Two dead and about 800,000 without power after Hurricane Isaias hits Florida
Hurricane Isaias made landfall in Florida early Saturday, leaving two people dead and widespread power outages as hazardous conditions persisted across the US Southeast.
Tallahassee, United States. Two people died and about 800,000 residents in Florida, Alabama and Georgia were without power after Hurricane Isaias made landfall early Saturday, according to local authorities and electricity monitoring services. The storm subsequently weakened to a post-tropical cyclone.
Hazardous conditions persist
Isaias rapidly lost wind speed after striking the Florida coast as a Category 2 hurricane, the first of the 2026 Atlantic season.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned of storm surges, flash flooding, damaging winds and a risk of tornadoes across parts of the US Southeast. The tornado threat was expected to continue Saturday across parts of the Florida Panhandle, Georgia and the Carolinas.
The storm was expected to produce gusty winds well inland before weakening below gale force later Saturday, the NHC said.
Deaths and road closures
Two people were killed by falling trees in Alabama and Florida, according to local media and authorities.
Alabama’s emergency management agency said fallen trees and power lines made travel hazardous in Houston County, which was under a flash flood warning.
“Due to the impacts of Hurricane Isaias, all Houston County roads are closed until further notice,” the agency posted on X.
Power restoration and damage assessments
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said authorities had received no search and rescue requests shortly after landfall, indicating limited impact at that stage.
Authorities said restoring electricity was a priority in Florida. Highways, bridges and airports were reopening, while teams assessed 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.
He said some 16,000 utility linemen had prepared to respond to the storm.
More than 430,000 customers in Florida, over 280,000 in Alabama and some 100,000 in Georgia lost power as the storm came ashore, according to tracking firm PowerOutage.us.
Shell begins personnel redeployment
Oil and gas producer Shell (SHEL.L) said Saturday it was beginning to redeploy personnel to its Mars, Olympus, Ursa, Vito and Appomattox assets in the Gulf.
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