Hurricane Ian left a path of destruction in its wake in southwest Florida that could make it one of the deadliest and costliest storms in U.S. history.
President Biden said in a Thursday speech at the Federal Emergency Management Agency's headquarters that the storm, which made landfall Wednesday near Fort Myers as a Category 4 hurricane, could result in more deaths than any other storm on record in Florida. The death toll was still emerging well into Thursday but the sheriff of Lee County, where Fort Myers is located, said fatalities were in the hundreds. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis later said the number was unconfirmed.
The Florida counties hardest hit by Ian — including Collier, Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota — are home to $88.6 billion of commercial real estate tracked by CoStar, according to Lisa McNatt, CoStar’s director of market analytics for Central Florida.
"Other areas took significant hits as well, but these are the ones that seem to have suffered the greatest impact from storm surge," McNatt said.
Preliminary estimates put the cost of all property damage above $30 billion in insured property losses, according to the New York-based Insurance Information Institute. That would “make it one of the largest property claim loss events in U.S. history,” Mark Friedlander, a Florida-based spokesman for the institute, told CoStar News.
Citing the institute’s data, Friedlander said Hurricane Katrina, which slammed the New Orleans area in 2005, was the costliest, at $89.7 billion. Last year’s Hurricane Ida that hit Louisiana came in at $36 billion. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in 2017 ranged from between $32.4 billion and $33.1 billion in property claim losses. All of those figures have been adjusted for inflation and represent values in 2021 dollars.
Hurricane Ian first hit Florida's barrier islands near Fort Myers and Cape Coral with winds reaching 150 miles per hour. Ian’s storm surge reached as high as 10 feet in Fort Myers, causing severe flooding there. Surging seawater flooded Naples, Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda as well.
Ian's diameter is very large, creating more potential for the storm's damage and destruction. A causeway that is the only route to Captiva and Sanibel islands from the Fort Myers and Cape Coral areas was no match for the surge. A portion of the bridge collapsed, cutting off the barrier islands from the mainland and potentially stranding residents who did not evacuate.
Ian was a Category 1 hurricane early Thursday evening after crawling across Florida as a tropical storm and dumping heavy rain that caused flooding in the Orlando area and other parts of the state, leading to hundreds of search-and-rescue operations. Major or record river flooding is expected to continue across Central Florida through next week, the National Hurricane Center said Thursday.
The storm is projected to maintain hurricane status as it moves back over the Atlantic Ocean and makes a second landfall, in South Carolina around Charleston, on Friday, the center said. The hurricane is expected to bring life-threatening flooding, storm surge and strong winds to the Carolinas and Georgia, according to the center.