Hundreds of thousands still without power in Florida and Alabama as Isaias tracks north

Hundreds of thousands of Florida and Alabama customers still lack power after Hurricane Isaias hit the Gulf Coast as a Category 2, with cleanup underway and flood threats lingering.

Isaias came ashore Friday night near Destin on Florida’s northern Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 105 miles per hour, then struck the Pensacola area before weakening within hours to a post-tropical cyclone, CBS News reported in live updates drawn from Associated Press material.

By early Sunday, more than 389,000 customers remained without power across the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama alone. Florida accounted for 315,315 outages and Alabama 74,109, even after Saturday peaks that topped 700,000 customers across several Southeast states.

At least four people died, two in Florida and two in Alabama. Officials said trees fell on homes in more than one of those cases. Tens of thousands had already evacuated the region before the storm arrived.

Cleanup is underway from Destin to Panama City. The weakened system has kept pushing north with wind, heavy rain, and flash-flood risk still on the board for parts of Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and the southern Appalachians.

Landfall hit hard along the Florida Panhandle

The first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic season left a clear trail of broken roofs, downed trees, and mangled storefronts across the Panhandle.

In Gulf Breeze, resident Jayme Mitich said she and her 13-year-old daughter, Jeweliana Jackson, hid beneath a mattress minutes before part of their roof tore away.

Mitich later surveyed the wreckage and put the moment in plain terms.

"I looked and I took a step around and I was like, 'That was our roof, oh my God.'"

She described the noise as things broke and crashed around them, then told reporters they would make it through. Nearby, gas stations were damaged, trees were uprooted, and a truck sat flipped in the aftermath photos.

Navarre residents Tamara Stamm and Danielle Pagan spent Saturday clearing debris after combining households overnight so all nine of their children could stay together. Pagan said the family boarded windows and still heard impacts slam into the boards.

In East Milton, Milton High School’s gymnasium was destroyed, with debris scattered across campus. An apartment roof landed in front of another building. At Milton Quick Stop, the roof was torn off and salvage work began. Florida Power & Light crews cut through downed limbs as residents picked through what remained.

In Panama City, Sean Palamarczuk, co-owner of Angry Tuna Seafood Company, put the hit to his business between $50,000 and $75,000 and did not soft-pedal what he saw.

"Pretty catastrophic, when it comes to just the cosmetics of the storm."

He called the mangled scene depressing and said it was time to reopen the doors and rebuild. Destin also showed warehouse damage at A.J.’s Restaurant and a collapsed boathouse along the water.

Four dead as officials warn the danger is not over

Escambia County bore two of the Florida deaths. Sheriff Chip Simmons reported a woman killed after a tree fell on a house during the storm. Separately, deputies responding on Wilderness Lane found a victim dead in a closed garage with a generator running. Four other family members, ages 72, 24, 5, and 4, were taken to a hospital for non-life-threatening treatment.

In Alabama, Jefferson County Emergency Management said a person was killed in the Huffman area of Birmingham after a tree fell on a house. Gov. Kay Ivey’s office confirmed a second fatality in Barbour County to CBS News without releasing circumstances.

Ivey addressed the losses directly on Facebook.

"Unfortunately, we have also learned that two Alabamians have lost their lives. I am praying for their loved ones this morning."

She urged residents to stay smart during cleanup and put safety first. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis struck a similar note after the storm’s center left the state, warning that flooding remained a live threat even with the core gone.

That mix of grief, practical warning, and steady local leadership is what front-line communities lean on when the wind dies down and the water is still rising.

Trump, DHS, and FEMA move resources into place

President Trump approved an emergency declaration for Georgia on Saturday after earlier declarations for Florida and Alabama ahead of landfall. FEMA said the Georgia action frees federal resources for disaster relief across dozens of counties.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the department is in contact with governors in affected and potentially affected states and credited coordination running from the Oval Office to county first responders. He said FEMA pre-positioned assets and stood ready for life-saving work, and that the Coast Guard has conducted boat rescues and recovery.

