Hurricane Ian pounds Florida as monster Category 4 storm
Hurricane Ian slammed into the coast of southwest Florida as a monster Category 4 storm with powerful winds and torrential rains threatening "catastrophic" damage and flooding.
The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said the eye of the "extremely dangerous" hurricane made landfall on the barrier island of Cayo Costa, west of the city of Fort Myers.
Dramatic television footage from the coastal city of Naples showed floodwaters surging into beachfront homes, submerging roads and sweeping away vehicles.
Fort Myers, which has a population of more than 80,000, was also experiencing severe coastal flooding with some neighbourhoods resembling lakes.
The NHC said Ian was packing maximum sustained winds of 240 kilometers per hour when it made landfall and forecast "catastrophic storm surge, winds and flooding in the Florida peninsula."
More than one million customers have already lost power in Florida, a tracking website recorded, with the number expected to rise. Of 11 million customers tracked in Florida, 1.07 million were suffering outages, PowerOutages.us reported.
Ian is expected to affect several million people across Florida and in the southeastern states of Georgia and South Carolina, and may have caused multiple casualties offshore.
The US Border Patrol said 20 migrants were missing after their boat sank. Four Cubans who survived swam to shore in the Florida Keys and three were rescued at sea by the coast guard.
