Florida Gulf Coast residents emptied grocery shelves, boarded up windows and fled to evacuation shelters as Hurricane Ian churned closer on Wednesday, lashing the state's southern tip with tropical storm-force winds hours before it was forecast to make U.S. landfall.
Ian, which pummeled Cuba on Tuesday and left the entire Caribbean island nation without power, was expected to crash ashore into Florida on Wednesday evening south of Tampa Bay somewhere between Sarasota and Naples as a potentially deadly Category 4 hurricane.
The NHC also issued storm surge warnings for much of western Florida's shoreline, predicting coastal flooding of up to 12 feet from wind-driven high surf. U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Deanne Criswell said she worried that too few Florida residents were taking the threat seriously. It also may prove one of the costliest, with data modeling service Enki Research projecting storm-related damages ranging from $38 billion to more than $60 billion.
"We're right on the water, along a canal, so ... this could be devastating," Melissa Wolcott Martino, 78, a retired magazine editor in St. Petersburg, said as she and her husband loaded valuables and pets into their car for a drive to their son's home north of Tampa on Tuesday.
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