At Least 84 Dead After Hurricane Hits Americas
At least 84 people have been confirmed dead a week after Hurricane Ian hit the US and nearby regions: 75 in Florida, five in North Carolina, three in Cuba and one in Virginia.
The Category 4 hurricane hit southwest Florida on Wednesday, September 28. Around 400,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity on Tuesday, although this was down from 2.6 million when the storm hit.
Search and rescue efforts are ongoing in the state, where more than 2,350 people have been rescued.
Flooded roads and washed-away bridges have left many residents on Florida's barrier islands isolated without clean water, electricity or internet. Crews have been working to restore electricity, but state officials said they expect people to be without power until Sunday, October 9.
Hurricane Ian isn't the only storm the US is trying to clean up after. On Monday, US President Joe Biden was in Puerto Rico to see the damage done by Hurricane Fiona, a Category 1 storm that hit the island on September 18.
The hurricane cut electrical power to the US territory of 3.2 million people, 44% of whom live below the poverty line.
At the time of Biden's visit, power had been restored to about 90% of the island's 1.47 million homes, but more than 137,000 others, mostly in the worst hit areas of Puerto Rico's southern and western regions, remained in the dark. Another 66,000 homes were without water.
And in Cuba, protests took place in Havana on Thursday and Friday against delays in fully restoring electricity across the island after Hurricane Ian cut off power on Tuesday, September 27.
