Star Metro - Hurricane Milton shreds Florida stadium roof

In a video filmed by a local resident, the roof is seen being torn apart by Milton's powerful winds Wednesday night, as rain whips through the city's dark, largely abandoned streets.

Photos from AFP showed the once-covered Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg exposed to the elements the next day, the fiberglass roofing largely destroyed, metal rafters left naked in the morning sunlight.

As local authorities prepared for the storm, they initially had prepped the stadium, home to Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays, as a 10,000-person staging ground for first responders, with cots lining the ballpark inside.

But overnight, a spokesman for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the staging area had "already been relocated."

Drone footage from above showed pieces of the roof littered across the field, while remaining scraps, still attached to the metal girders, fluttered in the wind.

Milton made landfall Wednesday night on the Florida Gulf Coast as a major Category 3 storm, tearing through the southeastern state from coast to coast.

It whipped up a spate of deadly tornadoes that left at least four people dead and millions without power.

Many communities hit were still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which smashed into Florida late last month.

P.Lefebvre--SMC