More than 2 million Floridians remained without power Friday morning as they emerged from the flooding and wreckage left by Hurricane Ian and began to plot a recovery from the storms devastation.

After lingering over Florida on Thursday as it weakened to a tropical storm, Ian had returned to Atlantic waters by early Friday, regained the strength of a lesser hurricane and was expected to make landfall in South Carolina by the afternoon.

Ian had come ashore Wednesday on Floridas Gulf Coast as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane, one of the strongest storms ever to hit the U.S. It flooded homes on both the states coasts, cut off the only road access to a barrier island, destroyed a historic waterfront pier and knocked out electricity to 2.6 million Florida homes and businesses nearly a quarter of utility customers.73

Hurricane Ian

In Lee County, where Fort Myers and Cape Coral took direct hits from the storm, more than 80% of customers were without power Friday morning. Inland, Hardee County in Central Florida awoke Friday nearly entirely in the dark, according to outages tracked by PowerOutage.us.

Read more: Early Hurricane Ian reports suggest substantial loss of life, Biden says

The Florida Power & Light Company which had nearly 1 million customers without electricity on Friday morning said the recovery could take some time in the areas most devastated by the storm.

Hurricane Ians catastrophic winds will mean parts of our system will need to be rebuilt not restored, the company said. Be prepared for widespread, extended outages as we are assessing the damage. We are already at work restoring power where we can do so safely.Read more: Will Hurricane Ian affect New England? Forecasters say its a tough call

Mike Sexton, a Florida Power & Light lineman on the recovery effort, said in a message posted to the companys Twitter page that trees taken down by the storm, lingering high winds and flooding were the main obstacles to restoring power.

Duke Energy offered similar sentiments in a statement. The states second-largest power supplier who had 500,000 of its 2 million Florida customers without power early Friday strong winds and heavy rainfall continued to impede the power restoration and damage assessment, slowing any estimation of when power would return.Read more: Hurricane Ian: Mass. residents gauge damage to their Florida properties

The company said it would provide estimated restoration times for the hardest hit areas by Friday night.

In a press conference Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that 5,000 Florida National Guardsmen and 2,000 guardsmen from other states had been activated, according to Orlando-area television station WESH. Over 40,000 lineworkers and other power company employees were at work, the network reported.

This is going to be one of those historic storms and have a profound impact on our state, DeSantis said. We thank people across the country for their thoughts and prayers.

At least four people were confirmed dead in Florida, according to the Associated Press.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.