Six injured after monster wave sweeps them off footpath: 'Disastrous'

Six people have been taken to hospital after a monster wave swept them off a footpath after Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc.

A powerful surge of water at Miami Beach in the US state of Florida engulfed the pedestrians as a king tide sent them into manmade shipping canal Government Cut.

A video posted on Twitter by WLPG TV journalist Louis Aguirre shows the terrifying wave crashing onto a footpath as a woman sprints away to stand on a railing for safety while a bike is crushed up against the fence.

Aguirre tweeted the monster king tide had merged with the noon high tide on Miami Beach.

A resident who lives nearby told local news station WSVN they watched the wave from their home.

“I have never seen the water this turbulent, ever,” the resident said.

Another witness, Tim Carr, told the news station: "It's kind of the perfect storm between king tides this month and, I think the remnants of [Hurricane] Ian."

People on Twitter were shocked by the footage and the fact people were so close to the water.

"Being near water during [a] hurricane is disastrous," one wrote.

"Nothing like this has ever happened before. There was no warning. Perfect storm of Ian 'after waves', king tide and high tide," another wrote.

"Holy crap! There were people squashed against the fence!" a third added.

Hurricane Ian's path of destruction

The storm struck Florida's Gulf Coast on Wednesday as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US mainland and then cut a destructive path across the state, transforming beach towns into disaster areas with catastrophic flooding and winds.

There have been reports of at least 21 deaths in Florida, Kevin Guthrie, director of the state's Division of Emergency Management, said at a morning briefing. He stressed that some of those reports remained unconfirmed.

Georgetown, with a population of about 10,000, is a tourist destination known for its oak-lined streets and more than 50 sites on the National Registry of Historic Places. The town was heavily damaged by 1989's Hurricane Hugo.

Even before Ian's arrival, Charleston was seeing torrential rain. Video clips on social media showed several inches of water in some streets in the port city, which is especially prone to flooding.

A city-commissioned report released in November 2020 found about 90 per cent of all residential properties were vulnerable to storm surge flooding.

Two days after Ian first hit Florida, the extent of the damage there was becoming more apparent.

Some 10,000 people were unaccounted for, Guthrie said, but many of them were likely in shelters or without power. Roughly 1.6 million Florida homes and businesses remained without power on Friday, according to PowerOutage.us.

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