Death toll from Hurricane Ian rose to over 77

The death toll from Hurricane Ian rose Saturday to more than 77 as one of strongest and costliest storms to ever hit the U.S. pushed northward from the Carolinas leaving in its wake a trifecta of misery — dangerous flooding, power outages and massive destruction.

Ian, which slammed into Florida on Wednesday with 150 mph winds, was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone after marching across South Carolina and was expected to weaken even more as it moved later Saturday into south-central Virginia before rolling into the mid-Atlantic.

The storm was still wielding maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

But the NHC also warned of potential flash-flooding both in urban and rural areas across the central Appalachians and the southern Mid-Atlantic region through the weekend as well as continued record river flooding across parts of Florida.

The 77 confirmed storm-related deaths were recorded in Florida and North Carolina, according to a tally by state officials and an NBC News count. And with rescue efforts ongoing and the floodwater receding in places littered with wrecked homes, local officials warned the death toll could still rise.

At least 1,100 rescues have been made in Florida since Ian made landfall in the state, Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a news conference on Saturday.

“There’s been a great outpouring of support and I’ve seen a lot of resilience in this community of people that want to pick themselves up and they want to get their communities back on their feet,” DeSantis told reporters. “We’ll be here and we’ll be helping every step of the way.”

Rear Adm. Brendan McPherson, who commands the Coast Guard in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, told the Today Show on Saturday morning that power outages were complicating rescue efforts as people in affected communities without cell phone service or electricity were temporarily cut off from the rest of the world.