Braintree Crews In Florida For Hurricane Milton Relief Efforts

ORLANDO, FL — A two-man crew from Braintree is among the public power crews who headed south to Florida earlier this week to prepare for Hurricane Milton.

The hurricane made landfall on Wednesday evening as a category 3 storm that ravaged the region, leaving many without power and killing an unknown amount of residents, officials said.

• Related: Hurricane Milton Makes Landfall In FL As A Category 3 Storm

The crew from the Braintree Electric Light Department was in Orlando with a material handling bucket truck earlier this week. They attended a "critical" planning meeting on Wednesday morning just hours before the storm made landfall.

"We're proud to see such dedicated collaboration among crews from different areas, all united to restore power and help these communities get back on their feet as quickly as possible," BELD officials said Wednesday.

Search and rescue efforts were underway in Florida after dangerous tornadoes tore through the region, destroying about 125 homes before the hurricane made landfall. The Spanish Lakes Country Club near Fort Pierce, on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, was hit particularly hard. Some residents were killed.

"We have lost some life," St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson told WPBF News, though he wouldn’t say how many people were killed.

The storm officially hit near Siesta Key in Sarasota County along the west coast of the state at 8:30 p.m. EST Wednesday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The situation in the Tampa area was a major emergency as St. Petersburg recorded over 16 inches of rain, prompting the National Weather Service to warn of flash flooding there as well as other parts of western and central Florida.

Some 90 minutes after making landfall, the storm had weakened to a Category 2 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph — but officials warned that the storm was no less dangerous.

With reporting from Kat Schuster.