DeSantis warns of flooding, storm surge from Hurricane Ian on Florida’s Gulf coast
At a press conference on Tuesday morning, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that Hurricane Ian is expected to cause “catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge” on the Gulf coast of Florida.
Video Transcript
RON DESANTIS: There's still uncertainty with where that exact landfall will be. But just understand, the impacts are going to be far, far broader than just where the eye of the storm happens to make landfall.
In some areas, there will be catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge. And so if you're on Florida's Gulf Coast from Naples all the way through the Tampa Bay Area and some of the counties north of that, could be something that happens. And it will certainly happen in some parts of Florida's Gulf Coast.
Now, I know there's folks in Southwest Florida, who remember Hurricane Charley was projected to make a direct impact into Tampa Bay, and then it turned and went in into Southwest Florida. I would just say, the track may end up doing something similar. But this is a much different storm. Charley was a lot smaller. It was powerful. It was a category 4. Most of the damage from Charley was from wind and wind destruction.
What we have here is really historic storm surge and flooding potential. And so if you're looking at those places in Fort Myers, Charlotte County, Sarasota, the storm surge that you're gonna see generated from this is gonna far eclipse what we saw there.
