Hurricane Ian landed in Florida as a category hurricane, going up the Atlantic ocean, already in the Carolinas and moving up north and hitting Virginia this past weekend, 10/2/22. Over 100 people in Florida died on Thursday 9/29 – Friday 9/30 due to the hurricane and at least 4 people in North Carolina. West Potomac student Marcus Davis said, “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened, and I hope things get better.” Ian left Florida with no electricity, little drinking water, inhabitable homes, pulverized rooms, toppled trees, gutted storefronts, and cars being set afloat. The damages in Florida are over $100 billion, including $63 billion in privately insured losses. The mayor of Fort Myers Beach County in Florida had his 900 year old cottage turned to ruins, and when walking around his neighborhood, he said, “When you are walking around the ruins, it’s an apocalyptic scene.”

After Hurricane Ian blew through South Carolina as a category 1 hurricane on September 30th, people are still cleaning up all the debris as more than 7,000 homes are still left without power. Hurricane Ian slammed through North Carolina as a tropical storm on October 1st-2nd and caused more than 38,000 homes to go without power but luckily a lot of homes in NC have had their power restored swiftly. Several streets in these states were flooded when Ian first hit them causing a lot of damage. A resident in Charleston, North Carolina had a a tree that had fallen near his house, he said, “If this tree had fallen a different way, It would be in our house. It’s pretty scary, pretty jarring.”

After going through North Carolina, Ian made its way up to Virginia, all FCPS-sanctioned extracurricular activities were canceled for the weekend as a response to Ian. Virginia Beach was also closed as a precaution and will be opened back up on Tuesday, 10/4/22. Ian has hit Virginia with tens of thousands of power outages and a whole lot of heavy rain this past week. Matthew Lewis commented, “What happened was quite sad, My support goes out to them.”