Assessing Hurricane Ian’s damage in Fort Myers area
Josh Cascio reports
FORT MYERS, Fla. – Hurricane Ian swamped southwest Florida, leaving behind a damaged power infrastructure in two counties, turning streets into rivers and damaging two bridges, including the Sanibel Causeway.
Governor Ron DeSantis provided an update Thursday morning, saying the electric grid for Lee and Charlotte counties will likely need to be rebuilt, described Hurricane Ian’s devastation in the area a “500-year flood event.”
Aerial view of Sanibel Causeway (Credit: Lee County Sheriff’s Office)
He said the Sanibel Causeway and Pine Island Bridge are both impassable. They suffered structural damage and will need to be rebuilt.
Part of the Sanibel Causeway that collapsed (Credit: WZVN-WBBH)
Sheriffs in southwest Florida said 911 centers were inundated by thousands of stranded callers, some with life-threatening emergencies. The U.S. Coast Guard began rescue efforts around daybreak on barrier islands near where the Ian struck, DeSantis said. Fire departments fanned out in flooded areas as well.
According to Lee County officials, people were stuck in attics and even roofs of some buildings, reports FOX 4. On Wednesday, East Naples deputies performed 30 water rescued.
Overnight, Punta Gorda city officials said their water supply emptied.
“They are pumping at a rate of over 13 million gallons per day and cannot keep up,” they said.
Thursday, the Sanibel Lighthouse appears to still be standing. It’s located on the eastern end of the island. It was built in 1884 and given to the City of Sanibel in 2004 for restoration purposes.
Side by side images showing a photo of the Sanibel Lighthouse from 2016 (left) and a distant shot of it the morning after Hurricane Ian made landfall (right)
While the exact figure for injuries and fatalities is not confirmed, the Lee County sheriff said the number of deaths could be in the “hundreds.”
During a phone interview with Good Morning America, Sheriff Carmine Marceno said there are thousands of people who still need to be rescued. Lee County includes Fort Myers, Sanibel Island, and Captiva Island.
“I don’t have confirmed numbers, but I definitely know the fatalities are in the hundreds,” he said during the interview. “There are thousands of people that are waiting to be rescued.”
Another angle showing the road damage leading up to the Sanibel Causeway
The major hurricane pushed a wall of storm surge accumulated during its slow march over the Gulf, flooding Fort Myers roadways even before making landfall in Coya Costa.
Flooding in Fort Myers
FORT MYERS FLORIDA – SEPTEMBER 29: Stedi Scuderi looks over her apartment after flood water inundated it when Hurricane Ian passed through the area on September 29, 2022 in Fort Myers, Florida. The hurricane brought high winds, storm surge and rain t
In Naples, the first floor of a fire station was inundated with about 3 feet of water, and firefighters worked to salvage gear from a firetruck stuck outside the garage in even deeper water, a video posted by the Naples Fire Department showed.
Naples is in Collier County, where the sheriff’s department reported on Facebook that it was getting “a significant number of calls of people trapped by water in their homes” and that it would prioritize reaching people “reporting life-threatening medical emergencies in deep water.”
In Port Charlotte, along Florida’s Gulf Coast, the storm surge flooded a lower-level emergency room in a hospital even as fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from its intensive care unit, according to a doctor who works there.
Water gushed down onto the ICU, forcing staff to evacuate the hospital’s sickest patients — some of whom were on ventilators — to other floors, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Staff members used towels and plastic bins to try to mop up the sodden mess.
“As long as our patients do OK and nobody ends up dying or having a bad outcome, that’s what matters,” Bodine said.
Boats floated onto flooded streets and were swept ashore.
TOPSHOT – Residents inspect damage to a marina as boats are partially submerged in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida, on September 29, 2022. – Hurricane Ian left much of coastal southwest Florida in darkness early on Thursday, bri
The medium-sized hospital spans four floors, but patients were forced into just two because of the damage. Bodine planned to spend the night there in case people injured from the storm arrive needing help.
For WINK-TV, the wall of storm surge that Ian brought entered the newsroom set in Fort Myers.
Devastating flooding in Fort Myers due to Hurricane Ian
Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday afternoon near Fort Myers as a major hurricane just shy of a Category 5. The area was somewhat caught off-guard after the storm’s projected path began to shift south a day before. Residents had little time to evacuate their homes before feet of water rushed in due to storm surge.
According to one of their meteorologists, Matt Devitt, they lost power and were unable to continue broadcasting. By 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, he said the worst surge was behind them and water levels were slowly lowering.
“This was, without a doubt, the strongest hurricane in Southwest Florida history,” he wrote on Facebook. “Stay tough, we’re almost through it. I’m thinking of all of you. We WILL rebuild back to the community we know and love.”
Brittany Hailer, a journalist in Pittsburgh, contacted rescuers about her mother in North Fort Myers, whose home was swamped by 5 feet (1.5 meters) of water.
“We don’t know when the water’s going to go down. We don’t know how they’re going to leave, their cars are totaled,” Hailer said. “Her only way out is on a boat.”
FORT MYERS FLORIDA – SEPTEMBER 29: Brenda Brennan sits next to a boat that pushed against her apartment when Hurricane Ian passed through the area on September 29, 2022 in Fort Myers, Florida. Mrs. Brennan said the boat floated in around 7pm. The hur
President Joe Biden has since approved a disaster declaration for Sunshine State on Thursday morning following Ian’s trek across the state.
MOSCOW, Sept 29 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said the “unprecedented sabotage” against the Nord Stream gas pipelines was “an act of international terrorism,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin made the remarks in phone call with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan. He also said it was necessary to fulfil an internationally-brokered deal on Ukrainian grain exports, including the removal of barriers for Russian food and fertilizer supplies to the global markets, the Kremlin said.
Editor’s Note: Affected by the storm? Use CNN’s lite site for low bandwidth. You also can text or WhatsApp your Ian stories to CNN +1 332-261-0775.
Rescuers pulled people from roofs, flooded homes and submerged vehicles across Florida on Thursday, a day after Hurricane Ian brought high winds, heavy rain and catastrophic storm surge to the state.
And the storm’s path of destruction is not over: Ian, now a tropical storm, is dropping more heavy rain on central and northeast Florida throughout Thursday and is forecast to strengthen to a Category 1 hurricane and make a second landfall in South Carolina on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said.
In southwest and central Florida, about a dozen people were reported dead so far due to the storm. One person who was in hospice care died in Osceola County, Emergency Management Director Bill Litton said; about five people are believed to have died in Lee County, the sheriff said; and six deaths were reported in Charlotte County, commissioner Chris Constance told CNN’s John King on Thursday.
Survey crews, photos and videos of the region show collapsed buildings, flooding, downed power lines and impassable roads, including a key bridge connecting Sanibel and Captiva islands to Florida’s mainland that has been washed out. In all, more than 2.6 million customershave no power Thursday, according to PowerOutage.US, and some drinking water systems have broken down completely or have boil notices in effect.
“I just literally got out of a helicopter where I was able to take a complete tour of the entire county and there’s really no words that I can say to tell you what I’ve seen,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marcino said on CNN Thursday. “The Fort Myers Beach area, buildings, major, major homes and buildings completely washed away with vehicles in the water, vehicles in the bay, boats are upside down.”
There are many people who need to be rescued in southwest Florida’s Fort Myers area, FEMA chief Deanne Criswell said Thursday morning. The nearby Naples area was similarly slammed, with feet of water submerged streets, nearly swallowing vehicles and rushing into the first floors of homes and businesses.
