Wisconsin crews set to help Floridians in Hurricane Ian aftermath
FLORIDA (CBS 58) -- Pictures of entire neighborhoods taken out by Hurricane Ian are being shared. The Red Cross is working around the clock to provider shelter to the newly homeless - and utility crews are speeding to Florida to see what they can do.
More than 33,000 Floridians are spending another night in one of the Red Cross' 260 shelters across the state. And volunteers are coming from all over to help in the mass relief effort.
The massive storm surge left catastrophic damages to Sanibel Causeway. It is now an island completely shut off from the mainland.
Elsewhere in Florida - roofs blown away - heavy winds tossed trees and boats, and left entire neighborhoods unrecognizable. Rescues are continuing, even now. Water waist deep, and higher in spots.
At least five have been reported dead in Lee County. And the power is out for at least 90 percent of Fort Myers.
"We're on daily mutual aid call, sometimes multiple times a day where the different utility companies in that area are on the call and they'll let us know what kind of damage that they're seeing," said Amy Jahns, We Energies spokesperson.
We Energies is releasing its contract crews to help out, and monitoring weather maps, to see whether their own workers may be called to the Carolinas in the coming days.
"It's nice to know that we're playing a part of helping them get their lives back to normal too," said Eric Miller of Kaukauna Utilities.
Kaukauna Utilities has a two-man crew headed to Kissimmee, Florida in a bucket truck.
You can imagine how fun it would be driving down in a large vehicle that's not built for highway speeds, probably roaring the whole way down and crawling over the mountains. Wish them safe travels and hope that they stay safe.
"We try to make sure that we gave them a lot of resources but also on a personal level, they're bringing down a lot of water and other things to drink too, not their first rodeo I guess," said Miller.
Nearly 50 lineworkers from Wisconsin Public Utilities met up in Beloit, roughly 24 hours after the hurricane hit Florida. Traveling by convoy to New Smyrna Beach.
"It's gonna be a lot of debris and we're gonna have to clean up over there. So there's gonna be a lot of chain saws working out over there. Yea so what we want to do is get those main lines going back up. That's gonna feed all the rest of the commercial properties, residential properties over there," said Michael Czuprynko of Municipal Electric Utilities of Wisconsin.
The secondary lines will be next. Our Wisconsin crews tell us they never know what they'll find until they get there, but they're prepared to stay in Florida up to four weeks.