Hurricane Ian updates: Florida death toll climbs

Hurricane Ian caused extensive and "historic" impact and damage in across Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference Thursday.

"The impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that was done has been historic and this is just off initial assessments. There's going to be a lot more assessing that goes on in the days ahead," DeSantis said.

"But I think we've never seen a flood event like this. We've never seen storm surge of this magnitude and it hit an area where there's a lot of people in a lot of those low-lying areas and it's going to end up doing extensive damage to a lot of people's homes," he said.

As of 6 a.m., there are 2.02 million customers without power, according to DeSantis.

DeSantis said Charlotte and Lee counties are "basically off the grid at this point." The areas will likely need a rebuilding of their infrastructure.

Ian, now a tropical storm, is near Florida’s east coast and is moving back over water. Ian is expected to re-intensify and could be at near-hurricane strength when it approaches the coast of South Carolina on Friday.

A hurricane watch has been issued for South Carolina and the Georgia coast.

Ian is producing catastrophic flooding over east-central Florida and is expected to produce life-threatening flooding, storm surge and gusty winds across portions of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

There are already more than 14,000 customers without power in Georgia.

-ABC News' Max Golembo

Hurricane Ian caused serious damage to the city of Punta Gorda's water system, leaving it empty, the city said in an alert sent out to residents.

Water services will be restored as repairs are made, but the city warned it may take days to complete the repairs, officials said.

The city is under a boil water notice.

Officials set up a water fill station for residents and additional water availability has been requested through the Emergency Operations Center, the city said.

Power has been restored to 502,100 customers, as of 5 a.m. Thursday, Florida Power & Light Company said.

But, the power utility company warned that some customers may experience prolonged outages "because portions of the electric system in Southwest Florida will need to be rebuilt rather than repaired," FPL said in a statement.

The company said is still working to restore power to 1.2 million customers.

FPL said its workforce has increased to more than 20,000 people, including mutual assistance from 30 states, as it works around the clock to restore power.

"Hurricane Ian has forever altered the lives of so many of our fellow Floridians and we recognize the road to recovery will be long and challenging," Eric Silagy, chairman and CEO of FPL, said in a statement.