The Coast Guard and National Guard were “pulling people off of roofs in Fort Myers” with aircraft Thursday morning, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Brendan McPherson told CNN. Coast Guard crews have conducted 28 rescues on Thursday, the service said.
Still, much about the misery remains unknown: how many lives Ian may have ended, how many people remain trapped, how many homes were wrecked beyond repair and how long it might take to restore a semblance of ordinary life.
The rescue efforts come a day after Ian came ashore near Cayo Costa as a Category 4 hurricane as one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall on Florida’s west coast. The storm has since weakened to a tropical storm with 70 mph sustained winds, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm cut a path from near Fort Myers in the southwest across to the eastern part of the state, and its combination of wind, rain and storm surge caused flooding that Gov. Ron DeSantis called “a 500-year flood event.”
Here are the latest developments:
• Downgraded to a tropical storm: Ian weakened to a tropical storm Thursday with winds of 70 mph, and the center of the storm was about 25 miles north-northeast of Cape Canaveral around 11 a.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center said. Based on wind speed, Ian tied with 2004’s Hurricane Charley as the strongest storm to make landfall on the west coast of the Florida Peninsula, both with 150-mph winds at landfall.
• Hurricane warnings for South Carolina: Hurricane warnings are in place for the entire coast of South Carolina. In addition, Tropical Storm warnings are in place from Jupiter, Florida, up the east coast to Duck, North Carolina.
• Record-high storm surges: Ian’s storm surge hit up to 12 feet in some places in western Florida. On Thursday morning, a storm surge warning – meaning life-threatening surges could hit – was in place for a coastal stretch from northeastern Florida into an area north of Charleston, South Carolina.
• More than a foot of rainfall: Lehigh Acres near Fort Myers got 14.42 inches of rain, and Warm Mineral Springs near Port Charlotte got 11.05 inches. Up to 30 inches of rain may have fallen in parts of Florida by storm’s end, forecasters say.
Rescue efforts stymied as hurricane traps residents
Sunrise on Thursday gave Florida residents their first look at Ian’s overnight wrath – and the results were not pretty.
As Ian pushed inland, ocean water piled up onshore Wednesday – 12 feet in some places – and 150-mph winds whipped. 911 call centers in several counties were inundated.
Scott Carlos, who rode out the storm in his fourth-story Fort Myers condo, saw waves of water crash into homes across the street, up to their roofs, he said. Roads are littered Thursday with washed-out vehicles, he told CNN on Thursday.
“Everybody’s garages basically just gave out. … Cars are everywhere, smashed up in the street. There’s debris everywhere,” he said.
As Ian continues trudging northeast, heavy rain and flooding has been reported in the Orlando area, where 8 to 12 inches of rain had already fallen and up to 4 more inches of rain was expected. In Orlando, a reporter for CNN affiliate WESH rescued a woman after seeing her trying to drive through floodwaters, carrying her on his back in waist-high water to dry ground, WESH video showed.
In badly hit southwest Florida, a “three-pronged” search and rescue response is taking shape, with crews fanning out and help residents by air, ground and sea as soon as it’s safe, state emergency management director Kevin Guthrie said Wednesday.
Calls for help came in Wednesday and Thursday across several counties.
In Fort Myers – where about 90% of electric customers were without power – Fire Chief Tracy McMillion told residents to stay inside, and to stay hopeful. “We’re coming for you, be encouraged,” he told residents Wednesday night.
The city’s downtown streets were flooded Wednesday with almost 4 feet of water, Mayor Kevin Anderson told CNN.
Thomas Podgorny was trapped in his two-story home in Fort Myers with three others, watching vehicles float away outside and worrying about others who did not evacuate, he told CNN Wednesday evening.
“I’ve lost my house. I have water and gas flowing through my bottom floor,” he said. “My neighbors have very little breathing room in their one-story house.”
One couple there was trapped in their home when the ceiling caved in.
“Something is dripping on me,” Belinda Collins recalled her partner saying. “He got up, and the ceiling – the family room ceiling – caved in.” They called 911 and were waiting for a call back about when it would be safe to leave, they said.
In Port Charlotte, the storm tore off the roof above a hospital’s ICU with patients inside Wednesday, forcing staff to move them to a post-operation recovery area, Dr. Birgit Bodine, an internal medicine specialist at the facility, told CNN.
Water gushed down stairwells to other floors, and other patients needed to be moved either to beds in hallways or to a different, dry wing of the hospital.
“We still have water in hallways that we’re still sloshing through,” but patients are safe in dry beds, and as many as possible were transferred to the dry wing, Bodine told CNN Thursday morning.
People in nearby Collier County, which includes Naples, were also trapped in their homes, calling for help, after electricity went out. In Naples, half the streets were not passable Wednesday because of high water, officials said.
“Some are reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water. We will get to them first. Some are reporting water coming into their house but not life threatening. They will have to wait. Possibly until the water recedes,” the Collier County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday evening.
Complicating matters, neighboring Lee County’s 911 system was down and calls were being rerouted to Collier County, Chief Stephanie Spell told CNN. “At this point the majority of our 911 calls are water rescues,” Spell added.
In Sarasota County, sheriff’s deputies and fire crews had a backlog Thursday morning of more than 500 calls for help to respond to, the county sheriff’s office said. Deputies were “responding to the highest priority calls” that still were in the queue Thursday morning, the office said.
Monster storm leaves ‘life-changing’ mark on Florida
Even before the hurricane made landfall, officials knew the damage would be severe, and there will be a long road to recovery.
“Ian is going to be a life-changing event. This is a very powerful, catastrophic storm that is going to do significant damage,” President and CEO of Florida Power & Light Eric Silagy, said.
Some sections of infrastructure will be irreparable and need to be rebuilt – which can take weeks, Silagy said.
In Fort Myers Beach, key drinking water equipment failed, town spokesperson Jennifer Dexter told CNN.
“When the backup water pump system goes down, that shows you how serious it is,” she said.
Punta Gorda’s water system is empty and boil-water notices are in effect, according to an update from the city overnight.
Lee County Utilities issued a systemwide boil-water notice for all customers effective immediately due to the impacts of the hurricane, according to county officials. Residents in parts of Pasco County were also asked to boil their tap water as the water distribution system in the area lost pressure and a water main ruptured.
In Manatee County, residents were asked to limit flushing, showering, doing dishes and laundry due to power outages impacting the system.
In Cape Coral, authorities were getting reports of significant structural damage across the city, Ryan Lamb, the city’s fire chief and emergency management director, told CNN.
Gov. DeSantis has asked President Joe Biden to approve a major disaster declaration for all 67 counties in the state, his office said in a news release. DeSantis is also asking Biden to grant FEMA the authority to provide 100% federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures for the first 60 days from Ian’s landfall.
Correction: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect location for storm witness Scott Carlos. He was in Fort Myers, Florida.
CNN’s Naomi Thomas, Rebekah Riess, Paul P. Murphy, Brandon Miller, Amy Simonson, Jamiel Lynch, Joe Sutton, Amanda Musa, Hannah Sarisohn and Paradise Afshar contributed to this report.
The death toll was rising and thousands of Floridians desperately sought rescue as historically powerful Hurricane Ian hammered the state with heavy rain and strong winds, one of the strongest storms in U.S. history.
The hurricane’s center made landfall as a Category 4 monster Wednesday afternoon near Cayo Costa, a barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers in Lee County.
“The impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that has been done is historic,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday. “We’ve never seen a flood event like this, we’ve never seen a storm surge of tis magnitude.”
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said on CNN that at leave five deaths have been confirmed in his county. He told ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” that hundreds may have died and thousands are in need of rescue.
