Hurricane Ian Update: South Carolina Grapples With Storm Damage as Florida Searches for Survivors
Rescuers continue to comb for survivors in devastated Florida communities following the Hurricane Ian impact in South Carolina after the storm’s second landfall.
As reported by NBC News, at least 23 people have been killed in the storm in Florida, according to state officials, but that number looked set to grow.
Ian made landfall in South Carolina as a Category 1 storm on Friday afternoon, and has since been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone. Still, officials warned that Ian and its aftermath still pose a grave danger, with warnings of flash flooding across parts of North Carolina and southern Virginia, according to the National Hurricane Center.
And Ian is expected to produce between 3 to 6 inches of rainfall on Saturday, across parts of North Carolina and West Virginia.
More than 1.3 million customers in Florida were without power early Saturday, three days after Ian slammed into the state. In South Carolina, just under 65,000 homes and businesses were without power after the hurricane hit.
President Joe Biden warned that Ian could ultimately be responsible for “substantial loss of life” and could end up being the deadliest storm in the state’s history.
Many beach cottages that lined the shores of Sanibel Island were wiped away by Hurricane Ian’s storm surge, new aerial imagery from NOAA shows.
Most homes on Sanibel and Captiva islands are still standing, but appear to have sustained some form of roof damage, in addition to certain storm surge and flooding damage.
Florida Hospital Without Running Water Faces Sanitation Crisis
Hurricane Ian has created a burgeoning biohazard situation in at least one Florida hospital close to where the storm first made landfall.
Staffers at the Health Park Medical Center in Fort Myers told NBC News that the facility’s running water went out Wednesday and hasn’t yet been restored. If water service isn’t back soon, the workers said, they fear disease outbreaks and infections in the wake of the storm.
Patients and nurses alike have been forced to defecate in plastic bags, then store the waste in overflowing biohazard bins, staffers and patients said.
Workers said they can’t properly sanitize medical instruments for reuse, and some patients went over a dozen hours without drinking any water.
Even Inland Towns Are Menaced by Floods
Residents in North Port, Sarasota County, thought they might be safe from the ravages of Hurricane Ian, living far from the beach and outside areas under evacuation orders.
But even in inland towns, water levels have gone up significantly, causing widespread flooding and turning roads into canals and leaving residents trapped inside their homes. Heavy rains from the storm have ended up flowing into suburban and inland towns not included in hurricane warnings.
This is because rising rivers have created a deluge, the overflowing of water on land, continuing to cause having long after the winds have passed, and leading to rescue efforts not dissimilar to those in coastal areas.
“Water just keeps going up. Who knows when it is going to stop,” Samuel Almanzar, 42, told the Associated Press. He was rescued by crews Friday along with his father, wife and two children, 11 and 6.
