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In Fort Myers, Sanibel and other Canadian snowbird hangouts, flooded homes and damaged infrastructure have left a massive mess – and the storm continues to threaten communities in other states

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A neighbourhood of Fort Myers, Fla., as it looked on Sept. 29 after Hurricane Ian swept through.Marco Bello/Reuters

Hurricane Ian was over southwest Florida for only a few hours. It will take months to clean up all the damage, maybe longer. And some of the destruction can’t be cleaned up at all.

From trees getting ripped out of the ground to signs being ripped apart, traffic lights crashing onto roadways and some buildings simply being destroyed, the impact was everywhere and almost nothing was spared. The only difference between one place and the next was the severity of the problems. “We will get through this,” said Vice Mayor Richard Johnson of Sanibel, Fla. “And we’ll come out on the other side better than we were going in.”

A revived Hurricane Ian pounded coastal South Carolina on Friday, ripping apart piers and flooding streets after the ferocious storm caused catastrophic damage in Florida, trapping thousands in their homes and leaving at least 27 people dead.

While Ian’s center came ashore near Georgetown, South Carolina, on Friday with much weaker winds than when it crossed Florida’s Gulf Coast earlier in the week, the storm left many areas of Charleston’s downtown peninsula under water. It also washed away parts of four piers along the coast, including two at Myrtle Beach.

Online cameras showed seawater filling neighborhoods in Garden City to calf level. As Ian moved across South Carolina on its way to North Carolina Friday evening, it dropped from a hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone.

Many of the deaths in Florida were drownings, including that of a 68-year-old woman swept away into the ocean by a wave. A 67-year-old man who was waiting to be rescued died after falling into rising water inside his home, authorities said.

Other storm-related fatalities included a 22-year-old woman who died after an ATV rollover from a road washout and a 71-year-old man who fell off a roof while putting up rain shutters. An 80-year-old woman and a 94-year-old man who relied on oxygen machines also died after the equipment stopped working during power outages.

Another three people died in Cuba earlier in the week as the storm churned northward. The death toll was expected to increase substantially once emergency officials have an opportunity to search many of the hardest-hit areas.

Rescue crews piloted boats and waded through riverine streets in Florida after the storm to save thousands of people trapped amid flooded homes and shattered buildings.


Ian’s path so far

As of Thursday, Sept. 29, 8 a.m. (EDT)

Forecast positions

Potential track area*

Hurricane/tropical storm watch

Hurricane/tropical storm warning

W.Va.

Va.

Ky.

Sunday,

2 a.m.

Tenn.

N.C.

Saturday,

2 a.m.

S.C.

Ga.

Ala.

Friday,

2 a.m.

Thursday,

8 a.m.

Gulf of Mexico

Fla.

*This "cone of uncertainty" indicates the potential areas where the centre of the storm may go. The graphic does not indicate the strength of the storm.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

As of Thursday, Sept. 29, 8 a.m. (EDT)

Forecast positions

Potential track area*

Hurricane/tropical storm watch

Hurricane/tropical storm warning

W.Va.

Va.

Ky.

Sunday,

2 a.m.

Tenn.

N.C.

Saturday,

2 a.m.

S.C.

Ga.

Ala.

Friday,

2 a.m.

Thursday,

8 a.m.

Gulf of Mexico

Fla.

*This "cone of uncertainty" indicates the potential areas where the centre of the storm may go. The graphic does not indicate the strength of the storm.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

As of Thursday, Sept. 29, 8 a.m. (EDT)

W.Va.

Va.

Ky.

Sunday,

2 a.m.

N.C.

Tenn.

Saturday,

2 a.m.

Ark.

S.C.

Ga.

Miss.

Ala.

La.

Friday,

2 a.m.

Thursday,

8 a.m.

Fla.

Gulf of Mexico

THE BAHAMAS

Forecast positions

Potential track area*

Hurricane/tropical storm watch

CUBA

Hurricane/tropical storm warning

*This "cone of uncertainty" indicates the potential areas where the centre of the storm may go. The graphic does not indicate the strength of the storm.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Friday that crews had gone door to door to over 3,000 homes in the hardest-hit areas.

“There’s really been a Herculean effort,” he said during a news conference in Tallahassee, Fla.

Hurricane Ian has likely caused “well over $100-billion” in damage, including $63-billion in privately insured losses, according to the disaster modeling firm Karen Clark & Company, which regularly issues flash catastrophe estimates. If those numbers are borne out, that would make Ian at least the fourth costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said first responders have focused so far on “hasty” searches, aimed at emergency rescues and initial assessments, which will be followed by two additional waves of searches. Initial responders who come across possible remains are leaving them without confirming, he said Friday, describing as an example the case of a submerged home.

“The water was up over the rooftop, right, but we had a Coast Guard rescue swimmer swim down into it and he could identify that it appeared to be human remains. We do not know exactly how many,” Guthrie said.


Flooding in Florida

Hurricane Ian, one of the mightiest to hit the U.S. mainland in recent years, flooded communities and left more than two million homes and businesses without power as it battered Florida's Gulf Coast with howling winds, torrential rains and raging surf

POTENTIAL FLOODING

ABOVE GROUND LEVEL (feet)

STORM PATH

0

1

3

6

9+

Real

Forecasted

FLORIDA

Orlando

Tampa

Sept. 28

11 p.m. (EDT)

Port Charlotte

Fort Myers

Cape Coral

Miami

Note: All inundation data is mapped without filtering out intertidal zones. Flooding values have a 10% chance of being exceeded. Potential storm surge values are for the period Sept. 28, 11 p.m. to Oct. 3, 2 a.m. EDT.

REUTERS / SOURCES: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION (NOAA); NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

Hurricane Ian, one of the mightiest to hit the U.S. mainland in recent years, flooded communities and left more than two million homes and businesses without power as it battered Florida's Gulf Coast with howling winds, torrential rains and raging surf

POTENTIAL FLOODING

ABOVE GROUND LEVEL (feet)

STORM PATH

0

1

3

6

9+

Real

Forecasted

FLORIDA

Orlando

Tampa

Sept. 28

11 p.m. (EDT)

Port Charlotte

Fort Myers

Cape Coral

Miami

Note: All inundation data is mapped without filtering out intertidal zones. Flooding values have a 10% chance of being exceeded. Potential storm surge values are for the period Sept. 28, 11 p.m. to Oct. 3, 2 a.m. EDT.

REUTERS / SOURCES: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION (NOAA); NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

Hurricane Ian, one of the mightiest to hit the U.S. mainland in recent years, flooded communities and left more than two million homes and businesses without power as it battered Florida's Gulf Coast with howling winds, torrential rains and raging surf

POTENTIAL FLOODING ABOVE GROUND LEVEL (feet)

STORM PATH

0

1

3

6

9+

Real

Forecasted

FLORIDA

Orlando

Tampa

Sept. 28

11 p.m. (EDT)

Port Charlotte

Fort Myers

Cape Coral

Miami

Note: All inundation data is mapped without filtering out intertidal zones. Flooding values have a 10% chance of being exceeded. Potential storm surge values are for the period Sept. 28, 11 p.m. to Oct. 3, 2 a.m. EDT.

REUTERS / SOURCES: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION (NOAA); NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE


Desperate to locate and rescue their loved ones, social media users shared phone numbers, addresses and photos of their family members and friends online for anyone who can check on them.

Orlando residents returned to flooded homes Friday, rolling up their pants to wade through muddy, knee-high water in their streets. Friends of Ramon Rodriguez dropped off ice, bottled water and hot coffee at the entrance to his subdivision, where 10 of the 50 homes were flooded and the road looked like a lake. He had no power or food at his house, and his car was trapped by the water.

“There’s water everywhere,” Rodriguez said. “The situation here is pretty bad.”

The devastating storm surge destroyed many older homes on the barrier island of Sanibel, Florida, and gouged crevices into its sand dunes. Taller condominium buildings were intact but with the bottom floor blown out. Trees and utility poles were strewn everywhere.

Municipal rescuers, private teams and the Coast Guard used boats and helicopters Friday to evacuate residents who stayed for the storm and then were cut off from the mainland when a causeway collapsed. Volunteers who went to the island on personal watercraft helped escort an elderly couple to an area where Coast Guard rescuers took them aboard a helicopter.

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Boats lie in a heap in a Fort Myers marina on Sept. 29.RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP via Getty Images

Only the pilings remain at Fort Myers Beach pier on Sept. 29. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Broken pavement and road signs lie on the way to the Sanibel Island causeway. Steve Helber/The Associated Press
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Retired marine Efrain Burgos Jr. recovers a personal item from a first visit to his flooded home in Fort Myers. 'It's done in there. I'm going to have to start all over,' Mr. Burgos said of his house.Rebecca Blackwell/The Associated Press

Hours after weakening to a tropical storm while crossing the Florida peninsula, Ian regained strength Thursday evening over the Atlantic. Ian made landfall in South Carolina with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph). When it hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, it was a powerful Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph (240 kph).

After the heaviest of the rainfall blew through Charleston, Will Shalosky examined a large elm tree in front of his house that had fallen across his downtown street. He noted the damage could have been much worse.

“If this tree has fallen a different way, it would be in our house,” Shalosky said. “It’s pretty scary, pretty jarring.”

Ian’s heavy rains and winds crossed into North Carolina on Friday evening. Gov. Roy Cooper warned residents to be vigilant, given that up to 8 inches (20.3 centimeters) of rain could fall in some areas.

“Hurricane Ian is at our door. Expect drenching rain and sustained heavy winds over most of our state,” Cooper said. “Our message today is simple: Be smart and be safe.”

In Washington, President Joe Biden said he was directing “every possible action be taken to save lives and get help to survivors.”

“It’s going to take months, years to rebuild,” Biden said.

“I just want the people of Florida to know, we see what you’re going through and we’re with you.”

We have to be patient. We have to start looking at where are we going to stay and live for a significant period of time. Don’t know exactly what that is. We’ll learn more as we go through this process.
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Damaged mobile homes in the San Carlos area of Fort Myers lie scattered on Sept. 29.Rebecca Blackwell/The Associated Press

Hurricane season: More from The Globe and Mail

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