The extent of Hurricane Ian’s destruction became clearer on Thursday as people across southwestern Florida, left without electricity, drinking water, or inhabitable homes began to assess the damage and gird for what Gov. Ron DeSantis said would be a yearslong recovery.
The scale of the wreckage was staggering, even to Florida residents who had survived and rebuilt after other powerful hurricanes. The storm pulverized roads, toppled trees, gutted downtown storefronts, and set cars afloat, leaving a soggy scar of ruined homes and businesses from the coastal cities of Naples and Fort Myers to inland communities around Orlando.
Several areas of the state showed homes crunched together in a chaotic jumble or smashed into what looked like toothpicks. Fishing boats and pleasure cruisers had been hurled onto the ground like bathtub toys. The streets were a perilous obstacle course of toppled trees and downed wires.
The death toll was rising, and thousands of Floridians desperately sought rescue as historically powerful Hurricane Ian hammered the state with heavy rain and strong winds, one of the strongest storms in US history.
The “catastrophic” scale of the damage wreaked by Hurricane Ian’s 150mph deadly rampage across Florida has become clearer as emergency crews rescued trapped residents from flooded homes, and authorities expressed fears of a growing death toll.
At least 120 people had been confirmed dead in the storm as of Saturday, with seven of them in Charlotte County, near where Ian made landfall on Florida’s southwest coast Wednesday afternoon as a major Category 4 hurricane.
More than 2.2 million energy customers across Florida were still without power as of early Friday morning, with more than 400,000 customers in Lee County alone left in the dark.
As South Carolina braced for Ian to make a second landfall on Friday, search and rescue crews in south-west Florida conducted hundreds of missions in areas that were submerged by a storm surge of up to 18ft after one of the most powerful storms to strike the US swept ashore on Wednesday.
The hurricane’s center made landfall as a Category 4 monster Wednesday afternoon near Cayo Costa, a barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers.
Gov. Ron DeSantis described the storm as a “500-year flooding event” and said communities across the state would be swamped by the overwhelming waters. Coast Guard helicopters were plucking trapped ones.
“The impacts of this storm are historical, and the damage that has been done is historic,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday. “We’ve never seen a flood event like this; we’ve never seen a storm surge of this magnitude in Lee County.”
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said that five deaths had been confirmed in his county and that hundreds may have died and thousands are in need of rescue. More than 2.6 million Florida homes and businesses were without power early Thursday.
The storm flooded entire communities, leaving residents stranded in their homes with battering 150-mph maximum sustained winds just seven mph shy of a Category 5 hurricane, the strongest on the Saffir Simpson Hurricane scale. Ian’s strength at landfall tied it for the fifth strongest hurricane when measured by wind speed to strike the U.S. 
It’s tied with five other hurricanes that reached 150 mph, two in Florida, two in Louisiana, and one in Texas. Residents described the terror after a tornado tore through a condominium complex near Delray Beach, ripping off roofs and turning over vehicles.
“I felt things blow past my head and face,” resident Jim Travis said. “When I opened the door, my apartment was destroyed.”
Pray for the people in Florida and others in the path of this hurricane.
Philippians 4:6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
1 Thessalonians 5:17 Pray without ceasing.
Ephesians 6:18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
Psalms 34:17 The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.
1 Timothy 2:1 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men.
Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
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