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Rescuers continue search for Hurricane Ian survivors in Florida
Rescuers searched for survivors among the ruins of Florida’s flooded homes from Hurricane Ian while authorities in South Carolina began assessing damage from its strike there as the remnants of one of the strongest and costliest hurricanes to ever hit the U.S. continued to push north.
The powerful storm terrorized millions of people for most of the week, battering western Cuba before raking across Florida from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, where it mustered enough strength for a final assault on South Carolina.
As of late Saturday afternoon, the official statewide death toll in Florida stood at 24. However, after contacting local sheriffs’ offices, CBS News found that the number of deaths attributed directly or indirectly to the hurricane was at least 72. Of those 72, 35 were in Lee County, and 23 in Charlotte County.
The office of North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper also reported Saturday at least four Ian-related deaths. They included a 25-year-old man, a 24-year-old woman, a 22-year-old man and a 65-year-old man. Three of the deaths involved vehicular accidents, the governor’s office said, while the 65-year-old man died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator that was running in a closed garage during a power outage. The man’s wife was also hospitalized.
As of Saturday afternoon, nearly 1.2 million homes and businesses remained without power in Florida, and hundreds of thousands of outages were reported across the Carolinas and Virginia.
At a Saturday morning press conference, FEMA and U.S. Coast Guard officials said about 4,000 people have been rescued in Florida by local, state and federal authorities, with a vast majority of those coming from the barrier islands. Some 10,000 people are still in shelters, according to the Red Cross, and authorities have not yet determined what kind of temporary housing will be set up for those who lost their homes.
At least 145 hospitals and medical facilities in Florida were impacted by Hurricane Ian. Of those, 10 emergency departments were fully evacuated. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to conduct damage assessments.
“There are impacts to the hospital system,” FEMA assistant administrator Anne Bink said, adding that FEMA is engaged in “bulk water delivery” to affected medical facilities, particularly in Lee County.
Meanwhile, crews on Saturday were going door to door in Pine Island, Florida, “to get everyone out,” the Matlacha/Pine Island Fire Control District said on social media. The storm heavily damaged the only bridge to the island, and left it without any power or water service. The Lee County Sheriff’s Office reported Saturday evening that the U.S. Coast Guard was planning a “waterborne” Pine Island evacuation effort Sunday.
In nearby Sanibel Island, the Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will soon send barges as a short-term solution for getting equipment and materials to the decimated island.
“That area is going to be out of out of commission for a long time,” said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Brandon McPherson. “It does not have water. It does not have basic infrastructure. I think some people might have though they could stay there for some time, but after camping out for a night or two, they’re realizing that’s not a viable option.”
In South Carolina, Ian’s center came ashore near Georgetown, a small community along the Winyah Bay about 60 miles north of historic Charleston. The storm washed away parts of four piers along the coast, including two connected to the popular tourist town of Myrtle Beach.
During a Saturday afternoon press conference, Gov. Henry McMaster said the state has cleaning and rebuilding to do, particularly in the northwest corner of the state, where residents saw a lot of water. However, he said overall it was a “good story” for South Carolina — there were no reported storm deaths, no hospitals were damaged, water systems were working, and most residents who lost power already had it back on Saturday morning.
“We are open for business,” the governor said.
In some places, though, new problems continued to arise. A 14-mile stretch of Interstate 75 in Florida was closed late Friday in both directions in the Port Charlotte area because of the massive mount of water swelling the Myakka River.
In the Sarasota suburb of North Point, Florida, residents of the Country Club Ridge subdivision waded through waterlogged streets Friday. John Chihil solemnly towed a canoe and another small boat through the ankle-deep water.
“There’s really not much to feel. It’s an act of God, you know?” he said. “I mean, that’s all you can do is pray and hope for a better day tomorrow.”
Now weakened to a post-tropical cyclone, Ian was expected to move across central North Carolina on Saturday morning then move into Virginia and New York.
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Sen. Mark Kelly says feds need to do a “better job” of letting Americans know “there’s a huge amount of misinformation” on election
Washington — Sen. Mark Kelly said Sunday that the federal government needs to do its part to inform Americans of the vast swath of election misinformation that’s being consumed on social media platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
“It’s up to us, the people who serve in Congress and in the White House to get the information out there, that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation in this election, and it’s not going to stop on Nov. 5,” Kelly said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Kelly, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he’s seen these misinformation operations target not only his state of Arizona, but also other battleground states.
“There is a very reasonable chance I would put it in the 20 to 30% range, that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China,” Kelly said.
In a committee hearing last month on foreign threats to the 2024 election, Kelly presented screenshots of Russian-made web pages showing fabricated headlines designed to look like Fox News and The Washington Post, targeted at voters in battleground states.
“So my constituents in Arizona and others — they seek to influence the outcome of these elections, and that is absolutely beyond the pale,” Kelly said at the Sept. 18 hearing. “We’ve got to do something about it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each have the support of 49% of Arizona voters, according to CBS News’ battleground tracker as of Sept. 30.
In another battleground state, Pennsylvania, Trump returned Saturday to hold a rally in Butler three months after an attempted assassination on him. He was joined by members of his own party and billionaire Elon Musk, who said Trump was the only way to preserve democracy and warned of a last election if he does not win in November.
Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Kelly called the social media mogul a hypocrite.
“He’s standing next to the guy that tried to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, saying that this is somehow going to be the last election and they’re going to take away your vote,” Kelly said. “And you know, it just doesn’t pass the logic test.”
At the White House press briefing on Friday, President Biden – speaking from the podium for the first time since taking office – said he’s confident of a free and fair election but alluded to the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol in his concerns on whether it will be a peaceful transfer of power.
“The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous,” Mr. Biden said. “If you notice, I noticed that the vice-presidential Republican candidate did not say he’d accept the outcome of the election, and they haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election.”
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Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie says Iran is the country that’s in a corner
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