As Hurricane Ian Nears Florida, More Than a Million Homes Lie in Its Dangerous Path

family preparing to protect their home from hurricane ian in florida

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

After slamming into Cuba on Tuesday morning, Hurricane Ian is expected to set its sights on western Florida later this week—threatening millions of residents.

The storm is expected to crash into Florida’s Gulf Coast late Wednesday or early Thursday around Tampa Bay. More than 1 million homes lie in the path of the Category 3 storm, which could be accompanied by storm surges of up to 10 feet, according to a recent CoreLogic analysis of National Hurricane Center projections from Monday morning.

Homes that are destroyed could come with a price tag of up to $258 billion in reconstruction costs.

(The CoreLogic analysis looked at potential storm-surge damage to single-family and multifamily homes, including mobile homes, that were under four stories.)

Mandatory evacuations have been ordered in parts of about a half-dozen counties that are currently in the storm’s trajectory. However, it’s still too early to predict the exact path of the natural disaster and just how bad it will be, says Tom Jeffery, senior hazard scientist at CoreLogic.

“We still don’t know until this storm makes landfall how much devastation it will cause,” he says. However, “it looks like it’s going to ramp up to a Category 3 to 4 storm, so it’s a major hurricane. This has the potential to be a wide-ranging storm with a lot of width to the wind field on the Gulf side of Florida.”

Anywhere from about 100,000 to 400,000 homes in the Tampa metropolitan area, which includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater, along with the surrounding towns and suburbs, could be in danger depending on the strength of the storm. For a Category 1 hurricane, damages could total $21.9 billion and go up to about $90.6 billion for a Category 4 storm.

“You’re going to see a multiplying effect from the flooding because of the rainfall combined with the storm surge,” says Jeffery of the two forces expected to pummel the region simultaneously. This is likely to create flooding conditions for homes and businesses. “There’s more opportunity for flooding because the rainfall is not able to run off. That rainfall water has nowhere to go.”

In the Northport metro, which encompasses Sarasota and Bradenton, about 46,000 to 233,000 homes could be impacted with a reconstruction cost between $11.6 billion and $58 billion.

In the Cape Coral metro, which includes Fort Myers, anywhere from 23,500 to about 227,000 homes could be affected, with between $7 billion and $57 billion in reconstruction costs.

The Naples metro could have anywhere from just over 6,000 to 125,000 homes damaged by the storm. Reconstruction costs could range from $1.8 billion to $36.1 billion. And about 5,000 to 62,000 homes in Punta Gorda could come into harm’s way, costing $1.6 billion to $16.5 billion to rebuild.

“It’s going to affect a large population of people along the coast,” says Jeffery. However, people continue to seek out homes along the water due to the natural beauty despite the dangers. “There’s a certain resiliency to people who live in these areas. [They] know that every year there’s a potential for real estate to be hit.”

Hurricane Fiona, a Category 1 storm, hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 18, claiming at least three lives and knocking out power on the island. About a half-million homes and businesses still weren’t back online as of Tuesday.

Hurricane season in the U.S. is usually from June to November.

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