A group of young Kenyans are working on an unusual solution to the problems of food waste and fish feed produced unsustainably from wild-caught fish stocks: maggots.

The larvae of the black soldier fly are now devouring unwanted food in projects around the world. Their excrement, known as frass, can be used as a fertiliser for land-based crops, and their protein-rich bodies, harvested before they turn into flies, can be fed to livestock.

In Kenya, the environmentalists behind Project Mila, which in Swahili means tradition, are employing the larvae to clean up food waste, as well as nurture mangroves and feed fish in coastal farms.

Project Mila’s team of volunteers collect organic waste from households, markets and restaurants in the south-eastern coastal city of Mombasa, and feed it to voracious larvae, which produce frass while helping to clean up the city.

Nusra Abed, co-founder of Project Mila and a community health promoter, says she was “perturbed by the number of sanitation-related infections within the community due to poor waste management, and wanted to be part of the solution”.

According to a report by the UN Environment Programme, Kenya has some of the highest levels of household food waste in the world, producing 40-100kg per person annually.

Apart from alleviating the problem of food waste, the frass fertiliser has also been helping small-scale farmers in the Mombasa area increase their crop growth and diversity. It can enable farmers to diversify away from planting coconuts – a commonly grown crop which is slow to mature – into fast-growing produce including onions, tomatoes and other fruits. This offers them the opportunity to earn extra income through farming that’s sustainable and organic, and selling their surplus harvest in markets, says Roselyne Mwachia, a marine and fisheries researcher working with Project Mila.

The use of frass in farming has also made the activity less harmful for the environment and improved the catch of nearby fishers, say the team. In areas like Mariakani and Mazeras, 24 miles west of Mombasa, upstream smallholder farmers were using chemical-based fertilisers before the switch to frass, which polluted the marine ecosystem when washed into the water after storms, says Mwachia. “This affected … marine species, as well as caused bleaching of coral reefs and death of mangroves, seagrass and seaweeds.”

“Coral reefs are fertile breeding grounds for marine species, and when bleaching happens, it means breeding will be impacted and marine stocks will reduce,” she adds. But with farmers shifting to frass, Mwachia says that “fishers around areas where we have worked are reporting reduced coral bleaching and increased fishing fortunes due to reduced pollution”.

Globally, aquaculture has gained a bad reputation for its unsustainability, especially relating to the widespread practice of turning wild-caught fish into food for captive-bred fish. But making fish feed out of fly larvae can potentially reduce dependence on traditional fishmeal derived from wild stocks, notes Mary Opiyo, a senior aquaculture research scientist at KMFRI, a state body.

“This is one way of promoting sustainable aquaculture and reducing overreliance on marine stock,” she says.

Kigen Compton is the founder of BioBuu, a company producing fish feed from black soldier fly larvae in Kenya and Tanzania. He says: “With easily accessible, available and affordable feeds, many farmers are shifting to sustainable aquaculture and moving away from wild fishing.”

The larvae have been catching on with aquaculture workers in other countries, too. In Colombia, rural populations are earning sustainable livelihoods through frass-fed insects that are being used as feed in fish farming, while a company in Finland says producing fish feed from the larvae is the “perfect solution” for future aquaculture. Researchers in the US recently made some calculations regarding the country’s aquaculture industry. They found that if soldier fly protein was fed to salmon, trout and shrimp to the maximum extent without impairing the fish, 40,843 tonnes of wild fish could be spared every year in the US alone.

There are some concerns about disease. David Mirera, a senior research scientist at KMFRI, says there are risks if proper hygiene guidelines are not followed during the production of the feed. “We do not have a clear regulatory framework and controls on black soldier fly rearing, and this might compromise the quality of feeds being produced, especially by those who are not professionals in the sector of feed formulation and production,” he says.

But many fish farmers in his country are already firm fans of the flies, citing their convenience and secure yields. Juma Mashanga is one of them. He helps lead a group of community fishers who are farming fish in cages in the Indian Ocean near Kwale, a town 19 milles south-west of Mombasa.

“With cages, there is a guarantee of harvesting at maturity, and the returns are good,” he says. “Sustaining the cages and feeding the fingerlings is manageable because we can process our [black soldier fly] protein feeds at home.”

