Dozens of Florida residents fled their flooded and shattered homes by boat and plane this weekend as rescue workers continue to search for survivors in the wake of Hurricane Ian, while authorities in South Carolina and North Carolina began to take stock of their losses.
The death toll from Hurricane Ian rose to more than 80 on Sunday, as embattled residents in Florida and the Carolinas faced a recovery that was expected to cost tens of billions of dollars, and some officials have been criticized for their response to the storm.
Now, the only option left for dozens of people is to turn to the public for help through crowdfunding platform GoFundMe as they try to rebuild their lives.
The crowdfunding site shared the most heartbreaking confirmed Hurricane Ian crowdfunding effort with .
Among them are newlyweds Amanda Trompeta and Dimitrios Frantzis, who are due to marry in just two weeks.
According to her page set up by Trompeta’s sister, the couple lost almost everything. Trompeta’s wedding dress was badly damaged during the storm.
Trompeta’s sister wrote that the couple’s home was submerged in three feet of water and their furniture was ruined.
Frantzis told the Orlando Sentinel, “We wanted to leave, but we couldn’t even open the garage door because of all the pressure.”
He added: “The most important thing is that we are alive and our animals are safe. We realize how deep we are in the hole, we’re basically starting over. But we take it one day at a time.’
At the time of writing, the couple have raised over $14,000.
Amanda Trompeta and Dimitrios Frantzis on their GoFundMe page
The couple wrote on their page that they have lost almost everything after being caught in nearly three feet of water at their Orlando home on Thursday
According to their crowdfunding page, the floodwaters left the couple’s funeral soaked and muddy
The death toll was expected to continue to rise as floodwaters receded and search teams continued to advance into areas initially cut off from the outside world. Hundreds of people were rescued as rescue workers searched homes and buildings that had been inundated with water or washed away completely.
At least 85 storm-related deaths have been confirmed since Ian crashed with catastrophic force as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph along Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday.
High winds during Hurricane Ian collapsed a wall at the Kuttner family home in Fort Myers
The Kuttner family, who left Rhode Island in 2021 to start a new life in paradise in Fort Myers, saw their home destroyed by Hurricane Ian.
According to her GoFundMe page, “The winds were so strong that the outside wall of her apartment was swept away, allowing the contents of the master bedroom to be swept outside in the storm.”
At the time of writing, the site has raised over $6,000.
Florida was responsible for all but four deaths, with 42 counted by the coastal Lee County Sheriff’s Office, which bore the brunt of the storm as it made landfall, and 39 other deaths reported by officials in four neighboring counties .
The storm weakened on Saturday as it rolled into the mid-Atlantic, but not before washing out bridges and piers, hurling massive boats into buildings ashore and shearing roofs off homes, leaving hundreds of thousands without power.
A GoFundMe page for this Key West home that was hit by a fire has raised over $20,000
A GoFundMe page for Key West, Fla., police officer Nick Smith raised over $20,000. His home was engulfed in fire during Thursday’s hurricane.
The page reads: “Building marked in red, floor and roof collapsed. All is lost and destroyed.”
The majority of the deaths confirmed in Florida were due to drowning in storm water, but others were due to Ian’s tragic aftermath. An elderly couple died when they lost power and their oxygen equipment was turned off, authorities said.
As of Saturday, more than 1,000 people had been rescued from flooded areas on Florida’s southwest coast alone, Daniel Hokanson, a four-star general and chief of the National Guard, told The Associated Press as he flew to Florida.
Later that evening, the White House announced that President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden would travel to Florida on Wednesday. Further details of Biden’s visit were not immediately released.
Officials in Lee County, which includes Fort Myers and Cape Coral and is on the Gulf Coast, have been faced with questions about whether they ordered evacuations in a timely manner.
The Frölich family in Estero Park were among those who lost everything. There, the house was destroyed in Hurricane Ian. At the time of writing, her GoFundMe page has raised over $3,000.
The site’s modest goal of $5,000 will be used to top up personal items that flood insurance may not cover.
According to their website, the house of the Frölich family pictured here was demolished after the hurricane
This shows the riding floods in front of the house of the Frölich family
The site calls the Frölich family “one of the most amazing families”
Cecil Pendergrass, chairman of the county’s board of commissioners, said Sunday that evacuation orders were issued once the county was predicted to be in the cone, or the likely track of the hurricane’s center. Even then, some people chose to ride out the storm, Pendergrass said.
“I respect their decisions,” he said at a press conference. “But I’m sure many of them regret it now.”
River flooding at times presented a major challenge to rescue and supply efforts. The Myakka River washed over a section of Interstate 75, forcing a traffic-calming closure of the freeway for a while.
Avid sailor Captain Tyler Martin, who operates charters to Key West, saw his ship wrecked along with other boats. Also, Martin lived on his boat.
At the time of writing, his GoFundMe page has raised over $20,000.
Avid sailor Captain Tyler Martin, who operates charters to Key West, saw his ship wrecked along with other boats
Described on the site as “incredibly generous” and “caring,” Martin has raised more than $20,000
The key corridor connects Tampa to the north with the hardest-hit region of southwest Florida, which stretches through Port Charlotte and Fort Myers. Later Saturday, state officials said water levels had receded enough for I-75 to fully reopen.
While rising water in Florida’s southwestern rivers has peaked or is about to peak, levels are not expected to drop significantly for days, National Weather Service meteorologist Tyler Fleming said in Tampa.
Elsewhere, Pawleys Island in South Carolina — a beach community about 70 miles from Charleston — was among the hardest-hit locations. Power remained out on at least half of the island on Saturday.
These photos, posted by an anonymous family, show the cleanup going on in their backyard
The family also released pictures showing their street becoming a river after Hurricane Ian
Trees were shown to have fallen on the family home, causing leaks inside
Eddie Wilder, who has been coming to Pawleys Island for more than six decades, said Friday’s storm was “insane”. He said waves up to 7.6 meters high washed away the local pier, a landmark.
“We watched it hit the pier and watched the pier go away,” said Wilder, whose home 30 feet above the ocean stayed dry inside. “We watched it crumble and watched it float by with an American flag.”
Pawleys Pier was one of at least four piers along the South Carolina coast destroyed by high winds and rain. Meanwhile, the Intracoastal Waterway was littered with the remains of several boathouses that had been knocked off their pilings.
In North Carolina, the storm claimed four lives and mostly downed trees and power lines, leaving over 280,000 people across the state without power at one point Saturday morning, officials said. The outages fell sharply hours later after crews worked to restore power.
Two of the North Carolina deaths were attributed to storm-related vehicle accidents, while officials said one man drowned when his truck crashed into a swamp and another was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator in a garage.