Florida faces fury as US battens down for one of its biggest storms ever recorded
Hurricane Ian has made landfall in southwest Florida as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the US, swamping streets with water and smashing trees along the coast.
A truck pulls a man on a kayak on a low-lying road after flooding in aftermath of Hurricane Ian, in Key West, Fla. on a street near the Southernmost Point buoy. (AP Photo/Mary Martin)
A coastal sheriff’s office reported that it was already getting a significant number of calls from people trapped in homes barely an hour after the massive storm trudged ashore.
The hurricane’s centre struck near Cayo Costa, a protected barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers.
The Category 4 storm slammed the coast with 241 kilometres per hour winds and pushed a wall of storm surge accumulated during its slow march over the Gulf of Mexico.
More than 1 million Florida homes and businesses were without electricity. The storm previously tore into Cuba, killing two people and bringing down the country’s electrical grid.
About 2.5 million people were ordered to evacuate southwest Florida before Ian hit, but by law no one could be forced to flee.
Though expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it marched inland at about 14 kph, Ian’s hurricane force winds were likely to be felt well into central Florida.
“This is going to be a nasty nasty day, two days,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said, stressing that people in Ian’s path along the coast should rush to the safest possible shelter and stay there.
In Naples, the first floor of a fire station was inundated with about 3 feet of water and firefighters worked to salvage gear from a fire truck stuck outside the garage in even deeper water, a video posted by the Naples Fire Department showed.
Naples is in Collier County, where the sheriff’s department reported on Facebook that it was getting “a significant number of calls of people trapped by water in their homes” and that it would prioritise reaching people “reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water.”
Ian’s windspeed at landfall tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to strike the US, along with several other storms.
Florida residents rushed ahead of the impact to board up heir homes, stash precious belongings on upper floors and join long lines of cars leaving the shore.
Flash floods were possible across all of Florida. Hazards include the polluted leftovers of Florida’s phosphate fertiliser mining industry, more than one billion tons of slightly radioactive waste contained in enormous ponds that could overflow in heavy rains.
The federal government sent 300 ambulances with medical teams and was ready to truck in 3.7 million meals and 3.5 million litres of water once the storm passes.
“We’ll be there to help you clean up and rebuild, to help Florida get moving again,” President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.
“And we’ll be there every step of the way. That’s my absolute commitment to the people of the state of Florida.”
The governors of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina all preemptively declared states of emergency. Forecasters predicted Ian will turn toward those states as a tropical storm, likely dumping more flooding rains into the weekend, after crossing Florida.
