Nearly two million people left without power in Florida due to Hurricane Ian

Hurricane downgraded to category two with wind gusts of up to 168 kilometers per hour

Just hours after ‘Ian’ made landfall in southwest Florida as a category four hurricane with winds of up to 150 miles per hour, nearly two million people have been without power across a multitude of counties throughout the state.

Specifically, 1,814,000 people have suffered a collapse that has left a multitude of Florida counties without electricity service in whole or in part, according to the website PowerOutage.us, which tracks power outages across the United States.

‘Ian’ made landfall in southwest Florida Wednesday afternoon as a category four hurricane, tying the fifth-strongest hurricane in recorded U.S. history, ‘The Washington Post’ reported.

The hurricane is reminiscent of 2004’s ‘Charley,’ the strongest hurricane ever to make landfall on the west coast of the Florida peninsula, with winds of 150 miles per hour (240 kilometers per hour)

“At 3:05 a.m. (local time) the eye of Hurricane ‘Ian’ made landfall near Key Coast, Florida, as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour (240 kilometers per hour),” the U.S. National Hurricane Center (CNH) stressed on its official Twitter profile.

However, in the last few hours the hurricane has downgraded to a category two, with maximum winds of 168 kilometers per hour, moving northeast at 12 kilometers per hour, according to the latest update from the CNH.

“‘Ian’ continues to batter the Florida peninsula with catastrophic storm surge, winds and flooding,” the hurricane center said in statements picked up by CNN.

The agency also warned that “catastrophic storm surge, winds and flooding” would continue as the storm moves inland.

Labeled “extremely dangerous,” the CNH has warned that ‘Ian,’ which has about 2.5 million people on evacuation alert, will soon “cause catastrophic storm surge, winds and flooding.”

About 21 million people are preparing to face power outages and flooding in the coming hours and the hurricane is expected to cause more than $67 billion (€68.8 billion) in damage and losses, Bloomberg news agency has reported.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has previously explained that, at the moment, at least 200,000 power outages have already been recorded across the state of Florida, assuring that the power grid disruption will be “widespread.”

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