As Hurricane Ian continues to upend the lives of millions of people in the southeastern United States, authorities in Florida and South Carolina have begun sifting through storm debris to assess the toll of one of the most powerful and costliest hurricanes in recent American history.
The storm made its way north after slamming into Florida, recovering some of its strength in warm Atlantic Ocean waters, and hitting South Carolina on Friday, making landfall in Georgetown, 60 miles away north of Charleston, and destroying parts of four popular piers, including two at Myrtle Beach.
Although Charleston was largely spared the worst of the storm, city mayor John Tecklenburg told the local Post and Courier that its impact on the community was “still significant, with a number of roads closed , inhabitants without electricity and damage caused by the floods”. It was the third hurricane to make landfall in the state in six years, after Matthew in 2016 and Isaias in 2020 both caused significant damage.
As of Saturday morning, about 1.2 million people remained without power in Florida, with hundreds of thousands more in North Carolina and thousands in Virginia, as the storm weakened into a post-tropical cyclone.
Dozens of people, mostly in Florida, died of drowning and other storm-related causes as it initially swept across the Florida coast earlier this week, flooding streets and homes. Florida officials have confirmed that at least 27 people have died so far, although that number is expected to rise significantly as rescue teams search the wreckage for survivors throughout the weekend.
In fact, the Lee County, Florida Sheriff’s Office reportedly confirmed the deaths of 35 people from Ian in its jurisdiction on Saturday, although it’s unclear if state officials also made the same confirmation. .
Three people died in western Cuba earlier in the week due to the storm.
Aerial footage captured by the National Ocean Service showed once-lush areas of Florida’s coastal communities, hardest hit by the storm, now completely devastated. One resident described the destruction of Fort Myers Beach to the Tampa Bay Times as if “someone took an atomic bomb and dropped it.”
Meanwhile, heavy rains caused flooding in more interior neighborhoods in central Florida. Authorities closed a 14-mile stretch of Interstate 75 in Florida late Friday night due to flooding from the Myakka River.
Residents of some of Florida’s hardest-hit coastal communities wondered why evacuation orders came later than expected despite forecasts for the storm.
Disaster modeling firm Karen Clark & Co has estimated that Hurricane Ian could be the fourth costliest hurricane in US history, inflicting more than $100 billion in damage, the report reported. Associated Press. US President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration in North Carolina on Saturday for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “to coordinate all disaster relief efforts aimed at alleviating hardship and suffering” caused by Hurricane Ian.