Hurricane Ian hit Southwest Florida tonight (Wednesday), when the strong winds and heavy rains began in the last hours. This led the authorities to clarify to the residents that they had not yet evacuated – that now it is too late to do so. The number of people cut off from electricity is over 470,000 households.
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Lee County, home to Fort Myers and Cape Coral, is the hardest-hit area so far, with more than 166,000 homes without power, according to PowerOutage.us. In Collier County, which includes Naples and Marco Island, more than 78,000 homes were without power, and about 57,000 more were without power in Sarasota County, which includes the cities of Sarasota and Siesta Key.
Despite the estimates that the storm is expected to weaken upon its arrival on Florida soil, it continues to strengthen – and is approaching intensity 5. The National Hurricane Center of the United States announced that the blowing winds reached a strength of about 250 km/h. The first areas that are expected to be affected are south of Tampa and north of Fort Myers. This is an area that includes many kilometers of spectacular beaches, dozens of hotels and many parks, very popular with retirees and vacationers alike. In Venice, a coastal city located between Tampa and Fort Myers, experienced the rain and strong winds already in the last few hours. Among other things, the palm trees broke and fell, while They hit everything in their path.
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LIVE: Hurricane Ian hits Florida. Photo: Reuters
“I wish this forecast was not going to come true,” said Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service of the United States, “This is a historic event, a storm that we will still be talking about in the years to come.” As mentioned, earlier this week, the authorities in Florida ordered over 2.5 million residents to evacuate their homes.
Doug Tu of Venice is one of the residents who chose to ignore these warnings. While experiencing the rains for the past few hours and leaving his house to see how his friend’s house was coping with the storm, Toh admitted he had never experienced a storm of this magnitude, although he was unfazed by the possibility that his neighborhood would be damaged. “You have to be vigilant, because you never know what will happen with this. I stay here to stand guard, but try not to worry.”
The hotels along Route 75, which runs along Florida’s west coast, are packed with people seeking shelter. This is an area where there are many residential parking lots, which most of the residents abandoned – and found shelter in one of the buildings that were opened as emergency shelters. One of the unusual buildings in the area was an assisted living facility called Heartis Venice, which is located north of Venice, as 98 of the 107 residents – chose to stay and continue and receive treatment there, with the help of the staff and some of their families, explained CEO Michelle Berger. The building, which opened before Two years, built to withstand a level 5 storm.
The institution stressed that they had stocked up with a sufficient amount of food and water, which would be enough for more than seven days, as well as medicine and supplies so that they could provide the required services. “We are in quarantine, protected and prepared for the situation,” she explained, “we feel safe and protected, as do the residents, their families and all the employees.”