Storm makes second landfall as hurricane, now in South Carolina, as the death toll in Florida grows

The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday it has saved 325 people and 83 pets so far in its response to Hurricane Ian.

Those numbers were as of 8 p.m. Friday. The Coast Guard is among the agencies responding to the devastation caused by Ian, which was a Category 4 hurricane when it struck Florida’s southwest coast Wednesday.

The Coast Guard posted video showing a man being rescued by helicopter from a boat stranded in mangroves from flooded areas near Sanibel.

Sanibel Island, in Lee County, was among the areas devastated by the storm and is south of where the hurricane made landfall. Sanibel city officials have said there was a storm surge there of 8 to 15 feet.

HAVANA — The widespread power outage caused by Hurricane Ian prompted several hundred people to protest in Havana, and a monitoring group said the island’s internet service shut down again Friday in what appeared to be an attempt to curb information about the demonstrations from spreading.

An Associated Press journalist saw about 400 people gathered Thursday night in at least two spots in the Cerro neighborhood shouting, “We want light, we want light,” and banging pots and pans.

It appeared to be the first public display over the electricity problems that spread from western Cuba, where Ian hit on Tuesday, to the entire island, leaving the country’s 11 million people in the dark. The storm also left three people dead and caused still unquantified damage.

Power was restored to much of the island within a day after the storm’s blast. But there still areas without service, including in the capital.

Hurricane Ian whipped up momentous swell in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Friday that a buoy off the southwestern edge of Florida put up a historic number: 52 feet, the largest Florida Gulf Coast measured by the Scripps' Coastal Data Information Program since 2007.

That height, measured Wednesday, the day of Ian's first landfall, is comparable or even higher than buoy readings off Hawaii's North Shore and the Northern California coast that inspire the athletes of big wave surfing to jet to Honolulu and San Francisco with their biggest boards.

The Gulf Coast buoy, identified as 226-Pulley Ridge, Florida, was recording measurements of 40 feet and above for hours before that record wave height, according to CDIP data.

The swell measured by 226-Pulley Ridge delivered as a storm surge of 12 to 18 feet was measured in Charlotte Harbor, Florida, as Ian approached and eventually struck the coast Wednesday, according to Scripps.

At least 23 deaths in Florida have been attributed to Hurricane Ian, the state medical examiners commission said Friday.

The deaths reported by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission have been confirmed to be related to the storm after autopsies. Most of the 23 drowned.

The true death toll from the hurricane, which struck Florida’s southwest coast as a Category 4 with 150-mph winds, could be higher.

Local officials have reported other deaths. According to an NBC News count of reports from officials, there have been 34 deaths in Florida.

Of the 23 deaths confirmed by medical examiners, a dozen were in Lee County where the storm made landfall Wednesday afternoon.

As Ian moved north through the Carolinas and toward Virginia on Friday night, it knocked out power to hundreds of thousands homes and businesses.

Hard-hit South Carolina, where Ian earlier Friday made landfall as a hurricane, had 99,224 customers without power as midnight approached, according to figures from PowerOutage.us.

North Carolina, which has experienced Ian mostly as a less potent version of its time as an ocean-fueled tropical cyclone, reported 370,857 customers in the dark, the site reported Friday night.

State Emergency Management Operations said most of those were in Wake, Guilford, Mecklenburg and Durham counties.

Though Ian was still on its way, Virginia had 95,395 customers without power late Friday, PowerOutage.us said.

Even as landfall knocked some of the breath out of Ian, eventually taking it down to a post-tropical cyclone, South Carolina's Charleston International Airport recorded more than 5 inches of rain Friday.

The National Weather Service's Charleston office tweeted that the city received 5.5 inches, making it the wettest Sept. 30 since record-keeping began.

The forecast office said the measurement would also make the date the fifth wettest September day and the 13th wettest day of any month on record.  

MEXICO CITY — Tropical Storm Orlene strengthened in the eastern Pacific on Friday and forecasters expected it to become a hurricane while heading for a projected landfall on Mexico’s northwestern coast Monday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Orlene had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph Friday evening. It was centered about 265 miles south-southwest of Cabo Corrientes and was moving north-northwest at 5 mph.

The center said Orlene was a small, compact storm, with tropical storm-force winds extending out only 45 miles from the center.

It was forecast to grow to hurricane force by Saturday morning before falling back to tropical storm strength ahead of a forecast Monday landfall in Sinaloa state, in the region around the resort city of Mazatlan.