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Wheeling Native Flees Wrath of Hurricane Ian

John Warnick thought he was getting himself out of harm's way, packing up from where he was living in Sarasota, Florida, and hunkering down in a hotel in Vero Beach - about 160 miles east, on the other side of the Sunshine State and, hopefully, out of the path of Hurricane Ian.

Yet the Wheeling native woke up this morning in Vero Beach realizing there were few in Florida who would truly be out of the path of the behemoth storm, which slammed into the state's Gulf Coast just west of Fort Myers with winds as fast as 150 miles an hour.

The outer bands of the hurricane were lashing the Wheeling native's surroundings on the Treasure Coast.

"When I woke up this morning, they were showing a tornado right over me," Warnick said. "I was like, what the heck? It was horrible. Torrential rain."

So Warnick hopped back in his car and headed back west to stay in the Villages, the massive retirement community in the center of Florida northwest of Orlando.

"When I drove up U.S. 1 from Vero Beach to connect with (Interstate) 75, you could see the devastation from that tornado," he said. "It was windy and rainy. It was horrible."

Florida's Atlantic coast saw damage from Ian, though nothing compared to southwest Florida, where the hurricane made landfall.

Ian’s windspeed at landfall tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to strike the U.S., along with several other storms. Among them was Hurricane Charley, which hit almost the same spot on Florida’s coast in August 2004, killing 10 people and inflicting $14 billion in damage.

About 2.5 million people were ordered to evacuate southwest Florida before the storm hit, but by law, no one could be forced to flee. Though expected to weaken as it marched inland at about 9 mph, Ian’s hurricane-force winds were likely to be felt well into central Florida.

"This is going to be a nasty nasty day, two days," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, stressing that people in Ian's path along the coast should rush to the safest possible shelter and stay there.

In Naples, the first floor of a fire station was inundated with about 3 feet of water and firefighters worked to salvage gear from a firetruck stuck outside the garage in even deeper water, a video posted by the Naples Fire Department showed. Naples is in Collier County, where the sheriff's department reported on Facebook that it was getting "a significant number of calls of people trapped by water in their homes” and that it would prioritize reaching people "reporting life-threatening medical emergencies in deep water."

Ian had strengthened rapidly overnight, prompting Fort Myers handyman Tom Hawver to abandon his plan to weather the hurricane at home and head across the state to Fort Lauderdale.

"We were going to stay and then just decided when we got up, and they said 155 mph winds,” Hawver said. “We don't have a generator. I just don't see the advantage of sitting there in the dark, in a hot house, watching water come in your house."

The governor said the state has 30,000 linemen, urban search and rescue teams, and 7,000 National Guard troops from Florida and elsewhere ready to help once the weather clears.

Florida residents rushed ahead of the impact to board up their homes, stash precious belongings on upper floors and join long lines of cars leaving the shore.

Ian made landfall more than 100 miles south of Tampa and St. Petersburg, sparing the densely populated Tampa Bay area from its first direct hit by a major hurricane since 1921. Officials warned residents that Tampa could still experience powerful winds and up to 20 inches of rain.

"Please, please, please be aware that we are not out of danger yet," Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said in a video on Twitter. "Flooding is still going to occur."

Flash floods were possible across all of Florida. Hazards include the polluted leftovers of Florida's phosphate fertilizer mining industry, more than 1 billion tons of slightly radioactive waste contained in enormous ponds that could overflow in heavy rains.

Isolated tornadoes spun off the storm well ahead of landfall. One tornado damaged small planes and a hangar at the North Perry Airport, west of Hollywood along the Atlantic coast.

More than 1 million homes and businesses were without electricity, and Florida Power and Light warned those in Ian's path to brace for days without power.

The federal government sent 300 ambulances with medical teams and was ready to truck in 3.7 million meals and 3.5 million liters of water once the storm passes.

"We'll be there to help you clean up and rebuild, to help Florida get moving again," President Joe Biden said Wednesday. "And we'll be there every step of the way. That's my absolute commitment to the people of the state of Florida."

Warnick had been in Sarasota since November, taking a job with a company flipping homes in the area. He admits that, if he had known the full extent of what was coming, he would have left Florida for the duration of the storm. Yet he's still in the Sunshine State and he's ready to head back down to Sarasota to help wherever he's needed.

"I've just been taking each day as it comes and see what happens," he said. "This has been part of it. I'm sure there will be some cleanup when we get back and devastation at a lot of these properties we're working on."