More than 2.6 million Florida homes and business were without power early Thursday.
Ian had weakened to a tropical storm but was forecast to continue roaring across the state most of the day before heading out into the Atlantic. The storm flooded entire communities, leaving residents stranded in their homes with battering 150-mph maximum sustained winds – just 7 mph shy of a Category 5 hurricane, the strongest on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale.
The storm previously tore into Cuba, killing two people and bringing down the country’s electrical grid. No injuries or deaths have been reported in Florida.
Latest developments:
►The U.S. Coast Guard was still searching for more than 20 Cuban migrants after their boat sank in stormy weather near the Florida Keys.
► Ian’s strength at landfall tied it for thefifth-strongest hurricane when measured by wind speed to strike the U.S. It’s tied with five other hurricanes that reached 150 mph — two in Florida, two in Louisiana and one in Texas.
► Residents described the terror after a tornado tore through a condominium complex near Delray Beach, ripping off roofs and turning over vehicles. “I felt things blow past my head and face,” resident Jim Travis said. “When I opened the door, my apartment was destroyed.” Read more.
The hurricane’s center made landfall as a Category 4 monster Wednesday afternoon near Cayo Costa, a barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers in Lee County.
“While I don’t have confirmed numbers, I definitely know the fatalities are in the hundreds,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America.” “There are thousands of people that are waiting to be rescued.”
Pressed on the numbers, Marceno said “so far confirmed in the hundreds. Meaning that we are responding to events, drownings. Again, unsure of the exact details because we are just starting to scratch the surface on this assessment.”
Emergency crews sawed through toppled trees to reach people in flooded homes. “If the line is busy, keep trying,” Marceno said in a Facebook post early Thursday.
More than 2.6 million Floridians without power
More than 2.5 million homes and businesses across Florida were without power early Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us. Most of the homes and businesses in 12 counties were without power, although authorities said they were making progress, that power had been restored to 500,000.
Sheriff Bull Prummell of Charlotte County, just north of Fort Myers, announced a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. “for life-saving purposes,” saying violators may face second-degree misdemeanor charges.
“I am enacting this curfew as a means of protecting the people and property of Charlotte County,” Prummell said.
Southeast braces as Ian advances
Meteorologists with the National Hurricane Center said Ian will roll off of Florida’s east coast, turn northwest and might strengthen to hurricane status again before making landfall again in South Carolina. The governors of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia all preemptively declared states of emergency.
“State agencies are working together and preparing for Hurricane Ian’s potential impact,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMasters said on Twitter. “Each South Carolinian should do the same – take the time now to make a plan for every contingency.”
Hospital roof partially torn off, fire station flooded: Damage in Florida
Parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast saw major damage as Hurricane Ian swept through the state, damaging buildings and homes and flooding communities.
Water coursed through the streets of Naples, creating giant waves that made roads impassable and flooded the city’s fire department. A video posted by Naples Fire-Rescue showed crews working to salvage equipment and firetrucks in more than 3 feet of water. In Cape Coral, about 30 miles up the coast, photos showed a sailboat washed up in the middle of a road near homes.
Nearby Fort Myers saw intense storm surge flooding coastal communities and the area around WINK News, a local CBS affiliate. Videos showed water reaching car windshields in the studio’s parking lot and some of the storm surge leaking into the building.
Farther north along the coast, intense storm surge flooded a hospital’s lower level emergency room in Port Charlotte, while fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from its intensive care unit, according to a doctor who works there.
Water gushed down from above onto the ICU, forcing staff to evacuate the hospital’s sickest patients – some of whom were on ventilators – to other floors, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Staff members used towels and plastic bins to try to mop up the sodden mess.
Officials warned flash floods were possible across the state, which could lead to pollution and radioactive waste overflow.
KYIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government are responding with defiance and a touch of bravado to a stream of threats from Russia as it prepares to take the provocative step of declaring parts of Ukraine to be Russian territory.
Amid ominous signals from Moscow about escalating the war, including hinting at the use of nuclear weapons, Ukrainian forces are pressing ahead with their attack on Russian troops in the east and the south in regions that Russia intends on Friday claim as its own. And government officials are pursuing a propaganda advantage as well, posting instructions on social media, in Russian, about how Russian soldiers can surrender safely.
Mr. Zelensky has taken pains to point out he is not dismissive of the Russian threat. He said he did not believe Mr. Putin was bluffing about threats of military escalation or the use of nuclear weapons.
But he also gave a public reminder of Ukraine’s recent successes, awarding medals on Wednesday to 320 soldiers and other security service members for the counterstrike this month in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine.
Russia set the annexation plans in motion after the stunning offensive broke through the Russian Army’s defensive lines and forced it to retreat from thousands of square miles of land.
Annexation would allow Russia to assert that Ukraine is attacking its territory, not the other way around, and Russian officials have spoken of defending their claims by any means, a hint at the potential use of nuclear weapons. Russia also announced a draft to call up hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.
In Kyiv, officials are responding with the touch of swagger that has characterized their public statements throughout the war, despite more cautious responses from Western allies.
“If you want to live, run,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address on Wednesday, speaking in Russian and addressing Russian soldiers. “If you want to live, surrender. If you want to live, fight on your streets for your freedom.”
Ukraine’s minister of defense, Oleksiy Reznikov, told a conference of security experts that many Western nations had expected Ukraine’s government to collapse in the initial Russian invasion, but were proved wrong. “The Ukrainians will never surrender,” he said.
Russian rocket and missile attacks struck two Ukrainian cities, Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih, overnight Wednesday to Thursday, damaging homes, killing two civilians and wounding at least 15 others. The Ukrainian government does not release information on military casualties from Russian missile strikes.
Ordinary Ukrainians, ready to believe the worst of Russia after shelling in civilian areas and the discovery of mass graves in territory reclaimed by the Ukrainian Army, have been on edge. Many are posting on social media about fear of nuclear war.
“Next will be a nuclear strike, coming soon,” Stanislav Kotliar, a musician, wrote on Facebook. “This is the main reason I sent my loved ones to Germany, though they wanted to stay in Poland — to keep them away from the nuclear cloud.”
Still, even Ukrainian analysts and former security officials view Russia’s nuclear threat as showing weakness, not strength. Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in an interview that Ukraine would not cease its offensives if Russia declared the four provinces Russian territory.
If Russia’s lines continued to collapse after reinforcements arrived from the mobilization, he said, that would increase the risk of a tactical nuclear strike. But he added: “For Putin it’s wishful thinking Ukraine and the West will step back. It’s important to keep biting territory occupied by Russia. This is what Putin is trying to avoid, so we should do this.”
“It was a deliberate act and in my opinion it can very likely be linked to the push for constant provocation by the Kremlin,” Ribera told reporters, according to Reuters.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry was not immediately available to comment when contacted by CNBC Thursday morning.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that claims Russia was behind the suspected attack were “stupid.”
The cause of the gas leaks is not yet known. Swedish police are currently investigating the leaks and the European Union suspects sabotage, particularly as the incident comes amid a bitter energy standoff between Brussels and Moscow.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines connect Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea.
Seismologists on Monday reported explosions in the vicinity of the unusual Nord Stream gas leaks, which are situated in international waters but inside Denmark’s and Sweden’s exclusive economic zones.
The explosions sent gas spewing into the Baltic Sea. Denmark’s armed forces said video footage showed the largest gas leak created a surface disturbance of roughly 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) in diameter, while the smallest leak caused a circle of approximately 200 meters.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned of “robust and united” retaliatory measures if evidence of deliberate disruption was uncovered.
