Video Shows Major Flooding, Destroyed Buildings in Ft. Myers

Fort Myers, the southwest Florida city nearest to where Hurricane Ian made landfall on Wednesday, experienced widespread destruction from one of the strongest storms ever to hit the state. One video shows floodwaters swallowing homes, one of which appears to have collapsed into rubble, the New York Post reports. Frank Loni, an architect who took video of the flooding, said he'd never seen anything like it before. "The storm surge is very significant. We’re seeing cars and boats float down the street. We’re seeing trees nearly bent in half,” he told CNN. "There’s quite a bit of chaos on the streets." Similar destruction was seen in communities including Naples and Cape Coral.

Authorities in Lee County say they are still trying to assess the damage and rescue stranded people. "I am sad to tell you that while we don't know the full extent of the damage for Lee County right now, we are beginning to get a sense that our community has been, in some respects, decimated," Roger Desjarlais, the county manager, said Wednesday night, per the News-Press. "It is reasonable to think all the conditions that we have experienced for the last 12 hours or so that there can be fatalities but we just don't now that yet," he said. The storm has left more than 2 million people in the state without power. (More Hurricane Ian stories.)