In Port Charlotte, across a river from where the storm made landfall, Teresa Madden and her husband slipped on waders to slog through thigh-deep brown water - risking encounters with red ants, snakes and the two alligators known to live in the lake at their community for people 55 and older. Rescuers were arriving by air and sea to reach people who had not evacuated.Īcross the region on Thursday, people waded back home and trudged up muddy, debris-covered streets that had been raging waterways just a day earlier to see what, if anything, had survived. The storm severed sections of two bridges connecting mainland Florida to barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico and reduced some roads to rubble while littering others with trees and power lines. This morning was, OK, what’s next? Tomorrow we go face the actual reality.”Īt least 2.6 million people remained without power on Thursday, though Florida officials said there were 20,000 utility workers poised to start getting power back on. “Last night was shock and just exhaustion. Aldridge had lost everything in Hurricane Irma in 2017, and was now facing the prospect of starting over, once again. When a flicker of cell service returned on Thursday evening, her brother, Chip Aldridge, 56, recounted how he, his fiancée and dog, Kobi, had walked two miles through the storm and ended up at a La Quinta Inn, where they were now staying because their apartment was a mildewy shambles. “You’re powerless to help,” said Julie Hittle, who lives in Texas and has been anxiously waiting for updates from her brother, who fled his flooding apartment in Naples by crawling out a window and onto the roof of a minivan. Cell service was spotty or nonexistent up and down the coast, another agonizing impediment to residents’ efforts to seek help or reach missing family members. The storm’s heavy blow to infrastructure complicated efforts to gauge the damage - early estimates said insured losses could reach up to $40 billion - and to reach hard-hit barrier islands, where homes and businesses were now heaps of wood pulp and broken concrete. “Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island look like they will need to be 80 percent rebuilt,” he estimated. The causeway to nearby Sanibel Island had a missing section and a collapsed section, said Jared Moskowitz, Florida’s former emergency management chief, who flew over the area on Thursday. Several residents of the island reported not hearing from friends who rode out the storm there. On Fort Myers Beach, a laid-back strip dotted with hotels, bars and restaurants that for many Southwest Florida residents offered a cherished escape from the mainland, the storm had laid waste to beloved landmarks, including the fishing pier and Times Square, the communal gathering spot where sunset was celebrated each night. We’ve never seen storm surge of this magnitude.” “We’ve never seen a flood event like this. “The damage that was done has been historic,” Mr. DeSantis said there had been “biblical” storm surge on Sanibel Island, normally a tourist haven of gleaming beaches and mangroves southwest of Fort Myers. The sheriff in Volusia County, near Orlando on the state’s east coast, said by text message that the coastal county was seeing “unprecedented flooding.” Mr. Mayors, sheriffs and other officials surveying the damage struggled to even describe its scope.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |