An Unconfirmed Death Toll Estimate From Lee County Spread Widely

As people across Florida struggled on Thursday morning to understand the scale of the damage from Hurricane Ian, the sheriff of Lee County, Carmine Marceno, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that hundreds of people might have died in his county — an estimate that was quickly shared on social media and in some news reports.

“While I don’t have the confirmed numbers, I definitely know the fatalities are in the hundreds,” the sheriff said. “There are thousands of people that are waiting to be rescued and, again, cannot give a...