PUNTA GORDA, Florida –
Rescue teams piloted boats and walked through flooded streets Thursday to save thousands of Floridians trapped amid flooded homes and shattered buildings left by Hurricane Ian, which crossed the Atlantic Ocean and moved toward South Carolina.
Hours after weakening to a tropical storm as it crossed the Florida panhandle, Ian regained hurricane strength Thursday night over the Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center predicted it would hit South Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane on Friday.
The devastation inflicted on Florida came to light a day after Ian struck as a monster Category 4 hurricane, one of the strongest storms to hit the US. It inundated homes on both coasts of the state, cutting off the only access by road to a barrier island, destroyed a historic waterfront pier and knocked out power to 2.67 million Florida homes and businesses, nearly a quarter of utility customers.
At least one man was confirmed dead in Florida, while three others died in Cuba after the hurricane hit the island on Tuesday.
Aerial photos of the Fort Myers area, a few miles (kilometers) west of where Ian made landfall, showed houses torn from their slabs and deposited amid crushed debris. Businesses near the beach were completely swept away, leaving twisted debris behind. Broken docks floated at odd angles alongside damaged boats and fires smoldered on lots where houses once stood.
“I don’t know how anyone could have survived there,” William Goodison said amid the rubble of the mobile home park in Fort Myers Beach, where he lived for 11 years. Goodison weathered the storm at his son’s home inland.
The hurricane tore through the park of about 60 homes, many of them destroyed or vandalized beyond repair, including Goodison’s single-width home. Wading through waist-deep water, Goodison and his son pushed two trash cans containing what little he could salvage: a portable air conditioner, some tools and a baseball bat.
The road to Fort Myers was littered with broken trees, boat trailers and other debris. Cars were left abandoned on the road, having stalled when storm surge flooded their engines.
“We have never seen storm surge of this magnitude,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at a news conference. “The amount of water that has been rising, and will likely continue to rise even after the storm passes, is basically a 500-year flood event.”
After leaving Florida as a tropical storm on Thursday and entering the Atlantic Ocean north of Cape Canaveral, Ian re-strengthened into a hurricane with winds of 75 mph (120 km/h).
A hurricane warning has been issued for coastal South Carolina and has been extended to Cape Fear on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. With tropical-storm-force winds reaching about 415 miles (665 kilometers) from its center, Ian is forecast to push a 5-foot (1.5-meter) storm surge into coastal areas of Georgia and the Carolinas. Rains of up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) threatened flooding from South Carolina to Virginia.
National Guard troops were positioning themselves in South Carolina to help with the aftermath, including water rescues. On Thursday afternoon, a steady stream of vehicles left Charleston, a city of 350 years.
Sheriffs in southwest Florida said 911 centers were inundated by thousands of callers stranded, some with life-threatening emergencies. The US Coast Guard began rescue efforts hours before dawn on barrier islands near where Ian struck, DeSantis said. More than 800 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 neighborhood. Nursing home patients were carried on stretchers through the floodwaters to a bus.
In Fort Myers, Valerie Bartley’s family spent desperate hours holding a dining room table against their patio door, fearing the storm “was tearing our house apart.”
“I was terrified,” Bartley said. “What we heard was shingles and debris from everything in the neighborhood hitting our house.”
The storm tore off patio screens and snapped a palm tree in the yard, Bartley said, but left the roof intact and his family uninjured.
Long lines formed at gas stations in Fort Myers and a Home Depot hardware store opened, letting in a few customers at a time.
Frank Pino was near the end of the line, with about 100 people ahead of him.
“I hope they leave something,” Pino said, “because I need almost everything.”
Authorities have confirmed at least one death in Florida: a 72-year-old man in Deltona who fell into a canal while using a hose to drain his pool in 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 struggling to respond to thousands of 911 calls in the Fort Myers area, but many roads and bridges were impassable.
Emergency crews sawed down felled trees to reach stranded people. Many in the hardest-hit areas were unable to call for help due to power and cell phone outages.
A section of the Sanibel Causeway fell into the sea, cutting off access to the barrier island where 6,300 people live.
No deaths or injuries have been confirmed in the surrounding county, and overflights of the barrier islands show “the integrity of homes is much better than we expected,” county Emergency Management Director Patrick Fuller said.
South of Sanibel Island, the historic beachfront pier in Naples was destroyed, even with the pilings ripped out. “Right now, there is no dock,” Collier County Commissioner Penny Taylor said.
In Port Charlotte, a hospital emergency room was flooded and strong winds tore off part of the roof, sending water gushing into the intensive care unit. Sicker patients, some on ventilators, huddled on the two middle floors as staff prepared for storm victims to arrive, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital.
Ian slammed into Florida with 150 mph (241 km/h) winds that tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane in US history.
While scientists generally avoid blaming climate change for specific storms without detailed analysis, Ian’s aquatic destruction fits with what scientists have predicted for a warmer world: stronger and wetter hurricanes, though not necessarily more.
“This thing of very, very heavy rain is something we expected to see because of climate change,” said Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at MIT. “We will see more storms like Ian.”
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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, Fla.; Seth Borenstein in Washington; and Bobby Caina Calvan in New York.