Live Updates: Hurricane calls overwhelm rescue officials

The Latest on Hurricane Ian:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — In Lee County, home to the city of Fort Myers, rescue officials said they were overwhelmed with calls for rescues and feared significant fatalities.

Sheriff Carmine Marceno told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that there had been thousands of calls to 911 and that he believed the death toll would be “in the hundreds.”

Rescues have been underway, he said, but “we still cannot access many of the people in the waterways, bridges are compromised, and it’s a real real rough road ahead.”

Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson told NBC’s “Today” that he has not been told of any deaths in the city, though there may have been some elsewhere in the metro area.

Anderson said that he has been in the area since the 1970s and that this was by far the worst storm he has ever witnessed.

“Watching the water from my condo in the heart of downtown, watching that water rise and just flood out all the stores on the first floor, it was heartbreaking,” Anderson said.

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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:

— Hurricane Ian leaves destruction in southwest Florida, has South Carolina in sights for second U.S. landfall

— Hurricane Ian strikes Florida hospital from above and below

— Tampa Bay drains from Ian’s winds, then refills

— Ian threatens Florida’s already unstable insurance market

— Find more AP coverage here: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

NAPLES, Fla. — Along Interstate 75, the main highway connecting the Miami and Naples areas, utility trucks from Texas — flanked by pickup trucks with flashing yellow beacons — made their way west early Thursday toward the area of southwest Florida ravaged by Hurricane Ian.

Also along that path were pickup trucks loaded with generators, gas cans and other storm recovery supplies.

Naples Fire Chief Pete DiMaria said that his firefighters had to wade through the water to make rescues on foot.

“We made a couple of rescues where we had to actually walk from the fire station about two blocks to rescue a couple that was stuck in their house that was flooding rapidly,” DiMaria said Thursday on NBC’s “Today.”

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, where Ian’s second U.S. landfall as a strong tropical storm was predicted Friday, officials didn’t order evacuations, but warned the storm needed to be taken seriously.

Flooding appeared to be the main threat, both from rain and days of onshore winds piling ocean water inland.

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DELTONA, Fla. — A 72-year-old man died after going outside early Thursday to drain his swimming pool during the storm, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said.

Deputies were called to the home in Deltona, near Daytona Beach on Florida’s Atlantic coastline, around 1 a.m. Thursday.

The man’s wife told deputies that he disappeared after heading outside around 1 a.m. Deputies found his flashlight and then found him in a canal behind his home. The man was not responsive, deputies said.

He was pulled from the water, and deputies performed CPR until paramedics arrived, the statement said.

Investigators said it appears he was using a hose to drain the pool down a hill and into a 30-foot-wide canal. The steep decline into the canal was “extremely soft and slippery due to the heavy rain.”

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