PUNTA GORDA, Fla. — Rescue crews piloted boats and waded through flooded streets Thursday to save thousands of Floridians trapped after Hurricane Ian destroyed homes and businesses and left millions in the dark.
Hours after weakening to a tropical depression while crossing the Florida peninsula, Ian regained hurricane strength Thursday evening after emerging over the Atlantic Ocean. The National Hurricane Center predicted it would make landfall in South Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane Friday.
The devastation inflicted on Florida began to come into focus a day after Ian struck as one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the U.S. The storm flooded homes on both the state’s coasts, cut off the only bridge to a barrier island, destroyed a historic waterfront pier and knocked out electricity to 2.67 million Florida homes and businesses — nearly a quarter of utility customers.
At least one man was confirmed dead in Florida, while two other people were reported killed in Cuba after the hurricane struck the island Tuesday.
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Aerial photos from the Fort Myers area, a few miles west of where Ian struck land, showed homes ripped from their slabs and deposited among shredded wreckage. Businesses near the beach were completely razed, leaving just twisted debris. Broken docks floated at odd angles beside damaged boats, and fires smoldered on lots where houses once stood.
“We’ve never seen storm surge of this magnitude,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told a news conference. “The amount of water that’s been rising, and will likely continue to rise today even as the storm is passing, is basically a 500-year flooding event.”
After leaving Florida as a tropical storm Thursday and entering the Atlantic Ocean north of Cape Canaveral, Ian spun up into a hurricane again with winds of 75 mph (120 km/h). The hurricane centre predicted it would continue to strengthen before hitting South Carolina on Friday, but still remain a Category 1 storm.
A hurricane warning was issued for the South Carolina coast and extended to Cape Fear on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. With tropical-storm force winds reaching 415 miles (667 kilometres) from its centee, Ian was forecast to shove storm surge of 5 feet (1.5 metres) into coastal areas in Georgia and the Carolinas. Rainfall of up to 8 inches (20.32 centimetres) threatened flooding from South Carolina to Virginia.
Sheriffs in southwest Florida said 911 centres were inundated by thousands of stranded callers, some with life-threatening emergencies. The U.S. Coast Guard began rescue efforts hours before daybreak on barrier islands near where Ian struck, DeSantis said. More than 800 members of federal urban search-and-rescue teams were also in the area.
In the Orlando area, Orange County firefighters used boats to reach people in a flooded neighbourhood. A photo the department posted on Twitter showed one firefighter carrying someone in his arms through knee-deep water. At an area nursing home, patients were carried on stretchers across floodwaters to a waiting bus.
Among those rescued was Joseph Agboona. “We were happy to get out,” he said after grabbing two bags of possessions when water rose to the windows in his Orlando home. “It was very, very bad.”
In Fort Myers, Valerie Bartley’s family spent desperate hours holding a dining room table against their patio door, fearing the storm raging outside “was tearing our house apart.”
“I was terrified,” Bartley said. “What we heard was the shingles and debris from everything in the neighbourhood hitting our house.”
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The storm ripped away patio screens and snapped a palm tree in the yard, Bartley said, but left the roof intact and her family unharmed.
In Fort Myers, some people left shelters to return home Thursday afternoon. Long lines formed at gas stations and a Home Depot opened, letting in a few customers at a time.
Frank Pino was near the back of the line, with about 100 people in front of him.
“I hope they leave something,” Pino said, “because I need almost everything.”
Authorities confirmed at least one Florida death — a 72-year-old man in Deltona who fell into a canal while using a hose to drain his pool in the heavy rain, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said. Two other storm deaths were reported in Cuba.
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said his office was scrambling to respond to thousands of 911 calls in the Fort Myers area, but many roads and bridges were impassable.
“We still cannot access many of the people that are in need,” Marceno told ABC’s “Good Morning America.
Emergency crews sawed through toppled trees to reach stranded people. Many in the hardest-hit areas were unable to call for help because of electrical and cellular outages.
Christine Bomlitz was unable to reach her mother by phone after the storm made landfall south of Englewood, where the 84-year-old woman lives in a retirement community. Bomlitz said her mother was supposed to evacuate but wasn’t picked up, so the anxious daughter from Las Vegas posted a plea for help on social media.
Some Good Samaritans came to her aid Thursday, one of them wading in chest-deep floodwaters to perform a welfare check. Relieved that her mother had weathered the storm, Bomlitz was working to arrange a boat rescue.
“I’m thankful for this stranger, a total stranger,” Bomlitz said.
A chunk of the Sanibel Causeway fell into the sea, cutting off access to the barrier island where 6,300 people live. It was unknown how many heeded orders to evacuate, but Charlotte County Emergency Management Director Patrick Fuller expressed cautious optimism.
No deaths or injuries have been confirmed in the county, and flyovers of barrier islands show “the integrity of the homes is far better than we anticipated,” Fuller said.
South of Sanibel Island, the historic beachfront pier in Naples was destroyed, with even the pilings underneath torn out. “Right now, there is no pier,” said Penny Taylor, a Collier County commissioner.
In Port Charlotte, a hospital’s emergency room flooded and fierce winds ripped away part of the roof, sending water gushing into the intensive care unit. The sickest patients — some on ventilators — were crowded into the middle two floors as the staff prepared for storm victims to arrive, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital.
Ian struck Florida as a monstrous Category 4 storm, with 150 mph (241 km/h) winds that tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to hit the U.S.
While scientists generally avoid blaming climate change for specific storms without detailed analysis, Ian’s watery destruction fits what scientists have predicted for a warmer world: stronger and wetter hurricanes, though not necessarily more of them.
“This business about very, very heavy rain is something we’ve expected to see because of climate change,” said MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel. “We’ll see more storms like Ian.”
— Associated Press contributors include Terry Spencer and Tim Reynolds in Fort Myers; Cody Jackson in Tampa, Florida; Freida Frisaro in Miami; Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Seth Borenstein in Washington; and Bobby Caina Calvan in New York.
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