Hurricane Ian death toll nears 100, likely to rise. ‘We haven’t seen devastation like this’

Five days after Hurricane Ian made landfall, ravaging the Southwest Florida coast and parts of Central Florida, officials across 10 counties have linked about 100 deaths to the storm as of Monday — a toll that is likely to rise as search and rescue efforts continue.

More than half of the confirmed deaths were in Lee County, where storm surges as high as 10 feet razed homes and destroyed some bridges that connect barrier island residents to the mainland.

Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno announced Monday afternoon that the county’s death toll had climbed to 54, up from 42 on Sunday. The state has confirmed the causes of 12 of those deaths so far, all but one from drowning.

“We haven’t seen devastation like this,” Marceno told reporters. “As sheriffs, we like to press a button and we fix what’s wrong. Unfortunately I can’t do that. There’s nothing I can say in words to bring loved ones back.”

The state’s second-highest death toll is in Charlotte County, where the sheriff’s office has confirmed 24 storm-related fatalities. The causes of those deaths have not been made public yet.

Additional Ian-related deaths have been reported in Collier, Volusia, Sarasota, Manatee, Hendry, Hillsborough, Lake and Polk counties.

The still-incomplete death toll fell between about 95 and 101 on Monday, based on information provided by the state Medical Examiners Commission, county sheriffs and the Division of Emergency Management.

President Joe Biden plans to visit Florida on Wednesday to witness the damage caused by the storm. The president was in Puerto Rico on Monday to view the devastation wrought by Hurricane Fiona two weeks ago.

State officials not discussing death numbers

Some people have speculated there could be many more bodies buried under debris or carried away by high water. But state officials are not providing any numbers just yet.

Jamie Grant, the state’s chief information officer, has been tracking data of those who sheltered in place in impacted areas and those who have been contacted and deemed safe. He said at a press briefing Monday that he could not provide an exact number of those who are unaccounted for or deemed not safe, though it could be in the thousands.

Over 20,000 households are known to have sheltered in place during the storm, Grant said, based on data compiled from people who registered to let the state know they were not evacuating. Of those, he said more than 10,000 have been reported “safe.”

Due to landlines being down and disruptions to cellphone services, the state might not be able to reach some people. And just because the state can’t reach them doesn’t mean they are not safe, Grant said.

“As batteries are dead and wet and phones are down, it’s impossible for me to even know in some situations if somebody received the text [message],” he said. “But we are still getting responses.”

Florida’s emergency management director, Kevin Guthrie, said Monday that he is “fairly confident” rescue crews have been able to search every address that was registered in advance of the storm.

Many still without power, in shelters

More than 530,000 power outages were still being reported as of 6 p.m. Monday, according to data from the Florida Public Service Commission. That’s down from about 2.6 million outages Thursday.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, speaking at a press conference Monday evening in Cape Coral, said the “more difficult restoration” will be to rebuild the electric grid to the barrier islands and coastal communities whose electricity infrastructure was wiped out to an unknown number of homeowners and businesses.

The Florida Electric Cooperatives Association has agreed to work with the Lee County Electric Utility to rebuild the infrastructure that has been damaged, he said. And DeSantis announced the state will provide any extra subsidy needed to reimburse utility crews outside of the state to work as long as needed to repair the grid.

“I want Lee County to be the lineman capital of the world for the next, however many, days,’‘ he said. “Florida has the largest budget surplus in the history of the state by far. I can pick up the cost share, I just want the power back on.”

Meanwhile, Guthrie said at least 1,700 people remained in emergency shelters, a figure that demonstrates the enormity of the post-hurricane crisis as recovery efforts are underway. It remains unclear how many of those people lost their homes in the storm, but state officials said they are preparing plans for emergency housing.

The next phase will be to consolidate the number of shelters in each county and move people to short-term shelters. Currently there are 27 shelters across 12 counties. Many of those shelters are schools. Then, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will take the lead in coordinating the availability of trailers, which will serve as temporary housing for people who are in need of it. Hotels may also serve as temporary shelters.

“We’ve got to determine how many people we have in that bucket and will start moving to that very quickly,” he said.

DeSantis defends Ian response, evacuation orders

DeSantis was upbeat at his Cape Coral press conference Monday, refraining from any mention of the mounting death toll as he emphasized the ongoing recovery effort.

He said the state has hired an engineering firm to work on repairing the broken water main in Lee County. And he announced that, in addition to a temporary slow-speed bridge to restore vehicle traffic to the battered community of Pine Island, the state will also build a temporary bridge to reach Sanibel Island, where a section of the causeway was washed away.

DeSantis said the state is utilizing 375 Starlink satellite devices provided by Elon Musk to provide internet access to the impacted areas. He also said the state will supply 100 generators to the city of Cape Coral to help get its sewage system back up.

When a reporter asked if officials could have done more to protect Florida residents from the life-threatening storm surge, the governor was combative. The New York Times reported Lee County officials waited a day later than other coastal counties to order evacuations ahead of the storm, in a possible violation of the county’s own evacuation strategy.

“This has been handled ad nauseum. Lee County has explained what they did,” DeSantis said. “I followed not just the NHC track, the Euro model, the ICON model, the GFS — most of you probably don’t even know what those are.”

He added: “It’s a little rich coming from an industry that on Monday all day they were all in Tampa Bay saying it was going to be the worst case scenario for Florida straight into Tampa Bay. ... Now, they’re turning around and wondering why people 150 or 120 miles [south] didn’t do something they were not telling people to do.”

DeSantis said there is room to “look to see what you can do better,” but that he would prefer “to focus on getting people where they need to be with power, with food, with all these different things.”

“Let’s spend a little more time doing that,” he said.