Barack Obama made his first appearance on the campaign trail for Kamala Harris on Thursday, speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania and at an event for Black voters, where he urged men in particular to support the vice-president.

In comments directed specifically to Black men in the swing state during an event at one of Harris’s campaign offices, Obama questioned their unwillingness to vote for her – a September NAACP poll showed that over one quarter of Black men under 50 say they will vote for Donald Trump.

“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers,” Obama said.

“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses. I’ve got a problem with that.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and reasons for that.”

He added: “When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting.”

Later in the evening, at the Fitzgerald Field House in Pittsburgh, where thousands appeared to be in attendance, the Democratic party leader called on residents of the crucial swing state to vote for Harris – and down-ballot for other Democratic candidates like Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey.

“We need a president who actually cares about solving problems and making your life better, and that’s what Kamala Harris will do,” Obama said. “And to help her do it, she will need a Senate full of serious public servants like Bob Casey.”

With 19 electoral college votes, Pennsylvania is essential for either candidate to win the election. Recent surveys released by Quinnipac University showed Harris leading in Pennsylvania, but polling between the vice-president and Donald Trump has been close.

The state may also determine control of the Senate: Casey, for example, is up for re-election and facing a well-funded Republican opponent.

Obama and Harris have long been supporters of each other’s campaigns, and at the Democratic national convention in August the former president and his wife sought to cast Harris as the heir to their movement. Harris was an early supporter of Obama’s long-shot bid against Hilary Clinton, starting in 2007 when she knocked on doors for him ahead of the Iowa caucuses. In 2010, when Harris ran for attorney general of California, Obama backed her campaign – calling her “a dear, dear friend of mine”.

In Pittsburgh on Thursday, Obama acknowledged American voters’ frustrations with inflation, the Covid recovery and other issues – while denouncing Trump and praising Harris’s platform.

“This election is going to be tight because there are a lot of Americans who are still struggling out there,” Obama said. “I get it why people are looking to shake things up. I mean, I am the hope-y, change-y guy. So I understand people feeling frustrated. We can do better. What I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you.

“The good news is, Kamala Harris – she doesn’t have concepts for a plan. She has an actual plan to make your life better.”

Harkening back to the message he shared with Black voters earlier in the day, Obama later added: “I’m sorry, gentlemen, I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior of bullying and putting people down is a sign of strength. And I am here to tell you: that is not what real strength is. It never has been.

“Real strength is about helping people need it and standing up for those who can’t always stand up for themselves, that is what we should want for our daughters and for our sons, and that is what I want to see a president of the United States of America.”

Before the former president took the stage, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who was among those shortlisted to be Harris’ running mate, touted the Democratic party’s work in the state to expand universal free breakfast and gun violence prevention efforts, while criticizing Republican party leadership on the national level. He specifically encouraged attendees to vote to re-elect Casey.

Casey himself spoke, laying out the stakes for the upcoming election and denouncing his rival, David McCormick. McCormick, a businessman, ran the world’s largest hedge fund while it managed and advised funds holding hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian debt, documents obtained by the Guardian show.

“These out-of-state billionaires [are] spending more than $100m to defeat me in this race. Well, I got news for those billionaires. I’m going to beat David McCormick, and I’m going to beat those billionaires,” Casey said.

Obama’s appearance comes as Democratic surrogates are campaigning for Harris in swing states across the country. This week, the Harris campaign confirmed that vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz will campaign in Wisconsin, former president Bill Clinton will tour the southern states of Georgia and North Carolina, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders will host events in Michigan. Meanwhile, former first lady Michelle Obama has relaunched Party at the Polls, a program of her non-partisan voting initiative When We All Vote.

At the same time, Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance held a town hall Thursday evening in Greensboro, North Carolina, shortly after Trump spoke in Detroit.

A US Coast Guard helicopter crew rescued a man who was left clinging to an ice box in the Gulf of Mexico after his boat was stranded overnight in waters roiled by Hurricane Milton.

The man was aboard a fishing vessel that became disabled on Wednesday off Madeira Beach, Florida, hours before the hurricane made landfall, said coast guard press officer Nicole Groll. The man, who was not identified, was able to radio the coast guard station in nearby St Petersburg before contact was lost about 6.45pm.

But on Thursday searchers located the man about 30 miles (48km) off Longboat Key, Florida, clinging to an open cooler chest, a video clip provided by the coast guard shows. In the video, a coast guard diver was lowered from a helicopter and swam to the man to pick him up.

