Hurricane Ian leaves ‘catastrophic’ damage, flooding in its Florida wake

Hurricane Ian left Florida behind late Thursday, growing from a downgraded tropical storm back to a hurricane on its way to the Carolinas. Across Florida, the monster storm caused catastrophic devastation, flooding and at least 11 deaths, with many more expected.

President Joe Biden said Ian “could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history,” responsible for a “substantial loss of life.”

Preliminary reports of lives lost include six in Charlotte County; two in Lee County: two in Sarasota County, and one in Volusia County.

Gov. Ron DeSantis declined to speculate on the number of fatalities at multiple news conferences. DeSantis surveyed the damage in Fort Myers Beach on Thursday, saying some of it was “indescribable.”

“There were cars floating in the middle of the water,” DeSantis said. “Some of the homes were total losses.”

Ian has moved off the east coast of Florida and is expected to turn north early Friday, the center’s latest advisory said. Ian will approach the coast of South Carolina on Friday, and the center of the storm will move farther inland across the Carolinas on Friday night and Saturday.

According to the National Hurricane Center’s 5 a.m. advisory, the Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds up to 85 mph was located about 145 miles south-southeast of Charleson, S.C. and 225 miles south-southwest of Cape Fear, N.C. moving north-northeast at 9 mph.

Its hurricane-force winds extend out extend outward up to 70 miles, while the tropical-storm-force winds extend out to about 485 miles.

It is forecast to rapidly weaken over the southeastern United States late Friday into Saturday.

[ MAP: Here’s the updated forecast track of Hurricane Ian  ]

The entire coast of South Carolina and the coast of North Carolina from Little River Inlet to Cape Fear are now under hurricane warnings. A storm surge warning was also issued for several parts of both Carolinas, with “rapid weakening” forecast after landfall.

Meanwhile, rescue work for people trapped in the flooded neighborhoods of Southwest Florida began Wednesday and continued Thursday as the sun came up, the winds died down, and the extent of Ian’s destruction began to reveal itself.

Hundreds of people called for help in Lee County, DeSantis said.

At the Thursday afternoon briefing, the governor encouraged people to send financial aid, not supplies. So far, he said, the Florida Disaster Fund has raised $10 million in 24 hours.

The Coast Guard and the United States Army Reserve have been performing rescue missions in the area, while engineers on site began to do bridge inspections. Some bridges, such as Pine Island Bridge, are no longer passable, DeSantis said. The storm tore an entire section out of the Sanibel Causeway.

“Sanibel is destruction,” DeSantis said. “It got hit with a really biblical storm surge.”

[ RELATED: ‘Catastrophic’ Hurricane Ian swamps southwest Florida, trapping people in homes ]

Lee and Charlotte counties were practically “off the grid” as of Thursday morning, DeSantis said, with 2.5 million power outages reported so far across the state, 1.5 million of which are in Southwest Florida, according to the governor’s office. Returning to the grid may not happen overnight.

“Reconnects are going to have to be a rebuilding of that infrastructure,” DeSantis said. “That’s going to be more than just connecting a powerline back to a pole.”

Ian had made landfall on the Florida mainland at 4:35 p.m. Wednesday just south of Punta Gorda, coming ashore with 145 mph winds, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm previously made landfall on the island of Cayo Costa off Fort Myers.

A wind tower near Punta Gorda clocked sustained winds of 55 mph with a gust of 78 mph, the hurricane center said in a 9 p.m. update, while a station at Punta Gorda Airport measured a gust of 109 mph shortly before 8 p.m.

[ RELATED: South Florida coping with flooding and intense bands of rain from Hurricane Ian ]

“This is going to be a storm we talk about for years to come,” Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service, had said at a news conference Wednesday morning.

Despite the attention given to high winds, the biggest killer in hurricanes tends to be water. After submerging much of southwest Florida on Wednesday, Ian churned up through central Florida overnight and into Thursday, bringing heavy rainfall and flooding across the region. Rivers overflowed onto major streets. Some bodies of water, like Shingle Creek near Kissimmee, broke records, reaching the highest levels ever reported.

DeSantis called the storm a “500-year flood event.”

Forecasters had predicted that central and northeast west Florida could see between 12 and 18 inches of rain, with a maximum of 24 inches in some areas, while northeast Florida would get between 6 and 10 inches with up to 1 foot in some areas.

As of Thursday evening, parts of the Orlando metropolitan area received over 14 inches, city officials told the Orlando Sentinel.

In the cities of Kissimmee and New Smyrna Beach, residents and local media outlets shared videos of major streets flooded with water.

Meanwhile, areas of South Florida received nearly 10 inches of rain over the past 3 days from Hurricane Ian, according to the National Weather Service. The western fringes of Broward were hit hardest.

In South Florida, much of the destruction occurred Tuesday night, when Ian spawned at least two tornadoes in Broward County and one in Palm Beach County, the National Weather Service said. A tornado near Kings Point, close to Delray Beach, toppled trees, wrecked cars, damaged apartments, and displaced 35 people.

[ RELATED: Hurricane Ian outages: More than 2 million are without power in Florida ]

Florida Power and Light reported restoring power to 750,000 customers before the storm left Florida, while 1.2 million remain without power as of 4 p.m. Thursday.

“We did not lose one single transmission tower,” said Eric Silagy, the president of FPL, at the press conference Thursday afternoon. “That is critical. The backbone is up.”

[ STAY UPDATED with the latest forecast for tropical weather at SunSentinel.com/hurricane ]

The new tropical depression that formed Wednesday morning dissipated Thursday evening, the hurricane center said.

Another tropical wave off the African coast has a 40% chance of developing in the next five days, the hurricane center said.

The next named storm to form would be Julia.

Hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

Staff writers Ron Hurtibise, David Lyons, Rafael Olmeda, Lois Solomon and Scott Travis contributed to this report. Information from the Associated Press was also used.