In Florida's St Petersburg, holdouts awaken to find Milton took mercy on their city

By Leonora LaPeter Anton

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (Reuters) - Residents of St. Petersburg, Florida, who decided to ride out Hurricane Milton despite dire warnings and mandatory evacuation orders emerged from their homes on Thursday morning to find their city largely intact after the powerful storm's overnight passage.

In the downtown, situated alongside Tampa Bay, many streets avoided flooding, boats in the city marina fared well and damage to the city's buildings appeared limited.

That is not to say the city came away completely unscathed. The hurricane's shredding winds ripped a gaping hole in the fabric roof of St. Petersburg's Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, scattered tree limbs across many streets and brought down power lines.

Even so, Steve Kicksee, 40, who lives across the street from the stadium, said the overall damage he was seeing was not as bad as expected. "I thought it was going to be a lot worse."

The wind also toppled a construction crane that sliced off a corner of the Johnson Pope building on First Avenue South, home to the Tampa Bay Times newspaper. Its crumpled boom stretched from one end of the street to the other.

"That, to me, is shocking and crazy to see," said Alberta Momenthy, 27, who lives in a nearby studio that didn't get damaged. "It looks like it kind of keeled over, and the building caught it and got a little destroyed."

Chase Pierce, a 25-year-old electrician's apprentice who was also surveying the damage caused by the crane, said he was surprised and relieved to see minimal damage in the surrounding area, despite the spectacle of the fallen crane.

In the days before Milton made landfall just south of Tampa Bay, forecasters and political leaders were speaking about the coming storm in historical terms.

It had intensified from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane - the highest classification - in about a day, and appeared destined to become the first major storm to make a direct hit on Tampa Bay in a century, triggering a huge storm surge that might have swamped the densely populated area.

In the event, the storm lost some of its intensity by the time it made landfall south of Tampa Bay on Wednesday evening, and the surge that had been feared never materialized.

Some streets in Pierce's neighborhood in west St. Petersburg, near the President Barack Obama Library, were covered with a couple of feet (60 cm) of water, he said. He took advantage of the conditions to kayak a half mile (800 meters) down the road.

Pierce said he saw some homes that were flooded, although the water had stopped just short of his property. Dozens of tree limbs, some as thick as a weight lifter's thigh, also littered the streets.

Some of the city's roads were left with pockets of dead traffic lights, and along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street, a set of traffic signals hung about five feet (1.5 meter) off the ground.

In front of the Vinoy Marina, a sea wall had collapsed, taking a walkway with it.

"Wow, the sidewalk is gone," said Barbara Deininger, who gazed at workers setting up barricades as she walked her family's golden retriever.

Pierce and his girlfriend, Kelsie Jacobson, 27, said they saw transformers blowing up and blue sparks flying. A power line fell in the backyard, but they said they were grateful the storm had some mercy on St. Petersburg.

"I think if this is all we got, I feel we're very blessed," said Pierce. "I still have my house, still have my car, everything."

(Reporting by Leonora LaPeter Anton in St. Petersburg; Editing by Frank McGurty and Sandra Maler)