Tampa Bay feared Milton would be the storm of a century. How bad was it?

Hurricane Milton ripped off the roof of the towering Tropicana Field where emergency responders initially planned to gather. A giant crane collapsed onto a building housing the Tampa Bay Times newsroom. And dozens of people had to be rescued from an assisted care facility.

But the storm that people in Tampa Bay feared would pummel one of the country’s most vulnerable urban coastlines, breaking the area’s spectacular streak for avoiding a hurricane catastrophe, proved largely not to be.

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said police and fire departments had responded to “hundreds of calls,” though most were for trees and downed power lines. At a Thursday morning briefing, she said her city had been spared the worst. Before the storm, she’d warned residents in evacuation zones that if they stayed, “You are going to die.”

“One of the blessings for us is that we didn’t see that predicted storm surge,” she said. “So that saved a lot. That was what we were really worried about, was the storm surge. Fortunately, we didn’t see the peak of it.”

To be sure, there was still plenty of damage to tally in the early hours after the storm. In some parts of Pinellas County, a peninsula jutting into the gulf near Tampa, homes that were damaged from Hurricane Helene were further battered by Milton. Residents gawked at the sight of their baseball team’s stadium in tatters. Some picked up ripped turf found strewn in the stadium’s parking lot.

“It’s just heartbreaking to see,” said Sherl Hackett, 68, a retired flight attendant who snapped photos of the damage while walking her dog. She had sheltered in her nearby high-rise apartment during the storm. The wind roared. Debris flew through the air. As the sun rose Thursday, she said, “Today was just a relief.”

The Tampa Bay area caught the brunt of Milton’s wind and rain. Wind gusts over 80 mph were widespread throughout the region, with peak gusts of 102 mph at the Tampa Skyway Fishing Pier. The wind was accompanied by hours of torrential rain. The high-end amounts were the equivalent of four to six Octobers’ worth of rain.

In St. Petersburg, more than 9 inches fell in three hours Wednesday evening, which qualifies as a 1-in-1000-year event.

But the surge the meteorologists warned could rise above 10 feet did not appear. In the end, Milton made landfall south of Tampa Bay, sparing the region of the “dirty side” of the storm that brought in a swell of ocean water. Instead, wind sucked water out of Tampa Bay, rather than surging into it.

Hurricanes spin counterclockwise and locations on their north side experience winds from the east. In the case of Milton, in Tampa Bay, these winds from the east, off the land, were pushing waters back out into the Gulf of Mexico. Tide gauges, which track water levels, showed water levels had dropped below normal at Port Manatee, Tampa’s Old Port, St. Petersburg and Clearwater Beach.

“We had certain worst-case scenarios in terms of it going into Tampa Bay,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a Thursday briefing. But, he said, those scenarios didn’t materialise. “A lot of places in Pinellas County, they had negative storm surge because it sucked the water out of the bay. So in terms of all that, where you’d see the entire Tampa Bay area underwater, that did not happen.”

On Thursday morning, residents in downtown St. Petersburg emerged from their high-rise apartments to find the storm had tossed an enormous construction crane into the building housing the Tampa Bay Times.

Police cordoned off the street and small crowds formed at either end of neighbours who said they heard or saw the crane fall overnight.

“I heard a crash,” said Timothy Lawler, 69, a retired business owner who lives blocks away at an apartment building. “It was quite frightening.”

Donald Tyre, a St. Petersburg city building official, said a section of the crane wedged itself between the fourth and fifth floors of the building. He said the city had ordered the developer of a skyscraper under construction across the street to remove the crane’s upper sections before the storm. But that didn’t happen, Tyre said, because it takes a few days to a week to make a disassembly plan, and the developer told the city he couldn’t fly in a crew on such short notice.

“There really just wasn’t enough time to disassemble those sections,” Tyre said.

The developer, Red Apple Real Estate, said in a statement that it was grateful the only damage was to “bricks and not to people.”

Lawler’s building had minor leaks, ceiling damage in the lobby and a broken window, but nothing as severe as what happened with the crane. Overall, however, he said he was relieved to see his city escape more serious damage. He predicted the storm wouldn’t change people’s minds about the safety of living near Tampa Bay.

“People here are resilient,” he said. “We dodged the bomb.”

Tampa Bay has been bracing for a monster storm for years. Helene hit the region with flooding not seen in generations. But that storm surge was considerably lower than the dire scenario feared ahead of Milton.

The region is at particular risk because of its topography. Experts have warned that if a storm pushes water into Tampa Bay, it could essentially get trapped into too small a space, sending storm surge levels higher.

Scores were ordered to evacuate ahead of Milton - and many appeared to heed that order after experiencing Helene’s wrath.

Some residents returned to their homes Thursday to find them largely intact. Others were not as lucky.

Ritarose Williams tried to get a peek at a friend’s mobile home at Causeway Village in South Pasadena, in Pinellas County. Storm winds had knocked down power lines and flooded streets and homes with several feet of water. Her friend’s trailer was also flooded.

“I’m going to have to be the one to tell her,” Williams said, starting to cry.

Further north, the staff at HCA Florida Largo Hospital in St. Petersburg was rushing to evacuate patients after the facility flooded overnight. Several elderly patients in blue hospital gowns waited to be loaded into ambulances and taken to other hospitals.

A hospital spokeswoman said the basement had flooded but that none of the water reached patient rooms.

Many were counting their blessings after the storm. Mike Bush, 34, survived Helene in a second-floor apartment in the barrier island community of Pass-a-Grille. The first floor of his complex had flooded. Debris was still piled out front when Milton hit.

The new storm scattered the trash down to the beach. Now there were two couches and a mix of waterlogged belongings strewn out front. Among the litter nearby: mattresses, golf balls and a soaked book titled “Don’t Let Go.”

In the distance, alarms sounded. Generators hummed. A helicopter passed overhead.

But Bush was determined to do something to mark his community’s resilience. After Helene, he’d walked down to the beach and planted a Florida state flag. On Thursday, he made the same walk, planting the red and white banner in the sand.

“It was bad, but it could have been a hundred times worse,” he said. “We could all be underwater.”

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Samenow and Brasch reported from Washington. Rozsa reported from Ocala, Fla.

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