More than 21 dead in Florida after Hurricane Ian; storm makes landfall on South Carolina coast

Hurricane Ian made its second major landfall on the South Carolina coast as a Category 1 storm Friday, while rescue and recovery efforts ramped up across Florida in its wake.

The current death toll in Florida sits at 21, with many more expected. About 10,000 people in southwest Florida are unaccounted for. Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday near Punta Gorda as a Category 4 storm.

President Joe Biden said Ian “could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history,” responsible for a “substantial loss of life.”

The governor’s office reported 12 deaths in Charlotte County, 8 in Collier County, and one in Polk County.

In Lee County, it is still too early to say “until the water recedes,” Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said at a Friday morning briefing.

In one case that hasn’t been included in the official tally, water came up to the roof of a house. The Coast Guard swam in and discovered human remains, Guthrie said, but it was unclear how many people had died. He said there were “a couple other similar situations.”

Preliminary reports across the state also include two deaths in Lee County, two in Sarasota County, and two in Volusia County.

In Volusia County, one man fell and drowned in rising flood waters in his own home, while another drowned in a nearby canal, the Volusia County Sheriff’s office reported.

The two who died in Sarasota were both elderly residents who relied on oxygen machines that lost power during the storm, according to the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.

In North Fort Myers, another man who relied on oxygen was narrowly saved when his neighbors used an extension cord to connect his oxygen machine to a neighbor’s generator, the New York Times reported.

Gov. Ron DeSantis surveyed the damage in Fort Myers Beach on Thursday, saying some of it was “indescribable.”

“There were cars floating in the middle of the water,” DeSantis said. “Some of the homes were total losses.”

Ian’s center made landfall near Georgetown, South Carolina on Friday at approximately 2:05 p.m., with “life-threatening storm surge, damaging winds and flash flooding lashing the Carolinas,” according to the National Hurricane Center’s 2 p.m. advisory. It will turn north-northwest by Friday night, the center’s latest advisory said, moving farther inland across North Carolina overnight and into Saturday.

According to the advisory, the Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds up to 85 mph was located about 55 miles east-northeast of Charleston, S.C., moving north at 15 mph.

Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 70 miles, while the tropical-storm-force winds extend out to about 275 miles.

It is forecast to rapidly weaken soon over the southeastern United States and dissipate Saturday.

The entire coast of South Carolina and the coast of North Carolina from Little River Inlet to Cape Fear are under hurricane warnings. A storm surge warning was also issued from Florida’s Volusia County to Cape Fear.

Meanwhile, rescue work for people trapped in the flooded neighborhoods of southwest Florida

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“You see a house totally washed out and it’s just nothing but a concrete slab on Fort Myers beach,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday morning. “You just pray to God that no one was in that.”

DeSantis encouraged people to send financial aid, not supplies. He said the Florida Disaster Fund raised $12 million in 24 hours.

The Coast Guard and the United States Army Reserve have continued to perform rescue missions in the area, while engineers on site conducted bridge inspections. Some bridges, such as Pine Island Bridge, are no longer passable, DeSantis said. The storm tore an entire section out of the Sanibel Causeway.

“Sanibel is destruction,” DeSantis said. “It got hit with a really biblical storm surge.”

Lee County is entirely without water due to a main break, DeSantis said Friday. The state is transporting 1.2 million gallons of water from Lakeland to Fort Myers to support hospitals there that have no potable water.

Hardee County is 99% without power as of Friday, followed by Charlotte and Lee at 85% and DeSoto at 80%. Close to half of Sarasota, Collier, and Manatee remain without power. Returning to the grid may not happen overnight.

“Reconnects are going to have to be a rebuilding of that infrastructure,” DeSantis said. “That’s going to be more than just connecting a powerline back to a pole.”

Ian had made landfall on the Florida mainland at 4:35 p.m. Wednesday just south of Punta Gorda, coming ashore with 145 mph winds, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm previously made landfall on the island of Cayo Costa off Fort Myers.

Despite the attention given to high winds, the biggest killer in hurricanes tends to be water. After submerging much of southwest Florida on Wednesday, Ian churned up through central Florida overnight and into Thursday, bringing heavy rainfall and flooding across the region. Rivers overflowed onto major streets. Some bodies of water, like Shingle Creek near Kissimmee, broke records, reaching the highest levels ever reported.

More than 20,000 people across the state are still in shelters as of Friday.

DeSantis called the storm a “500-year flood event.”

Parts of east central Florida, such as New Smyrna Beach, received up to 20 inches of accumulated rainfall between Tuesday and Friday. Much of Orlando had received over 14 inches by Thursday, city officials said in a press conference.

In the cities of Kissimmee and New Smyrna Beach, residents and local media outlets shared pictures and videos of major streets flooded with water and cars keeling into puddles of unknown depths.

Meanwhile, areas of South Florida received nearly 10 inches of rain over the past 3 days from Hurricane Ian, according to the National Weather Service. The western fringes of Broward were hit hardest.

In South Florida, much of the destruction occurred Tuesday night, when Ian spawned at least two tornadoes in Broward County and one in Palm Beach County, the National Weather Service said. A tornado near Kings Point, close to Delray Beach, toppled trees, wrecked cars, damaged apartments, and displaced 35 people.

At high tide in Miami Beach on Friday, a giant wave overtook the sidewalk and flung six people against the pedestrian railing and into the Government Cut, WPLG reported. All six were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. The wave was likely the result of a combination of lingering swells produced by Ian and the area’s high king tides.

Florida Power and Light reported restoring power to about 50%, or 1 million customers Friday, while about 980,000 remain without power.

“We did not lose one single transmission tower,” said Eric Silagy, the president of FPL, at the press conference Thursday afternoon. “That is critical. The backbone is up.”

A new tropical depression that formed Wednesday morning dissipated Thursday evening, the hurricane center said.

Another tropical wave off the African coast has a 60% chance of developing in the next five days, the hurricane center said, forming a tropical depression early next week as the system moves westward to west-northwestward over the eastern tropical Atlantic.

The next named storm to form would be Julia.

Hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

Staff writers Ron Hurtibise, David Lyons, Rafael Olmeda, Lois Solomon and Scott Travis contributed to this report. Information from the Associated Press was also used.