His comments echoed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who pledged any deliberate disruption of active European energy infrastructure would lead to the “strongest possible response.”
Notably, neither directly accused Russia of being responsible for the suspected attack.
Russian ships reportedly seen in vicinity of the leaks
U.S. news channel CNN reported Thursday, citing three unnamed sources, that European security officials observed Russian navy support ships and submarines near the area of the leaks in the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
When asked to comment on the CNN report, the Kremlin’s Peskov said there had been a much larger NATO presence in the area. NATO did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The North Atlantic Council, the principal political decision-making body of the Western military alliance NATO, said in a statement Thursday that “any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response.”
“All currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage. These leaks are causing risks to shipping and substantial environmental damage,” the council said.
Neither pipeline was pumping gas at the time of the leaks but both lines were still pressurized: Nord Stream 1 stopped pumping gas to Europe “indefinitely” earlier this month, with Moscow’s operator saying international sanctions on Russia prevented it from carrying out vital maintenance work.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, meanwhile, never officially opened as Germany refused to certify it for commercial operations due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
— CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.
Liz Truss’s first few weeks as British prime minister have been defined by crisis. She’d barely been in the job 48 hours when news broke that Queen Elizabeth II had died, placing the country in a state of official mourning and delaying the official launch of the Truss plan for Britain.
Once that official mourning period was over last Monday, her government unleashed a wave of radical policies, climaxing on Friday with the announcement of £45 billion ($48 billion) in tax cuts. The measures included scrapping the top rate paid by the highest earners, in adjustments that will benefit the rich far more than millions of people on lower incomes.
The logic, according to Truss’s government, is that cutting personal and corporate tax will trigger an investment boom and kick-start the British economy.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper last week, Truss defended her economic plans saying that her government was “incentivizing businesses to invest and we’re also helping ordinary people with their taxes.”
But Truss’s plans have seemingly backfired almost immediately. The pound fell to its lowest level in nearly four decades on Monday, at one point reaching near parity with the dollar. It seems very likely that the Bank of England will hike interest rates, which will make repayments harder for those fortunate enough to have mortgages, while those seeking to get mortgages are already seeing products removed by banks.
On Wednesday, the Bank of England announced it would buy UK government bonds in an attempt to “restore orderly market conditions” and to prevent “dysfunction” following the cuts, and subsequent plunge in the pound.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a rare rebuke for a developed country on Tuesday night, criticizing the UK’s tax-cutting plans, saying they will “likely increase inequality.”
The chaos couldn’t have come at a better time for the official opposition Labour Party, which held its annual conference in Liverpool this week.
Going into the conference, Labour was enjoying poll leads it hasn’t seen since the days of the last Labour prime minister to win a general election, Tony Blair.
Opportunity for Labour
The Labour Party has suffered badly since losing power in 2010. Its past two leaders have struggled with their personal credibility on a range of issues, from economics to security.
The party’s last leader, Jeremy Corbyn, came from the far left of the party. He had in the past associated with known extremists, opposed NATO, shared platforms with antisemites and generally existed on the fringes of politics for decades.
When his successor, Keir Starmer, took over in 2020, received wisdom was that his job was to remove Corbyn’s influence from the party and then hand it over to a new leader, probably closer to 2030 than the next scheduled general election in 2024.
This week in Liverpool, however, Starmer’s Labour looked legitimately like a government-in-waiting. It is nothing short of remarkable given that not even a year ago, Boris Johnson looked like the undisputed champion of British politics.
But after scandals sank his premiership and Conservatives’ approval ratings, the unassuming Starmer, a softly-spoken lawyer with a smart haircut and unremarkable suits, really does look as though he could be the next prime minister of the UK.
In the two years of his leadership, Starmer has managed to silence many of the elements of his party that Corbyn attracted. It has gone from being a home for far-left radicals to a party whose conference this week attracted corporate lobbyists who were only too happy to bankroll events and brush shoulders with the potential next government.
And after years of accusations while Corbyn was in charge that Labour was somehow anti-British, conference this year began with delegates singing the national anthem.
Those around Starmer are tempering their optimism. The Labour Party has smelled power before, only to be disappointed when the next general election came around. The UK, particularly England, is a traditionally Conservative-voting country. Previous Labour governments won power largely due to Scottish support.
That has all but drained away since the independence referendum of 2014, in which Scotland voted to stay in the UK by a margin of 55% to 45%. That left nearly half of Scots disgruntled and throwing their support behind the pro-independence Scottish National Party.
The Labour Party also has form for making unforced errors. While this year’s conference went largely without a hitch, one near-crisis had to be dealt with.
On Tuesday, a video emerged of a Labour MP calling the Conservative finance minister, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, “superficially” Black. The MP, Rupa Huq, had her party whip removed almost immediately, meaning she is expelled from the party and now sits as an independent. Huq later tweeted that she had apologized to Kwarteng for comments she described as “ill judged.”
And Labour Party members know very well that the Conservative Party plays the game of politics better than most. The term “natural party of government” might seem odd, given the chaos taking place around Truss at the moment, but Conservatives like winning at almost any cost.
‘We look like reckless gamblers’
None of this is providing Conservative MPs with much comfort, however.
“Every single problem we have now is self-inflicted. We look like reckless gamblers who only care about the people who can afford to lose the gamble,” one former Conservative minister told CNN on Wednesday morning.
Taking aim at the team around Truss, which is largely comprised of libertarian Conservatives, the former minister said: “We’ve made the mistake of thinking that things which go down well in free-market think tanks go down well with the free market.”
For all that things don’t look great for Truss, there is a fear in Labour circles that the current polling is a reflection of disapproval of the Conservatives rather than enthusiasm for Labour. Many still question whether Starmer truly has the strength of personality to win over sufficient voters to comprehensively defeat the Conservatives at the next election.
That caution could be born of a reluctance to get ahead of themselves. And their doubts over Starmer could be the same reason that some Conservatives are quietly optimistic that Truss has more personal substance than her Labour rival and could simply overpower him in the future.
What’s undeniable is that the expectations in British politics have shifted this week. For the first time in years, the next election is undeniably Labour’s to lose.
It wasn’t the story of the day or the week, and more pressing national matters surround it in every direction.
But the scene in the White House press briefing room on Wednesday spoke to a particular political vulnerability of President Joe Biden and his party — one discussed only around the edges in Democratic circles, but that Republicans would love to have get more attention.
A few hours earlier, the president seemed to wonder aloud why the late Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., wasn’t at an event organized at the White House: “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about that by ABC News White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega — and, later on in the briefing, by a pile-on of other reporters seeking clarity on what the president meant.
Jean-Pierre’s answers mentioned the bipartisan nature of the event, a plea for “context” around Biden listing contributors and Walorski being “top of mind,” the fact that the president will meet with her family on Friday and the importance of the conference’s substance.
She didn’t say Biden misspoke, and she downplayed it overall: “That is not an unusual scenario there.”
That might be part of the problem, though. Biden has called himself a “gaffe machine” and his verbal miscues long predate his time as president, but the accumulation of odd moments and statements forcing White House clean-up has made its way into mainstream discussions of the midterms and what comes next.
Asked recently on “60 Minutes” about his fitness for the job, Biden responded crisply: “Watch me.” With 56% of even Democrats wanting the party to look elsewhere in 2024, according to this week’s ABC News/Washington Post poll, that also might be part of the problem right now.
“No – it’s a natural disaster; the governor is focused on saving lives,” tweeted Christina Pushaw, a spokeswoman for his reelection campaign. “Stop politicizing!”
