Isaias left at least four dead and nearly 900,000 without power after a Destin landfall

Hurricane Isaias left at least four people dead and nearly 900,000 customers without power after it came ashore as a Category 2 storm near Destin, Florida, on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. Those figures come from wire reporting published Oct. 10, in the first hours after landfall, and recovery work was still in its early stages at that point.

The deaths were scattered across two states: two in Escambia County, Florida, one in Birmingham, Alabama, and one in Barbour County, Alabama. The outages were concentrated in Florida and Alabama, and forecasters warned that the danger was shifting from wind to water as the storm moved inland.

Four deaths in three places

The Boston Globe’s wire report on the storm breaks the toll down by location. In Escambia County, Sheriff Chip Simmons reported that a woman died when a tree fell on her home and that a man died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator running in his garage; four of the man’s family members, ages 4 to 72, were treated and were expected to survive. In Birmingham, Fire Chief Cory Moon said one person died when a tree fell on a house. In Barbour County, Josh Johnson of the Alabama emergency management agency said one person died in a vehicle crash involving a downed tree.

Early accounts differed. A local report from WLOX reported that Isaias left two dead, and a separate NewsChannel 9 report noted that its own story gave both four and at least two, because Gov. Kay Ivey had confirmed two Alabama deaths without saying where or how the second occurred. That is why the figure is stated as a minimum.

Nearly 900,000 customers in the dark

The wire report said nearly 900,000 customers lost power within the first hours after landfall, mostly in Florida and Alabama. By Saturday morning, NewsChannel 9 put the number at about 900,000 homes and businesses across Florida, Alabama and Georgia, citing an outage tracker, while Gov. Ron DeSantis said about 448,000 Florida utility accounts were without electricity. The tracker that supplied the tally is an outage-monitoring site that describes itself as a project to track, record and aggregate power outages across the United States.

The restoration effort was large. DeSantis said more than 16,000 linemen and restoration personnel began work around 3 a.m. Saturday, that all state-owned bridges, Interstate 10 and U.S. 98 had reopened by 6 a.m., and that the state had completed 150 emergency missions with no requests for state search-and-rescue deployments. Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport reopened to commercial traffic, while the Destin-Fort Walton Beach and Pensacola airports were still closed Saturday morning. Ivey said major roads in Alabama, including the Intracoastal Waterway, had reopened, though some remained closed because of downed lines.

Outage counts of this size are consistent with what the National Hurricane Center expects of the storm’s category. Its Saffir-Simpson scale lists Category 2 sustained winds at 96 to 110 mph and says well-built frame homes may suffer major roof and siding damage, shallowly rooted trees may be snapped or uprooted, and near-total power loss is expected, with outages lasting from several days to weeks.

Damage at the coast and a flood threat inland

Isaias, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, made landfall near Destin at 9:30 p.m. Friday, according to NewsChannel 9. DeSantis reported gusts of 116 mph near Santa Rosa Sound and above 100 mph near Pensacola and Panama City Beach. Wind blew the roof off a Pensacola hotel, flattened a boathouse in Destin and tore part of a high-rise facade in Panama City Beach, and the Pensacola mayor said the city’s airport “took some damage.” In Gulf Breeze, Jayme Mitich and her 13-year-old daughter hid beneath a mattress as part of their apartment roof came off, and Mitich described the noise as growing so loud that she kept hearing things break and crash.

Ivey said the storm “cannot clear fast enough.” DeSantis was more specific about what remained: “Although the center of the storm has moved out of Florida, the threat of flooding remains,” he said, warning of 4 to 8 inches of rain across the Panhandle and Big Bend through the weekend. Forecasters warned that flooding could stretch into the Appalachians, and the wire report also flagged a threat of tornadoes across the Southeast. The National Weather Service said parts of Georgia and the Carolinas could see heavy rain capable of flash flooding, and the storm was expected to cross the Tennessee Valley and the mid-Atlantic on Sunday.

President Trump approved emergency declarations for Florida and Alabama, and then Georgia, opening the way for federal aid, and the Energy Department authorized emergency exchanges of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to address supply disruptions. The Globe noted that Isaias was the first hurricane to hit the eastern U.S. since 2024 in an unusually quiet Atlantic season. The death toll and outage count reported here are as of Oct. 10 and may have changed since.

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

More from Morning Overview