Isaias killed at least 4 people, including a man found in a garage with a running generator

Hurricane Isaias has been blamed for at least four deaths across Florida and Alabama, among them a man found dead in his closed garage in Escambia County, Florida, with a generator running inside. Coverage published late on Saturday, October 10, 2026, put the toll at four, two in each state. Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons announced both of the Florida deaths.

Two deaths in Escambia County, Florida

Simmons said on the morning of Saturday, October 10, that a woman had died when a tree fell on a home in Escambia County, the Panhandle county that includes Pensacola. By mid-afternoon the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office had reported a second death, on Wilderness Lane: a man discovered in his closed garage with a running generator.

CBS News logged the first death at 9:21 AM and the second at 2:48 PM in its live coverage of Isaias, which carried an “updated” stamp of 10:14 PM EDT on October 10. A local station, WEAR-TV in Pensacola, published Simmons’ account of the woman’s death at 9:59 AM and said no further information was available at that point. Neither report names the victims.

The cause of the man’s death comes from the Associated Press. In a report carried by ABC7 New York, the AP wrote that he died of carbon monoxide fumes from the generator, and that four family members, aged 4 to 72, were treated and expected to survive, according to Simmons. CBS describes the same four relatives, aged 72, 24, 5 and 4, as treated for non-life-threatening conditions.

Alabama’s two deaths and the agencies behind them

The two Alabama deaths reached reporters through different offices, and the descriptions do not line up neatly. CBS credits the Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency, at 11:01 AM, with reporting that a person died when a tree fell on a house in the Huffman area of Birmingham. The AP, in the same ABC7 report, names Birmingham Fire Chief Cory Moon as the official who confirmed a death from a tree falling on a house.

The second Alabama death is where the accounts diverge most. CBS reports that Gov. Kay Ivey’s office confirmed a death in Barbour County to the network at 2:55 PM, with no circumstances given. The AP attributes a Barbour County death to a motor vehicle crash involving a downed tree, a characterization it credits to Josh Johnson of the state’s emergency management agency.

Sorted by cause, then, the four deaths are two trees on houses, one crash involving a downed tree and one generator. No report read for this article attributes a death to storm surge or drowning, though the weather that killed these four was still moving north.

Carbon monoxide and the garage generator

Generators are the one cause on the list that a household controls, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is direct about it: the agency’s carbon monoxide guidance says a generator should never be used inside a home or garage, even with doors and windows open, and should run only outdoors, more than 20 feet from any windows, doors and vents. The CDC also lists the early symptoms as headache, dizziness, weakness, upset stomach, vomiting, chest pain and confusion, which it says are often mistaken for the flu.

Generators were in demand because the power was out. The same CBS page, drawing on the PowerOutage tracking service, recorded more than 884,000 customers dark at 7:38 AM on Saturday.

A toll counted before the water arrived

The deaths came after warnings that had been issued well ahead of landfall. DeSantis declared a state of emergency for more than two dozen Florida counties before the storm arrived, and Ivey did the same for 40 Alabama counties. CBS reported that tens of thousands of people along the northern Gulf Coast were placed under evacuation orders, and that federal emergency declarations were approved for Florida and Alabama, with Georgia’s following on Saturday afternoon at 4:33 PM. None of those accounts says whether either of the Escambia County victims had been in an evacuation zone.

Isaias came ashore near Destin at about 8 p.m. Eastern on Friday, October 9, as a Category 2 hurricane, and had weakened to a post-tropical cyclone by early Saturday. The rain was still ahead. The National Hurricane Center forecast, as relayed by CBS at 6:12 AM, called for up to 8 inches across southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, the Big Bend and southwest Georgia, with localized totals up to 15 inches. Fox 10 in Mobile reported that forecasters expected heavy rain and possible flooding across much of the Southeast through the weekend.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters on Saturday morning, “The flooding story is not over.” The count of four was the latest published as of the AP report’s 10:37 PM timestamp on October 10, and the two states’ emergency agencies had not issued a revised figure in any of the coverage reviewed.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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