The United States discovered on Thursday the “historic” damage of the powerful hurricane Ian, who “devastated” certain cities of Florida according to the governor of this State, and left at least two dead.
Le Monde with AFP
Hurricane Ian could become “the deadliest” to have ever struck Florida, the American president, Joe Biden said on Thursday, September 29, September 29. “The figures (…) are not yet clear but we receive first information reporting human losses that could be substantial,” he said during a visit to the premises of the Federal Agency who takes In charge of natural disasters (FEMA). The American president said that he would go to Florida “when the conditions will allow”, “to thank personally” people engaged in rescue and reconstruction operations.
The United States discovered on Thursday the “historic” damage of the powerful hurricane Ian, which “devastated” certain cities of Florida according to the governor of this state, and left at least two dead. A spokesperson for the County of Volusia, on the east coast of Florida, announced that he had identified “a first death linked to Hurricane Ian”. He is a 72 -year -old man, “released his swimming pool during the storm,” added Kevin Captain. An official of the County of Osceola, in the center-east of the State, told him to the CNN channel the death of a resident of a retirement home.
earlier, Governor Ron Desantis had raised two dead “not yet confirmed, because we do not know if they are linked to the storm”, even if this is “likely”. He had not indicated the place where these deaths occurred.
On the west coast, where the hurricane first struck, the sheriff of the county of Lee said to the MSNBC chain deplore the dead, without being able to communicate their number. At the same time, research continued to find twenty passengers from a migrant boat who capsized Wednesday near the Keys archipelago, slightly away from the hurricane trajectory.
” Devastated areas “
“We have never seen such floods,” said Ron Desantis. “Some of these areas, Cape Coral, the city of Fort Myers, have been really flooded and really devastated by this storm,” he continued, qualifying the damage as “historical”.
ian, since demoted in tropical storm, hit earth on Wednesday afternoon as a category 4 oil (on a scale of 5) in the southwest Florida, before continuing its passage through the ‘State, carrying violent winds and torrential rains.
It is still too early to take stock, but some material damage was already visible a few hours after the hurricane. In the port of Fort Myers, some boats were partially overwhelmed, another having failed on the shore.
Thursday morning, more than 2.6 million households or businesses remained deprived of electricity, out of a total of 11 million, according to the specialized site Poweroutage. Faced with the extent of the damage, US President Joe Biden declared the state of major natural disaster on Thursday morning, a decision to unlock additional federal funds for affected regions.
The chief of the firefighters of Naples, city in the southwest of Florida, Pete Dimara, told CNN that his barracks had suddenly been flooded by up to two meters of water, preventing his teams from answering for emergency calls.
Although the Ian storm was continuing on Thursday its destructive route to Southern Carolina. It creates winds of up to 110 km/h and “catastrophic” floods in the center-east of Florida, according to the National Center for American Hurricane (NHC). It should strengthen, finding the power of a hurricane when it touches Earth in South Carolina Friday, before quickly weakening again.
With the warming of the ocean surface, the frequency of the most intense hurricanes, with more violent winds and greater precipitation, increases, but not the total number of hurricanes. Div Data-ID = “X8E2PDH” Data-Provider = “Dailymotion” Data-Title = “Images of Florida ravaged by Hurricane Ian”>
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