Floridians are just beginning to assess the damage left by Hurricane Michael and preparing for a difficult period of recovery.
CNN Thursday morning broadcast some devastating footage from Mexico Beach, near where Michael made landfall as a Category 4 storm Wednesday. "It's gone," reporter Brooke Baldwin somberly noted while looking at the destruction and flattened homes across the city. "I've never seen anything like this."
FEMA administrator Brock Long said Thursday that Mexico Beach "took the brunt" of the storm and is "probably ground zero," per The Washington Post.
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Some footage taken while the storm still raged is also surfacing, including a shocking video of one woman's flooded yard in St. George Island being totally flooded, per CNN.
Panama City was also ravaged by the hurricane, with drone footage showing homes and schools completely torn apart. "It looks like a bomb went off on every single block," Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.) told CNN.
On Thursday morning, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum told CNN that based on these images, "this is going to be a long recovery process." Michael was the strongest hurricane to ever hit the Florida Panhandle, and has since been downgraded to a tropical storm.
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