Flooding, power cuts as Hurricane Ian crashes ashore in Florida
Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the United States, has swept into southwest Florida, flooding streets and buildings, knocking out power to more than one million people, and threatening catastrophic damage further inland, Qazet.az reports.
The “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm made landfall shortly after 3pm local time (19:00 GMT) on Wednesday near Cayo Costa, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, bringing sustained winds of about 240 kilometres per hour (150 miles per hour).
The storm’s wind speeds put it just shy of a Category 5 designation on the Saffir-Simpson scale, the most severe classification for storms, although the NHC said Ian was expected to weaken slightly after coming ashore.
Cayo Costa is a protected barrier island just west of Fort Myers, and officials warned of the dangers to the heavily-populated Gulf Coast — with the Naples to Sarasota region at “highest risk” of a devastating storm surge from the strong winds and torrential rain.
