On Saturday, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina were attempting to recover from Hurricane Ian’s devastation, which left tens of billions of dollars in damage and more than 20 fatalities. Hurricane Ian was one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the U.S. mainland.
According to the National Hurricane Center, Ian, a post-tropical storm, was decreasing but was still expected to produce dangerous weather to some areas of the Carolinas, Virginia, and West Virginia through Saturday AM.
It warned of ‘the severe storm surge, flash flooding, and high wind threat.’
On Wednesday, the storm hit Florida’s Gulf Coast, turning beach towns into catastrophe zones. It battered seaside Georgetown, South Carolina’s historic city, on Friday with winds that reached 85 mph (140 kph).
Several piers were damaged, and roads were inundated and blocked by trees.
At 2:30 a.m. ET (0630 GMT), the Carolinas and Florida had about 1.7 million homes and businesses without power, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us.
The number of fatalities and restoration expenses are yet unknown, but as Florida reached the third day after Ian’s initial strike, the scale of the destruction was becoming clear.
Kevin Guthrie, director of the state’s Division of Emergency Management, stated on Friday morning that there have been reports of at least 21 deaths, noting that some of those are still pending confirmation.
He estimated that 10,000 individuals were missing, although many of them were probably in shelters or without electricity.
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