Rescuers searched for survivors among the ruins of Florida's flooded homes as the death toll from Hurricane Ian continued to rise Saturday.
The Florida Medical Examiners Commission confirmed 73 deaths as of Saturday afternoon.
The number of deaths reported in Lee County jumped to 35 and Charlotte County to 23, according to the report.
The Commission also reported deaths including five fatalities in Volusia County, three in Collier County, four in Sarasota County, one each in Lake and Polk counties, and one in Manatee County.
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Ian roared into Florida Wednesday with disastrous 150 mph winds and torrential flooding leaving a staggering amount of destruction in its wake.
The U.S. Coast Guard continued search and rescue operations along hard hit areas Saturday using helicopters and boats to evacuate residents.
"They threw me in the back, threw him in the front and threw the cat alongside me and brought us right over to the marina," said Elaine Coleman. "I still got the shakes."
Over the last three days, over 1,100 rescues were made by first responders and others, and likely many more that weren’t reported, Governor Ron DeSantis said at a news conference Saturday.
The U.S. Coast Guard began rescue efforts around daybreak Thursday on barrier islands near where Ian struck, according to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis said Friday that rescuers had gone to more than 3,000 homes in the hardest hit areas.
"Life rescue is making sure people are okay, following up on any types of calls," said DeSantis. "There's been really a Herculean effort."
Video from the USCG showed crews descending from helicopters to rescue residents and their pets from homes flooded with several feet of water.
Rescue crews waded through flooded streets, using boats to save people trapped in their homes after the hurricane inundated communities in southwest Florida.
More than 1.1 million Floridians remained without power Saturday according to PowerOutage.us and cellphone connectivity was sparse in some areas. In Hardy County, about 99% were without power Friday, DeSantis said.
But on Saturday, the governor announced that he has been working with Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, to use SpaceX's Starlink satellites to provide satellite Internet coverage in southwest Florida and other affected areas.
"A large device, you can put it in different areas in the community that are having problems and they can get a 13 mile radius and they can support over 1000 users at a given time," DeSantis said. "So that will help bridge some of the connectivity issues."
The impact of Ian has not been confined to the beaches and tourist towns. The heavy rains from the storm have ended up flowing into suburban and inland towns not part of hurricane warnings.
Near North Port, the Florida Department of Transportation closed a stretch of Interstate 75 in both directions late Friday because of the flooded Myakka River. The highway has since reopened.
On Saturday, a long line of people waited outside an O’Reilly’s auto parts store in Port Charlotte, where a sign read, “We have generators now.” Hundreds of cars were lined up outside a Wawa gas station, and some people walked, carrying gas cans to their nearby cars.
At a news conference Friday, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said there were many more unconfirmed deaths throughout multiple counties. He said it was too soon to determine whether many of the deaths were disaster-related.
Guthrie said U.S. Coast Guard crews had found what are believed to be human remains in at least one home.
"We do not know exactly how many were in the house and let me paint the picture for you. The water was up over the rooftop, right, but we had a Coast Guard rescue swimmer swim down into it and he could identify there, it appeared to be human remains," Guthrie said. "And we got a couple of other situations where we had that particular type of situation."
On Friday afternoon, a revived Hurricane Ian made landfall on South Carolina's coast with maximum sustained winds near 85 mph, with forecasters predicting more storm surge and floods.
The storm initially made landfall in Florida on Wednesday as one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the country. In its path of destruction, Hurricane Ian cut off the only bridge to a barrier island, destroyed a historic waterfront pier and knocked out electricity to a peak of 2.67 million Florida homes and businesses.
"We've never seen storm surge of this magnitude," DeSantis told a news conference Thursday. "The amount of water that's been rising, and will likely continue to rise today even as the storm is passing, is basically a 500-year flooding event."
Ian turned streets into rivers and blew down trees after making landfall with 150 mph winds, pushing a wall of storm surge. Ian’s strength at the time of landfall in Cayo Costa — a barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers — was Category 4, tying it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever strike the U.S. in terms of wind speed.
"The impacts of this storm are historic, and the damage that was done has been historic," DeSantis said. "We've never seen a flood event like this, we've never seen storm surge of this magnitude."
In the Fort Myers area, the hurricane ripped homes from their slabs and deposited them among shredded wreckage. Businesses near the beach were completely razed, leaving twisted debris. Broken docks floated at odd angles beside damaged boats. Fires smoldered on lots where houses once stood.
“I don't know how anyone could have survived in there,” William Goodison said amid the wreckage of a mobile home park in Fort Myers Beach where he'd lived for 11 years. Goodison said he was alive only because he rode out the storm at his son's house inland.
The hurricane tore through the park of about 60 homes, leaving many destroyed or mangled beyond repair, including Goodison’s single-wide home. Wading through waist-deep water, Goodison and his son wheeled two trash cans containing what little he could salvage — a portable air conditioner, some tools and a baseball bat.
The road into Fort Myers was littered with broken trees, boat trailers and other debris. Cars were left abandoned in the road, having stalled when the storm surge flooded their engines.
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said his office was scrambling to respond to thousands of 911 calls in the Fort Myers area, but many roads and bridges were impassable.
Emergency crews sawed through toppled trees to reach stranded people. Many in the hardest-hit areas were unable to call for help because of electrical and cellular outages.
At a Friday afternoon news conference in Fort Myers, DeSantis said rescue workers were facing challenges in trying to contact those who might be missing.
"Now I think what we don't know is, you look at like a Fort Myers beach, you look here, if a house just washes away into the ocean, into water, with 155 mph winds, if that person evacuated that's great, if they didn't, I don't know how you survive that, I think it's just such a punishing wallop, so those are some of the questions," DeSantis said.
It was unknown how many residents heeded orders to evacuate Sanibel Island, just south of where Ian made landfall.
Some who stayed behind had to be rescued after a chunk of the Sanibel Causeway fell into the sea, cutting off access to the barrier island where 6,300 people normally live.
"We kind of got stuck there and had to ride it out. That was pretty nasty," said John Herman.
"Terrifying. We were trying to save ourselves with pool noodles, if we had to, to get to the roof. I would never stay again but with six dogs it was complicated," Michele Herman said.
Many who were rescued said Sanibel looks like a war zone. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sanibel was hit with a "really biblical storm surge."
The governor said in addition to choppers, crews would be using barges to access the island.
In Port Charlotte, the storm surge flooded a hospital's emergency room even as fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from its intensive care unit, a doctor who works there told the Associated Press.
Water gushed down onto the ICU, forcing them to evacuate their sickest patients -- some on ventilators — to other floors, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Staff members used towels and plastic bins to try to mop up the sodden mess.
The medium-sized hospital spans four floors, but patients were forced into just two because of the damage. Bodine planned to spend the night there in case people injured from the storm arrive needing help.
“As long as our patients do OK and nobody ends up dying or having a bad outcome, that’s what matters," Bodine said.
Hundreds of thousands of Floridians had been given mandatory evacuation orders in anticipation of powerful storm surge, high winds and flooding rains from Ian.
Some chose to stay and ride it out including Rodney McDonald, who spent the night on a boat near Fort Myers. The 80-year-old McDonald said he'd survived five other storms on the small boat but the sixth was the one he'll remember.
"This one went all night and it was nasty," McDonald said.
Check back with NBC 6 for the latest updates on Hurricane Ian.
