Hurricane Ian Hits Florida

Austin Adams, Reporter

Hurricane Ian made landfall on the southwest coast of Florida near Fort Myers and Cape Coral. This storm was a category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of around 150 mph, causing Florida to announce a state of emergency.For days Hurricane Ian has been wiping out neighborhoods and turning streets into rivers. Coastal towns have been decimated, homes have been severely flooded and damaged, and cars have been sent floating in the floods. Millions of people were under evacuation orders and mandatory curfews were set as the storm hit. So far officials have confirmed Ian has killed at least 76 people in Florida, but rescue crews are still reporting more deaths as they search for survivors. More than 1,600 people have been rescued from Ian’s path in parts of southwest and central Florida since last week.As of wednesday night, there were over 2 million residents without power from the storm. That number is still around 613,000 as of monday morning. Officials are saying some homes and businesses may be without power for weeks or even months because the storm did so much structural damage. Many are also left without clean tap water.“People need to take car of their emotional and mental health, because we’re really going to need to work together on this,” said Jay Boodheshwar, city manager of Naples, Florida. “The amount of water we recieved and the height of the surge affected a lot of infrastructure. There are transformers that are completely fried. It’s not simply rehanging lines.”Hurricane Ian is estimated to be the most expensive storm in Florida’s history, devastating neighborhoods on the western coast to inland cities like Orlando. The storm may have passed through, but it will take the state of Florida a long time to recover as Hurricane Ian was one of the worst storms in recent history.