Regardless of his campaign’s outrage at the suggestion, DeSantis’ response to the hurricane season will be fresh on the minds of voters come November. Yes, if things go wrong, the governor could take a hit. But stellar decision-making could also be a boon to his campaign in the closing stretch.
DeSantis isn’t the only person on the ballot shying away from politics during the storm. The Democratic nominee for governor, former Rep. Charlie Crist, has suspended ads in markets expected to be severely impacted by Ian. When asked for his thoughts on DeSantis’ handling of the storm, Crist stood down.
“I don’t want to get into Monday-morning quarterbacking before Monday. I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Crist told reporters this week. He later added, “What we all need to do is be focused on protecting our fellow Floridians, doing whatever we can to maintain that safety.”
The White House, too, has refrained from speaking about the stark differences between DeSantis and President Biden. During a call between the two leaders on Tuesday night, there were “no politics” discussed, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later said.
“This is about two people who wanted to have a conversation on how we can be partners to the governor and his constituents,” she said.
Arizona Democratic attorney general nominee Kris Mayes and her Republican opponent, Abe Hamadeh, sparred on a debate stage in Phoenix on Wednesday, both agreeing that the differences between them — on abortion, on the validity of the 2020 election — were crystal-clear.
Mayes said, as attorney general, that she wouldn’t prosecute any health care provider who violates a state abortion ban with no exceptions for rape and incest cases, deeming the law unconstitutional under Arizona’s right to privacy. Hamadeh said he would follow the newly reinstated territorial-era abortion ban, calling his opponent’s resistance “dangerous.”
“I think there’s a clear difference,” Mayes said. “My opponent wants to put doctors and nurses and pharmacists in jail for abortion care, and that’s outrageous.”
While calling it “an important distinction” between them, Hamadeh said: “There’s an argument to be made on both sides, but I’m tasked to uphold the law.”
The pair also exchanged condescending blows about the other’s background, with Mayes knocking Hamadeh’s age — he’s 31 — and Hamadeh attacking Mayes’ lack of time at trial despite her background as a lawyer.
While candidates in state attorney general races are often lesser known than those at the top of the ticket, such races have drawn more attention in 2022 in large part due to Republican candidates clinging to the false belief that the 2020 election was rigged.
According to FiveThirtyEight, seven election deniers, including Hamadeh, are running across the U.S. for state attorney general with seven more running for secretary of state, the post that oversees election administration in most areas.
In response, the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State announced an $11 million ad buy this week in Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada — three battlegrounds with incumbent Democratic secretaries of state who are running against election-deniers. The group has also promised spending in Arizona and Georgia.
THE PLAYLIST
ABC News’ “Start Here” Podcast. “Start Here” devotes all of Thursday’s episode to Hurricane Ian. We start with an interview from Fort Myers, Florida, where resident Joe Orlandini’s home has been in 12 feet of moving water — and rising; he’s watching neighbors’ homes float by. Then, ABC’s Ginger Zee breaks down the storm’s path of destruction and explains where these weather patterns are coming from. http://apple.co/2HPocUL
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY
At noon ET, President Biden will receive a briefing on impacts from Hurricane Ian and ongoing federal response efforts at FEMA headquarters in Washington.
Biden hosts a summit between the U.S. and Pacific Island countries at 3 p.m. ET.
Download the ABC News app and select “The Note” as an item of interest to receive the day’s sharpest political analysis.
The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the day’s top stories in politics. Please check back Friday for the latest.
The spy was minutes from leaving Iran when he was nabbed.
Gholamreza Hosseini was at Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran in late 2010, preparing for a flight to Bangkok. There, the Iranian industrial engineer would meet his Central Intelligence Agency handlers. But before he could pay his exit tax to leave the country, the airport ATM machine rejected his card as invalid. Moments later, a security officer asked to see Hosseini’s passport before escorting him away.
Hosseini said he was brought to an empty VIP lounge and told to sit on a couch that had been turned to face a wall. Left alone for a dizzying few moments and not seeing any security cameras, Hosseini thrust his hand into his trouser pocket, fishing out a memory card full of state secrets that could now get him hanged. He shoved the card into his mouth, chewed it to pieces and swallowed.
Not long after, Ministry of Intelligence agents entered the room and the interrogation began, punctuated by beatings, Hosseini recounted. His denials and the destruction of the data were worthless; they seemed to know everything already. But how?
“These are things I never told anyone in the world,” Hosseini told Reuters. As his mind raced, Hosseini even wondered whether the CIA itself had sold him out.
Iranian engineer Gholamreza Hosseini spent nearly a decade in a Tehran prison following his conviction for spying for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He said the agency abandoned him following his 2010 arrest. Handout via REUTERS
Rather than betrayal, Hosseini was the victim of CIA negligence, a year-long Reuters investigation into the agency’s handling of its informants found. A faulty CIA covert communications system made it easy for Iranian intelligence to identify and capture him. Jailed for nearly a decade and speaking out for the first time, Hosseini said he never heard from the agency again, even after he was released in 2019.
The CIA declined to comment on Hosseini’s account.
Hosseini’s experience of sloppy handling and abandonment was not unique. In interviews with six Iranian former CIA informants, Reuters found that the agency was careless in other ways amid its intense drive to gather intelligence in Iran, putting in peril those risking their lives to help the United States.
One informant said the CIA instructed him to make his information drops in Turkey at a location the agency knew was under surveillance by Iran. Another man, a former government worker who traveled to Abu Dhabi to seek a U.S. visa, claims a CIA officer there tried unsuccessfully to push him into spying for the United States, leading to his arrest when he returned to Iran.
Such aggressive steps by the CIA sometimes put average Iranians in danger with little prospect of gaining critical intelligence. When these men were caught, the agency provided no assistance to the informants or their families, even years later, the six Iranians said.
James Olson, former chief of CIA counterintelligence, said he was unaware of these specific cases. But he said any unnecessary compromise of sources by the agency would represent both a professional and ethical failure.
“If we’re careless, if we’re reckless and we’ve been penetrated, then shame on us,” Olson said. “If people paid the price of trusting us enough to share information and they paid a penalty, then we have failed morally.”
The men were jailed as part of an aggressive counterintelligence purge by Iran that began in 2009, a campaign partly enabled by a series of CIA blunders, according to news reports and three former U.S. national security officials. Tehran has claimed in state media reports that its mole hunt ultimately netted dozens of CIA informants.
To tell this story, Reuters conducted dozens of hours of interviews with the six Iranians who were convicted of espionage by their government between 2009 and 2015.
To vet their accounts, Reuters interviewed 10 former U.S. intelligence officials with knowledge of Iran operations; reviewed Iranian government records and news reports; and interviewed people who knew the spies.
None of the former or current U.S. officials who spoke with Reuters confirmed or disclosed the identities of any CIA sources.
The CIA declined to comment specifically on Reuters’ findings or on the intelligence agency’s operations in Iran. A spokeswoman said the CIA does its utmost to safeguard people who work with the agency.
Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its Mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to requests for comment.
Hosseini was the only one of the six men Reuters interviewed who said he was assigned the vulnerable messaging tool. But an analysis by two independent cybersecurity specialists found that the now-defunct covert online communication system that Hosseini used – located by Reuters in an internet archive – may have exposed at least 20 other Iranian spies and potentially hundreds of other informants operating in other countries around the world.
This messaging platform, which operated until 2013, was hidden within rudimentary news and hobby websites where spies could go to connect with the CIA. Reuters confirmed its existence with four former U.S. officials.
“This is a very serious, very serious intelligence goal to penetrate Iran’s nuclear weapons program. You don’t get a much higher priority than that.”
