A sheriff in the most severely affected area of Florida said early on Thursday, September 29, that hundreds of people have died after the historic Hurricane Ian devastated Florida.
As Floridians awaken and begin to understand the actual scope of the catastrophe, the death toll is anticipated to rise.
According to Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno, “This is a life-changing event for all of us.”
He continued, “I don’t have confirmed numbers, but I know the dead are in the hundreds.
“So far, confirmed in the hundreds,” he said, noting that conditions were too dire for his officers and other rescuers to get a true sense of the disaster.
“There are thousands of people that are waiting to be rescued. And again, cannot get a true assessment until we’re actually on scene assessing each scene, and we can’t access people that’s the problem,” he said.
The sheriff warned that rescue crews are going to “see things they’ve never seen before”.
More than 80% of the area was also without power, further hampering any rescue attempts, County Commissioner Kevin Ruane had said.
As of early Thursday, more than 2.5 million people across Florida were without power, according to NY Post.
“My heart goes out to them,” Ruane said of the trapped. “We will try to help them as soon as we can. We will get to them.”
