Rescuers searched for survivors among the ruins of Florida's flooded homes from Hurricane Ian while authorities in South Carolina began assessing damage from its strike as shocked Florida communities counted their dead Saturday and the full scale of the devastation came into focus, two days after the hurricane tore into the coastline as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States.
Rescuers were still searching for survivors in flooded neighborhoods and along the state's southwest coast, where homes, restaurants and businesses were ripped apart as Ian roared ashore as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday.
According to the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, the death toll climbed to 24 on Saturday, with some U.S. media reporting it could be three times than that.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard, 16 migrants also remain missing from a boat that sank during the hurricane on Wednesday. Two people were found dead and nine others rescued, including four Cubans who swam to shore in the Florida Keys.
Over 1.2 million people remained without power in Florida Saturday, hampering efforts by those who evacuated to return to their homes to take stock of what they lost.
"It's just flipped upside down, soaking wet, full of mud," resident Pete Belinda said of the home he and his wife share on the lower floor of their daughter's house in Fort Myers Beach, a town on the Gulf of Mexico coast which took the brunt of the storm.
Ian passed over Florida and into the Atlantic Ocean before making US landfall again, this time on the South Carolina coast on Friday as a Category 1 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 140 kph (85 mph).
It was later downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone and is set to dissipate over Virginia later Saturday.
More than 320,000 people remained without power across North and South Carolina and Virginia, the tracking website poweroutage.us said Saturday.
"We're just beginning to see the scale of the destruction" in Florida, U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday.
"It's likely to rank among the worst in the nation's history," he said of Ian.
With damage estimates running into the tens of billions of dollars, Biden said it's "going to take months, years to rebuild."
"It's not just a crisis for Florida," he said. "This is an American crisis."
CoreLogic, a firm specializing in property analysis, said wind-related losses for residential and commercial properties in Florida could cost insurers up to $32 billion, while flooding losses could reach $15 billion.
"This is the costliest Florida storm since Hurricane Andrew made landfall in 1992," CoreLogic's Tom Larsen said.
Rescues continue
On Friday, the Coast Guard said it had made 117 rescues using boats and helicopters of people trapped in flooded homes.
Governor Ron DeSantis said hundreds of other rescue personnel were going door-to-door "up and down the coastline."
Many Floridians evacuated ahead of the storm, but thousands chose to shelter in place and ride it out.
Two hard-hit barrier islands near Fort Myers – Pine Island and Sanibel Island – were cut off after the storm damaged causeways to the mainland.
Aerial photos and videos show breathtaking destruction in Sanibel and elsewhere.
In Fort Myers Beach, a recreational boat called Crackerjack sat atop a pile of debris like an abandoned toy. A trailer park was blasted away to almost nothing.
A handful of restaurants and bars reopened in Fort Myers, giving an illusion of normalcy amid downed trees and shattered storefronts.
Before pummeling Florida, Ian plunged all of Cuba into darkness after downing the island's power network.
Electricity was gradually returning, but many homes remained without power.
Human-induced climate change is resulting in more severe weather events across the globe, scientists say – including with Ian.
According to rapid and preliminary analysis, U.S. scientists said that human-caused climate change increased the extreme rain that Ian unleashed by over 10%.