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Hurricane Ian regains strength as it heads to South Carolina

One day after Hurricane Ian unleashed its fury across Florida, the destruction and the devastation started to become clear.

US President Joe Biden issued a formal disaster declaration and warned of ‘‘substantial loss of life’’.

Officials warned that Ian would be a problem for much of South Carolina after it regained hurricane-level strength.

And in Deltona, Florida, came the first confirmed fatality: a 72-year-old man who died while attempting to drain his pool into a nine-metre-wide canal, when he slipped down the hill, fell into the water and drowned.

While the death toll from Hurricane Ian won’t be known for some time, Biden warned that ‘‘this could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history’’.

‘‘We know many families are hurting,’’ he said during a Federal Emergency Management Agency briefing after formally issuing a disaster declaration. ‘‘Our entire country hurts with them.’’

With much of Florida situated on a peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Straits of Florida, the socalled sunbelt state is no stranger to hurricanes and tropical storms.

But Ian, which at one point was a Category 4 hurricane, was catastrophic, unleashing winds of 241kph when it made landfall on Wednesday (US time) and creating what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described yesterday as a ‘‘500-year flood event’’.

‘‘We’ve never seen a flood event like this,’’ DeSantis said. ‘‘We’ve never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.’’

By yesterday, more than 500 people had been rescued from floodwaters in southwest Florida, but emergency crews were still struggling to reach some of the hardest-hit areas.

As first responders assessed the damage, more than 2.5 million people were still without power, roads had turned into rivers filled with upturned cars, and large sections of the Sanibel Causeway, which connects the Sanibel Islands to the mainland, collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico.

In Fort Myers, where storm surges of up to 3.6 metres pummelled the popular beachside destination, homes had been completely uprooted and strewn into the Gulf Coast, creating a swamp of debris and disaster.

‘‘I got an aerial tour of Fort Myers beach,’’ Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat and former emergency management director said on Twitter. ‘‘Most of it will need to be completely rebuilt.’’

In the Orlando area, Orange County firefighters used boats to reach people in a flooded neighbourhood. A photo the department posted on Twitter showed one firefighter carrying someone in his arms through knee-deep water. At an area nursing home, patients were carried on stretchers across floodwaters to a waiting bus.

And in Port Charlotte, where a hospital was flooded when ferocious winds tore apart the roof of its intensive care unit, patients were being evacuated throughout the day while staff members attempted to mop up the mess.

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s department confirmed multiple deaths but did not have a firm figure.

Authorities in Sarasota County were investigating two possible storm-related deaths, a sheriff’s spokesperson said.

World

en-nz

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281792812908322

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