The 95% of those affected in Florida after the passage of Hurricane Ian, have already recovered electricity service, 5 days after the storm made landfall on Cayo Costa, in the southwestern part of the state, with winds of more than 125 miles per hour, that caused catastrophic damage, said state governor Ron DeSantis on Monday.
DeSantis said at a press conference in Cape Coral, in Lee County, one of the areas most affected by the hurricane, that already only 5% of the subscribers of the state remain without electricity service.
The recovery of the service, however, is very uneven, since in some areas of the west coast still close to the half of the population remains without electricity, while other areas, such as the southeast, practically did not suffer the impact of the hurricane.
“Thousands of people are working on the ground to restore the energy infrastructure”, stressed DeSantis, who said or that the state authorities carry out joint work aimed at restoring all services to the population, including drinking water and food supply to the most isolated areas.
“The work already done means that in a few days the service has been restored to more than 2 million people who lost it with the passage of the hurricane”, the governor added.
DeSantis gave Charlotte County as an example, one of the hardest hit, where, as he said, already a 50 % of subscribers recovered the service.
Regarding infrastructures, it was announced that work is being done so that by the end of this week the bridge can be used that links the town of Fort Myers with Pine Island, which was destroyed by the hurricane, although he clarified that it is a temporary solution.
DeSantis pointed out that for the Sanibel bridge, the only access that connects that small island with land, a similar process will be carried out that will allow vehicles, temporarily, to be able to circulate again.
He said that steps are also underway to restore the drinking water service for the entire population affected by Hurricane Ian in Florida.
Regarding the number of deaths directly caused by the cyclone, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Kevin Guthrie, once again asked for time to give a definitive figure.
“There is very scattered data and we collect information from different platforms”, he clarified.
DeSantis said about the difficulty of giving a specific figure as good that one of the problems is that many people have not responded to the contacts of the rescue teams, because they do not want to give information to the authorities.
During the first hours of this Monday, the Florida authorities i They reported the provisional figure of 58 deceased by the passage of Hurricane Ian.
Guthrie further indicated that more than 22 million dollars have been raised for recovery by the passage of the hurricane through Volunteer Florida’s Florida Disaster Fund.
Meanwhile, the donation campaigns continue for those affected and in the city of Sweetwater, in Miami-Dade County, bottled water, electric generators, gasoline cans, plywood and flashlights, among others, were collected on Monday supplies.
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