MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ian makes devastating landfall in US State of Florida

Ian will be reaching northeastern Georgia and South Carolina Friday

Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Class 4 storm in the US State of Florida. It is deemed extremely dangerous, with winds of up to 240 kilometers per hour.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that the eye of Hurricane Ian made landfall near Cayo Costa, in southwest Florida, which caused floods that were described as “catastrophic.”

According to PowerOutage, Ian left more than one million homes powerless as strong category 4 winds on the Saffir-Simpson scale, tore off the branches of many palm trees and knocked down light poles, in addition to raising sea levels and flooding coastal areas.

“This is a storm that will be talked about for many years to come,” said National Weather Service (NWS) Director Ken Graham.

Ian could be near hurricane strength as it moves over the east coast of Florida as it approaches northeastern Georgia and South Carolina by Friday.

Meanwhile, The US Coast Guard is searching for 20 Cuban migrants missing at sea off the coast of Florida. The boat in which they were sailing was reportedly shipwrecked in the middle of a storm, which swept through the Gulf of Mexico from the western tip of Cuba to the west coast of Florida.

Four survivors managed to swim ashore to Stock Island, next to Key West, less than 200 kilometers away from Cuba, and notified the rescue services in the area of the shipwreck.

Ian also left a path of destruction including the roof of a hospital intensive care unit, it was reported. In Port Charlotte, along Florida's Gulf Coast, the storm surge flooded a lower-level emergency room in a hospital even as fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from its intensive care unit, according to a doctor who works there.

Water gushed down onto the ICU, forcing staff to evacuate the hospital's sickest patients, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. The medium-sized hospital spans four floors, but patients were forced into just two because of the damage.