Death toll rises in Florida as search and rescue operations continue

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Officials across Florida were assessing the full extent of the destruction from Hurricane Ian, with fatalities climbing and massive search and rescue efforts continuing days after the historic storm caused catastrophic damage.

The official death tally increased to 58 over the weekend, with the toll likely to rise significantly in the days ahead. The vast majority of those deaths — 42 — were in hard-hit Lee County in southwest Florida. The hurricane made landfall near Fort Myers in Lee County on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm.

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters during a late afternoon briefing on Sunday that mobilization of search and rescue teams was the largest since the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. more than two decades ago.

DeSantis said that the Florida Department of Transportation plans to begin construction of temporary bridge to Pine Island, the largest barrier island on Florida’s Gulf coast, which was home to an estimated 9,000 residents before the storm. DeSantis acknowledged that this would be a stop-gap remedy, saying that cars would have to travel no faster than 5 miles per hour in order to use the temporary bridge once it’s finished.

DeSantis, who spoke in Arcadia, a small town located in an interior Southwest Florida county, acknowledged there were places that would require a complete rebuild of electric utility infrastructure.

“There’s still flooding in places they would need to go to reconnect some of the power lines,” DeSantis said.

More than 621,000 home and businesses remained without power Monday morning — most of them located in the hard-hit counties of southwest Florida, where a wall of water left some communities in complete devastation.

The storm prompted a mammoth rescue effort that had resulted in saving more than 1,600 survivors, with both the Florida National Guard and U.S. Coast Guard landing helicopters on barrier islands in order to search for those left stranded.

Devastated like Lee and Charlotte counties will be recovering for months if not years, with some school districts saying that they would remain closed indefinitely. Insurers have already reported at least $1.44 billion in preliminary claims that have been filed.