The full impact ofHurricane Ianis still unknown, but a local official fears the death toll could be in the hundreds.
“While I don’t have confirmed numbers, I definitely know fatalities are in the hundreds,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said during a Thursday appearance onGood Morning America, according to theFort Meyers News-PressandTallahassee Democrat.
About an hour later, while speaking with CNN, Marceno clarified that information at this point is still “very preliminary,” reportedThe New York Times.
“I don’t know the exact numbers, he added.
During the briefing, DeSantis said there were two “unconfirmed” fatalities, and that authorities were still working to determine if those deaths were linked to the storm.
On Thursday, theVolusia Sheriff’s Officesaid that a 72-year-old man died after going outside during the storm to drain his pool. Police said he was found unresponsive in a canal behind his home and pronounced dead at the hospital.
Damage in Fort Myers after Hurricane Ian passed through.Joe Raedle/Getty
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During Marceno’sGMAappearance, the sheriff said he was unable to “give a true assessment” of the death toll, according to theNews-Press, but that there were “thousands of people that are waiting to be rescued.”
“This is a life-changing event for all of us. We tracked that storm up the coast of Florida, it was very unpredictable,” Marceno said, according toABC News. “It’s a real, real rough road ahead.”
Federal assistance is on the way, with nine counties receiving major disaster declarations from President Joe Biden, according to theSentinel: Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Hardee, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Pinellas, and Sarasota.
At Thursday’s press conference, DeSantis said Hurricane Ian, which has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, has had a “historic” impact on the state of Florida, calling it “a 500-year flood event,” per theOrlando Sentinel.
“We’ve never seen a flood event like this,” he told reporters. “We’ve never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.”
source: people.com
