC said.
In Florida, power restoration was marked as priority, authorities said, while highways, bridges and airports were reopening, and teams were assessing the damage.
“They’re going to make assessments this morning, and I think that’ll give us a good sense about the future for the rapidity of the power restoration,” DeSantis told a press conference in Tallahassee. Some 16,000 utility linemen had prepared to respond to the storm, he said.
More than 430,000 customers in Florida, over 280,000 in Alabama and some 100,000 in Georgia lost power as the storm hit shore, according to tracking firm PowerOutage.us.
In Alabama and Florida, two people were killed by falling trees, according to local media and authorities. Alabama’s emergency management agency said the downed trees and power lines made travel hazardous in Houston County, which is under a flash flood warning.
“Due to the impacts of Hurricane Isaias, all Houston County roads are closed until further notice,” it posted on X.
Isaias rapidly lost wind speed after hitting the Florida coast as a Category 2 hurricane, the first of the 2026 Atlantic season. It is expected to produce gusty winds well inland before weakening below gale force later on Saturday, the NHC said.
On Saturday, oil and gas producer Shell said it was beginning to redeploy personnel to its Mars, Olympus, Ursa, Vito, and Appomattox assets in the Gulf.
President Donald Trump, asked about hurricane preparations on Friday, told reporters outside the White House that it was “under control.”
Emergency declarations were approved in Florida and Alabama to ensure federal resources would be available to respond to Isaias, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on X.
“There’s also a lot of hazards post-storm that people should be careful of, but so far, we’ve had a lot of assets in place that have not been called on,” DeSantis told FOX News early on Saturday.
(Reporting by Rhea Rose Abraham and Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard, Ros Russell and Tomasz Janowski)
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