Peo­ple kayak­ing down streets that were pass­able just a day or two ear­li­er. Hun­dreds of thou­sands with­out pow­er. Na­tion­al Guard he­li­copters fly­ing res­cue mis­sions to res­i­dents still strand­ed on Flori­da’s bar­ri­er is­lands.

Days af­ter Hur­ri­cane Ian carved a path of de­struc­tion from Flori­da to the Car­oli­nas, the dan­gers per­sist­ed, and even wors­ened in some places. It was clear the road to re­cov­ery from this mon­ster storm will be long and painful.

And Ian was still not done. The storm doused Vir­ginia with rain Sun­day, and of­fi­cials warned of the po­ten­tial for se­vere flood­ing along its coast, be­gin­ning overnight Mon­day.

Ian’s rem­nants moved off­shore and formed a nor’east­er that is ex­pect­ed to pile even more wa­ter in­to an al­ready in­un­dat­ed Chesa­peake Bay and threat­ened to cause the most sig­nif­i­cant tidal flood­ing event in Vir­ginia’s Hamp­ton Roads re­gion in the last 10 to 15 years, said Cody Poche, a Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice me­te­o­rol­o­gist.

The is­land town of Chin­coteague de­clared a state of emer­gency Sun­day and strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed that res­i­dents in cer­tain ar­eas evac­u­ate. The East­ern Shore and north­ern por­tion of North Car­oli­na’s Out­er Banks were al­so like­ly to be im­pact­ed.

At least 68 peo­ple have been con­firmed dead: 61 in Flori­da, four in North Car­oli­na and three in Cu­ba.

With the death toll ris­ing, Deanne Criswell, ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, said the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment was ready to help in a huge way, fo­cus­ing first on vic­tims in Flori­da, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make land­fall in the Unit­ed States. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and first la­dy Jill Biden plan to vis­it the state on Wednes­day.

Flood­ed road­ways and washed-out bridges to bar­ri­er is­lands left many peo­ple iso­lat­ed amid lim­it­ed cell­phone ser­vice and a lack of ba­sic ameni­ties such as wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and the in­ter­net. Of­fi­cials warned that the sit­u­a­tion in many ar­eas isn’t ex­pect­ed to im­prove for sev­er­al days be­cause the rain that fell has nowhere to go be­cause wa­ter­ways are over­flow­ing.

Few­er than 620,000 homes and busi­ness­es in Flori­da were still with­out elec­tric­i­ty by ear­ly Mon­day, down from a peak of 2.6 mil­lion.

Criswell told “Fox News Sun­day” that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the Coast Guard and De­part­ment of De­fense, had moved in­to po­si­tion “the largest amount of search and res­cue as­sets that I think we’ve ever put in place be­fore.”

Still, re­cov­ery will take time, said Criswell, who vis­it­ed the state Fri­day and Sat­ur­day to as­sess the dam­age and talk to sur­vivors. She cau­tioned that dan­gers re­main with downed pow­er lines in stand­ing wa­ter.

More than 1,600 peo­ple have been res­cued statewide, ac­cord­ing to Flori­da’s emer­gency man­age­ment agency.

Res­cue mis­sions were on­go­ing, es­pe­cial­ly to Flori­da’s bar­ri­er is­lands, which were cut off from the main­land when storm surges de­stroyed cause­ways and bridges.

The state will build a tem­po­rary traf­fic pas­sage­way for the largest one, Pine Is­land, Flori­da Gov. Ron De­San­tis said Sun­day, adding that an al­lo­ca­tion had been ap­proved for De­port­ment of Trans­porta­tion to build it this week and con­struc­tion could start as soon as Mon­day.

“It’s not go­ing to be a full bridge, you’re go­ing to have to go over it prob­a­bly at 5 miles an hour or some­thing, but it’ll at least let peo­ple get in and off the is­land with their ve­hi­cles,” the gov­er­nor said at a news con­fer­ence.

Coast Guard, mu­nic­i­pal and pri­vate crews have been us­ing he­li­copters, boats and even jet­skis to evac­u­ate peo­ple over the past sev­er­al days.

In rur­al Semi­nole Coun­ty, north of Or­lan­do, res­i­dents donned waders, boots and bug spray to pad­dle to their flood­ed homes Sun­day.

Ben Bertat found 4 inch­es (10 cen­time­ters) of wa­ter in his house by Lake Har­ney af­ter kayak­ing there.

“I think it’s go­ing to get worse be­cause all of this wa­ter has to get to the lake” said Bertat, point­ing to the wa­ter flood­ing a near­by road. “With ground sat­u­ra­tion, all this swamp is full and it just can’t take any more wa­ter. It doesn’t look like it’s get­ting any low­er.”

Else­where, pow­er re­mained knocked out to at least half of South Car­oli­na’s Paw­leys Is­land, a beach com­mu­ni­ty rough­ly 75 miles (115 kilo­me­ters) up the coast from Charleston. In North Car­oli­na, the storm downed trees and pow­er lines.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Re­bec­ca San­tana in Ft. My­ers; Bren­dan Far­ring­ton and An­tho­ny Iza­guirre in Tal­la­has­see; David Fis­ch­er in Mi­a­mi; Sarah Rankin in Rich­mond, Va.; and Richard Lard­ner in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.

By BOB­BY CAINA CAL­VAN and MIKE SCHNEI­DER-As­so­ci­at­ed Press