Rescue’s….
By Boats and Coast Guard and military Helicopters
Recovery…..
Travel by boat….
Bridge’s gone….
Mop up….
Billions in damage…..
A weakened Ian, no longer a tropical storm, continued on Saturday to sweep parts of the Carolinas and Virginia with heavy rain — and even a spattering of wet snow in the mountains. In hard-hit Florida, the scale of devastation inflicted on the state became more clear, including a death toll that continues to climb.
The latest:
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Many people across Florida remain without clean drinking water, or their taps have run dry, after water systems across the state were polluted or failed in the storm’s wake.
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Officials in Lee County, Fla., delayed evacuation, which might have contributed to catastrophic consequences when Ian made landfall. The Lee County sheriff said on Saturday that about 35 people there had been killed. At least half a dozen other deaths statewide have been attributed to Ian.
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Coastal South Carolina was not hit as hard as feared when Ian came ashore again on Friday, but the possibility of dangerous flooding across the region remains.
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Ian’s maximum sustained winds have dropped below 35 miles per hour. The storm was expected to move north through North Carolina on Saturday, weakening further before dissipating over south-central Virginia by Saturday night.
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About 1.2 million customers in Florida, 42,000 in South Carolina, 273,000 in North Carolina and 73,000 in Virginia remained without power.
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Ian, no longer a tropical storm, will continue to weaken but could still drop heavy rain near the Virginia-North Carolina border the rest of today and into Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. Flood watches are in effect across southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia.
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About 1.3 million customers in Florida remained without power as of 7:30 a.m. Eastern time, along with 62,000 in South Carolina, 326,000 in North Carolina and 100,000 in Virginia….
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As Hurricane Ian charged toward the western coast of Florida this week, the warnings from forecasters were growing more urgent. Life-threatening storm surge threatened to deluge the region from Tampa all the way to Fort Myers.
But while officials along much of that coastline responded with orders to evacuate on Monday, emergency managers in Lee County held off, pondering during the day whether to tell people to flee, but then deciding to see how the forecast evolved overnight.
The delay, an apparent violation of the meticulous evacuation strategy the county had crafted for just such an emergency, may have contributed to catastrophic consequences that are still coming into focus as the death toll continues to climb.
Dozens have died overall in the state, officials said, as Ian, downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone, moved through North Carolina and Virginia on Saturday, at one point leaving nearly 400,000 electricity customers in those states without power.
About 35 of Florida’s storm-related deaths have been identified in Lee County, the highest toll anywhere in the state, as survivors describe the sudden surge of water — predicted as a possibility by the National Hurricane Service in the days before the storm hit — that sent some of them scrambling for safety in attics and on rooftops….
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Florida officials said uncertainty about where Hurricane Ian would hit the state led to evacuation orders with short time frames for residents of barrier islands near Fort Myers that were walloped by the storm.
Gov. Ron DeSantis noted that forecasters initially thought the storm was likely to make landfall well to the north of the southwest Florida islands that ultimately took a direct hit….
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Firefighters rescued dozens of people from barrier islands near Fort Myers on Thursday and were back searching for victims on Friday, Chief Ray Jadallah of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said.
Footage released by his department showed firefighters searching the shredded remains of buildings on Sanibel and Captiva Islands, in southwest Florida, and helping some of the stranded residents board a helicopter. Chief Jadallah said the team, Florida Task Force 1, had rescued 42 trapped residents and that none had suffered serious injuries….