MIAMI — About a dozen people have died due to Hurricane Ian, which President Joe Biden has said could be the “deadliest” in Florida history.
The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said it is investigating two deaths related to the hurricane. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has confirmed that a 38-year-old Lake County man was killed Thursday when his car hydroplaned in the rain.
News Service of Florida has reported that Charlotte County officials confirmed six deaths, and Lee County officials confirmed five. The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office announced a storm-related death of a Deltona man who fell down an incline while draining his pool, the news service said.
A Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office spokesman said he could not confirm the number of fatalities. “I can confirm that there have been deaths,” said spokesman Christopher Hall, “but I cannot confirm how many or even what were the causes of those deaths.”
Sarasota County spokeswoman Kaitlyn Perez said the information is preliminary. She did not immediately provide any more details about the two individuals. Officials in Manatee, Hillsborough and Collier counties told the Herald they are still assessing damage in order to determine how many — if any — storm-related deaths have occurred in their jurisdiction.
Calculating the death toll may be a slow process, said Claudine Buzzo of Metro-Dade Firefighters Local 1403, because the search teams must go grid-by-grid, one house at a time.
“Usually the fatalities — it takes days to figure out,” she said.
Buzzo is in direct contact with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue’s Task Force 1 Team, which has approximately 60 members staged at the airport in Naples as of Thursday afternoon. The team is beginning search-and-rescue efforts in the hardest hit areas, such as Sanibel Island and Captiva.
Task Force 1 team members told Buzzo that pictures of the damage “don’t do it justice.”
“The text messages I’m getting are saying that it looks like total destruction,” she said. “It looks like what Homestead looked like after Hurricane Andrew.”
Buzzo said some of the team needed to be helicoptered into the area because of the massive damage to the Sanibel Causeway. She added that the team will likely assess the damage using drones before targeting the worst-hit areas.
Another local team, Task Force 2, which is led by the city of Miami, was preparing to begin search-and-rescue missions near Marco Island late Wednesday night, according to Miami Fire Rescue Capt. Ignatius Carroll.
Carroll said the team deployed 18 swift water specialists and six boats to search the heavily flooded areas.
