By CURT ANDERSON
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Ian, one of the crucial highly effective storms ever recorded within the U.S., swamped southwest Florida on Wednesday, turning streets into rivers, knocking out energy to 1.6 million folks and threatening catastrophic harm additional inland.
A coastal sheriff’s workplace reported that it was getting many calls from folks trapped in properties. The hurricane’s middle struck close to Cayo Costa, a protected barrier island simply west of closely populated Fort Myers.
Mark Pritchett stepped exterior his dwelling in Venice across the time the hurricane churned ashore from the Gulf of Mexico, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) to the south. He referred to as it “terrifying.”
“I literally couldn’t stand against the wind,” Pritchett wrote in a textual content message. “Rain shooting like needles. My street is a river. Limbs and trees down. And the worst is yet to come.”
The Category 4 storm slammed the coast with 150 mph (241 kph) winds and pushed a wall of storm surge collected throughout its sluggish march over the Gulf. More than 1.6 million Florida properties and companies had been with out electrical energy, in keeping with PowerOutage.us. The storm beforehand tore into Cuba, killing two folks and bringing down the nation’s electrical grid.
About 2.5 million folks had been ordered to evacuate southwest Florida earlier than Ian hit, however by regulation nobody may very well be pressured to flee. Nearly each dwelling and enterprise in three counties had been with out energy.
News anchors at Fort Myers tv station WINK needed to abandon their common desk and proceed storm protection from one other location of their newsroom as a result of water was pushing into their constructing close to the Caloosahatchee River.
Though anticipated to weaken to a tropical storm because it marches inland at about 9 mph (14 kph), Ian’s hurricane drive winds had been prone to be felt nicely into central Florida. Hours after landfall, high sustained winds had dropped to 125 mph (205 kph), making it a Category 3 hurricane. Still, storm surges as excessive as 6 toes (2 meters) had been anticipated on the alternative facet of the state, in northeast Florida.
“This is going to be a nasty nasty day, two days,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis mentioned, urging folks in Ian’s path alongside the Atlantic coast to hurry to the most secure potential shelter and keep there.
Jackson Boone left his dwelling close to the Gulf coast and hunkered down at his regulation workplace in Venice with workers and their pets. Boone at one level opened a door to howling wind and rain flying sideways.
“We’re seeing tree damage, horizontal rain, very high wind,” Boone mentioned by cellphone. “We have a 50-plus-year-old oak tree that has toppled over.”
In Naples, the primary flooring of a hearth station was inundated with about 3 toes (1 meter) of water and firefighters labored to salvage gear from a firetruck caught exterior the storage in even deeper water, a video posted by the Naples Fire Department confirmed. Naples is in Collier County, the place the sheriff’s division reported on Facebook that it was getting “a significant number of calls of people trapped by water in their homes” and that it will prioritize reaching folks “reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water.”
Ian’s power at landfall tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane when measured by wind velocity to strike the U.S. Among the opposite storms was Hurricane Charley, which hit almost the identical spot on Florida’s coast in August 2004, killing 10 folks and inflicting $14 billion in harm.
Ian had strengthened quickly in a single day, prompting Fort Myers handyman Tom Hawver to desert his plan to climate the hurricane at dwelling. He headed throughout the state to Fort Lauderdale.
“We were going to stay and then just decided when we got up, and they said 155 mph winds,” Hawver mentioned. “We don’t have a generator. I just don’t see the advantage of sitting there in the dark, in a hot house, watching water come in.”
Florida residents rushed forward of landfall to board up properties, stash valuable belongings on higher flooring and be part of lengthy traces of automobiles leaving the shore.
Some determined to try to trip out the storm. Jared Lewis, a Tampa supply driver, mentioned his dwelling has withstood hurricanes previously, although not as highly effective as Ian.
“It is kind of scary, makes you a bit anxious,” Lewis mentioned. “After the last year of not having any, now you go to a Category 4 or 5. We are more used to the 2s and 3s.”
Ian made landfall greater than 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Tampa and St. Petersburg, sparing the densely populated Tampa Bay space from its first direct hit by a significant hurricane since 1921.
Flash floods had been potential all throughout Florida. Hazards embrace the polluted leftovers of Florida’s phosphate fertilizer mining trade, greater than 1 billion tons of barely radioactive waste contained in monumental ponds that might overflow in heavy rains.
The federal authorities despatched 300 ambulances with medical groups and was able to truck in 3.7 million meals and three.5 million liters of water as soon as the storm passes.
“We’ll be there to help you clean up and rebuild, to help Florida get moving again,” President Joe Biden mentioned Wednesday. “And we’ll be there every step of the way. That’s my absolute commitment to the people of the state of Florida.”
DeSantis has requested Biden grant a Major Disaster Declaration for all 67 of the state’s counties, which might open a variety of federal help for residents and funding for public infrastructure repairs. DeSantis has additionally requested Biden permit FEMA to supply a 100% federal price share for particles elimination and emergency protecting measures for 60 days.
The governors of Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina all preemptively declared states of emergency. Forecasters predicted Ian will flip towards these states as a tropical storm, probably dumping extra flooding rains into the weekend, after crossing Florida.
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Associated Press contributors embrace Christina Mesquita in Havana, Cuba; Cody Jackson and Adriana Gomez Licon in Tampa, Florida; Freida Frisaro in Miami; Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Florida; Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Seth Borenstein and Aamer Madhani in Washington; Bobby Caina Calvan in New York; Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio; and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”