FLORIDA – While still cleaning up from Hurricane Florence, a leading American Muslim relief group has kicked off new efforts to offer relief for those affected by Hurricane Michael which slammed into Florida earlier this week.

“ICNA Relief’s Disaster Relief Services are prepared to respond to Hurricane Michael with our clean up and repair rig, mobile medical units and in-kind supply trucks standing by,” the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Relief wrote on its website.

“Please make du’a for those who are suffering and for those who are striving to help the suffering. We are asking for your support as a volunteer or financially.”

Hurricane Michael, the fiercest storm to hit Florida in a quarter century and the third-most powerful ever to strike the US mainland, roared into the state’s Gulf coast on Wednesday with tree-snapping winds and towering waves.

Michael, whose rapid intensification as it churned north over the Gulf of Mexico caught many by surprise, made landfall early in the afternoon near Mexico Beach, about 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Panama City in Florida’s Panhandle region, with top sustained winds reaching 155 miles per hour (249 kph).

Michael grew from a tropical storm into a Category 4 hurricane over the course of about 40 hours.

With minimum barometric pressure recorded at 919 millibars, a measure of hurricane strength, Michael stood as the strongest storm ever to hit Florida’s Panhandle and the most intense anywhere in the state since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Michael also ranked as the third-most powerful storm on record to make landfall in the continental United States, after Hurricane Camille on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969 and the so-called Labor Day hurricane of 1935 in the Florida Keys.