US First Lady Jill Biden delivers food to those affected by Fiona in Puerto Rico.
“Let’s make sure that [Puerto Rico] get every dollar you’ve been promised,” he said in the municipality of Ponce, where parts of the city were still without power Monday.
As reported by CBS, an American partner of the BBC, the death toll from the hurricane in Florida rose to at least 94 on Monday followingnoon. Four other deaths have been confirmed in North Carolina.
However, the Florida District Medical Examiners Commission has put the death toll at 58.
Differences in figures
The numbers differ in that while local officials may report additional storm-related deaths, the medical examiner only attributes one death to the hurricane following conducting an autopsy.
The bridge leading to Sanibel Island in Lee County was partially destroyed.
Most of the deaths, 54, were reported in Lee County, which includes the hardest-hit areas of Fort Myers, Sanibel and Pine Island, Sheriff Carmine Marceno said at a news conference Monday.
Marceno noted that access to the Fort Myers beach area is being restricted to allow authorities to investigate the deaths and preserve possible scenes of the incident.
He added that several arrests were made following a number of lootings were reported.
On Friday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the county as the “zero zone” of the hurricane.
Confusion over the death toll is common following hurricanes.
In 2020, for example, there were fewer than 20 reported deaths from Hurricane Laura days following it made landfall in Louisiana, a figure the National Hurricane Center later increased to 47.
Although the number of deaths from Hurricane Ian already makes it one of the deadliest in recent history, it is still far from the 1,800 victims that Katrina left in 2005.
Criticism of the authorities
In the wake of Ian, Lee County officials have come under fire for evacuation orders that were issued on September 27, less than 24 hours before Ian made landfall.
Other counties in the path of the incoming hurricane issued their own evacuation orders more than a day in advance.
Both local officials and Governor DeSantis have defended Lee County’s preparations for the hurricane.
“Everyone wants to focus on a plan that might have been done differently,” Sheriff Marceno said Sunday.
“I am 100% with my county commissioners, my county manager. We did what we had to do at the time that we had to do it. I would not change anything“.
A 2015 planning document on the official Lee County government website notes that “due to our large population and limited system, Southwest Florida is the most difficult place to evacuate in the country in the event of a disaster“.
The document adds that evacuation decision-making procedures consider “evacuation risks, disruption to the lives of our residents/visitors, businesses, and the potential magnitude of the imminent threat.”
The death toll cited by Florida officials does not include at least 16 Cuban immigrants who remain missing following their boat capsized off the state’s coast during the hurricane.
Of the 27 people on board, 9 were rescued by the US Coast Guard and two managed to swim to the shore of Stock Island, near Key West.
The bodies of two more who died have already been recovered. The Coast Guard has already called off the search for the missing.
electrical chaos
About 588,000 people remain without power statewide, according to data from the site poweroutage.us.
More than half a million people remained without power in Florida on Monday.
The utility with the most outages, Florida Power & Light (FPL), said most customers will have their power back by Oct. 7, but storm damage has left some properties “unable to receive power.” energy safely.
While officials are still assessing hurricane damage across the state, experts have warned that the economic cost might amount to tens of billions of dollars.
So far, insurers have reported regarding $1.44 billion in preliminary claims.
A preliminary forecast from the data firm Enki Research released on Oct. 1 estimated total damage to be at least $66 billion, but might rise to as much as $75 billion.
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC NewsWorld. Download the new version of our app and activate it so you don’t miss out on our best content.
