One day after Hurricane Ian unleashed its fury across Florida, its destruction and the devastation left behind started to become clear just as it regained strength off Orlando’s east coast and threatened South Carolina as its next target.

As officials warned that Ian would be a problem for much of South Carolina after it regained hurricane-level strength, US President Joe Biden issued a formal disaster declaration and warned of “substantial loss of life”.

And in Deltona, Florida, came the first confirmed fatality: a 72-year-old man who died while attempting to drain his pool into a nine-metre-wide canal, when he slipped down the hill, fell into the water and drowned.

While the death toll from Hurricane Ian won’t be known for some time, Biden warned that “this could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history”.

“We know many families are hurting,” he said during a Federal Emergency Management Agency briefing after formally issuing a disaster declaration. “Our entire country hurts with them”.

With much of Florida situated on a peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Straits of Florida, the so-called sunbelt state is no stranger to hurricanes and tropical storms.

But Ian, which at one point was a Category 4 hurricane, was catastrophic, unleashing winds of 241 kilometres an hour when it made landfall on Wednesday (US time) and creating what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described today as a “500-year flood event”.

“We’ve never seen a flood event like this,” DeSantis said. “We’ve never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.”

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https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/biden-declares-a-disaster-in-florida-after-hurricane-ian-wreaks-havoc-20220930-p5bm4w.html

DON'T WORRY RON, WITH GLOBAL WARMING, THIS 500-YEAR FLOOD EVENT WILL REPEAT PROBABLY NEXT YEAR OR SOONER THAN YOU THINK/HOPE/WISH/WANT/EXPECT....

SOME RELIGIOUS PEOPLE WOULD SUGGEST THAT THIS IS DUE TO SINS, SAY "MIAMI VICE", BUT SUPPLYING BOMBS TO UKRAINE AND DESTROYING RUSSIAN GAS PIPELINES ARE NOT GREENERIES FOR THE ATMOSPHERIC STATUS. THE SOONER THIS CONFLICT IS STOPPED (THE US EMPIRE HAS TO MAKE A SACRIFICE FOR ONCE) THE BETTER. ZELENSKY IS AN UNINTELLIGENT COMIC WHO CANNOT EVEN PLAY THE PIANO WITH HIS DICK WITOUT FAKING IT... PUTIN IS DOING ALL THE RIGHT MOVES (freedom to choose…...). 

HEY JOE, MAKE YOURSELF LOOK GOOD: FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............