Hurricanes and hurricane scares are part of life for the millions who call Florida’s precarious paradise home. But when Hurricane Ian walloped the state this week, its brute power caught many off-guard.
The scope of the devastation was only beginning to come into view days after Ian slammed into the peninsula as a Category 4 hurricane. Punishing winds and waters left a trail of destruction on the southwest coast and into central Florida, flooding streets and homes and knocking out power.
Hardest hit was the southwestern part of the state, where Ian made landfall Wednesday afternoon. A chunk of the Sanibel Causeway collapsed into the sea, severing access to a once-serene island rocked by what Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) described as “biblical storm surge.” Parts of low-key tourist town Fort Myers Beach appeared to be demolished.
The death toll was yet to be determined. As of Friday, state officials said they were investigating 21 deaths, though just one had been confirmed as storm-related. After more than 700 rescues, search efforts remained underway.
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Hurricane Ian’s impact, DeSantis said, is “historic.”
“You’re looking at a storm that’s changed the character of a significant part of our state,” the governor said during a Thursday briefing in Tallahassee. “This is going to require not just the emergency response now, and the days or weeks ahead; I mean, this is going to require years of effort, to be able to rebuild, to come back.”
President Biden declared it “an American crisis.”
As the storm emerged as a threat to Florida in late September, forecasts initially had it headed for the Tampa Bay area. Residents fled low-lying coastal areas under mandatory evacuation orders as the region braced for the potential of catastrophic flooding.
Raymond Oubichon, a retired entertainer from New Orleans, left his South Tampa home before sunrise Tuesday. He said he did not want to take his chances in the Tampa Bay area, even if avoiding it meant paying for an overpriced hotel room on his credit card.
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“I don’t want to max it out already, but also, I don’t want to die,” Oubichon said. “So here we are.”
By later that day, though, the projected track had veered south. Ian ultimately cut through the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall around 3 p.m. on the southwest Florida island of Cayo Costa.
The storm poured 10 to 20 inches on a wide stretch of the state as it carved a slow path across the peninsula. Orlando hit a 24-hour rainfall record with 12.49 inches — about twice its monthly average.
In the wake of the hurricane’s tear across Florida, swaths of the state were left without power. A day after landfall, more than 2 million consumers lacked electricity.
Share this articleShareCommunities close to Ian’s furious path were almost entirely in the dark. More than 99 percent of residences and other buildings were without power in south central Florida’s rural Hardee County on Thursday. In Lee County, where the hurricane made landfall, the number was nearly 85 percent; in neighboring Charlotte County, it was 84 percent.
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“Lee and Charlotte are basically off the grid at this point,” DeSantis said Thursday.
With Ian came the power outages
Crews were on their way to restore power, the governor said, but doing so will take more than “connecting a power line back to a pole.” In some areas, he said, reconnecting is likely to require rebuilding the infrastructure.
Authorities have warned that outages could drag on for days, leaving millions of people in darkness, without air-conditioning, refrigeration or reliable means of communication.
The scenes of destruction are staggering. Homes flooded to their second floors. Entire buildings reduced to heaps of rubble. Yachts launched into city streets. Sections of critical bridges and roadways torn away. Beloved local landmarks, gone.
The worst of it was in coastal southwest Florida communities such as Sanibel. The small island with 6,500 residents was severed from land when the only roadway to the island collapsed.
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Just about everywhere Hurricane Ian went, it left ruin. The inland central part of the state was also deluged with water. It was waist-deep in some images out of Orlando. A hospital in Kissimmee was surrounded by so much water, it looked almost like a lake.
The National Hurricane Center called the flooding “catastrophic.”
In Naples, Bill D’Antuono emerged from his aunt and uncle’s canal-front house, where the water went above the countertops and filled the drawers, to find his hometown transformed.
The landmark Naples Pier was torn apart in some sections. Streets were flooded and almost unrecognizable. Boats were everywhere. D’Antuono’s house in the Bayshore area appeared to be flooded beyond repair.
Describing it on Thursday, D’Antuono, a 36-year-old charter boat captain, used words like “annihilated” and “worst-case scenario” and “nightmare.” And “heartbreaking.”
“Everything we knew is different now,” he said.
About this story
Satellite images are from NOAA.
Editing by Christine Armario and Kainaz Amaria. Photo editing by Natalia Jimenez. Video editing by John Farrell. Graphics editing by Tim Meko and Emily Eng. Copy editing by Phil Lueck.
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