Hurricane Ian was a destructive Category 4 hurricane during the ongoing 2022 Atlantic hurricane season. Ian formed on Sept. 23 and dissipated Oct. 2.

The storm caused extensive damages starting from western Cuba all the way to continental United States. Florida and South Carolina were the two U.S. states impacted the hardest by the recent hurricane.

There have been at least 103 confirmed U.S. storm-related deaths and about 45,000 people displaced from their homes. Hurricane Ian’s devastation is currently estimated at around $28 billion and $47 billion in losses, making it the costliest storm to hit Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

U.S. President Joe Biden visited Fort Myers, Florida, on Oct. 5 to survey the hurricane destruction firsthand. Biden later made a speech to address his Hurricane Ian response with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by his side.

“It’s going to take a lot of time, not weeks or months. It’s going to take years for everything to get squared away in the state of Florida to fully recover and rebuild,” Biden said. “Today, we have one job, and only one job, and that’s to make sure the people of Florida get everything they need to fully, thoroughly recover.”

Action has been taken by both DeSantis and Biden to bring aid to the citizens of Florida.

DeSantis described the storm’s destruction to Sanibel Island’s power infrastructure during an Oct. 5 press conference. In the conference, DeSantis expressed the need for debris removal efforts.

“I saw more damage to the power infrastructure on Sanibel than anywhere I’ve seen and maybe even more than Fort Myers Beach,” DeSantis said. “I saw concrete utility poles snapped in half, I saw a lot of places where the lines were totally down, so that’s going to require rebuilding that power infrastructure and the debris removal removal effort is going to be really, really massive.”

On the morning of Oct. 5, Biden approved DeSantis’ request for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide 100 percent federal cost share for debris removal and other emergency protective measures for up to 60 days after storm landfall.

Roughly around 2.5 million Floridians were under mandatory evacuation orders during Hurricane Ian and were urged to heed orders. But, some residents either saw no need to leave or simply did not have the privilege.

Naples, Florida resident Desiree Brazdis described how her family was in the evacuation zone, but chose not to evacuate since the evacuation orders did not apply to the neighbors across the street.

“We were in the evacuation zone but we did not evacuate,” Brazdis said. “We were right on the line where the people across the street were not in an evacuation zone, so we figured we were probably okay to stay home. The worst part was just sitting through it and waiting for it to pass.”

However, other Florida residents did heed the warnings from state government officials and evacuated to zones outside the range of Hurricane Ian. Kassidy McEnroe, a resident of Winter Garden, Florida, was one of the millions evacuees.

“My family lives about two and a half hours south in West Palm Beach, an area of south Florida on the Atlantic side where the hurricane was not predicted to hit [and] all models showed this area was well outside the cone,” McEnroe said. “I felt much safer here and being able to be with my family. I recognize that I am fortunate to be able to have a safe place to evacuate to and that my house and belongings were not affected.”

To keep up with Florida’s statewide response to the storm and other updates regarding Hurricane Ian recovery efforts, click here. For information about current and future tropical storms, click here.