Hurricane Ian has become an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm as it prepares to make landfall on Wednesday evening somewhere along Florida’s Gulf Coast, forecasters said. Residents on Tuesday boarded up homes, packed up their vehicles and headed for higher ground. Ian is threatening to bring a deadly storm surge and more than a foot of rain to some areas.
Ian is likely to impact the entire state and the areas in its direct path are expected to see widespread damage and winds of well over 100 mph, USA Today reported. More than 2.5 million Floridians were under evacuation orders or warnings.
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Governor Ron DeSantis has warned of the potential for devastating Hurricane Harvey-like flooding that struck the Houston area in 2017. “It is a big storm, it is going to kick up a lot of water as it comes in. In some areas there will be catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge,” DeSantis told a news conference.
Flash and urban flooding are expected later in the week across central and northern Florida, southern Georgia and coastal South Carolina. Some residential buildings could be “uninhabitable” for weeks or even months due to structural damage caused by hurricane-level winds, the National Weather Service in Miami said.
Florida’s relatively flat topography means that water could take several days to fully drain.
Ian made landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio Province early on Tuesday, prompting officials early on to cut power to the entire province as a precautionary measure and evacuate 40,000 people from low-lying coastal areas, according to local media reports. The storm left at least two dead in western Cuba, state-run media reported. Cuba’s electrical grid completely went down late on Tuesday, Cuban officials reported.
Meanwhile, Vietnam on Wednesday downgraded Typhoon Noru to a tropical depression, but warned residents to stay on alert because of the risks from flooding and landslides caused by heavy rain, the government said. The storm made landfall in the early hours with winds of 117kph (72mph) in the province of Quang Nam.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, but photographs posted on social media and on state media showed downed trees and mudslides blocking roads. Noru was the strongest storm to hit the neighbouring Philippines this year and killed at least eight people when it made landfall on Sunday night.
(With inputs from agencies)
