Florida, Carolinas count the cost of Hurricane Ian

Florida, North and South Carolina faced a massive clean-up on Saturday from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ian, after one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US mainland caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and killed more than 20 people.

New images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed several beach cottages and a motel building that lined the shores of Florida’s Sanibel Island were wiped away by Ian’s storm surge. Even though most homes were still standing, they appeared to have roof damage, the images showed.

Ian, now a post-tropical cyclone, continued to weaken on Saturday morning but is still forecast to bring treacherous conditions to parts of the Central Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic, according to the National Hurricane Center, which added that flood watches were in effect across southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia.

“Major to record river flooding will continue across central Florida through next week. Limited flash, urban and small stream flooding is possible across the central Appalachians and the southern Mid-Atlantic this weekend, with minor river flooding expected over the coastal Carolinas,” it said.

The storm struck Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, turning beach towns into disaster areas. On Friday, it pummeled waterfront Georgetown, north of the historic city of Charleston in South Carolina, with wind speeds of 85 mph (140 kph).

Roads were flooded and blocked by trees while a number of piers were damaged.

Over 1.6 million homes and businesses were without power in the Carolinas, Virginia and Florida at 11:00 a.m. ET (1500 GMT) on Saturday, according to tracking website PowerOutage.us.

Both the number of casualties and repair costs remain unclear, but the extent of the damage was becoming apparent as Florida entered its third day after Ian first hit.

There were at least 23 deaths in Florida attributable to the hurricane, the state’s Department of Law Enforcement said on Saturday morning. Sixteen of those were aged above 60. The eldest was a 92-year-old man, who was found under three feet of water in Lee County.

Thousands of people were still unaccounted for, officials said, but many of them were likely in shelters or without power.

“Those older homes that just aren’t as strong built, they got washed into the sea,” Governor Ron DeSantis said on Friday.

“If you are hunkering down in that, that is something that I think would be very difficult to be survivable.”

Meanwhile, insurers braced for a hit of between $28 billion and $47 billion, in what could be the costliest Florida storm since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, according to U.S. property data and analytics company CoreLogic.

U.S. President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration, making federal resources available to counties impacted by the storm.

“We’re just beginning to see the scale of that destruction. It’s likely to rank among the worst … in the nation’s history,” he said.

Biden also declared an emergency in North Carolina on Saturday.

‘DEVASTATING’

The Florida city of Fort Myers, close to where the eye of the storm first came ashore, absorbed a major blow, with numerous houses destroyed.

Offshore, Sanibel Island, a popular destination for vacationers and retirees, was cut off when a causeway was rendered impassable.

Hundreds of Fort Myers residents lined up at a Home Depot store on Friday on the east side of the city, hoping to purchase gas cans, generators, bottled water and other supplies. The line stretched as long as a football field.

Rita Chambers, a 70-year-old retiree who was born in Jamaica and has lived in Fort Myers since 1998, said Ian was unlike any storm she had ever seen.

“And I’ve been in hurricanes since I was a child!” said Chambers, who moved to New York as a teenager.

At a mobile home park on San Carlos Island in Fort Myers Beach, trailers had been pushed together by the wind and water. A boat lay on its side at a local marina, where another boat had come to rest in a tree.

Hundreds of miles north in Georgetown, residents were also trying to put their lives back together.

With a population of about 10,000, the town is a tourist destination known for its oak tree-lined streets and more than 50 sites on the National Registry of Historic Places. It was heavily damaged by Hurricane Hugo in 1989.