The Storm Watch That Never Ends

DeSANTIS: HURRICANE IAN A ‘TOP 5’ STORM

Hurricane Ian made landfall with Category 4 force on the southwest coast of Florida Wednesday afternoon, wracking hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses with flooding and dangerous winds before being downgraded to Category 2 as it headed north. As of Wednesday evening over one-and-a-half million Floridians were without power. Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-FL, predicted that the hurricane will “rank as one of the top five hurricanes to ever hit the Florida peninsula.” (Fox News, Sept 28, 2022) Pictures emailed to Canada Free Press from Florida friends, caught up in the very eye of the storm, taken from inside their house in Fort Myers, broke our hearts. Coming across videos of people swimming in their living rooms shown on Fox host Jesse Watters show brought us to tears. “Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on southwest Florida — trapping residents in flooded homes, damaging at least one hospital, and leaving over two million without power before it was downgraded to a tropical storm at 5 a.m. EDT on Thursday.(NY Post, Sept. 29, 2022)

“Ian made landfall over the Sunshine State as a category 4 storm with winds of up to 150 miles per hour — making it one of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the country. “It left a path of destruction throughout the Gulf Coast, flooding neighborhoods, homes and buildings with its storm surge and heavy rains. “An emergency room inside ER of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte was inundated with water as powerful winds tore through the facility’s roof — exposing its intensive care unit to the dangerous elements, according to a doctor at the hospital.

“Water poured down onto the ICU as staffers rushed the hospital’s sickest patients — some of whom were on ventilators — to other floors, according to Dr. Birgit Bodine. “As long as our patients do OK and nobody ends up dying or having a bad outcome, that’s what matters,” Bodine told the Associated Press. “Nearby, calls of people trapped inside their flooded houses overwhelmed local police departments. “Residents posted pleas to social media sites alongside videos of rising water gushing towards their homes as Ian transformed roadways into rivers. “One woman’s North Fort Myers house was swamped by 5 feet of water, according to her out-of-state daughter, Pittsburgh journalist Brittany Hailer. “We don’t know when the water’s going to go down. We don’t know how they’re going to leave, their cars are totaled,” Hailer said. “Her only way out is on a boat.” “Ian toppled trees and powerlines causing two million Florida homes and businesses to lose electricity, according to the PowerOutage.us site.

“While the hurricane dropped to a category 1 with winds of 90 miles per hour, its path of destruction is far from over, experts said. “Storm surges as high as 6 feet are expected to batter northeast Florida on Thursday, with a high possibility of catastrophic flooding and dangerous winds. “Ian is barreling towards the Atlantic Ocean, where it is believed to continue north up the coast. “No deaths have been reported in the US as of Wednesday night.”

And on this day, The Morning After? ‘People Trapped, 2.5M Without Power as Ian Drenches Florida’ (Associated Press, Sept. 29, 2022)

“One of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the United States threatened catastrophic flooding around the state. Ian's tropical-storm-force winds extended outward up to 415 miles (665 km), and nearly all of Florida was getting drenched. “The National Hurricane Center said Ian became a tropical storm over land early Thursday and was expected to regain near-hurricane strength after emerging over Atlantic waters near the Kennedy Space Center later in the day, with South Carolina in its sights for a second U.S. landfall.

“A stretch of the Gulf Coast remained inundated by ocean water, pushed ashore by the massive storm. “Severe and life-threatening storm surge inundation of 8 to 10 feet above ground level along with destructive waves is ongoing along the southwest Florida coastline from Englewood to Bonita Beach, including Charlotte Harbor,” the Miami-based hurricane center said. “Hurricane Ian turned streets into rivers and blew down trees as it slammed into southwest Florida on Wednesday with 150 mph (241 kph) winds, pushing a wall of storm surge. Ian’s strength at landfall was Category 4, tying it for the fifth-strongest hurricane, when measured by wind speed, ever to strike the U.S. “At 5 a.m. Thursday, the storm was about 40 miles (70 km) southeast of Orlando and 35 miles (55 kilometers) southwest of Cape Canaveral, carrying maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph) and moving toward the cape at 8 mph (13 kmh), the center said. “It doesn’t matter what the intensity of the storm is. We’re still expecting quite a bit of rainfall,” Robbie Berg, senior hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Up to a foot (30 centimeters) of rain forecast for parts of Northeast Florida, coastal Georgia and the Lowcountry of South Carolina. As much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) could fall in southern Virginia as the storm moves inland over the Carolinas, and the center said landslides were possible in the southern Appalachian mountains.”

Throughout ‘The Storm Watch that Never Ended The Night’, we lost touch with most of our close Florida friends, including Doug and Katherine in Haines City, the recently widowed Kathie, in Rotonda, Stacey and Nestor in the frightening Eye of the Storm, held hostage by the storm, among others, We pray that it is only because of the loss of power that we haven’t heard from them. We take soul comfort in knowing that today is Michaelmas, also known as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. We know in our hearts that all CFP friends mentioned above are alright, no matter how the ravages of Hurricane Ian may have left them. How do we know? Because we Trust in God Almighty. Meanwhile, the storm “ranked as one of the top five hurricanes to ever hit the peninsula of Florida” has passed leaving millions without electricity and cautiously waiting for the next political storm already being planned for them by the Marxists holding public office. But we turn to God, not politicians, for mercy.