MEXICO BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Searchers on Friday uncovered the first body in the rubble of the Florida town of Mexico Beach, which was nearly obliterated by Hurricane Michael, as the toll from the historic storm rose to at least 18 and was expected to climb further. 
 
 Rescue teams, hampered by power and telephone outages, used cadaver dogs, drones and heavy equipment to hunt for hundreds of people unaccounted for in devastated communities across the Florida Panhandle. 
 
 “I’ve watched on television, thinking of what others have experienced, like in the Carolinas and Texas,” Mexico Beach Mayor Al Cathey told reporters referring to earlier hurricanes. 
 
 “But it’s different when you walk down and see this, and your emotions run away. This is just a small unique coastal community.” 
 
 No other information was available about the dead man found in Mexico Beach, said Joseph Zahralban, Miami’s fire chief who was leading a search and rescue unit. He said it was unclear if the man lived alone or with a family. 
 
 Three deaths were reported in Marianna, in Jackson County, Florida, Sheriff Lou Roberts told a news conference on Friday afternoon. 
 
 Florida accounts for nine of the storm-related deaths, with five more in Virginia, three in North Carolina and one in Georgia. 
 
 The death toll is expected to rise as rescuers go house-to-house and comb through the rubble in Mexico Beach and other Florida coastal communities, such as Port St. Joe and Panama City, said Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 
 
 The Houston-based volunteer search-and-rescue network CrowdSource Rescue said its teams were trying to find about 2,100 people either reported missing or stranded and in need of help in Florida, co-founder Matthew Marchetti said. 
 
 Social media websites were crowded with messages from those trying to reach missing family in Florida’s Bay and Gulf Counties. 
 
 Marchetti said his volunteer search teams, consisting mostly of off-duty police officers and firefighters, also had rescued or accounted for 345 others previously reported to CrowdSource Rescue since Michael struck on Wednesday. 
 
 DOGS AND BULLDOZERS 
 
 FEMA crews have been using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to push a path through debris so rescuers can sift the rubble using specially trained search dogs. 
 
 More than 1,700 search and rescue workers have been deployed, Governor Rick Scott’s office said in a statement, including seven swift-water rescue teams and nearly 300 ambulances. 
 
 Michael crashed ashore near Mexico Beach on Wednesday afternoon as one of the most powerful storms in U.S. history, with winds of up to 155 mph (250 kph). It pushed a wall of seawater inland, causing widespread flooding. 
 
 The tropical storm, which grew in less than two days into a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, tore apart entire neighborhoods in the Panhandle, reducing homes to naked concrete foundations or piles of wood and siding. 
 
 Damaged and destroyed buildings are seen in an aerial photograph, taken during a post-Hurricane Michael flight by a U.S. Coast Guard MH-65 helicopter over Mexico Beach, Florida, U.S. October 11, 2018. Coast Guard/Petty Officer 1st Class Colin Hunt/Handout via REUTERS 
 
 Except for the emergency 911 system, authorities in Bay County, the epicenter of the disaster, were virtually without telephone or internet service until late on Friday, making communications internally and with the public difficult. 
 
 “We didn’t have anything,” said Ruth Corley, a spokeswoman for the Bay County Sheriff’s Department. “We’ve been writing things down on pieces of paper. We’re doing what we can with the minimal media that we have.” 
 
 She said local television stations were knocked off the air for two days, and authorities were relying on the Gulf State College radio station to transmit public service bulletins. Search teams went door-to-door hunting victims. 
 
 REBUILD RIGHT 
 
 FEMA’s Long urged communities such as Mexico Beach, where many homes were pulverized by 12 to 14 feet (3.7 to 4.3 meters) of storm surge, to rebuild to withstand future storms. 
 
 “It’s OK if you want to live on the coast or on top of a mountain that sees wildfires or whatever, but you have to build to a higher standard,” he said. “If we’re going to rebuild, do it right.” 
 
 By Friday morning the storm remnants were about 275 miles (445 km) southwest of Nantucket, Massachusetts, packing maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph). 
 
 More than 940,000 homes and businesses on the U.S. East Coast were without power and it could be weeks before power is restored to the most damaged parts of Florida. 
 
