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Charleston, South Carolina: Rescuers searched for survivors among the ruins of Florida’s flooded homes from Hurricane Ian while authorities in South Carolina waited for daylight to assess damage from the storm’s second strike as the remnants of one of the strongest and costliest disasters to ever hit the US continued to push north.
The powerful storm terrorised millions of people for most of the week, battering western Cuba before raking across Florida from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, where it mustered enough strength for a final assault on South Carolina. It has since weakened to a still-dangerous post-tropical cyclone and was crossing North Carolina towards Virginia overnight, pushing heavy rains towards the Mid-Atlantic states.
At least 30 people were confirmed dead, including 27 people in Florida mostly from drowning but others from the storm’s tragic after-effects. An elderly couple died after their oxygen machines shut off when they lost power, authorities said. Meanwhile, distraught residents waded through knee-high water on Friday, salvaging what possessions they could from their flooded homes and loading them onto rafts and canoes.
“I want to sit in the corner and cry. I don’t know what else to do,” Stevie Scuderi said after shuffling through her mostly destroyed Fort Myers apartment, the mud in her kitchen clinging to her purple sandals.
In South Carolina, Ian’s centre came ashore near Georgetown, a small community along the Winyah Bay about 95 kilometres north of historic Charleston. The storm washed away parts of four piers along the coast, including two connected to the popular tourist town of Myrtle Beach.
The storm’s winds were much weaker on Friday than during Ian’s landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast earlier in the week. There, authorities and volunteers were still assessing the damage as shocked residents tried to make sense of what they just lived through.
A road is filled with debris from destroyed beachfront homes and businesses, two days after the passage of Hurricane Ian, in Fort Myers Beach, Florida on Friday.Credit:AP
Anthony Rivera, 25, said he had to climb through the window of his first floor apartment during the storm to carry his grandmother and girlfriend to the second floor. As they hurried to escape the rising water, the storm surge had washed a boat right up next to his apartment.
“That’s the scariest thing in the world because I can’t stop no boat,” he said. “I’m not Superman.”