Pedro Muacaj rests on higher ground in front of a gift shop in Tarpon Springs, Fla., where he was working Thursday. The street was filling quickly at high tide as Tropical Storm Hermine strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico.

CARRABELLE, Fla. — Hurricane Hermine made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend area early today as the first hurricane to hit the state in more than a decade, bringing soaking rain, high winds and thousands of power outages. Injuries were reported in Tallahassee as trees fell onto homes.

The Category 1 storm hit just east of St. Marks around 1:30 a.m. with winds around 80 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Hermine later weakened to a tropical storm as it moved farther inland.

Projected storm surges of up to 12 feet menaced a wide swath of the coast and an expected drenching of up to 10 inches of rain carried the danger of flooding along the storm’s path over land, including the state capital Tallahassee, which hadn’t been hit by a hurricane since Kate in 1985.

Hermine was weakening as it moved into southern Georgia, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph, the Hurricane Center said. After pushing through Georgia, Hermine was expected to move into the Carolinas and up the East Coast with the potential for drenching rain and deadly flooding.

In Tallahassee, high winds knocked trees onto several houses injuring residents inside, fire-rescue spokesman Mike Bellamy said. He said an unknown number were taken to area hospitals with injuries that weren’t thought to be life-threatening. Bellamy said his agency responded to more than 300 calls overnight. Mayor Andrew Gillum said up to 100,000 area residents were without electricity.

At Florida’s Keaton Beach, just south of the state’s Big Bend where the peninsula meets the Panhandle, about two dozen people waited on a road just after sunrise today trying to get to their homes. Police had the road blocked because of flooding. Taylor County Commissioner Jody DeVane said several homes were damaged.

Dustin Beach, 31, rushed to Keaton Beach today from a hospital in Tallahassee where his wife had given birth Thursday night to a girl.

“When my wife got up this morning she said, ‘Go home and check on the house. I need to know where we’re going after we leave the hospital,”’ Beach said.

Cindy Simpson was waiting near her car, hoping her beach home and boats had made it. “It’s a home on stilts so I put everything upstairs. We have two boats in the boat house and I hope they’re still there,” she said.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared an emergency in 51 counties. He said 6,000 National Guardsmen were poised to mobilize for the storm’s aftermath. The governors of Georgia and North Carolina also declared states of emergency.