Ian strengthens to hurricane strength again in the Atlantic after battering Florida
TAMPA - After weakening to a tropical storm, Ian intensified to hurricane strength again after lashing Florida and moving to the Atlantic Ocean.
According to the National Hurricane Center's 5 p.m. update Thursday, the storm was now taking aim at the Carolinas and Georgia, bringing life-threatening flooding and strong winds.
The center said the storm's maximum sustained winds increased Thursday to 75 mph and it was centered about 240 miles south of Charleston, South Carolina, and moving northeast at 10 mph.
Ian made landfall Wednesday on Florida's west coast as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds. The storm flooded homes, cut off a popular barrier island and left nearly 2.7 million people without power before moving over the Atlantic and turning north
One of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the United States barreled across the Florida peninsula, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.
Officials confirmed late Thursday that at least 12 people had died from the storm.
During an 8:45 a.m. news conference, Gov. Ron DeSantis said two confirmed fatalities had been reported but it was not clear if they were related to the storm. He also there were thousands of people who needed help in the storm battered region.
"The impacts of this storm has been historic," the governor said.
Earlier in the day, the Lee County sheriff had said there could have been hundreds of fatalities but DeSantis said that information was not confirmed. The sheriff has since retracted that statement.
The center said Ian became a tropical storm over land early Thursday and emerged over Atlantic waters near the Kennedy Space Center later in the day. Flooding rains continued across the state, and a stretch of the Gulf Coast remained inundated by ocean water, pushed ashore by the massive storm.
"Severe and life-threatening storm surge inundation of 8 to 10 feet above ground level along with destructive waves is ongoing along the southwest Florida coastline from Englewood to Bonita Beach, including Charlotte Harbor," the center said.
In Port Charlotte, along Florida's Gulf Coast, the storm surge flooded a lower-level emergency room in a hospital even as fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from its intensive care unit, according to a doctor who works there.
Water gushed down onto the ICU, forcing staff to evacuate the hospital's sickest patients -- some of whom were on ventilators - to other floors, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Staff members used towels and plastic bins to try to mop up the sodden mess.
The medium-sized hospital spans four floors, but patients were forced into just two because of the damage. Bodine planned to spend the night there in case people injured from the storm arrive needing help.
"As long as our patients do OK and nobody ends up dying or having a bad outcome, that's what matters," Bodine said.
Law enforcement officials in nearby Fort Myers received calls from people trapped in flooded homes or from worried relatives. Pleas were also posted on social media sites, some with video showing debris-covered water sloshing toward homes' eaves.
Brittany Hailer, a journalist in Pittsburgh, contacted rescuers about her mother in North Fort Myers, whose home was swamped by 5 feet of water.
"We don't know when the water's going to go down. We don't know how they're going to leave, their cars are totaled," Hailer said. "Her only way out is on a boat."
Hurricane Ian turned streets into rivers and blew down trees as it slammed into southwest Florida on Wednesday with 150 mph winds, pushing a wall of storm surge. Ian's strength at landfall was Category 4 and tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane, when measured by wind speed, to ever strike the U.S.
The hurricane's eye made landfall near Cayo Costa, a barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers. As it approached, water drained from Tampa Bay.
More than 2 million Florida homes and businesses were left without electricity, according to the PowerOutage.us site. Nearly every home and business in three counties was without power.
Sheriff Bull Prummell of Charlotte County, just north of Fort Myers, announced a curfew between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. "for life-saving purposes," saying violators may face second-degree misdemeanor charges.
"I am enacting this curfew as a means of protecting the people and property of Charlotte County," Prummell said.
Life-threatening storm surges and hurricane conditions were possible on Thursday and Friday along the coasts of northeast Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, where Ian was expected to move inland, dumping more rain well in from the coast, the hurricane center said.
The governors of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia all preemptively declared states of emergency.