 The numbers in emergency shelters were expected to swell to 20,000 across five states by Friday, said Brad Kieserman of the American Red Cross. The Coast Guard said it rescued 129 people. 
 
 Slideshow (17 Images) 
 
 Even as rescuers searched the rubble for survivors or the dead, some Mexico Beach residents were nervously trickling back, expressing hope the place, nicknamed “the Forgotten Coast,” would not change too much as it rebuilds. 
 
 “It was the perfect beach town. Not all of that commercialism,” said Dottie Sinclair, 57, a nurse, adding a Subway fast-food restaurant was the only commercial chain. 
 
 “I don’t think it will ever be the same,” said her husband Danny, 64, who is semi-retired. “People will just pack up and leave.” ||||| Five days after Hurricane Michael roared into the Florida Panhandle, decimating the seaside community of Mexico Beach, rescuers appear to have some good news -- just three people remain missing in the city that was torn apart by the Category 4 storm. 
 
 Hurricane Michael's death toll has climbed to 18 and officials feared the number of people killed by the storm would increase as crews sifted through the wreckage of once-bustling oceanside cities, including Mexico Beach and Panama City Beach, the Associated Press reported. 
 
 Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images, FILE 
 
 David Goldman/AP 
 
 In Mexico Beach, three of those who didn't evacuate were missing still unaccounted for on Monday, city manager Tanya Castro told ABC News. 
 
 She said search and rescue teams were making their final sweep of the area and they’re optimistic about finding the other three. 
 
 Mexico Beach Mayor Al Cathey had said 289 people, including 10 children, decided to stay put despite evacuation orders, and rode out the storm, which made landfall there on Wednesday. Michael devastated homes and businesses in Mexico Beach, which has a population of nearly 1,200. 
 
 DigitalGlobe, a Maxar company via AP, FILE 
 
 The powerful storm sounded like a freight train when it barreled into nearby Panama City, said resident Jackie Lane, who was overcome with emotion recalling her experience to ABC News on Monday. 
 
 Lane, her husband and her son rode out the storm on the second story of an inn down the street from her home. She and her son raced into the bathtub, she said, as her husband sat on the floor and put his feet up against the bathroom door to hold it. 
 
 "It was already splitting," she said of the door, her voice shaking, "and the roof came, the ceiling came off." 
 
 "For about three hours it just sucked us in and sucked us out, sucked us in and sucked us out," she said. "I thought I was gonna lose my husband cause the door was cracking. And the stove and refrigerator that was in there, we could hear them just banging together and clanging around. We seen the stove fly across us. We seen all the debris, trees, pieces of everything." 
 
 The entire second story of that inn is now gone. 
 
 "We lost everything," Lane said. "We're lucky to have our lives." 
 
 AP 
 
 Of the 18 people killed as the hurricane swept through the Florida Panhandle, Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina, only one confirmed death was reported in Mexico Beach. When Michael made landfall there, winds topped out around 155 mph. 
 
 Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images, FILE 
 
 Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Michael knocked out power across the South, and Monday over 280,000 remained powerless across four states, including 150,000 in Florida. 
 
 AP 
 
 President Donald Trump toured some of the hurricane-hit Sunshine State Monday with Florida Gov. Rick Scott. 
 
 Trump called it "total devastation" as he toured a badly damaged neighborhood in Lynn Haven. 
 
 "To see this personally, is very, very tough," he said. 
 
 David Goldman/AP 
 
 The storm not only destroyed homes and businesses in the city, it destroyed the Mexico Beach Police Department. 
 
 "We don't have a building -- from my understanding, the water surge moved it off its foundation," Police Chief Anthony Kelly told ABC News on Friday. "The officers, I finally made accountability of them all today, two days after the fact. ... They're not just my officers, the people that I work with, they're my family." 
 
 Emily Mitchell returned on Saturday afternoon to what was left of the house her family owned in Mexico Beach. The roof was ripped off and walls were blown in. She called it a "total loss." ||||| Matthew Washington carries out items he salvaged from the damaged Thai restaurant he owns with his wife in the aftermath of hurricane Michael in Callaway, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018. (AP Photo/David... (Associated Press) 
 
 Matthew Washington carries out items he salvaged from the damaged Thai restaurant he owns with his wife in the aftermath of hurricane Michael in Callaway, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Associated Press) 
 
 MEXICO BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Florida authorities fielded a barrage of calls about people missing in Hurricane Michael's aftermath as search-and-rescue teams Friday made their way through ravaged neighborhoods, looking for victims dead or alive. The death toll stood at 13 across the South. 
 
