Hundreds are dead after Hurricane Ian swept through Florida on Wednesday causing high winds and extensive flood damage, a local sheriff has claimed.
One man, 72, was confirmed to have died after going outside in an attempt to drain the pool at his property. Authorities found him unresponsive in a canal near the home and he died in hospital.
Now downgraded to a tropical storm, the hurricane reached sustained wind speeds of around 150mph when it crashed into the Florida coast and President Joe Biden declared it a major disaster.
Experts believe more problems could be caused by the storm getting stronger once again as it approaches South Carolina and Georgia on Friday.
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said deaths were unconfirmed but could be as high as the hundreds.
He told ABC's Good Morning America: "So while I don't have confirmed numbers, I definitely know fatalities are in the hundreds.
"There are thousands of people that are waiting to be rescued.
"And again, I can't give a true assessment until we're actually on scene assessing each scene.
"And we can't access, that's the problem. We're accessing the bridges, seeing what's compromised and what's not. And this will be a life-changing event for the men and women who are responding.
"They're going to see things they've never seen before."
The district contains the city of Fort Myers, where flooding was extensive enough for sharks to be seen swimming along city streets in a downtown residential area.
At least nine hospitals in Lee County have no water.
Deanne Criswell, the Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator (FEMA), said to CNN: "I understand that some of the sheriffs are saying that they expect a large number of fatalities, but that's why we want to get our search and rescue teams out there.
"That's why they're out there... We want to save as many lives as possible."
She added: "The reports that I have this morning is that Lee County’s water has been disrupted and so we’re focused on a couple of things.
"We know there’s nine hospitals in Lee county that the state is looking at right now to determine whether or not we’re going to be able to get water restored to them, or whether or not they’re going to have to be evacuated."
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claimed "we've never seen a flood event like this".
He said: "The impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that was done has been historic and this is just off initial assessments. There's going to be a lot more assessing that goes on in the days ahead.
"We've never seen storm surge of this magnitude and it hit an area where there's a lot of people in a lot of those low-lying areas and it's going to end up doing extensive damage to a lot of people's homes.
Around 2 million homes were without power on Monday morning, according to the Sunshine State politician.