“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” coast guard official Dana Grady said.

Rescue teams continued pull Florida residents from the wreckage of Hurricane Milton throughout Thursday, after the storm smashed through coastal communities, where it tore homes into pieces, filled streets with mud and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes. At least six people were dead.

Among the most dramatic rescues, Hillsborough County officers found a 14-year-old boy floating on a piece of fence and pulled him on to a boat.

Despite the destruction, many people expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialised.

At least 340 individuals and 49 pets have been rescued in ongoing efforts, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Thursday afternoon.

Arriving just two weeks after the misery wrought by Hurricane Helene, the system also knocked out power to more than 3 million people, flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off a baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.

The man rescued off the coast clinging to the ice box was taken to Tampa general hospital for medical treatment, the coast guard said. The agency estimated he had survived winds of 75-90mph (121-145km/h) and waves up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) high during his night on the water. The fate of his boat was unknown.

A brown bear that underwent brain surgery in the first operation of its kind in the UK is doing well but is “not out of the woods” yet, a charity has said.

Boki went under the knife on Wednesday after an MRI scan revealed he had hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain.

The two-year-old mammal, who had been suffering from seizures and related health issues, is awake and said to be doing well after the surgery.

A specialist wildlife veterinary surgeon, Romain Pizzi, carried out the operation, which aimed to drain fluid from the bear’s brain, at Wildwood Trust, a wildlife park near Canterbury in Kent.

It was the first time a procedure of this kind has been carried out in the UK. Pizzi previously became the first surgeon to perform a similar operation on a black bear in Asia.

The Wildwood Trust said on Thursday: “We are very pleased to report that Boki is awake and is doing as well as can be expected following his brain surgery yesterday.

“We are, of course, not out of the woods but he has been checked over this morning by Romain Pizzi and our vet, Elliott Simpson-Brown, from IZVG (International Zoo Veterinary Group) and they are happy with his recovery so far.

“The team at Wildwood will continue to monitor him closely to make sure he is responding to treatment.”

Pizzi said: “You’re always a little bit nervous when you come in a day after an unusual or big operation, and there’s a lot that could have given us problems with Boki, but the good news is he’s actually doing really well this morning.

“He was a little bit sorry for himself, and any animal is going to have a little discomfort after an op, but he’s bright and alert and very mentally active and he’s taking his medication. So far so good.”

The conservation charity is fundraising for Boki’s surgery and immediate aftercare costs, which is expected to be about £20,000.

Donald Trump’s decision to hold a rally in the heart of Manhattan on 27 October, nine days before election day, has been slammed by New York Democrats, with one comparing the booking to an infamous Nazi rally held at the same venue in the lead-up to the second world war.

But it has also triggered a backlash to such sentiments, with Republicans saying such rhetoric heightens tensions even more in a presidential election campaign which has already seen two attempts on Trump’s life.

The Democratic state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes much of the west side of Manhattan where a date on Trump’s “arena tour” rally has been booked at Madison Square Garden, called on venue owners to cancel the event.

“Let’s be clear,” Hoylman-Sigal wrote on X. “Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939.”

Hoylman-Sigal was referring to a pro-Hitler rally, organized by the German American Bund, that was attended by more than 20,000 people and featured a portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. Many attendees came from Yaphank, Long Island, where the Bund was headquartered and had a summer camp teaching Nazi ideology.

In 2019, Hillary Clinton used a speech at the same venue to decry “an assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our democracy”, referring to the infamous Bund rally.

But New York Republicans denounced the comparison.

“Referring to a peaceful rally for the leading candidate for President of the United States as a ‘Nazi Rally’ is not only a disgusting comparison, it is a gross escalation of the dangerous rhetoric in the wake of two direct attempts on President Donald Trump’s life,” state senator Rob Ortt said in a statement.

In his post, Hoylman-Sigal tried to downplay the comparison he had made. “I’m not calling anyone a Nazi,” he said. “I’m pointing out a historic similarity.”

The state senator added: “I was talking about the venue and many of his followers who are white supremacists and have demonstrated hatred and vitriol toward minority groups, including Jews, people of color and the LGBTQ community.”

Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Politico that Trump had refused to condemn white supremacy, incited rightwing extremists to engage in an insurrection, and aligned with and dined with Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis.

“If ever there was a moment to make such a comparison, it’s now, which is why the vast majority of American voters are opposing Donald Trump in this election,” Soifer said.

The dispute comes as the major political parties are locked in an expensive battle for control of New York’s suburban districts that flipped Republican in 2022, depriving Democrats of a majority in Congress.

But it also comes as Jewish voters in New York City weigh their traditional Democratic alignment over the widening Middle East conflict. Trump has said Jews who vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris “should have their head examined”.

Members of Democrats’ progressive wing have been accused of antisemitism over their statements criticizing Israeli actions and for their support of pro-Palestinian protests at university campuses across the city.

Earlier this week, Trump held a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israelis on 7 October 2023. He called the attack on Israel a “nightmare” and went on to say that the rise of antisemitism in the US was a result of Democratic leadership.

Trump has previously said he had hoped to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden, home to sports teams such as the New York Knicks and the Rangers, and the most prestigious rock venue in the country.

“We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” Trump said in April. “We think we’re signing Madison Square Garden to do. We’re going to have a big rally honoring the police, and honoring the firemen, and everybody. Honoring a lot of people, including teachers by the way.”

The dispute over a Trump rally at the venue comes as Democrats have broadly toned down their comparisons between Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and Nazi ideology.

In May, Joe Biden accused Trump of using “Hitler’s language” in May after the former president temporarily shared a video referencing a “unified reich” to Truth Social.

The Trump campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said comments by Hoylman-Sigal “is the same type of dangerous rhetoric that led to two assassination attempts on President Trump’s life and has divided our country” and called on the senator to resign.

The Republican state senate candidate Vito LaBella said on X that Hoylman-Sigal’s comments would alienate voters. “All polls show about half this country supporting this man. It’s OK that you hate Trump. You just called 150 million voters Nazies [sic]. Shame on you.”

Eighteen theatregoers at Stuttgart’s state opera required medical treatment for severe nausea over the weekend after watching a performance that included live piercing, unsimulated sexual intercourse and copious amounts of fake and real blood.

“On Saturday we had eight and on Sunday we had 10 people who had to be looked after by our visitor service,” said the opera’s spokesperson, Sebastian Ebling, about the two performances of Sancta, a work by the Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger. A doctor had been called in for treatment in three instances, he added.

Holzinger, 38, is known for freewheeling performances that blur the line between dance theatre and vaudeville. Her all-female cast typically performs partially or fully naked, and previous shows have included live sword-swallowing, tattooing, masturbation and action paintings with blood and fresh excrement.

“Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,” Holzinger told the Guardian in an interview earlier this year.

Sancta, Holzinger’s first foray into opera, premiered at the Mecklenburg state theatre in Schwerin in May, and is based on Paul Hindemith’s 1920s expressionist opera Sancta Susanna, which has its own history of controversy.

Hindemith’s original opera tells the story of a young nun who, aroused by a tale told by one of the nunnery’s older women, steps on to the altar naked and rips the loincloth from Christ’s torso. An encounter with a large spider leads her to repent her action and beg the other nuns to wall her up alive.

It was originally meant to premiere at Stuttgart’s state opera in 1921, but was not put on stage until 1922 after protests against its allegedly sacrilegious content.

The version that unsettled audience members in Stuttgart this year supplanted the original musical performance with naked nuns rollerskating on a movable half-pipe at the centre of the stage, a wall of crucified naked bodies and a lesbian priest saying mass.

After Holzinger brought Sancta to her native Vienna in June, bishops from Salzburg and Innsbruck criticised it as a “disrespectful caricature of the holy mass”.

The Austrian artist has previously suggested that her opera was less designed to mock the church than explore parallels between the conservative institution on the one hand, and kink communities and BDSM subcultures on the other.

“We recommend that all audience members once again very carefully read the warnings so they know what to expect,” Ebling told the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper. Visitors to the adults-only show were alerted in advance to a long list of warnings for potential triggers including incense, loud noises, explicit sexual acts and sexual violence.

“If you have questions, speak to the visitor service,” Ebling added. “And when in doubt during the performance, it might help to avert your gaze.”

Reports of medical treatment in the auditorium do not appear to have done Holzinger’s Sancta any commercial harm. All five remaining shows at the Stuttgart state opera, as well as two performances at Berlin’s Volksbühne in November, have since sold out.

