Schools have established mental health services to help traumatized students get back on track with their studies. Housing has begun to bounce back and programs were created to help people buy homes. The area has received hundreds of millions of federal dollars in reimbursement for cleanup efforts - in some cases faster than first expected. More: GALLERY: Damage from Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beachĭespite such devastation, much has improved in the last two years. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed, thousands of trees were snapped and the lives of many families were uprooted. Ron DeSantis called the storm a '500-year flooding event.' President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in Florida on Thursday.Panama City and the rest of Bay County on Saturday will mark two years since Category 5 Hurricane Michael struck, changing the area forever. The death toll from Ian was up to at least 78 people on Monday: 71 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba, where the storm made its first landfall on Sept.

It's expected to keep moving across Florida into parts of Georgia and South Carolina. The hurricane came ashore near Cayo Costa, Florida, as a major Category 4 storm but its maximum sustained winds were only 7 mph less than a Category 5. The storm returned to hurricane force the same day, then made landfall again Friday in South Carolina.

Ian was downgraded to a tropical storm with 65-mph winds early Thursday as Florida braced for storm surges, flooding and wind damage. Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S., made landfall on Florida's Gulf coast on Wednesday afternoon. Ian's 150-mph winds and heavy rains knocked out power for 2.6 million residents as it continued to batter its way across the Sunshine State.

Hurricane damage to panama city airport