Rescuers continue search for Hurricane Ian survivors as remnants of storm push north

Rescuers search for survivors amid the rubble of flooded homes in Florida Hurricane Ian while authorities in South Carolina waited for daylight to assess the damage from its landfall there, as the remnants of one of the strongest and costliest hurricanes to ever hit the US continued to push north.

The powerful storm terrified millions of people this week as it swept through Florida before making landfall in the second US state of South Carolina on Friday. At least 28 people died in the storm.

As of Saturday morning, more than 1.2 million homes and businesses remained without power in Florida, and hundreds of thousands of outages were reported across the Carolinas and Virginia.

Distraught residents waded through knee-deep water in Florida on Friday, salvaging what belongings they could from their flooded homes and loading them into rafts and canoes.

“I want to sit in the corner and cry. I don’t know what else to do,” Stevie Scuderi said after rummaging through her damaged Fort Myers apartment, mud in her kitchen sticking to her purple sandals.

In South Carolina, Ian’s center made landfall near Georgetown, a small community along Winyah Bay about 60 miles north of historic Charleston. The storm swept away sections of four piers along the coast, including two connected to the popular tourist town of Myrtle Beach.

The storm’s winds when it hit the state were much weaker than when Ian made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast earlier in the week. Authorities and volunteers there were still assessing the damage as shocked residents tried to make sense of what happened.

Anthony Rivera, 25, said he had to climb out of his first-floor apartment window during the storm to get his grandmother and girlfriend to the second floor. As they rushed to escape the rising water, the storm had washed a boat right next to his apartment.

“That’s the scariest thing in the world because I can’t stop any boat,” he said. “I’m not Superman.”

Even though Ian has long passed Florida, new problems continued to arise. A 14-mile stretch of Interstate 75 was closed late Friday in both directions in the Port Charlotte area due to the massive amount of water swelling the Myakka River.

Hurricane Ian has likely caused “well over $100 billion” in damages, including $63 billion in private insurance losses, according to disaster modeling firm Karen Clark & ​​Co., which regularly issues disaster estimates. If those numbers are confirmed, it would make Ian at least the fourth costliest hurricane in US history.

In the Sarasota suburb of North Point, Florida, residents of the Country Club Ridge subdivision spent Friday in flooded streets. John Chihill ceremoniously towed a canoe and another small boat through ankle-deep water.

“There’s not really much to feel. It’s an act of God, you know?” he said. “I mean, that’s all you can do is pray and hope for a better day tomorrow.”

Now weakened to a post-tropical cyclone, Ian was expected to move across central North Carolina on Saturday morning and reach south-central Virginia by the afternoon.