Hurricane Ian killed at least 148 people in Florida. Much of the catastrophic toll was foreseeable and preventable.
people in Florida, most of them in coastal communities where the danger of storm surge is well documented but not widely understood. Scores drowned as they fled on foot, while in their cars or after seawater swallowed their homes. More than a dozen survived the flood itself but suffered life-threatening medical emergencies; by the time the storm finally allowed paramedics through, nine of them had died.was foreseeable and preventable, an NBC News investigation found.
“There’s a huge lesson for all of us in public health response and emergency management to learn from what we’ve seen here and ramp up our outreach efforts,” she said. “The education is out there. As Floridians, we just think we’ve got it. This storm showed us that we don’t,” said Jeannine Joy, the president and CEO of United Way of Lee, Hendry and Glades counties.
Other residents said the evacuation orders came too late. Lee County, which took a direct hit from Ian, waited until the day before the storm — a day longer than neighboring counties — to issue a mandatory evacuation order. The conditions during the storm killed at least 61 people there, more than in any other county.
A charter boat sits on top of a SUV on Oct. 31, a month after Hurricane Ian ravaged Fort Myers Beach, Fla. As wind and water battered her tiny home in the island community of Matlacha, Peggy Collson texted her brother in a panic.Collson, 67, was alone and bedridden with knees so badly deteriorated that she’d spent two years in nursing homes, including for much of the pandemic, when the facilities didn’t allow visitors, her brother, Jim, said.
“During a storm, you will hear this, especially on social media: ‘Why didn’t they just leave? They had notice. They knew days in advance. People were telling them to leave,’” said Crystal Rothhaar, the chief communications officer at the nonprofit Senior Friendship Centers, which helps people in Lee and three other southwest Florida counties plan for hurricanes and checks in on them. Fifteen of the organization’s clients died in Ian.
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