With the death toll from Hurricane Ian rising and hundreds of thousands of people without power in Florida and the Carolinas, US officials have vowed an unprecedented amount of federal disaster aid as crews scramble to rescue people still trapped by floodwaters.
Days after Ian tore through central Florida, carving a deadly path of destruction into the Carolinas, water levels continued to rise in some flooded areas, inundating homes and streets that were passable just a day or two earlier.
Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the federal government was ready to help in a huge way, focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the US.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit the state on Wednesday.
Flooded roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated with limited mobile phone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity and the internet.
Officials warned that the situation in many areas wasn’t expected to improve for several days because the rain that fell had nowhere to go as waterways were overflowing.
Nearly 850,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity Sunday, down from a peak of 2.67 million.
Ms Criswell told Fox News Sunday that the federal government had begun to arrange the “largest amount of search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before” to supplement Florida’s resources.
Even so, recovery would take time, said Ms Criswell, who visited the state on Friday and Saturday to assess the damage and talk to survivors. She cautioned that dangers remained.
“We worry a lot about the direct impacts from the storm itself as it is making landfall, but we see so many more injuries and sometimes more fatalities after the storm,” Ms Criswell said.
“People need to stay vigilant right now. Standing water brings with it all kinds of hazards – it has debris, it could have power lines, it could have hazards in there that you just don’t know about.”
At least 54 people have been confirmed dead: 47 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba.
The weakened storm drifted north on Sunday and was expected to dump rain on parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, according to the National Hurricane Centre, which warned of the potential for flash-flooding.
More than 1000 people had been rescued from flooded areas along Florida’s south-western coast alone, Daniel Hokanson, a four-star general and head of the National Guard, told The Associated Press.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Saturday that multibillionaire businessman Elon Musk was providing 120 Starlink satellites to “help bridge some of the communication issues.”
Starlink, a satellite-based internet system created by Mr Musk’s SpaceX, will provide high-speed connectivity.
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