The CIA considers Iran one of its most difficult targets. Ever since Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran in 1979, the United States has had no diplomatic presence in the country. CIA officers are instead forced to recruit potential agents outside Iran or through online connections. The thin local presence leaves U.S. intelligence at a disadvantage amid events such as the protests now sweeping Iran over the death of a woman arrested for violating the country’s religious dress code.
Four former intelligence officers interviewed by Reuters said the agency is willing to take bigger risks with sources when it comes to spying on Iran. Curbing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions has long been a priority in Washington. Tehran insists its nuclear efforts are solely for energy needs.
“This is a very serious, very serious intelligence goal to penetrate Iran’s nuclear weapons program. You don’t get a much higher priority than that,” said James Lawler, a former CIA officer whose focus included weapons of mass destruction and Iran. “So when they do the risk-versus-gain analysis, you’ve got to consider the incredible amount of gain.”
Much has been written about the decades-long shadow war between Iran and Washington, in which both sides have avoided a full military confrontation but have carried out sabotage, assassinations and cyberattacks. But the six informants, interviewed by Reuters for the first time, gave an unprecedented firsthand account of the deadly spy game from the perspective of Iranians who served as CIA foot soldiers.
The six Iranians served prison terms ranging from five to 10 years. Four of them, including Hosseini, stayed in Iran after their release and remain vulnerable to rearrest. Two fled the country and have become stateless refugees.
The six men acknowledged that their CIA handlers never made firm promises to help if they were caught. Still, all had believed that U.S. assistance would one day come.
The espionage busts could pose a challenge to the CIA’s credibility as it seeks to rebuild its spy network in Iran. The country’s state media publicized some of these cases, portraying the agency as feckless and inept.
“It’s a stain on the U.S. government,” Hosseini told Reuters.
CIA spokeswoman Tammy Kupperman Thorp declined to comment on Hosseini, the cases of other captured Iranians or any aspect of how the agency conducts operations. But she said the CIA would never be careless with the lives of those who help the agency.
“CIA takes its obligations to protect the people that work with us very seriously and we know that many do so bravely at great personal risk,” Thorpe said. “The notion that CIA would not work as hard as possible to safeguard them is false.”
The CIA says it does its utmost to safeguard people who assist the agency. A Reuters investigation found that the CIA was often careless in protecting lower-level sources in Iran. REUTERS/Larry Downing
An angry volunteer
Hosseini’s leap to espionage came after he had climbed a steep path to a lucrative career. The son of a tailor, he grew up in Tehran and learned lathing and auto mechanics, he said, showing Reuters his trade-school diploma.
Along the way, teachers spotted Hosseini’s intelligence and pushed him to study industrial engineering at the prestigious Amirkabir University of Technology, he said. Hosseini said a professor there put him in touch with a former student with ties to the Iranian government who eventually became his business partner.
Founded in 2001, their engineering company provided services to help businesses optimize energy consumption. The firm at first worked mainly with food and steel factories, Hosseini said, over time scoring contracts with Iran’s energy and defense industries. Hosseini’s account of his professional background is confirmed in corporate records, Iranian media accounts and interviews with six associates.
Hosseini said the company’s success made his family affluent, allowing him to buy a large house, drive imported cars and go on foreign vacations. But in the years after the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served from 2005 to 2013, his business teetered.
Gholamreza Hosseini in 2005 at the University of Tehran Science and Technology Park. The engineer said he later supplied information about two important Iranian nuclear sites to the CIA. Handout via REUTERS
Under Ahmadinejad, a hardliner aligned with the country’s theocratic ruler, Iran’s security forces were encouraged to enter the industrial sector, increasing the military’s control over lucrative commercial projects. Established companies often found themselves relegated to the role of subcontractors for these newcomers, Iranian democracy activists said, shrinking their slice of the pie.
Before long, Hosseini said, all of his new contracts had to be routed through some of these firms, forcing him to lay off workers as earnings tumbled.
“They didn’t know how to do the work, but they took the lion’s share of the profits,” said Hosseini, his voice rising as he recounted the events a decade later. “It was as if you were the head of the company, doing everything from 0 to 100, and seeing your salary being given to the most junior employees. I felt raped.”
At the same time, U.S. rhetoric was ramping up against Ahmadinejad. Washington viewed Iran’s president as a dangerous provocateur set on building nuclear weapons. Hosseini began to feel that his life was being destroyed by a corrupt system, and that the government was too erratic to be allowed to obtain nukes. His anger grew.
One day in 2007, he said he opened the CIA public website and clicked the link to contact the agency: “I’m an engineer who has worked at the nuclear site Natanz and I have information,” he wrote in Persian.
Located 200 miles south of Tehran, Natanz is a major facility for uranium enrichment. Archived web records from Hosseini’s engineering firm from 2007 say the company worked on civilian electrical power projects. Reuters could not independently confirm Hosseini’s work at Natanz.
A month later, to his surprise, Hosseini said he received an email back from the CIA.
Part of the team?
Three months after that contact, Hosseini said he flew to Dubai. At the fashionable shopping market Souk Madinat Jumeirah, he looked for a blonde woman holding a black book. He was standing outside the restaurant where they had agreed to meet, when she arrived accompanied by a man.
The restaurant manager guided them to a table secluded in a corner. The woman introduced herself only as Chris, speaking in English while her colleague translated in Persian. As she sipped a glass of champagne, Chris told him they were the people Hosseini had been exchanging messages with over the past few months in Google’s chat platform. She asked Hosseini about his work.
Hosseini said he explained that his company had several years earlier worked on contracts to optimize the flow of electricity at the Natanz site, a complex balancing act to keep centrifuges spinning at precisely the speed needed to enrich uranium. Located in central Iran, Natanz was the heart of Tehran’s nuclear program, which the government said was to produce civilian electricity. But Washington saw Natanz as the core of Iran’s push to acquire nuclear weapons.
Hosseini told Chris his firm was a subcontractor of Kalaye Electric, a company sanctioned in 2007 by the U.S. government over its alleged role in Iran’s nuclear development program. He added that he was seeking additional contracts at other sensitive nuclear and military sites.
Kalaye Electric did not respond to requests for comment.
The next day the three met again, this time at Hosseini’s hotel room overlooking the Gulf. Hosseini unfurled a maze-like map across the desk showing the electricity connected to the Natanz nuclear facility. As he did, Chris’s mouth dropped open wide, Hosseini recalled.
While several years old, Hosseini explained, the map’s notations of the amount of power flowing into the facility provided Washington a baseline to estimate the number of centrifuges currently active. That evidence, he believed, could be used to assess progress toward processing the highly enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon.
Hosseini said he didn’t know it at the time, but Natanz was already in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities. That same year, Washington and Israel launched a cyberweapon that would sabotage those very centrifuges, infecting them with a virus that would cripple uranium enrichment at Natanz for years to come, security analysts concluded. Reuters could not determine whether the information provided by Hosseini assisted in that cyber sabotage or other operations.
Iran’s then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a 2008 visit to the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in central Iran. REUTERS/Presidential official website/Handout (IRAN)
In subsequent meetings, Hosseini said, the CIA asked him to turn his attention to a broader U.S. goal: identifying possible critical points in Iran’s national electric grid that would cause long and paralyzing blackouts if struck by a missile or saboteurs.
Hosseini said he continued to meet with the CIA in Thailand and Malaysia, in a total of seven meetings over three years. To show evidence of his travels, Hosseini provided photographs of entry stamps in his passport for all but his first two trips, for which he said he had used an older, now discarded, passport.
