Clearwater, Florida Mayor Brian J. Aungst told Newsmax on Wednesday that the city is “relatively lucky” that Hurricane Idalia "jogged left" and didn’t cause more damage in the city after making landfall on the southeast coast.
Aungst said on “National Report” that Clearwater was “relatively lucky [that] this thing jogged left a little bit. We had five feet of storm surge, the beach is underwater right now. The high tide is going to be about 11:20 a.m. this morning. We expect another three feet, but we do expect by the end of the day most of that water will recede.”
He added, “We’ve closed the bridge to the beach, parts of our gulf to bay across the Tampa is closed, the southern part. A lot of our streets are underwater, about one of our major north-south arteries … is underwater. The sustained winds were about 35-40 miles an hour with gusts going up to 49. So again, we fared relatively well considering what could have happened.”
Aungst noted, “There are power outages. Duke Energy, our power company, has brought a lot of people in from Texas and other areas to restore the power, [and] clear debris … so we can get the power lines back up. But it doesn't look like it's a major power outage. I think in our area there’s 4,000, around the county I think it's less than 10,000. So we're again, we’re fortunate there."
The mayor also credited residents for listening to evacuation orders, saying, “We learned our lesson last year with … what happened, the devastation in Fort Myers and Sanibel Island. We had so many storms in the past that were coming and then didn’t come, so people got rather lackadaisical. But that was a wake-up call.”
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.