Yahoo Finance Hurricane Ian Rips Roof Off Florida Hospital, Flooding ICU Where Patients Had to Be Moved to Other Floors
A Florida hospital was hit hard by winds and flooding from Hurricane Ian on Wednesday.
Part of the fourth floor roof from the intensive care unit at HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte was blown off, Dr. Birgit Bodine, who works there, told the Associated Press. A lower level emergency room also experienced storm surge flooding.
"We didn't anticipate that the roof would blow off," Bodine, who spent the night at the hospital on what she anticipated would be a busy night, told the news agency.
Videos shared by a reporter for ABC affiliate WTVD show workers walking through water on the floor of the ICU, as well as towels spread on the ground to soak up flooding.
"Hard to believe," wrote reporter Josh Chapin.
RELATED: Hurricane Ian Knocks Out Power for More Than 2.5 Million People in Florida
Bodine told the AP that after water began coming down in the ICU, hospital staff had to evacuate some of the hospital's sickest patients to other floors — and that due to damage at the hospital, only two of the hospital's four floors were available for patients.
"The ambulances may be coming soon and we don't know where to put them in the hospital at this point," she told the outlet. "We're doubled and tripled up."
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On Wednesday, the hospital announced that due to the arrival of the storm they would only be open for emergencies.
"HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital is currently open for serving patients in our facility right now and emergency patients only," they wrote on Facebook. "Thank you for your cooperation."
HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.
RELATED: See Photos of Hurricane Ian's Path as Historic Storm Hits Florida
Ian made landfall near Cayo Costa, Florida, as a catastrophic Category 4 storm, with its 150 mph winds snapping apart trees, ripping homes to shreds and tearing down power lines across the coastline.
It has since been downgraded a tropical storm by the National Hurricane Center, although strong winds, heavy rains and storm surge are still predicted across portions of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
"This is by far the worst storm I have ever witnessed," Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson said during a call into the Today show on Thursday. "Watching the water rise from my condo in the heart of downtown, watching it rise and flood out all the stores on the first floor, it was heartbreaking."
Joe Raedle/Getty Damage in Fort Myers after Hurricane Ian passed through
On Thursday, President Joe Biden officially declared the state of Florida a major disaster zone, sending federal aid to residents in Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Hardee, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Pinellas and Sarasota counties.
Urgent rescue methods are now taking place to help those stranded by the massive flooding.
Although the full impact of the storm remains unknown, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno told Good Morning America on Thursday that "while I don't have confirmed numbers, I definitely know fatalities are in the hundreds."
"I can't give a true assessment until we're actually on scene assessing each scene. And we can't access, that's the problem," Marceno continued. "We're accessing the bridges, seeing what's compromised and what's not. And this will be a life-changing event for the men and women who are responding. They're going to see things they've never seen before."