As the relationship progressed, Hosseini said, Chris was replaced with a male handler who was accompanied by officials described as more senior in the CIA’s Iran operations, as well as technical experts able to keep up with his engineering jargon.
The new role motivated Hosseini, injecting his work with a sense of urgency and purpose. He scrambled to win business that would give him greater access to the intelligence the CIA sought. He said his company secured a contract with a unit of Setad, the sprawling business conglomerate controlled by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to assess the electrical needs of a giant shopping and commercial building project in the north of Tehran.
Iranians walk on a promenade in northern Tehran late last year. The United States and Iran severed diplomatic ties more than 40 years ago. Relations between the two nations remain strained. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Representing the supreme leader’s commercial organization, Hosseini pushed the state power company Tavanir for the electricity the sprawling development required, Hosseini said. When Tavanir said it didn’t have enough electricity to meet the project’s giant demands, Hosseini asked the company to provide in-depth analyses of the national grid. This allowed him access to maps showing how electricity flowed to nuclear and military sites and how critical points of the network could be sabotaged.
Setad and Tavanir did not respond to requests for comment.
In August 2008, a year after becoming a spy, Hosseini said he met with an older, broad-shouldered CIA officer and others at a hotel in Dubai.
Gholamreza Hosseini says a CIA officer purchased this stuffed bear for his daughter as a birthday gift.
“We need to expand the commitment,” Hosseini recounted the officer saying. The officer handed Hosseini a piece of paper and asked him to write a promise that he would not provide the information he was sharing to another government, a CIA practice intended to deepen a feeling of commitment from an informant, two former CIA officials said.
Another CIA officer in the meeting then showed Hosseini a covert communications system he could use to reach his handlers: a rudimentary Persian-language soccer news website called Iraniangoals.com. Entering a password into the search bar caused a secret messaging window to pop up, allowing Hosseini to send information and receive instructions from the CIA.
When Hosseini lamented missing his daughter’s third birthday during one of the trips, he said a CIA officer bought him a teddy bear to give to the child. “I felt that I had joined the team,” Hosseini told Reuters.
Secret system breakdown
What Hosseini didn’t know was that the world’s most powerful intelligence agency had given him a tool that likely led to his capture. In 2018, Yahoo News reported that a flawed web-based covert communications system had led to the arrest and execution of dozens of CIA informants in Iran and China.
Reuters located the secret CIA communications site identified by Hosseini, Iraniangoals.com, in an internet archive where it remains publicly available. Reuters then asked two independent cyber analysts – Bill Marczak of University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, and Zach Edwards of Victory Medium – to probe how Iran may have used weaknesses in the CIA’s own technology to unmask Hosseini and other CIA informants. The two are experts on privacy and cybersecurity, with experience analyzing electronic intelligence operations. The effort represents the first independent technical analysis of the intelligence failure.
Marczak and Edwards quickly discovered that the secret messaging window hidden inside Iraniangoals.com could be spotted by simply right-clicking on the page to bring up the website’s coding. This code contained descriptions of secret functions, including the words “message” and “compose” – easily found clues that a messaging capability had been built into the site. The coding for the search bar that triggered the secret messaging software was labeled “password.”
Far from being customized, high-end spycraft, Iraniangoals.com was one of hundreds of websites mass-produced by the CIA to give to its sources, the independent analysts concluded. These rudimentary sites were devoted to topics such as beauty, fitness and entertainment, among them a Star Wars fan page and another for the late American talk show host Johnny Carson.
Each fake website was assigned to only one spy in order to limit exposure of the entire network in case any single agent wa captured, two former CIA officials told Reuters.
But the CIA made identifying those sites easy, the independent analysts said. Marczak located more than 350 websites containing the same secret messaging system, all of which have been offline for at least nine years and archived. Edwards confirmed his findings and methodology. Online records they analyzed reveal the hosting space for these front websites was often purchased in bulk by the dozen, often from the same internet providers, on the same server space. The result was that numerical identifiers, or IP addresses, for many of these websites were sequential, much like houses on the same street.
“The CIA really failed with this,” said Marczak, the Citizen Lab researcher. The covert messaging system, he said, “stuck out like a sore thumb.”
In addition, some sites bore strikingly similar names. For example, while Hosseini was communicating with the CIA through Iraniangoals.com, a site named Iraniangoalkicks.com was built for another informant. At least two dozen of the 350-plus sites produced by the CIA appeared to be messaging platforms for Iranian operatives, the analysts found.
All told, these features meant the discovery of a single spy using one of these websites would have allowed Iranian intelligence to uncover additional pages used by other CIA informants. Once those sites were identified, nabbing the operatives using them would have been simple: The Iranians just had to wait and see who showed up. In essence, the CIA used the same row of bushes for its informants worldwide. Any attentive espionage rival would have been able to spot them all, the analysts said.
This vulnerability went far beyond Iran. Written in various languages, the websites appeared to be a conduit for CIA communications with operatives in at least 20 countries, among them China, Brazil, Russia, Thailand and Ghana, the analysts found.
CIA spokeswoman Thorp declined to comment on the system.
Reuters confirmed the nature of the intelligence failure of the CIA’s cookie-cutter websites with three former national security officials.
The agency wasn’t fully aware that this system had been compromised until 2013, after many of its agents began to go missing, according to the former U.S. officials.
Still, the CIA had never considered the network safe enough for its most prized sources. Top-tier informants receive custom-made covert communications tools, built from scratch at agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to seamlessly blend into the life of a spy without drawing attention, three former CIA officers said.
The mass-produced sites, they said, were for sources who were either not considered fully vetted or had limited, albeit potentially valuable, access to state secrets.
“This is for a person viewed as not worth the investment of advanced tradecraft,” one of the former CIA officials said.
The CIA declined to comment on the covert communications system and the intelligence failure.
Hurricane Ian was so powerful that its winds were just a few miles per hour shy of making it a Category 5 storm as it made landfall in Florida on Wednesday. And it didn’t take long for it to unleash its wrath on Florida’s power grids.
Ian’s eye began moving onshore at Sanibel and Captiva islands by midday on Wednesday. Before 2:30 p.m. ET, more than 660,000 customers had their power knocked out, according to tracking on poweroutage.us. Just two hours later, the total surpassed 1 million outages. After sundown, the number surged once again – bringing the total as of 10 p.m. to more than 2 million. And shortly after 5 a.m., the number of homes and businesses in the dark was over 2.5 million.
Southwest Florida was bearing the brunt of the impact. All customers in Hardee County had no electricity as of 7:45 a.m. Nearly all customers in several counties, including DeSoto, Charlotte and Lee, were without power as of early Thursday. At least half the customers in several neighboring counties, including Manatee, Sarasota, Collier, Highlands and Glades, were without power, according to poweroutage.us.
Reports of outages continued to extend north along the Gulf Coast, with major disruptions going as far north as Citrus County. Smaller disruptions continued to creep towards the panhandle.
Areas along Florida’s eastern coast were also seeing outages. Miami-Dade, while hard-hit with power disruptions, saw steady restorations throughout the day. Outages were also being seen more inland and were detected in every single county on the state’s east coast.
Florida officials have been warning for days of the potential power issues. Ian has been relentless on its track, knocking out power to all of Cuba when it raked the island on Tuesday, although power in some areas has been restored.
The National Weather Service warned prior to landfall that Hurricane Ian would cause “catastrophic” wind damage in Florida’s southwest. The service’s director, Ken Graham, said during a press briefing on Wednesday that the storm would take 24 hours to complete its journey across the state after the eye made landfall.
“This is going to be a storm that we talk about for many years to come,” he said.
