Hur­ri­cane Ian has left a trail of de­struc­tion across Flori­da, be­com­ing the strongest trop­i­cal cy­clone to im­pact west­ern Flori­da since Hur­ri­cane Charley in 2004.

Cat­a­stroph­ic winds up to 240 kilo­me­tres per hour, life-threat­en­ing storm surges up­wards of 15 feet, and his­toric rain­fall and flood­ing af­fect­ed parts of Flori­da from Wednes­day through yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Ear­ly dam­age as­sess­ments be­gan yes­ter­day across the state, with res­cuers strug­gling to reach those af­fect­ed. Over sev­en hun­dred have had to be res­cued from high flood wa­ters across the state. How­ev­er, while state and fed­er­al of­fi­cials said they ex­pect­ed deaths con­nect­ed to the storm, no firm to­tal had emerged by last night, al­though there were re­ports four peo­ple had lost their lives.

The worst af­fect­ed area re­mained Fort Mey­ers Beach in south­west­ern Flori­da, with Gov­er­nor Ron De­San­tis say­ing homes were wiped out, de­scrib­ing cars float­ing in the wa­ter and con­crete slabs where hous­es once stood. Some 2.6 mil­lion peo­ple were still with­out pow­er across Flori­da as of last night.

Fur­ther north and east, one Trinida­di­an fam­i­ly in Jack­sonville, Flori­da, was still brac­ing for Ian’s im­pact. One Trin­bag­on­ian trans­plant, Rekha Balka­ran-Bo­lai, who has called Jack­sonville home for the last three years, said, “Overnight, we had just rain, heavy down­pours, and light rain, but the gusts were very loud. Every cou­ple of min­utes, you would hear the wind out­side, howl­ing, hit­ting against the wall. It was a bit scary for me, be­ing my first time ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a hur­ri­cane.”

Jack­sonville was placed un­der a Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing and Storm Surge Warn­ing as strong winds, rain and im­pacts ex­tend­ed well away from Hur­ri­cane Ian’s cen­tre.

Balka­ran-Bo­lai added, “We’re fol­low­ing our lo­cal news, lis­ten­ing to what the city of Jack­sonville is say­ing, and try­ing to fol­low or­ders.”

While the city ex­pect­ed con­di­tions to de­te­ri­o­rate yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, by night­fall, con­di­tions had sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved with light rain and very lit­tle wind. How­ev­er, she and her hus­band de­cid­ed to ven­ture to the coast, where con­di­tions were much dif­fer­ent.

“The winds and gusts were con­stant are very strong. The wind was lit­er­al­ly push­ing me.”

As of 8 pm yes­ter­day, af­ter weak­en­ing as it moved across Flori­da, Ian re­gained hur­ri­cane sta­tus in the At­lantic with max­i­mum sus­tained winds near 120 kilo­me­tres per hour with high­er wind gusts as it moved to­wards the Car­oli­nas. Ian is fore­cast to strength­en be­fore mak­ing land­fall to­day across South Car­oli­na with storm surge reach­ing sev­en feet above sea lev­el, hur­ri­cane-force winds and wind gusts, and ad­di­tion­al rain­fall as high as 12 inch­es or (300 mil­lime­tres).

As Ian moved north­ward, Trinida­di­an Natasha Jones, who is liv­ing in Charleston, South Car­oli­na, said con­di­tions were de­te­ri­o­rat­ing with winds pick­ing up.

“As I walked in, I ac­tu­al­ly had to lean my body’s weight to­ward the wind to keep my foot­ing,” she told GML.

While she didn’t have much prepa­ra­tion, she ex­plained that oth­ers were get­ting sand­bags and prepar­ing to shel­ter in place. How­ev­er, Jones did not ex­press con­fi­dence in ad­vice from of­fi­cials.

“There were no evac­u­a­tion plans. The Gov­er­nor an­nounced yes­ter­day that he does not sug­gest evac­u­at­ing, that the storm will be no dif­fer­ent from a thun­der­storm.”

The en­tire coast of South Car­oli­na is now un­der a Hur­ri­cane Warn­ing and Storm Surge Warn­ing.