Appearing on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Mullin described the posture in blunt terms.

"You never can be fully prepared for a storm like this. But I can tell you that the coordination, from the Oval Office with President Trump's leadership to the governors to the county first responders, we're all working very closely together."

He also said conversations with each governor left him confident the states were “in good shape” and that agencies were “working together well as a team.” That kind of clear chain of command matches the decisive national-security posture voters have seen when Trump pulls American B-1 bombers in response to a direct threat.

Robbie Berg, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami, told the Associated Press that storm-surge warnings had been discontinued but that high wind remained a threat.

"So even though it has become post-tropical, it still does remain a wind threat, as well as a heavy rainfall threat."

The National Weather Service flagged isolated flash flooding and strong gusts across the southeastern United States, especially near the southern Appalachians. Flood watches covered broad stretches of that terrain and nearby states.

Outages climb, then ease, as the system grinds north

Saturday afternoon figures from PowerOutage.com showed the broader footprint before Sunday’s partial recovery: Florida 422,357 customers without power; Alabama 200,930; Georgia 44,877; Mississippi 18,824; South Carolina 7,917; North Carolina 8,138; and Tennessee 6,649.

By Saturday night, the post-tropical cyclone was centered about 75 miles south of Nashville, moving northeast at 16 miles per hour with maximum sustained winds near 25 mph. Forecast rainfall still called for 3 to 6 inches in portions of northeast Georgia, with some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas possibly seeing higher totals, though 3 to 6 inches remained the likelier range. Tornado risk was noted for eastern Georgia and the Carolinas.

Western North Carolina stayed on alert overnight into Sunday. NC Emergency Management said flood sirens were activated in the Chimney Rock area, with flash flooding, rainfall ponding, and some landslides reported, a hard reminder in a region still carrying scars from Hurricane Helene in 2024. Officials repeated the basic rule: do not drive through flood waters.

The system was expected to dissipate Sunday after being absorbed by another weather system. Until then, governors and emergency managers kept pressing residents to treat leftover rain and wind as real hazards, not afterthoughts.

Federal energy officials moved in parallel to protect fuel supplies. The Energy Department announced Saturday it had authorized emergency exchanges of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with Exxon Mobil and BP America each cleared for up to 2 million barrels and required to return more barrels in 2027 than they withdraw. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the aim was to maintain refinery operations, limit fuel-supply disruptions, and keep affordable, reliable energy flowing to families and businesses.

Keeping critical infrastructure online during a multi-state storm is the same seriousness about national capacity on display when Trump unveils Arsenal-2 in Baltimore as a major shipyard build for long-term strength.

Cleanup tests patience from the Panhandle to the mountains

On the ground, the work is unglamorous and urgent. Power crews clear limbs. Business owners sweep glass. Families dry out what they can save. Local sheriffs and emergency managers keep tallying damage while warning people not to treat a weakening storm as a finished storm.

DeSantis’s flooding caution and Ivey’s cleanup-safety message both point to the same reality. The headline wind speeds fade faster than the secondary threats, carbon monoxide from generators, unstable trees, flooded roads, and soft ground that still gives way.

Mullin’s account of Oval Office involvement “from the get-go,” FEMA staging, and Coast Guard rescues is the opposite of a slow-walk federal posture. It is the expectation taxpayers hold when a named storm crosses a multi-state belt: get declarations signed, push resources forward, and keep governors and counties in the same room.

That preference for order and accountability also shows up when the White House tightens internal discipline, as in the White House polygraph crackdown on Joint Staff that stirred institutional pushback, and when spending is cut fast through tools like a pocket rescission on migrant aid and DEI programs.

For now, the measure of the response is practical. Lights still out for hundreds of thousands. Four families burying loved ones. Schools and shops with roofs on the ground. Mountain towns watching creeks and sirens. And a post-tropical system still capable of dumping water on people who already took the first punch Friday night.

When a hurricane leaves town, competence is counted in restored power, honest warnings, and officials who treat cleanup like the second half of the job, not an afterthought.