by Brad Brooks and Jonathan Drake
FORT MYERS, FL/CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina were trying to return to normal life on Saturday after Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful to have hit hit the territory of the United States, but the still provisional toll is more than 20 dead and the damage is already estimated at several tens of billions of dollars.
Now downgraded to a post-tropical storm, Ian continues to weaken but remains a threat in parts of the two Carolinas, Virginia and West Virginia, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
“The threat of storm surge, flash flooding and high winds persists,” he said.
After making landfall in Florida on Wednesday, where it devastated several resorts, the hurricane hit the Georgetown waterfront, north of the city of Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday with winds measured at 140 km/ h.
About 1.7 million homes and businesses remained without power in the three most affected states as of 2:30 a.m. (06:30 GMT) on Saturday, according to the specialized site PowerOutage.us.
The human and material toll remains to be precisely established, but its scale is already visible in Florida.
Friday morning, Kevin Guthrie, director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, said at least 21 reported deaths, saying some have yet to be confirmed.
Authorities had no news of around 10,000 people at the time, but many were believed to be in shelters or without power, he added.
Insurance companies estimate the total cost of the hurricane could be between $28 billion and $47 billion (€28.6 billion and €48 billion), making Ian the costliest hurricane to hit. Florida since Andrew in 1992 according to real estate research firm CoreLogic.
President Joe Biden, for whom the destruction caused by Ian could be “among the worst (…) in the history of the country”, declared the state of natural disaster in North Carolina on Saturday, as he had already done for Florida, which allows affected counties to qualify for federal aid.
(Reporting Brad Brooks in Fort Myers and Jonathan Drake in Charleston, with Sharon Bernstein, Kanishka Singh and Juby Babu; French version Marc Angrand)