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Hurricane Ian flooded a Florida hospital's lower floor and partially tore its roof off, forcing staff to evacuate its sickest patients, the Associated Press reported.
Ian slammed into Florida's south-western coast as a Category 4 storm on Wednesday afternoon, bringing with it heavy rain and wind speeds of up to 155 mph, the BBC reported.
Birgit Bodine, who works at HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte, told the AP that Hurricane Ian flooded the hospital's first-floor emergency room and caused the roof of its fourth-floor intensive care unit to partially blow off.
The medium-sized hospital has four floors in total, AP reported.
The damage forced staff to evacuate the hospital's sickest patients from the fourth floor to the two floors that were not impacted, Bodine told AP. Some of the patients were on ventilators, she added.
Bodine, who spent the night at the hospital to be with the patients, told AP that staff used towels and plastic bins to try to clean up the mess on the first floor.
"For us, as much as everything is terrible and we're exhausted ... as long as our patients do OK and nobody ends up dying or having a bad outcome, that's what matters," Bodine told AP.
Hurricane Ian has left more than 2 million people in Florida without power, The Guardian reported.
On Thursday morning, Hurricane Ian downgraded to a tropical storm, according to the National Hurricane Center. But local officials have repeatedly urged Floridians to be careful, adding that it will continue to cause heavy rain and flooding, the BBC reported.
It is forecast to move northeast across the state by late Thursday and progress into Georgia or South Carolina on Friday.
