One Orlando woman and her 72-year-old mother say they were forced to swim out of a window of their home to seek help.

"You have to either swim or drown," the woman told CBS News, the BBC's partners in the US.

Meanwhile a resident of the harbourside city of Fort Myers, Tom Johnson, 54, said his home was not damaged, but his neighbours were not as lucky.

I was scared because I've never been through that," he told AFP.

"It was just the most horrifying sounds with debris flying everywhere, doors flying off."

His neighbour, Janelle Thil, 42, also swam to safety after her ground floor apartment began to flood.

"They got my dogs and then I jumped out of the window and swam," Thil said.

When she returned home, she opened her front door, and "had to wait about five minutes for all the floodwaters to come out".

"I loved my home," she said. "But I'm alive and that's what matters."

Image source, Reuters

One Florida resident who lost her home said the experience is "numbing" and has her feeling "overwhelmed".

"It's not my first hurricane but it's my first total loss," Karen told Reuters.

"I think I've lost everything I own, and I'm trying to be brave and know that my family and I are safe," she said.

"And I'll worry about all that other stuff later.

"This whole community is devastated. We've just got to move on and start a new chapter," she continued.

"It's all we can do."

John Sudworth
North America Correspondent

On the outskirts of Fort Myers we met Diole Ado, whose sons were helping clear up the shattered ruins of her home.

Diole moved to the mobile home community two years ago from New York and not only has she lost half of her property - the living room now exposed on all sides - she's lost her job too.

The greatest burden of adverse weather events is disproportionately borne by the most vulnerable.

"I clean houses," she told me. "Nobody is going to clean their houses now because their houses are a mess. It's too bad for me."

She'd been staying with her son when the hurricane struck, having been convinced by him to obey the warnings to move to safety.

"He said, 'Mum let's go, lets go. Don't stay here'," she said.

She's lucky she did.

Read more: Hurricane Ian devastates Fort Myers: 'The worst storm surge I've ever seen'

Alligators, snakes and sewage are some of the things being reported in Collier County's floodwater, officials have said, external.

The county's emergency management team has warned people to be cautious and stay away from floodwater.

At the Sunseekers mobile home park in North Fort Meyers, residents have had almost no outside help so far, a day after the devastating direct hit from Hurricane Ian.

But in the close-knit community, neighbours are banding together to help each other.

Hurricane Ian has also hit the inland city of Orlando.

Orange County officials are going door to door to rescue stranded residents and their pets.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Albert Harris

Image source, Albert Harris

Image source, Albert Harris

Image source, Albert Harris

Bernd Debusmann
BBC News, Naples, Florida

We've just got to Naples, Florida - parts of which have been rendered a dark and deserted ghost town by Hurricane Ian.

The city's pier is smashed in half. A concession stand - which just days ago marked the halfway point - now stands precariously over the water, with splintered pieces of wood hanging off.

About a block from the city's beach front, some roads remain impassable and underwater, while others have been left covered in mud as the water recedes.

A local police officer tells us that the upscale, multimillion dollar homes in the area are mostly owned by people who live in the northern US and come down for the town's busy tourist period, which begins next month and runs through March.

"It's going to take months to clear this," he tells us, gesturing with his flashlight at palm fronds strewn across a street.

The danger of storm surges is increasing along the Atlantic coast as Ian's winds drive water into Georgia and the Carolinas, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Coastal South Carolina could see the worst storm surges - as high as 7ft (2.1 meters) - in the coming hours, said the NHC.

In an evening briefing, acting NHC director Jamie Rhome noted that the part of South Carolina where the hurricane is expected to make landfall is known as the Lowcountry due to its lack of elevation.

Residents who live near coastal rivers are at the highest risk of storm surge flooding, however, communities further inland also face the danger of flash flooding due to heavy rain.

Image source, Getty Images

Rhome added that most deaths from hurricanes are caused indirectly during the recovery in the days after a storm has passed.

Around 16% of indirect deaths are due to carbon monoxide poisoning from using gas-powered generators indoors.

Heat and electrocution each account for 13% of indirect deaths.

Vehicles accidents also claim 17% of all indirect deaths, he warned.

A local official in Charlotte County, one of the areas in Florida hit hardest by Hurricane Ian, has told the BBC that 10 deaths have been confirmed in the county since the storm struck.

Joseph Tiseo, a county commissioner, said it was not yet clear how many of those people died as a direct result of the hurricane.

"We had a bunch of calls coming in when the storm was approaching, but we had to shut down 911 operations because we couldn't put our first responders on the roads during a hurricane event," he said.

“We don't know how many died of other causes.”

Emergency responders in the county are still following up on the calls they received.

Commissioner Tiseo said the destruction in Charlotte County, north of Fort Myers, was mostly caused by intense winds and not storm surges like in areas further south.

