Power outages are making rescue efforts more difficult, and 54 people have now been officially pronounced dead. Many people in the impacted areas still struggle without energy or access to their cell phones.
As one of the most powerful and expensive storms to ever hit the U.S. moved north from the Carolinas, it left behind a trifecta of misery: hazardous floods, power outages, and significant destruction. On Saturday, the death toll from Hurricane Ian reached over 54.
After sweeping across South Carolina, Ian, which had 150 mph gusts when it hit Florida on Wednesday, was downgraded to a post-tropical storm. It was forecast to lose even more strength when it travelled across south-central Virginia later on Saturday before making landfall in the mid-Atlantic.
The National Hurricane Center reported that the storm’s maximum sustained winds were still 35 mph.
However, the NHC also issued a warning regarding the possibility of flash flooding in both urban and rural areas throughout the middle Appalachians, southern Mid-Atlantic region, and Florida through the weekend.
Florida was home to 54 of the storm’s confirmed fatalities, according to a count by state officials. Local authorities cautioned the death toll could potentially rise despite ongoing rescue attempts and the fact that the floodwaters are receding in areas where ruined homes are littered all around.
Since Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida, at least 1,100 people have been saved, according to Governor Ron DeSantis, who spoke during a news conference on Saturday.
“There’s been a great outpouring of support and I’ve seen a lot of resilience in this community of people that want to pick themselves up and they want to get their communities back on their feet,” DeSantis told reporters. “We’ll be here and we’ll be helping every step of the way.”
On Saturday morning, Rear Adm. Brendan McPherson, who oversees the Coast Guard in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, said that power outages were making rescue operations more difficult because residents of the affected communities were temporarily cut off from the outside world because they were without electricity or mobile phone service.