The Gateway Pundit, the far-right news website that played a critical role in spreading false information about the 2020 election, has settled a defamation lawsuit with Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers it falsely accused of wrongdoing.

Notice of the settlement was filed in circuit court in Missouri, where Freeman and Moss had sued the site for defamation. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in the filing.

“The dispute between the parties has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement,” the legal team for Moss and Freeman said in a statement. Attorneys for the Gateway Pundit did not immediately return a request for comment.

After the 2020 election, the Gateway Pundit published a series of stories amplifying a misleading video that showed Freeman and Moss counting ballots. The site pushed the false claim that the two women were committing fraud and counting illegal ballots after counting had ended for the night. The Gateway Pundit was the first news outlet to identify Freeman and later identified Moss, who have been cleared of all wrongdoing.

Even after Georgia election officials debunked the video, the site continued to publish numerous articles falsely accusing Moss and Freeman of fraud. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, also attacked the two women publicly. A Washington DC jury ordered Giuliani to pay nearly $150m to the two women last year for libel, a decision the former New York mayor is appealing. At the trial, Giuliani’s lawyer at one point accused the Gateway Pundit of being the basis of the false claims about the two women.

The two women faced vicious harassment, including death threats, and fled their homes and went into hiding after people showed up unannounced at Freeman’s home. Moss’s son received death threats on his phone and fell behind in school. Freeman testified last year that she had nowhere to live. Moss testified to the committee investigating the January 6 attack in 2022, but has otherwise not spoken much publicly.

“I was terrorized,” Freeman said during a trial in Washington DC last year. “I’d rather stay in my car and be homeless rather than put that on someone else.”

The site’s founder, Jim Hoft, had refused to concede that the site said anything false about the women, even though the state quickly debunked accusations of wrongdoing and a longer investigation formally cleared them. Hoft and his twin brother, Joe, also a contributor, held a press conference in Milwaukee during the Republican national convention in July and repeated many of the false claims about Freeman and Moss.

The settlement with the Gateway Pundit is notable because of the influential role the site plays in spreading misinformation. One recent analysis by the group Advance Democracy found that the site is continuing to spread false information about voting and seed the idea that the 2024 election could be stolen.

The two women have already settled a settled suit with One America News, another far-right outlet. The network issued an on-air apology after the settlement.

They are also seeking to collect on the money Giuliani owes them. Their lawyers recently asked a New York judge to allow them to take control over Giuliani’s assets.

The Gateway Pundit still faces a libel suit from Eric Coomer, a former employee of the voting system company Dominion who was falsely accused of subverting the 2020 election.

The site had declared bankruptcy in an attempt to delay the case, but a judge dismissed the effort earlier this year.

The case was one of several libel lawsuits filed against Trump allies and conservative networks that aired false claims about the 2020 election. Nearly all of those cases have settled, which observers have said may underscore the limited role defamation law can have in curbing misinformation.

More details soon …

Even before Taylor Swift donned “glitter freckles”, the sparkly stuff was prolific – sold in tiny vials at craft shops, and sprinkled on to a variety of products from clothing to Christmas decorations, cards and makeup.

Glitter ends up everywhere: in the environment as well as the carpet.

While some scientists have called for an outright ban, new Australian-led research has found a shimmery cellulose substitute that could be safer for soil.

University of Melbourne researchers tested the effects of conventional and cellulose-based glitters at different concentrations – 10, 100 and 1,000 mg glitter/kg of soil – on the health of tiny soil animals called springtails.

The paper, published in Chemosphere, found that when conventional glitter made from plastic and metal was present in soil at 1,000 mg/kg, springtails produced 61% fewer offspring compared to a control soil sample after 28 days.

There were no toxic effects on springtail reproduction at any concentration of the cellulose glitter.

The co-author and University of Melbourne ecotoxicologist, associate prof Suzie Reichman, said the results highlighted the potential risks microplastics like glitter posed for soil health.

“We all know that plastic is a big issue in our oceans,” she said. “But what a lot of people aren’t as aware of is that there’s actually more plastic pollution in our soil, and it’s potentially having just as big an impact.”

Springtails are tiny organisms that crawl around in the soil and help maintain its health by eating decaying materials and fungi, she explained. If, as the experiment showed, plastic glitter affects their health and reproduction (and that of other soil-dwelling organisms), that could in turn affect the growth of healthy plants.

The non-plastic glitter made from cellulose nanocrystals was developed by researchers from the UK’s University of Cambridge. The lustrous dust was produced from very thin films of cellulose, a type of sugar found naturally in cotton and wood, which were then broken up into tiny crystal structures.

Based on the results, Reichman said the cellulose glitter was likely to be safer, noting that further research was under way into its effects on the aquatic environment.

Dr Cassandra Rauert, who researches human and environmental exposure to microplastics at the University of Queensland and was not involved in the glitter paper, said microplastics such as glitter are “ubiquitous”.

“They’re in the soil, they’re in the water, they’re in the air,” she said.

Microplastics and the chemicals they contain raise health concerns, as they could break into much smaller pieces and cross biological barriers in our bodies – though the implications are still unknown.

“For instance, if we eat them, they can then get through our stomach into our blood. Or if we inhale them, they might be able to get through the pathways and the lungs into the blood and then circulate through the body.”

Because glitter is a significant source of microplastics, Rauert said: “If there’s an alternative we should be using it.”

More than 3 million Floridians are without power as officials begin to assess the damage caused by Hurricane Milton, a category 3 storm that flashed across a central swath of the state overnight on Wednesday.

Parts of Sarasota, Fort Myers and other Gulf coast cities were inundated by up to 10ft of storm surge while tornadoes wrecked buildings, including a sheriff’s department facility, the skies turned purple and winds as high as 120mph turned cars, trees and debris into projectiles.

Milton made landfall on Siesta Key south of St Petersburg around 8.30pm. Eight hours later it was moving offshore just north of Cape Canaveral as a category 1 hurricane with winds of 85mph, according to the national hurricane center.

A crane collapsed in downtown St Petersburg leaving a gash in an office building, blocking a street, the water supply was cut, and the roof of a Major League Baseball stadium was ripped off.

It will take days of the damage to be assessed, but insurers have warned that losses could reach $60bn. Tornadoes that accompanied the approach of the storm may prove as damaging as the hurricane itself: at least 116 tornado warnings had been issued across Florida, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Wednesday evening.

Early on Thursday, four deaths were confirmed in St Lucie County on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where officials said tornadoes touched down. Kevin Guthrie, director for the Florida division of emergency management, said that early reports indicated about 125 homes were destroyed, mostly mobile homes in senior communities.

Inland, some 11 million people are at risk of flash and river flooding after some parts of the state received one-in-1,000-year amounts of rain.

In Bradenton, north of Sarasota, the police chief said “probably” more than 60% of the city has no electricity. In Hillsborough county, which includes Tampa, the sheriff’s office said there were “downed power lines and trees everywhere”.

But the powerful storm surge that authorities predicted ahead of Milton’s arrival may not have been as bad as projected. Communities to the north of Siesta Key were hit by heavy raining, predicted to be up to 18in, while areas to the south, including Fort Myers Beach and Naples, were hit by the storm’s sea-surge.

Some forecast models had predicted that Milton would hit squarely on Tampa Bay’s inlet, creating a 15ft storm surge, but the storm’s path wobbled, directing it about about 70 miles south to hit the beaches.

Still, just inland from Tampa, the flooding in Plant City was “absolutely staggering”, according the city manager, Bill McDaniel. Emergency crews rescued 35 people overnight, said McDaniel, who estimated the city had received 13.5in of rain.

“We have flooding in places and to levels that I’ve never seen, and I’ve lived in this community for my entire life,” he said on Thursday morning.

Ahead of Milton’s arrival, the state had issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties with a total population of about 7.2 million people. Anyone who stayed behind was warned they would have to fend for themselves until Milton passed over.

Among some who stayed were 12 workers at Tampa’s zoo, located in the evacuation zone, where they made sure the orangutans have their blankets, manatees had a supplies of lettuce and the rhinoceroses had bamboo.

Now, Florida is faced with a massive cleanup. In Orlando, Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and Sea World remained closed on Thursday. At a news conference, DeSantis said 9,000 national guard members were ready to step in, as well as 50,000 utility workers from as far as California.

“Unfortunately, there will be fatalities. I don’t think there’s any way around that,” DeSantis said.