Floridians endure slow wait for power knocked out by Ian
BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. — Hurricane Ian may be long gone from Florida, but workers on the ground were pushing ahead Tuesday to restore power and search for anyone still trapped inside flooded or damaged homes.
The number of storm-related deaths has risen to at least 84 in recent days, both because of the dangers posed by cleaning up and as search and rescue crews comb through the hardest-hit areas. Officials said that as of Monday, more than 2,350 people had been rescued throughout the state.
ADVERTISING
At least 75 people were killed in Florida, five in North Carolina, three in Cuba and one in Virginia since Ian made landfall on the Caribbean island on Sept. 27, a day before it reached Florida’s Gulf Coast. After churning northeastward into the Atlantic, the hurricane made another landfall in South Carolina before pushing into the mid-Atlantic states.
There have been deaths in vehicle wrecks, drownings and accidents. A man drowned after becoming trapped under a vehicle. Another got trapped trying to climb through a window. And a woman died when a gust of wind knocked her off her porch while she was smoking a cigarette as the storm approached, authorities said.
In hardest-hit Lee County, Florida, all 45 people killed by the hurricane were over age 50.
As floodwaters begin to recede, power restoration has become job one.
In Naples, Kelly Sedgwick was just seeing news footage Monday of the devastation. Her electricity was restored four days after the hurricane slammed into her community of roughly 22,000 people. She praised the crews for their hard work: “They’ve done a remarkable job.”
A few miles north along the coast in Bonita Springs, Catalina Mejilla’s family wasn’t as lucky. She was still using a borrowed generator to try to keep her kids and their grandfather cool as temperatures in the typically humid area reached the upper 80s (about 30 degrees Celsius).
“The heat is unbearable,” Mejilla said. “When there’s no power … we can’t make food, we don’t have gas.” Her mother has trouble breathing and needed to go to a friend’s house with electricity.
Ian knocked out power to 2.6 million customers across Florida after it roared ashore with 150 mph (241 kph) winds and a powerful storm surge. State officials said they expect power to be restored by Sunday to customers whose power lines and other electric infrastructure is still intact.
