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| Photo Credit: AP. |
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — People kayaking down streets that were passable just a day or two earlier. Hundreds of thousands without power. National Guard helicopters flying rescue missions to residents still stranded on Florida’s barrier islands.
Days after
Hurricane Ian carved a path of destruction from Florida to the Carolinas, the
dangers persisted, and even worsened in some places. It was clear the road to
recovery from this monster storm will be long and painful.
And Ian was
still not done. The storm doused Virginia with rain Sunday, and officials
warned of the potential for severe flooding along its coast, with a coastal flood
warning in effect Monday.
Ian’s
remnants moved offshore and formed a nor’easter that is expected to pile even
more water into an already inundated Chesapeake Bay and threatened to cause the
most significant tidal flooding event in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region in the
last 10 to 15 years, said Cody Poche, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
The island
town of Chincoteague declared a state of emergency Sunday and strongly recommended
that residents in certain areas evacuate. The Eastern Shore and northern
portion of North Carolina’s Outer Banks were also likely to be impacted.
At least 68
people have been confirmed dead: 61 in Florida, four in North Carolina and
three in Cuba.
Fort Myers
Beach Mayor Ray Murphy told NBC’s “Today Show” on Monday that the search and
rescue mission would be taking place for the next couple of days. Murphy said
that was why residents who evacuated are largely being kept away from their
homes.
With the
death toll rising, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, said the federal government was ready to help in a huge way,
focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the
strongest storms to make landfall in the United States. President Joe Biden and
first lady Jill Biden plan to visit the state on Wednesday.
Flooded
roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated
amid limited cellphone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water,
electricity and the internet. Officials warned that the situation in many areas
isn’t expected to improve for several days because the rain that fell has
nowhere to go because waterways are overflowing.
Fewer than
620,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity by early
Monday, down from a peak of 2.6 million.
Criswell
told “Fox News Sunday” that the federal government, including the Coast Guard
and Department of Defense, had moved into position “the largest amount of
search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before.”
Still,
recovery will take time, said Criswell, who visited the state Friday and
Saturday to assess the damage and talk to survivors. She cautioned that dangers
remain with downed power lines in standing water.
More than
1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency
management agency.
Rescue
missions were ongoing, especially to barrier islands near Fort Myers in
southwest Florida that were cut off from the mainland when storm surges destroyed
causeways and bridges.
The state
will build a temporary traffic passageway for the largest one, Pine Island,
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday, adding that an allocation had been
approved for Deportment of Transportation to build it this week and
construction could start as soon as Monday.
“It’s not
going to be a full bridge, you’re going to have to go over it probably at 5
miles an hour or something, but it’ll at least let people get in and off the
island with their vehicles,” the governor said at a news conference.
Coast Guard,
municipal and private crews have been using helicopters, boats and even jetskis
to evacuate people over the past several days.
In rural
Seminole County, north of Orlando, residents donned waders, boots and bug spray
to paddle to their flooded homes Sunday.
Ben Bertat
found 4 inches (10 centimeters) of water in his house by Lake Harney after
kayaking there.
“I think
it’s going to get worse because all of this water has to get to the lake” said
Bertat, pointing to the water flooding a nearby road. “With ground saturation,
all this swamp is full and it just can’t take any more water. It doesn’t look
like it’s getting any lower.”
Elsewhere,
power remained knocked out to at least half of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island,
a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from
Charleston. In North Carolina, the storm downed trees and power lines.
Associated
Press reporters Rebecca Santana in Ft. Myers; Brendan Farrington and Anthony
Izaguirre in Tallahassee; David Fischer in Miami; Sarah Rankin in Richmond,
Va.; and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.
For more AP
coverage of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes