In Fort Myers, a woman named Halle B. stood outside her wrecked and flooded home and told ABC News' chief meteorologist Ginger Zee about the terrifying ordeal she and her cat, Maui Maui, endured.
"I'm the stupidest woman. I'm from Florida. I went through (hurricanes) Andrew, Irma. I decided to stay. I did not know it was going to be a (Category) 4 ... and a tidal surge," Halle B. said.
She said she and her cat initially took shelter in her bathtub for three to four hours.
"And then the water just started coming into the front door and then it just exploded," she said, adding that her refrigerator floated away in the tidal surge from the Gulf of Mexico a little over a mile from her home.
She said that as the water got higher, she and her cat fled the bathtub and got onto her sleigh bed, which started to float.
"We floated on the bed up to the ceiling," Halle B. said. "We only had a foot of air left."
Some Floridians have decided to ignore the state’s evacuation orders and ride out Hurricane Ian at home, which made landfall on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm.
abcnews.go.com
