Hurricane Ian: 100 Deaths, Debate Over Evacuations, 581K With No Power

Updated at 3:10 p.m.

FLORIDA — More than 1,600 people have been rescued from houses battered by Hurricane Ian, while at least 100 people in Florida are dead, as search and rescue efforts continue and plans for a temporary bridge to a barrier island were announced.

Meanwhile, utility crews continue work to restore power to about 590,000 homes and businesses by the end of the week, questions surfaced about the timing of evacuation orders for the Fort Myers region, and stories emerged of rescues from Sanibel and Pine islands by neighbors and private citizens.

• Stay up-to-date by viewing all Hurricane Ian coverage on Patch here.

Ian is now ranked as one of the top five worst hurricanes to ever hit the state and likely caused "well over $100 billion" in damage, according to numbers from one firm. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Florida on Wednesday.

Officials confirmed Ian has killed at least 100 people in Florida, CNN reported Monday afternoon. Fifty-four of those deaths occurred in Lee County, which includes Fort Myers and Sanibel Island, Sheriff Carmine Marceno said Monday. Twenty-four deaths were recorded in Charlotte County – up from 12.

Hurricane Ian also contributed to the deaths of eight people in Collier County, five in Volusia County, three in Sarasota County, two in Manatee County, and one each in Polk, Lake, Hendry and Hillsborough counties, CNN reported.

Four other people died in storm-related incidents as Ian churned into North Carolina.

Lee County's sheriff and Gov. Ron DeSantis said county officials acted appropriately when they issued their first mandatory evacuations on Tuesday, a day after several neighboring counties issued their orders. Until last Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center predicted the storm would make landfall north of Tampa Bay, the officials said.

More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide as of Monday morning, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

The agency's director, Kevin Guthrie, said the goal is to restore power by Sunday to customers whose power lines and other electric infrastructure is still intact.

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.

The current goal is to restore power by Sunday to customers whose power lines and other electric infrastructure is still intact, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Monday. It does not include homes or areas where infrastructure needs to be rebuilt.
More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency management agency.

The state will build a temporary bridge for people to reach Pine Island, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday.

“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.

Rescue Efforts Spring Up

The storm's winds and waves washed out the bottom level of David Muench’s home on the barrier island of Sanibel, and his parents’ house was one of those destroyed by the storm that killed at least two people there.

While one expert said only the wealthy will be able to rebuild on Sanibel, Muench disagreed. He told AP homeowners and business owners will rebuild their properties. His family has owned and operated a campground on the island, which Muench called "paradise," for three generations.

“We are going to continue to exist on Sanibel,” Muench said from Fort Myers on Friday after evacuating Sanibel. “Give us five years, and you might not even notice if you didn’t know.”

Private citizens rescued neighbors and strangers as the storm abated. Bryan Stern, who founded a search-and-rescue team called Project Dynamo, said the group has rescued more than 20 people, many of them elderly residents trapped on Sanibel Island.

Matt Mengel and his friends said they had made seven rescues so far, most of them elderly residents of Sanibel Island whom they reached on jet skis. “We had gasoline. We had jet skis. We had water. We had food and snacks. And our mission was just to go find them, dead or alive,” he said.

Evacuation Orders

Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno is standing by the evacuation orders given before Hurricane Ian, CNN reported.

Officials in the county have come under fire after they issued their evacuation orders less than 24 hours before Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida’s southwest coast — a day later than several neighboring counties.

“I am confident ... that we got that message out at the right time,” Marceno said at a Monday news conference. “Now whether people listen to it,” he said. “We can't force people out of their homes, but we can continuously say, 'look — mandatory evacuation.'”

Marceno said the storm was tracking north toward Tampa before it turned south to Lee County.

Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson on Sunday defended Lee County officials from accusations that they had been slow in ordering evacuations ahead of the storm.

“Warnings for hurricane season start in June. So there’s a degree of personal responsibility here. I think the county acted appropriately. The thing is, a certain percentage of people will not heed the warnings regardless,” Anderson said on the CBS show “Face the Nation.”

Related:

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Florida’s Medical Examiners Commission said Saturday that most of the fatalities were from drowning. Many of the victims were over 60 years old. Bodies were found inside flooded cars, floating in waters and drowned on the beach, The Washington Post reported.

Officials said 30 of the victims in Florida were found in Lee County, which includes Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Cape Coral. The county does not have running water, and nearly 70 percent of remains without power, the Post said.

The causeway to the popular barrier island Sanibel is missing sections, cutting the island off from the mainland.

Sen. Marco Rubio told ABC News’s “This Week” that the island will be uninhabitable for the foreseeable future and all residents need to leave Sanibel. They “eventually have to come off because there’s just no way to continue with life there,” Rubio said, adding that it will take “a couple of years at least” to rebuild the bridge.

“This is a Hurricane Katrina-scale event, where you’re having to rebuild everything, including the infrastructure,” Jesse M. Keenan, a real estate professor at Tulane University’s School of Architecture, told the Associated Press. “We can’t build back everything to what it was — we can’t afford that.”

President Biden warned that Ian could be Florida’s deadliest hurricane ever.

The state website for reporting missing persons related to Hurricane Ian is http://missing.fl.gov. If you need to report a missing person, fill out the form on behalf of “Someone Else.” You can also fill out the form on behalf of yourself if communications are limited. Safe and found persons can be reported safe at http://safe.fl.gov.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency authorized the National Flood Insurance Program to approve Florida’s request for a waiver allowing policyholders to access part of their claims without going through the full claims process.

"This process cuts through a lot of red tape, and provides critical funding to policyholders who can provide FEMA with basic information of out-of-pocket expenses related to repair or replacement of NFIP-insured property," said Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis. "These advance payments are going to be essential to help Florida families get started on the difficult work of rebuilding.”

Ian unleashed more than 17 inches of rain on some places in Florida, swelling lakes, ponds, and rivers beyond their banks and into homes.

In the end, Ian likely caused "well over $100 billion" in damage, including $63 billion in privately insured losses, according to the disaster modeling firm Karen Clark & Co., which regularly issues flash catastrophe estimates.

If the numbers are true, that would make Ian at least the fourth costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

Across the southwest and central regions of the state, about 590,000 homes and businesses remained without power on Sunday, according to PowerOutage.us.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.