Hurricane warnings along the east and west coasts of the Florida panhandle have been changed to tropical storm warnings as of Thursday morning, according to the latest report from the National Hurricane Center (NHC). ).
In its wake, Hurricane Ian leaves destruction in Southwest Florida ranging from people trapped in flooded homes, structural damage to homes and hospitals, as well as more than two million people without power
Ian, one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the United States, crossed the Florida panhandle on Wednesday night and is now making its way to the Atlantic coast.
Ian is expected to emerge over the waters of the Atlantic Ocean later Thursday and heavy downpours that can lead to flooding continue over central and northern Florida, the NHC announced.
In Port Charlotte, on the Florida coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the storm surge flooded the emergency room of a hospital, located on the ground floor of the building, while the wind ripped off part of the roof of the ICU, located on the fourth, according to a doctor at the center.
Water poured into the intensive care unit, forcing staff to evacuate the center’s sickest patients, some of them on ventilators, to other floors, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Workers set out towels and plastic containers to try to contain the sudden chaos.
The hospital has four floors, but patients had to concentrate on just two due to damage. Bodine planned to spend another night at the center in case any injuries from the meteor arrived.
“As long as our patients are okay and no one ends up dying or getting worse, that’s what matters,” he said.
In nearby Fort Myers, authorities received calls from people trapped in flooded homes or from concerned family members. Pleas for rescue were posted on social media, some with videos showing how water, covered in debris, approached the ledges of houses.
Brittany Hailer, a journalist from Pittsburgh, contacted rescue teams about her mother, who lives north of Fort Myers and whose home was in 5 feet of water.
“We don’t know when the water is going to go down. We don’t know how they’re going to get out, their cars are broken,” Hailer said. “Their only way out is by boat.”
The hurricane turned streets into rivers and toppled trees as it swept through southwest Florida on Wednesday, packing 150 mph (241 km/h) winds and a wall of storm surge. When it made landfall, Ian was a Category 4 storm, and by the strength of its winds it was the fifth strongest in US history.
Wednesday night it was a Category 1 meteor with 90 mph (144 km/h) winds as it continued to move. Across the state, in the northeast, storm surges of up to 2 meters (6 feet) high were expected Thursday.
A hurricane watch remained active between Bonita Beach, about 50 km (31 miles) south of Fort Myers, and the Anclote River, including Tampa Bay, and from Sebastian Inlet to the Flagler/Volusia county line.
In central Florida, hurricane-force winds could continue into early Thursday with widespread and catastrophic flooding likely, the center added.
As of Wednesday night, no deaths from the storm had been reported in the United States. But a boat with Cuban migrants on board capsized Wednesday in stormy weather east of Key West.
The US Coast Guard launched a search and rescue operation for 23 people and found three survivors about two kilometers (miles) south of the Florida Keys, according to authorities. Four other Cubans swam to Stock Island, just east of Key West, according to the Border Patrol. Air crews were still searching for the 20 migrants who might still be at sea.
Before making landfall in Florida, the hurricane had swept through Cuba, where it claimed the lives of two people and disabled the island’s power grid.
More than two million Florida homes and businesses were without power, according to the website PowerOutage.us. Nearly every home and business in three counties was experiencing blackouts.
The governors of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia preemptively declared states of emergency. Forecasters expect Ian to hit those regions as a tropical storm that could cause flooding over the weekend.
(Reported by The Associated Press)
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