(St. Petersburg) An official warned Thursday that Hurricane Ian could have claimed hundreds of lives in Florida.
Posted at 11:23 a.m.
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno told ABC’s Good Morning America that there have been thousands of 911 calls and he believes the number of deaths would number “in the hundreds”.
Rescues are underway, he said, but “we still can’t access many people in the waterways, bridges are compromised, and the road is really, really rough.” »
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis later clarified that the toll had not been confirmed and was only an estimate based on 911 calls received.
A 72-year-old man died after going out early Thursday to drain his pool during the storm, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said.
Officers were called to Deltona’s home near Daytona Beach on Florida’s Atlantic coast around 1 a.m. Thursday.
The man’s wife told authorities he disappeared after going out around 1 a.m. Officers spotted his flashlight and later found the man in a canal behind his house. The man was unresponsive, officers said.
The victim was pulled out of the water and officers performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation until help arrived, the statement said.
the hurricane Ian was generating sustained winds of 241 kilometers per hour when it made landfall near Cayo Costa on Wednesday, just west of Fort Myers. That puts it tied for the fifth-most powerful hurricane, based on wind strength, to ever bludgeon the United States.
Some 2.5 million people were without power on Thursday and the property damage was clearly immense. There were fears of catastrophic flooding across the state. Tropical storm-force winds were felt up to 400 miles from the hurricane’s core.
The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said Ian weakened to tropical storm status as it passed over land, but is expected to regain strength when it reaches the Atlantic near the Space Center. Kennedy.
“Severe, life-threatening storm surges (2.5 to 3 meters) above ground level with damaging waves continue along the southwest coast of Florida from Englewood to Bonita Beach, including Charlotte Harbor,” the Center said.
President Joe Biden issued a formal declaration of disaster on Thursday. The United States Coast Guard began rescue operations early Thursday on the islands southwest of Florida as soon as the winds died down enough, Gov. DeSantis said.
“The Coast Guard has helped people who were in their attics or on their roofs,” he said. We have never seen a storm surge of this magnitude. The amount of water that is rising, and will likely continue to rise today with the passage of the storm, is essentially a flood that occurs every 500 years. »
Part of the only bridge that connects Sanibel Island to the mainland has been washed away. Some 6,300 people usually live there, but it is unclear how many had obeyed evacuation orders before it was too late.
South of Sanibel, waves destroyed the historic Naples wharf. Even the pillars on which the quay rested did not resist.
Rescuers did everything they could to reach people in need, but uprooted trees, flooded streets and the lack of cell service made their job much harder.
“Portable towers are on the way for cell service. Your loved ones probably aren’t able to contact you, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office, which includes Naples, said. We can tell you that it will be a difficult day, now that the light of day shows us the consequences. »
flooded emergency room
As of early Thursday, the storm was 70 kilometers east of Orlando and 15 kilometers southwest of Cape Canaveral, with sustained winds of 100 kilometers per hour. She was moving towards the cape at 13 kilometers per hour.
In Port Charlotte, along Florida’s Gulf Coast, storm surge flooded an emergency room on the lower level of a hospital even as high winds ripped off part of the roof of its care unit intensive, reported a doctor who works there.
Water levels were rising in the intensive care unit, forcing staff to evacuate the hospital’s sickest patients – some of whom were on ventilators – to other floors, said Dr Birgit Bodine of the HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Staff members used towels and plastic bins to try and mop up the mess.
The medium-sized hospital spans four floors, but patients could only use two due to damage. Doctor Bodine planned to spend the night there in case people injured by the storm arrived and needed help. “As long as our patients are doing well and no one is dying or having a bad outcome, that’s what matters,” she said.
Hurricane warnings have been reduced to tropical storm warnings for the Florida peninsula, with widespread catastrophic flooding remaining likely, the hurricane center said.
Up to 30 centimeters of rain are forecast for parts of northeast Florida, coastal Georgia and the South Carolina Lowcountry. Up to 15 centimeters of rain could fall in southern Virginia as the storm moves inland from Carolina, and the center said landslides are possible in southern Appalachia.