Death toll escalates in Florida to 47 from Hurricane Ian

FORT MYERS: Authorities in Florida confirmed several more deaths that raised the state's death toll from Hurricane Ian to at least 47 fatalities, hiking the global toll to at least 54 dead.

A list of the dead compiled by medical examiners in the state and made public reported numerous drowning deaths, victims found submerged or floating in storm waters.

Ian slammed into the southwest Gulf Coast of Florida as a major Category 4 hurricane earlier in the week before crossing the peninsula out over the Atlantic Ocean and then striking the US Southeast seacoast as a Category 1 hurricane. Four other storm-related deaths were reported in North Carolina and three in Cuba.

As of Saturday, more than 1,000 people had been rescued from flooded areas along Florida's southwestern coast alone, Daniel Hokanson, a four-star general and head of the National Guard, told The Associated Press while airborne to Florida.

Chris Schnapp was at the Port Sanibel Marina in Fort Myers on Saturday, waiting to see whether her 83-year-old mother-in-law had been evacuated from Sanibel Island. A pontoon boat had just arrived with a load of passengers from the island with suitcases and animals in tow but Schnapp's mother-in-law was not among them.

She stayed on the island. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law own two businesses over there. They evacuated. She did not want to go," Schnapp said. Now, she said, she wasn't sure if her mother-in-law was still on the island or had been taken to a shelter somewhere.

On Pine Island, the largest barrier island off Florida's Gulf Coast, houses were reduced to splinters and boats littered roadways as a volunteer rescue group went door-to-door Saturday, asking isolated residents if they wanted to be evacuated. Residents described the horror of being trapped in their homes as water kept rising.

The water just kept pounding the house and we watched, boats, houses we watched everything just go flying by, said Joe Conforti, as he fought back tears. He said if it wasn't for his wife, who suggested they get up on a table to avoid the rising water, he wouldn't have made it: I started to lose sensibility, because when the water's at your door and it's splashing on the door and you're seeing how fast it's moving, there's no way you're going to survive that."

River flooding posed a major challenge at times to rescue and supply delivery efforts. The Myakka River washed over a stretch of Interstate 75, forcing a traffic-snarling highway closure for a while Saturday. That's a key corridor linking Tampa to the north with the hard-hit southwest Florida region that straddles Port Charlotte and Fort Myers. Later Saturday, state officials said, water levels had receded enough that I-75 could be fully reopened.

While rising waters in Florida's southwest rivers have crested or are near cresting, the levels aren't expected to drop significantly for days, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tyler Fleming in Tampa.

Elsewhere, South Carolina's Pawleys Island a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston was among the places hardest hit. Power remained knocked out to at least half of the island Saturday.

Eddie Wilder, who has been coming to Pawleys Island for more than six decades, said Friday's storm was insane. He said waves as high as 25 feet (7.6 meters) washed away the local pier an iconic landmark.