Search and rescue teams combed through shattered US communities on Thursday looking for victims of Hurricane Michael, a Category 4 monster storm which carved out a swathe of destruction in the Florida Panhandle, killing at least five.

In Mexico Beach, a seafront town where the hurricane made landfall, houses had been razed by storm surge, boats had been tossed into yards and the streets were littered with trees and power lines.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said the storm had caused "unbelievable devastation" and the priority for the moment was looking for survivors among residents who failed to heed orders to evacuate.

"We have over 1,000 people doing search and rescue," Scott told ABC. "I'm very concerned about our citizens that didn't evacuate and I just hope that, you know, we don't have much loss of life."

There have been five confirmed storm-related deaths so far -- four in Florida's Gadsden County and one in Georgia.

CNN reported a sixth death, a 38-year-old man who died on Thursday when a tree fell on his car in North Carolina.

President Donald Trump pledged to help storm victims.

"Our hearts are with the thousands who have sustained property damage, in many cases entirely wiped out," Trump said. "We will not rest or waver until the job is done and the recovery is complete."

Florida officials said more than 400,000 homes and businesses were without electricity in Florida and Governor Scott said nearly 20,000 utility workers had been deployed to restore power.

Michael made landfall on Wednesday afternoon as a Category 4 storm, the most powerful to hit Florida's northwestern Panhandle in more than a century.

Michael has since been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves through the Carolinas, which are still recovering from last month's Hurricane Florence.

Mexico Beach, where the hurricane came ashore, suffered massive destruction from the 155 mile per hour (250 kph) winds and several feet (meters) of storm surge.

- 'Houses started floating' -

Home after home was razed from its foundations in the town of around 1,000 people, leaving just bare concrete slabs. Others were missing roofs or walls. Roads were impassable and canals were choked with debris.

A Mexico Beach resident who rode out the hurricane described the impact of the storm surge to CNN.

"When the water came in houses started floating," said the man identified as Scott. "We had furniture in our house that wasn't even our furniture. The surge had brought stuff in.

"There's nothing left here anymore," he said of the town. "Our lives are gone here. All the stores, all the restaurants, everything.

"It's hard to grasp," he said. "This was never in our imagination."

Nearby Panama City Beach experienced similar damage along with other communities along the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

A storage facility in Panama City Beach housing hundreds of boats was ripped apart by the strong winds with the roof shredding into strips of twisted metal.

Margaret Decambre, a 48-year-old gemologist, rode out the storm in her Panama City fourth-floor condo with her husband and three cats.

"The wind was so hard that it was pushing water through windows and doors," Decambre said. "We had probably about half an inch of water on my floor and no way to stop it from coming in.

"It's total devastation -- no power, no water, no communication," she said.

Decambre said she had opened her home to a friend who takes care of three elderly women.

"We brought all four of them and their cat to my condo," she said. "Yes, it is all about helping others."

- Storm over North Carolina -

At 5:00 pm Eastern time (2100 GMT), Michael was over North Carolina, the National Hurricane Center said.

It warned of possible flash flooding in North Carolina and Virginia and said the storm was still packing winds of 50 mph.

"The center of Michael will move across eastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia this evening, and move into the western Atlantic Ocean tonight," it said.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) chief Brock Long said Michael was the most intense hurricane to strike the Florida Panhandle since record keeping began in 1851.

Long said many Florida buildings were not built to withstand a storm above the strength of a Category 3 hurricane on the five-level Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

As it came ashore, Michael was just shy of a Category 5 -- defined as a storm packing top sustained wind speeds of 157 mph or above.

Michael: Most powerful US hurricane since 1969
Washington (AFP) Oct 11, 2018 - Hurricane Michael went in just two days from tropical storm status to a high-end Category 4 hurricane -- on a scale with a maximum of five -- making it one of the most powerful ever to hit the US mainland.

Here are some figures illustrating the power of Michael which "took forecasters by surprise" when it slammed into the Florida coast on Wednesday, according to Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

"This came out of nowhere, developed on a weekend so it didn't really get much attention at all until basically yesterday," he said.

- Wind speed -

Michael hit Florida with wind speeds of 155 miles per hour (250 kilometers per hour), making it just shy of a Category 5, which starts at 157 mph.

Never in recorded weather history has a hurricane hit the mainland United States at such a speed in October -- the penultimate month in the June to November hurricane season.

Looking back at entire hurricane seasons, Michael hit the continental United States with the strongest winds of any storm since 1992 and Hurricane Andrew.

Prior to that, only two other storms in recorded American weather history -- that is, since 1851 -- had stronger winds. They were in 1969 and 1935.

- Pressure, a better measure -

Meteorologists use another measure to evaluate hurricane intensity: central pressure.

This is preferred by Klotzbach, who explains that it is more precise for historical comparisons because it is measured precisely by an airplane flying in the middle of the storm's eye, whereas "wind is going to be different everywhere along the hurricane."

"The pressure gives an idea of the size of the storm," he said.

Measured in this way -- the lower the pressure the stronger the hurricane -- Michael was the most powerful since Hurricane Camille in 1969.

- How much damage? -

In any case, no matter how you measure it, Michael is among the most powerful hurricanes to have hit the US mainland in recent memory along with Camille in 1969, Andrew in 1992 and Katrina in 2005.

The calculation changes if you take into account Puerto Rico, the US island territory in the Caribbean that was devastated by Hurricane Maria last year. The death toll was recently revised to 2,975 fatalities, either in the storm itself or later as the health care and utility grids failed.

In terms of damage the most costly year on record was 2017, when besides the Caribbean several US coastal states were hit by powerful hurricanes -- Harvey and Irma -- that moved slowly and dumped record rainful for days, flooding major cities such as Houston.

When combined, natural disasters caused some $300 billion in damage nationwide in 2017, according to estimates.

The bill for 2018 is not yet known. It was a relatively calm year except for hurricanes Michael and Florence last month.

In the case of Michael the damage will be mainly from wind rather than rain.

Related Links
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Michael weakens to tropical storm after day of havoc in Florida
Panama City, United States (AFP) Oct 11, 2018
Michael weakened to a tropical storm Thursday after wreaking havoc along Florida's Gulf Coast, flooding homes and streets, ripping away roofs and snapping trees and power lines as it roared ashore as a raging Category 4 hurricane. Two deaths were blamed on the hurricane - one in Florida and one in Georgia as the storm raced across the neighboring state, heading northeast. Florida officials said Michael, packing winds of 155 miles per hour (250 kilometers per hour), was the most powerful storm t ... read more