 The number of dead was expected to rise, but authorities scrapped plans for setting up a temporary morgue, indicating they had yet to see signs of mass casualties from the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in nearly 50 years. 
 
 Search teams continued to pick their way through the ruins of Mexico Beach, the ground-zero town of about 1,000 people that was nearly wiped off the map when Michael blew ashore there on Wednesday with devastating 155 mph (249 kph) winds. 
 
 State officials said that by one count, 285 people in Mexico Beach defied mandatory evacuation orders and stayed behind. Whether any of them got out at some point was unclear. 
 
 Emergency officials said they have received thousands of calls asking about missing people. But with cellphone service out across vast swaths of the Florida Panhandle, officials said it is possible that some of those unaccounted for are safe and just haven't been able to contact friends or family to let them know. 
 
 Gov. Rick Scott said state officials still "do not know enough" about the fate of those who stayed behind in the region. 
 
 "We are not completely done. We are still getting down there," the governor added. 
 
 Emergency officials said they had done an initial "hasty search" of 80 percent of the stricken area, looking for the living or the dead. 
 
 Shell-shocked survivors who barely escaped with their lives told of terrifying winds, surging floodwaters and homes cracking like eggs. 
 
 Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Brock Long said he expects to see the death toll rise. 
 
 "We still haven't gotten into the hardest-hit areas," he said, adding with frustration: "Very few people live to tell what it's like to experience storm surge, and unfortunately in this country we seem to not learn the lesson." 
 
 Long expressed worry that people have suffered "hurricane amnesia." 
 
 "When state and local officials tell you to get out, dang it, do it. Get out," he said. 
 
 Officials, meanwhile, set up distribution centers outside big stores such as Wal-Mart and Publix to pass out food and water to victims. Some supplies were brought in by trucks, while others had to be delivered by helicopter because some roads had yet to be cleared. 
 
 The deaths were spread throughout the storm's vast path, from Florida to Virginia, where at least four people drowned in flooding caused by Michael's rainy remnants. Two died in North Carolina when a car smashed into a fallen tree. 
 
 On the Panhandle, Tyndall Air Force Base "took a beating," so much so that Col. Brian Laidlaw told the 3,600 men and women stationed on the base not to come back. Many of the 600 families who live there had followed orders to pack what they could in a single suitcase as they were evacuated. 
 
 A small "ride-out" team that hunkered down as the hurricane's eyewall passed directly overhead ventured out to find nearly every building severely damaged, many a complete loss. The elementary school, the flight line, the marina and the runways were devastated. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Contributors in Florida include Associated Press writers Jay Reeves in Panama City, Brendan Farrington in St. Marks, Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Tamara Lush in St. Petersburg, Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, and Jennifer Kay and Freida Frisaro in Miami. Others include Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland. 
 
 ___ 
 
 For the latest on Hurricane Michael, visit https://www.apnews.com/tag/Hurricanes
– Authorities in Mexico Beach, Florida, estimate that 285 people decided to stay home and try to ride out Hurricane Michael, reports the AP. As has been well reported by now, the coastal community was decimated by the storm, and authorities are now trying to figure out how many of those 285 survived. Similar situations exist elsewhere in the state, and Florida officials are fielding scores of calls from worried loved ones. Still, with cellphone service down throughout wide areas, rescue officials are holding out hope that the missing are fine and simply haven't been able to get in touch yet. As of Friday afternoon, CNN had the death toll at 13: Five in Virginia, four in Florida, three in North Carolina, and one (an 11-year-old girl) in Georgia. “Unfortunately, I think you’re going to see that number climb,” said FEMA Administrator William “Brock” Long Friday morning. “I hope we don’t see it climb dramatically.” As for the storm itself, the Washington Post notes that Michael is now Post-Tropical Cyclone Michael and has moved out to sea. However, communities from New Jersey to Massachusetts could still get 3 to 5 inches of rain through Friday. More than 1 million people were without power in the affected states.