Feds pledge to help Ian victims

Areas slammed by Hurricane Ian have been described as like a 'war zone.'

With the death toll from Hurricane Ian rising and hundreds of thousands of people without power in Florida and the Carolinas, U.S. officials vowed Sunday to unleash a massive amount of federal disaster aid as crews scrambled to rescue people stranded by the storm.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was in Arcadia on Sunday afternoon, about 30 miles inland from where Ian made landfall. The rural area didn’t get the storm surge experienced by coastal communities, but standing water from floods remained four days after the storm.

“This is such a big storm, brought so much water, that you’re having basically what’s been a 500-year flood event,” DeSantis said.

Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the federal government is focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the United States. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit Florida on Wednesday.

Criswell told “Fox News Sunday” that the federal government, including the Coast Guard and Department of Defense, had moved into position “the largest amount of search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before.”

Still, she cautioned that dangers remain.

“We see so many more injuries and sometimes more fatalities after the storm,” Criswell said. “Standing water brings with it all kinds of hazards — it has debris, it could have power lines.”

More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency management agency.

The National Guard and the Coast Guard were flying in helicopters to Florida’s barrier islands to rescue people. On Sanibel Island, the lone bridge to the crescent-shaped island collapsed, cutting off access by car for its 6,300 residents.

An aerial photo posted on social media of Sanibel’s Mad Hatter Restaurant shows a mostly vacant patch of sand where the restaurant used to be.

“The Mad Hatter Restaurant, unfortunately, is out at sea right now,” the restaurant’s Facebook page reads, adding that the staff are all safe. “The best news from this devastating scene is that there is still land for us to rebuild.”

DeSantis said the state will start building a temporary structure this week to restore vehicle access to Pine Island, the largest of southwestern Florida’s barrier islands devastated by the storm.

“It’s not going to be a full bridge, you’re going to have to go over it probably at 5 miles an hour or something, but it’ll at least let people get in and off the island with their vehicles,” DeSantis said.