Hundreds Feared Dead in Florida Hurricane Ian Hit Disaster Zone

Inside a home in Fort Myers, Florida being
hit by storm surge. Note the water outside
more than halfway up the doors.

 Swaths of southwestern Florida are practically flattened this morning in the wake of Hurricane Ian and unfortunately, early signs are we're going to find out about way too many deaths from this.  

As I write this, the sun has only been up for an hour or two in Florida, and emergency workers are only now starting to pick their way through blocked, flooded streets to see if they can rescue anyone from this catastrophe. 

"'I definitely know the fatalities are in the hundreds,' Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno told Good Morning American Thursday. 'There are thousands of people that are waiting to be rescued.'

 Marceno said thousands of 911 calls came in pleading for rescue, but roads are flooded or blocked by debris and bridges are compromised.

He later said he does not know exactly how many people died, and he's hoping the number is smaller than he fears.

To get an idea how endangered people who stayed behind were, click on this link to show how the intense winds decimated what had been a rather nice mobile home park in Placida, Florida.  And this park was not hit by the even more deadly storm surge that swept through heavily developed cities like Fort Myers. 

A lot of people in Fort Myers probably had little experience with hurricanes. The city's population haas been rapidly exploding as people move there. The city had about 65,000 residents a decade ago, and now has about 90,000.

So far at least, the mayor of Fort Myers said there are no known deaths in Fort Myers. 

However social media has been ominous. Twitter, Facebook and other sites were filled with pleas from people trapped in homes, some of which were flooded to the roofs. 

More from the Associated Press:

"In Port Charlotte, the storm surge flooded a hospital's emergency room even as fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from the intensive care unit, according to a doctor who works there. 

Water gushed down into the ICU, forcing the to evacuate their sickest patients - some on ventilators - to other floors,' said Dr Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Staff members used towels and plastic bins to try to mop up the sudden mess."  

The hospital has four floors, but only two can be used now, post hurricane. And the hospital is bracing for waves of people injured by the hurricane. 

At least nine hospitals in the region also have no water service this morning, so I don't know how they're going to deal with that.  

The remains of the causeway to Sanibel Island.
Part of it a bridge, collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Washington Post offered a glimpse of how frantic and helpless emergency services in Naples, Florida felt during the worst of Ian. They quoted Todd Terrell of United Cajun Navy, 350 of whom were in southwest Florida to help with rescues. 

"'The fire department has a foot of water in it, ' he said. 'There's people stranded. We just got a call for a 101 and a 98 year old lady, and we cannot get to them in Naples. There's nothing we can do.'

'The calls that we're getting, my God: a 91 year old man on oxygen floating in his house, and he's struggling to breathe. We just got a call from an apartment building: Their roof collapsed. The calls are coming in, frantic calls. The winds are too bad with the power lines down at night, but we got guys that are willing to risk that.'"

Part of the causeway to Sanibel Island collapsed, so you now can't get onto or off the island. It's unknown how many people tried to ride out the storm on hard hit Sanibel Island. 

I also don't know if people who remained in the danger zones were able to move up to higher floors as the storm surge came in. It was fast. A traffic cam in Sanibel Island  time lapsed just 30 minutes showing an intersection going from fine to deep flood waters.   

Winds diminished as the storm moved inland, which happens with every hurricane. But torrential rains continue and flash flood emergencies continue across much of northern and central Florida. Water rescues are ongoing, but they're difficult as rains continue, making it impossible to reach people in need.

It's way too early to assess how much monetary damage Ian is causing, but it will surely be in the tens of billions of dollars. Maybe over $100 billion. 

The humanitarian disasters, both in the U.S. and overseas keep coming.  Ian was probably made worse by climate change, so I would rate this as yet another in a long and fast growing litany of climate disasters. 

CBS News video of Hurricane Ian. Click on this link or view below if you see image: