FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The weather was getting worse in southern Florida on Tuesday morning as Tropical Storm Elsa began lashing the Florida Keys, complicating the search for survivors in the condo collapse and prompting a hurricane watch for the peninsula’s upper Gulf Coast.

In addition to damaging winds and heavy rains, the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center warned of life-threatening storm surges, flooding and isolated tornadoes. A hurricane watch was issued for a long stretch of coastline, from Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay to the Steinhatchee River in Florida’s Big Bend area.

Bands of rain were expected to reach Surfside on Florida’s Atlantic coast, soaking the rubble of the Champlain Towers South, which collapsed June 24, killing at least 32 people. Search and rescue crews have worked through rain in search of more than 100 others listed as missing, but must pause when lightning threatens, and a garage area in the pancaked debris already filled with water Monday, officials said.

Elsa’s maximum sustained winds stood at 60 mph (95 kph) early Tuesday. A slow strengthening is forecast through Tuesday night and Elsa could be near hurricane strength before it makes landfall in Florida. Its core was about 65 miles (105 kilometers) west-northwest of Key West, Florida, and 215 miles (345 kilometers) south of Tampa. It was continuing to move to the north-northwest at 10 mph (16 kph).

The forecast included the possibility of tornadoes across South Florida on Tuesday morning and across the upper peninsula later in the day.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expanded a state of emergency to cover a dozen counties where Elsa was expected to make a swift passage Wednesday, and President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state ahead of the storm.

Forecasters predicted Elsa would hit coastal Georgia and South Carolina after Florida. Georgia’s coast was under a tropical storm watch, as was much of the South Carolina coast. Forecasters said tornadoes could strike in the eastern Carolinas and Virginia as Elsa moves north.

The storm surge could reach 5 feet (1.5 meters) over normally dry land in the Tampa Bay area if Elsa passes at high tide, forecasters said. Commander Col. Ben Jonsson said only essential personnel were being allowed Tuesday morning on MacDill Air Force Base, which is located along the bay on the South Tampa peninsula.

Tampa International Airport planned to shut down Tuesday at 5 p.m.

At a Tuesday morning news briefing, DeSantis reminded residents not to focus on the Tropical Storm Elsa’s so-called “cone of concern” because the storm’s “impacts are expected well outside that area.”

“And if you look at how the storm is it’s incredibly lopsided to the east,” DeSantis said. “So most of the rainfall is going to be east of the center of the storm.”

Elsa’s westward shift spared the lower Florida Keys a direct hit, but the islands were still getting plenty of rain and wind Tuesday. Tropical storm warnings were posted for the Florida Keys from Craig Key westward to the Dry Tortugas and for the west coast of Florida from Flamingo northward to the Ochlockonee River.

Margarita Pedroza, who lives on a boat off Key West, told WPLG a stronger storm would have forced her ashore, but she was riding this one out. “Just batten down the hatches and get ready for it,” she told the television station.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s as strong as some of the other storms that have come around, so hopefully the winds won’t be as strong and maybe it’ll be some rain, but hopefully not too much rain,” she said.

Cuban officials evacuated 180,000 people against the possibility of heavy flooding from a storm that already battered several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people. But Elsa spent Sunday and much of Monday sweeping parallel to Cuba’s southern coast, sparing most of the island from significant effects.

It made landfall in Cuba near Cienega de Zapata, a natural park with few inhabitants, and crossed the island just east of Havana. Tuesday’s rainfall across parts of Cuba was expected to reach 10 inches (25 centimeters) with isolated maximums of 15 inches (38 centimeters), resulting in significant flash flooding and mudslides. But there were no early reports of serious damage on the island.

“The wind is blowing hard and there is a lot of rain. Some water is getting under the door of my house. In the yard the level is high, but it did not get into the house,” Lázaro Ramón Sosa, a craftsman and photographer who lives in the town of Cienega de Zapata, told The Associated Press by telephone.

Sosa said he saw some avocado trees fall nearby.

Tropical storm conditions were continuing over central and western Cuba on Tuesday morning, even as the storm reached Florida.

Elsa was the first hurricane of the Atlantic season until Saturday morning and caused widespread damage on several eastern Caribbean islands Friday. As a tropical storm, it resulted in the deaths of one person on St. Lucia and of a 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman in the Dominican Republic.

Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.

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Rodriguez reported from Havana.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — As the end to America’s “forever war” rapidly approaches, the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic missions in Kabul are watching a worsening security situation and looking at how to respond.

In the countryside, districts are falling to the Taliban in rapid succession. America’s warlord allies are re-arming their militias, which have a violent history, raising the specter of another civil war once the U.S. withdrawal is finished, expected in August.

A U.S. Embassy spokesperson told The Associated Press that security assessments are frequent these days. Speaking on condition of anonymity in line with briefing rules, she said the embassy is currently down to 1,400 U.S. citizens and about 4,000 staff working inside the compound the size of a small town.

A well-fortified town, that is. Besides its own formidable security, the embassy lies inside Kabul’s Green Zone, where entire neighborhoods have been closed off and giant blast walls line streets closed to outside traffic. Afghan security forces guard the barricades into the district, which also houses the Presidential Palace, other embassies and senior government officials.

The only route out is Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, currently protected by U.S. and Turkish troops. Before America can declare its war over, the security of the airport will have to be settled. Ankara is in talks with Washington, the United Nations and the Afghan government to decide who will protect the airport and who will foot the bill.

For now, the airport is running without interruption, except for restrictions imposed by a deadly third COVID surge that has prompted some countries to suspend flights to Kabul. However, India is not one of them — as many as eight flights arrive weekly from India — and as a result, the virus’ delta variant, first identified in India, is rampant in Afghanistan.

