NPR News

At least 2 deaths attributed to Isaias after hurricane bashes Florida and Alabama

NPR | By Bill Chappell

Published October 10, 2026 at 10:14 AM MST

A driver look at his overturned truck in a flooded parking lot on Saturday morning in Tiger Point, Fla., close to where Hurricane Isaias made landfall Friday night.

Emergency crews in Florida and Alabama are surveying damage wrought by Hurricane Isaias, after the storm bashed into the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 storm Friday night. At least two people have died from storm-related incidents, NPR has confirmed.

Isaias brought 105 mph winds onshore, snapping trees and knocking out electricity. Officials warn that flash flood threats persist, but further inland.

One death occurred in Escambia County, in the far west of the Florida Panhandle. Shortly before 9 p.m. local time Friday, a rescue team found a person pinned under a large tree, according to Sgt. Melony Peterson of the Escambia County Sheriff's Office.

"The victim was inside the home when the tree collapsed," Peterson said via email.

Another death was reported in Jefferson County, Ala., which includes Birmingham.

"We did have a storm-related fatality overnight," Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency Director Jim Coker told NPR. "A tree did fall on the house," Coker added. "It was a single-family residence."

Hurricane Isaias forced a Waffle House restaurant to shut down when it passed through Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Isaias made landfall as the season's first Atlantic hurricane.

As of 11:50 a.m. ET Saturday, about 780,000 power customers remained without power in Florida, Alabama and Georgia, according to the monitoring site Poweroutage.us. That figure had been closer to 900,000 earlier Saturday.

In Florida, the worst outages were in counties such as Santa Rosa; Holmes; Washington; and Walton – all of which had more than 80% of their residents without power, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a morning news conference.

The governor said some 16,000 utility workers were busy trying to get power returned to homeowners.

"Last night in the wee hours of the morning, those crews began working as early as 3 a.m.," DeSantis said. He added that teams were also working to remove trees blocking main roads -- and that both I-10 and Route 98 were open as of Saturday morning, along with all state bridges.

An uprooted tree is seen in Gulf Breeze, Fla., on Saturday. The southeastern U.S. faced a high risk of flooding as Isaias, weakened from a hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone, moved northward.

Isaias made landfall near Destin, Fla., as a Category 2 hurricane around 8:30 p.m. local time Friday night, packing 105 mph winds, according to theNational Hurricane Center. It brought a storm surge of some 5 feet -- short of the 6 to 9 feet forecasters had said was possible if landfall coincided with peak high tide. It arrived roughly two hours before high tide in Destin.

Isaias was downgraded to a post-tropical storm hours after making landfall. By 5 a.m. local time on Saturday, its sustained winds had dropped to 35 mph, as the system sped its way through Alabama.

"Multiple trees and power lines are down across the county,"tweeted the emergency management agency in Jefferson County, Ala. It told residents to "avoid unnecessary travel if possible while crews clear roads and restore service."

But the storm's effects extended for hundreds of miles. By around 9:30 a.m. Saturday, the system sent a long band of powerful thunder storms up the center of Georgia. And as theFlorida Public Radio Emergency Network notes, forecasters warn that tornadoes could spin off of the system, causing further havoc far from the Gulf Coast.