CNN
—
Many Floridians are still recovering from Hurricane Ian as Nicole tornadoes and floods terrorize the Carolinas and Virginia on Friday, but storms this week have killed at least five people and caused dangerous storm surges and strong winds. picking up debris after a building was torn apart in
At least 49 beachfront properties, including hotels and condominiums, are considered “unsafe” in Volusia County, Florida. Nicole struck the east coast of Florida south of Vero Beach early Thursday morning as a Category 1 hurricane before weakening into a tropical hurricane. It will turn into a rainstorm and eventually a tropical depression on Friday afternoon.
“The structural damage along our coastline is unprecedented,” Volusia County Manager George Recktenwald said at a press conference, adding that more buildings are likely to be identified as compromised. rice field.
Track Nicole here >>
Ian’s damaged coastal buildings were further damaged by coastal erosion when the storm hit Florida, the first hurricane to hit the United States in almost 40 years. Delegates Wednesday evacuated residents from structurally unstable buildings in Volusia County ahead of Nicole’s arrival.
In Wilbur-by-the-Sea, a barrier island community off Daytona Beach, 22 homes were pre-evacuated after authorities declared them unsafe.
Later, in Nicole, several seaside houses collapsed into the sea.
Tripp Varigorski unlocked the front door of his home to find a large hole where his living room used to be, leading to crashing ocean waves. Pointing to where the TV and sofa used to be, he told CNN affiliate WKMG he was shocked.
“I was here on Tuesday night and saw the wall deteriorating, and when I woke up on Wednesday morning the wall was completely gone and I started evacuating. ‘ said Valigorsky. “And now we are here.”
Nicole also ripped through the infrastructure already strained by Ian, pushing large amounts of water onto land.
The storm surge peaked at about 6 feet Thursday morning, sending rising waters into the streets. In addition to the unusually high tides associated with this week’s full moon, low tides also pushed the shores and held the water level for longer.
Homes nearly dangled from cliffs and a Daytona Beach hotel collapsed into the ocean in the aftermath of the storm, drone video has shown.
“It’s almost impossible to comprehend the devastation. Imagine your house crumbling into the ocean,” said Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood. murmured.
According to the National Weather Service, many people in Carolina and Georgia received a wind bulletin earlier in the day, while areas of Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York were hit hard from Friday night through Saturday. It will be below 1 degree by morning. It was capable of gusts of up to 50 mph.
Tornado warnings that had been in effect for several states on Friday were canceled at 6 p.m. ET.
The system is expected to produce an additional 1 to 3 inches of rain over the Central Appalachian Mountains, mid-Atlantic and New England by Saturday morning before it rolls off the US East Coast, according to the US Weather Prediction Center.
As Nicole’s wreckage moves northward into Saturday, its tropical moisture will be absorbed by another cold front, bringing blizzard conditions to the northern plains, said CNN meteorologist Derek Van Damme.
Heavy rain and gusts of wind in excess of 30 mph will make Interstate 95 difficult to pass. Meanwhile, as the storm passes, air travel could be disrupted at many East Coast airports. Strong winds caused an average delay of 63 minutes at Newark International Airport on Friday night, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Schools and colleges were closed, hundreds of flights were canceled, airports were shut down, and some coastal residents were evacuated as a giant storm approached Florida.
After Nicole passed, streets remained flooded, roads and homes were damaged, and thousands of homes lost power. More than 300,000 of her customers in Florida were affected by the previous outage. By Friday evening, that number had dwindled to about 8,000, according to PowerOutage.us.
In a news release, the sheriff’s office said two people had died after being “electrocuted by a power line that failed” in Orange County. According to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, he’s also under investigation as two deaths may have been linked to the storm following the fatal car crash.
A 68-year-old Port Canaveral man who was on the yacht early Thursday morning also died, according to the Cocoa Police Department. took me to Police said he was later confirmed dead, but added that the cause of death had not yet been determined.
A broken power line in a flooded street is one of the many hazards residents have to deal with in the aftermath of a hurricane as they return home, with crews clearing debris from roads and making emergency repairs to washed-out roads. are doing