In Kabul, it’s common to hear speculation about when and if the U.S. Embassy will evacuate and shut down, with images resurrected of America’s last days in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war.

Already, long before the last U.S. and NATO troops began packing to leave, American diplomats arriving at the airport were taken to the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy by helicopter. The 4-mile road trip through Kabul’s chaotic traffic was considered too dangerous.

Suicide bombers struck along that road with uncomfortable frequency.

For many of Washington’s new diplomats to Afghanistan, their view of the country and Kabul is limited to what they see from the confines of the sprawling embassy compound, hidden deep inside the Green Zone and protected by 10-foot blast walls, heavily armed U.S Marines, explosive-sniffing dogs and cameras at every corner.

An American employee of Resolute Support, the name of NATO’s military mission in Afghanistan, who arrived in the country last November, had not been outside the giant gates of the mission by June.

Citing security concerns, the U.S. spokesperson said she couldn’t reveal evacuation plans, or even if that’s a part of today’s conversation, but said the embassy has detailed plans for every scenario to protect its staff.

If there is an evacuation, it wouldn’t be the first.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul shut down in 1989, when the former Soviet Union left the country after negotiating an end to its 10-year invasion of Afghanistan. The pro-communist government collapsed three years later, followed by a brutal civil war carried out by most of the same U.S.-allied warlords who still operate in Kabul today — another reason why fear of a new civil war resonates.

The Taliban have issued statements saying they are not looking for a military takeover of Kabul. Washington has repeatedly warned that a military move on the Afghan capital would return the insurgent movement to pariah status, denying it international recognition and assistance.

Still, not long after President Joe Biden announced in mid-April that American troops would be gone by Sept. 11, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani expressed concern that Afghan forces might not be able to protect all the diplomatic missions in Kabul, according to an official familiar with the discussions. There were even suggestions that smaller embassies move into the U.S. compound for their protection.

The U.S. Embassy responded with an immediate so-called “ordered lockdown,” further restricting staff movements and new arrivals.

On April 27, the U.S. Embassy’s chargé d’affaires, Ross Wilson, tweeted that non-essential U.S. personnel would leave. The spokesperson would not say how many people left under that order, saying only that staff numbers are constantly being assessed.

Wilson blamed the departure on “increasing violence & threat reports in Kabul.” He also posted a U.S. Embassy site warning to all American citizens to leave Afghanistan immediately on any available commercial flight. And to Americans planning to visit Afghanistan, the order was clear: don’t.

The Australian Embassy closed, and most other Western embassies reduced their staff.

Most expatriate or foreign staff with international aid organizations in Kabul also left, said Naemat Rohi, deputy director of Akbar, an umbrella organization representing 167 aid organizations, including 87 international charities.

“They said they were going on R&R, but that was just so as not to create panic among their local staff, but they were leaving for their security reasons,” he said.

The exodus prompted the Taliban to issue multiple statements assuring aid groups and Afghans working for Western organizations they had nothing to fear.

But that hasn’t reassured interpreters who worked for the U.S. military. The spokesperson said some might be evacuated from Afghanistan but relocated to a third country while their immigration visas to the U.S. are processed. Thousands of applications are in the pipeline. Thousands more that were denied are being appealed.

The Taliban’s quick successes in northern Afghanistan, particularly the rapid surrender of Afghan soldiers in several instances, has heightened security fears in Kabul, where the presence of the heavily armed warlords resurrects images of the 1990s civil war.

Marshal Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord accused of war crimes, some against personal enemies who were once his allies, holds a military base on a hilltop overlooking Kabul’s posh Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood. His militia has an uneasy relationship with Ghani’s government and other powerful warlords, including the new Defense Minister Bismillah Khan.

Heavily armed guards patrol Wazir Akbar Khan streets, lined with marble mansions of government officials, many of them former warlords. Though united today against the Taliban, they have a brutal history of fighting each other.

For some, a Taliban play for Kabul seems inevitable.

“After the takeover of the districts and some provinces, the Taliban will make a try to enter Kabul,” said Torek Farhadi, a former adviser to the Afghan government. “They will face the regular army, but also the warlords who have accumulated huge wealth out of war related contracts.”

MOSCOW (AP) — A plane with 28 people on board went missing in the Russian Far East region of Kamchatka on Tuesday, local officials said.

An Antonov An-26 plane with 22 passengers and six crew members, flying from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the town of Palana, missed a scheduled communication, local emergency officials said. The plane also disappeared from radar, the local transport ministry.

The plane belonged to a company called Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise. The plane has been in operation since 1982, Russian state news agency Tass reported. The company’s director, Alexei Khabarov, told the Interfax news agency that the plane was technically sound.

An investigation has been launched, and a search mission is underway. Media reports have suggested the plane may have crashed into the sea, but there has been no official confirmation of that yet. Two helicopters and an airplane have been deployed to inspect the missing plane’s route, local officials said.

The state RIA Novosti news agency reported that several ships have also been searching for the plane. The town of Palana is located on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea.

The plane was on approach for landing when contact was lost about 10 kilometers (six miles) away from Palana’s airport. The head of the local government in Palana, Olga Mokhireva, was aboard the flight, spokespeople of the Kamchatka government said.

In 2012, an Antonov An-28 plane belonging to Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise crashed into a mountain while flying from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsk and coming in for a landing in Palana. A total of 14 people were on board and 10 of them were killed. Both pilots, who were among the dead, were found to have alcohol in their blood, Tass reported.