Florida Hurricane leaves 1.6 million without power
One of the strongest hurricanes to strike the United States slammed into southwest Florida on Wednesday afternoon with Category 4-level winds, inundating coastal communities and threatening to besiege the entire peninsula with devastating gusts and flooding as the storm slowly swirled east.
Packing peak winds of 150 mph, Hurricane Ian made landfall just after 3 p.m. near the barrier island of Cayo Costa, west of Cape Coral and Fort Myers, hours after a severe storm surge began turning roads into rivers. After rapidly intensifying overnight Tuesday, Ian tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane to hit the United States, and Gov.
Ron DeSantis said he had asked President Biden to free up federal assistance by announcing a major disaster declaration for all 67 Florida counties.
The hurricane was “a ferocious storm coming in, very hazardous, very ominous,” DeSantis (R) said Wednesday evening. He warned: “Once the storm goes, once there’s apparent calm, there are still plenty of hazards out there.”
The breadth of Hurricane Ian’s damage to life and property remained unclear Wednesday evening. Solid winds prevented first responders in the most-flooded communities from rescuing, and several jurisdictions imposed curfews.
Post-storm dangers such as downed power lines, standing water and generators killed dozens of Floridians after Hurricane Irma in 2017. They again would present grave danger following Ian, DeSantis said.
Hurricane Ian, which the National Hurricane Center referred to as “extremely dangerous,” shoved water over thresholds, bent some palm trees and plucked others from the ground, and overturned small aeroplanes with the ease of a giant.
Nearly 2 million customers in Florida were without power as of 10:04 p.m. on Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us, as Hurricane Ian continued to batter the state’s western coast.
Flooding from Ian’s storm surge the rise in ocean water above normally dry land probably peaked as high as 12 feet in some areas of Florida, the governor said. The surge increased to over seven feet in Fort Myers, nearly four feet higher than the next highest surge in 50 years of observations. The tide gauge in Naples also posted its highest level on record, with a surge of at least seven feet.
Boardwalk cameras and videos captured from high-rises in Fort Myers Beach, a barrier island taking the brunt of Hurricane Ian’s strongest winds, showed pounding waves carrying large amounts of debris and, in at least one video, the roof of a building.
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