“We had a tremendous wind event that lasted for 12 hours straight from approximately noon until midnight,” he told the BBC. “It was brutal.”

Photos show the difficult task that residents of Florida now have as they recover from the storm.

More pictures here.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Florida's First Lady Casey DeSantis, who has been asked by her husband, the governor, to oversee hurricane relief fundraising, says the state's disaster fund has already received over $10m (£9m) in donations in the first 24 hours.

"Our hearts and our prayers are with so many people who are suffering," says Mrs DeSantis at the briefing, after being introduced by her husband.

She thanked some of the companies that have donated funds, including Amazon, Airbnb, Boeing and Walmart, as well as individual smaller donations.

"We are going to do everything we can immediately to get things to people who need them most," she said.

Image source, Reuters

Governor DeSantis did not provide any death toll for the storm.

One reporter asked him to confirm that rescuers were "not finding massive numbers of dead people on these islands".

"That is correct," he responds.

But he cautioned that rescuers going door to door might not be entering homes in cases where nobody responds.

The occupants could be deceased inside, or could be homeowners who simply left town.

"There's not been, in these rescue efforts, deceased people found as of yet," he says. "Now, that may change of course as they do more."

"It's a massive storm. I think we anticipate casualties," he warned.

Guthrie, of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, says drones are hampering rescue operations and becoming an "issue".

“Please do not operate your drones in the areas where we have military aircraft, search-and-rescue aircraft working," he says.

“When you go in there with your drone they have to stop working.”

At the governor's briefing, Kevin Guthrie, director at the Florida Division of Emergency Management, says: "We’re entering that phase of the response where we start to really get into what we refer to as indirect deaths."

He warns homeowners to watch out for power lines mixed in trees and says no-one should be tinkering with generators, chainsaws, and getting on ladders or roofs without proper training.

"People need to be extremely careful," says Guthrie. "If you do not know how to use a chainsaw. If you do not know how to climb a ladder. If you do not know the difference between a cable line and a power line, you should not be doing that."

He says there are "significantly" more deaths in a hurricane’s aftermath that are “100% avoidable” than during the disaster itself.

Governor DeSantis says emergency and rescue services have been working around the clock to ensure roads are cleared and people are safe.

Widespread infrastructure damage has been reported. DeSantis says damage to telephone towers has been considerable.

But, he adds, most school districts in the state will be reopening either on Friday or Monday.

Governor DeSantis says 330,000 gallons of fuel have already been moved into south-west Florida after petrol stations reported outages.

"There's been a massive amount of supplies staged" in advance, he says, but more supplies are on the way.

DeSantis says "the road situation is by and large really good".

The governor adds that he had expected there would have been “way, way more roads that would have been blocked by debris”.

Other states are sending ambulances, food, water, ice, tarps and cots, he says.

Governor DeSantis says: “We absolutely expect to have mortality from this hurricane.

“I would just caution people, there is a process by where that is confirmed.

“In terms of confirmed, that will be made made apparent in the coming days.”

There have been various unconfirmed reports in US media of several deaths, but only two verified so far - a 72-year-old man. And a 38-year-old man in Lake County who died after his vehicle hydroplaned.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is now giving a briefing on the latest updates on Hurricane Ian.

He says that officials have conducted over 700 rescues so far.

"There will of course be many more rescues," he says.

He adds that the damage to the area around Fort Myers, where many of the rescues were conducted, is "indescribable".

DeSantis says he just came back from a tour of the region and saw homes in Fort Myers Beach “wiped out”.

“To see a house just sitting in the middle of the Estero Bay," he says. "Literally must have gotten picked up, flown because of the massive wind speed and the storm surge and deposited in a body of water.

“There was cars floating in the middle of the water. Some of the homes were total losses.”

Buildings on fire, washed-away roads and flooded streets are some of the destruction that people emerging from their homes and shelters are seeing across Florida.

Experts say that Ian has caused billions of dollars in property damage.

Image source, Getty Images

As we await the evening briefing from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, here's the latest:

• Ian has once again strengthened to a category one hurricane, after being downgraded to a tropical storm
• It is now over the Atlantic Ocean, and gaining strength before it's projected to make landfall again in South Carolina on Friday
• Recovery and clean-up efforts are beginning in Florida, where billions of dollars in storm damages are estimated
• Over 2.6m customers in Florida have no electricity as of Thursday evening

• In Charlotte County, a spokesperson for the sheriff's department said there had been multiple deaths, but did not provide a firm figure
• So far one death is confirmed: a 72-year-old man in Deltona, central Florida, who reportedly died as he went to drain his outdoor pool during the storm

• A 18:00 curfew remains in effect for Lee County, Florida - the hardest-hit region
• Lee Health, one of the largest hospital systems in the city of Fort Myers, announced it has to evacuate its patients owing to a lack of running water