Florida Power & Light, the main provider to the homes and businesses reporting outages, tweeted on Wednesday that the company was expecting “widespread, extend” outages. Of its more than 5.7 million tracked customers through PowerOutage.us, more than 1 million had reportedly lost power.
Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said Wednesday that there were more than 30,000 linemen “staged and ready” to help restore power when it is safe to do so. Gov Ron DeSantis said later in the day that number had increased to 42,000.
Hurricane Ian is expected to flood some areas of Florida’s west coast with storm surges as high as 18 feet above ground level as it moves across the peninsula after making landfall Wednesday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
Why it matters: Surge numbers that high — 12 to 18 ft — would be unprecedented for the region and some of the highest on record in the U.S.
“Ian battering the Florida peninsula with catastrophic storm surge, winds, and flooding,” the NHC said in a 5pm ET update.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) warned at a briefing Wednesday evening that there’s going to be damage throughout the entire state: “Overwhelmingly it’s been that surge that’s been the biggest issue and the flooding … as a result,” he said. “In some areas, we think it’s hit 12 feet.”
Driving the news: Hurricane Ian made landfall at 3:05 pm ET near Cayo Costa, Florida with maximum sustained winds at 150 mph as an “extremely dangerous” hurricane,” NHC said.
NHC is expecting between 12 to 18 feet of “catastrophic” storm surge somewhere between Englewood to Bonita Beach, including Charlotte Harbor.
Storm surge is expected along almost all of Florida’s west coast, with 8 to 12 ft expected somewhere between Bonita Beach and the small island of Chokoloskee in southern Florida, and 6 to 10 ft from Englewood to Longboat Key.
The storm surge will occur along with high winds, heavy rainfall and considerable flooding.
The major storm had already caused over 9 ft of surge in Naples by 1pm ET Wednesday, a new record for the city, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration monitoring station.
Fort Myers saw a peak 7.26 ft of surge — a record high, per NOAA.
The Caloosahatchee River, which flows into the San Carlos Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, was experiencing 7.2 ft of “moderate flooding” as of around 6:10pm ET, according to a National Weather Service gauge in Fort Myers.
Threat level: Some communities, likely including Naples, will experience the worst of the surge and winds on the backside of the storm’s eyewall.
The winds will be onshore and potentially stronger than they were during the storm’s initial approach.
The latest: As of 7pm ET, it was moving northeast at around 8 mph with maximum sustained winds at 125 mph and was located around 25 miles east-northeast of Punta Gorda.
It made landfall on the mainland Florida peninsula just south of Punta Gorda near Pirate Harbor around 4:35pm ET, according to the NHC.
A National Ocean Service station near Ft. Myers reported a water level greater than 7 ft, per a 7pm EST NHC update.
The big picture: The NHC considers storm surge, or an abnormal rise of water generated by a storm, to be the most deadly and destructive aspect of hurricanes.
The surge is the result of water being thrust toward the shoreline by the winds moving cyclonically around the storm and can cause “extreme” flooding in coastal areas, especially when it coincides with high tides.
National Guard Bureau Director of Operations Maj. Gen. Joseph Jarrard says Guardsmen are ready for search and rescue and supply operations as Hurricane Ian passes through Florida.
Hurricane Ian continues to wreak havoc on Walt Disney World as the massive Category 4 storm begins to move onshore in Florida.
Walt Disney World, located near Orlando, closed its theme and water parks for Wednesday and Thursday in response to the hurricane. Partially used multi-day tickets affected by the closures will be “automatically extended to allow use of the remaining unused ticket days through Sept. 30, 2023,” the company said on its website.
The closed parks include:
Magic Kingdom Park
EPCOT
Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon water park (Disney’s Blizzard Beach water park is currently closed for the season)
The Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World is seen with the crest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the theme park on Aug. 30, 2021. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File / AP Newsroom)
The resorts require all guests to check in by 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and they are not accepting any check-ins on Thursday. Customary cancellation fees will be waived, the company said.
The resorts have asked all guests to shelter in place “for the duration of the storm.”
Dining options at the resorts may be limited, Walt Disney World warned on its website. Open restaurants will not require reservations, only accepting walk-ins. On both Wednesday and Thursday, there will be no characters at character dining locations.
According to Walt Disney World, several resorts have been temporarily closed from Wednesday to Friday, including:
Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground
Copper Creek Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
Treehouse Villas at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Space
Bungalows at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
An entrance to Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, on Aug. 19, 2015. (iStock / iStock)
Other events, including Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party and the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue, have also been impacted by Hurricane Ian. The Halloween party has been canceled for Thursday, while the musical event remains closed through Friday.
“Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser” voyages departing Tuesday and Thursday have been called off, according to the company’s website.
The company closed its ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex through Friday. Disney World said it “anticipates Disney Springs will also be closed on Thursday” after already deciding to close it for Wednesday.
The Monorail at Walt Disney World. (iStock)
Walt Disney World’s transportation has been temporarily halted until after the hurricane passes. There will be limited taxi service for resort guests who already have breakfast reservations, according to the company’s website.
Walt Disney World isn’t the only attraction in Florida to have its operations impacted by Hurricane Ian.
SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Orlando Resort are closed Wednesday and Thursday. Busch Gardens Tampa Bay was closed on Tuesday and remains that way through Thursday.
At least six adults were wounded in a shooting at a school campus in Oakland on Wednesday, with at least some of the victims found inside the school, authorities said.
The shooting took place around 12:45 p.m. at Rudsdale Newcomer High School, authorities said. The school serves recent immigrants ages 16-21 who have fled violence and instability in their home countries, according to the school’s website. It is one of four adjacent schools located on a block in east Oakland.
Officials have not said whether any of the victims might be students age 18 or older.
“The victims were affiliated with the school, and we are determining the affiliation at this time,” Oakland Assistant Police Chief Darren Allison said, although he declined to say whether any students or teachers were involved.
Allison said police were seeking at least one suspect but did not have anyone in custody.
Three of the wounded were taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland, while the other three were taken to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley. Allison said three people remained hospitalized Wednesday evening, two of them with life-threatening injuries, while one person had been released and two others were expected to be released soon.
John Sasaki, a spokesperson for Oakland Unified School District, said in a statement that district officials “do not have any information beyond what Oakland Police are reporting.” He said counselors were being made available for students and he could not say whether the schools at the site would be open Thursday.
Television footage showed dozens of police cars and yellow tape on the street outside the school and students leaving nearby campuses.
City Council Member Treva Reid said investigators told her the shooting may be tied to rising “group and gang violence.”
James Jackson, chief executive of Alameda Health System, also noted an increase in violence.
“We’ve seen almost a doubling of the violent crimes victims that we’re seeing here at our facility (Highland Hospital). So something has changed,” Jackson said.
City Council Member Loren Taylor, who was outside the school, declined to confirm any details about the incident, telling KTVU-TV, “Guns were on our school campuses where our babies were supposed to be protected.”
___
This story has been corrected to show that The Associated Press, quoting Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, erroneously identified the location of the shooting. It was at Rudsdale Newcomer High School, not Sojourner Truth Independent Study school.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia positioned itself Wednesday to formally annex parts of Ukraine where occupied areas held a Kremlin-orchestrated “referendum” on living under Moscow’s rule that the Ukrainian government and the West denounced as illegal and rigged.
Armed troops had gone door-to-door with election officials to collect ballots in five days of voting. The suspiciously high margins in favor were characterized as a land grab by an increasingly cornered Russian leadership after embarrassing military losses in Ukraine.
Moscow-installed administrations in the four regions of southern and eastern Ukraine claimed Tuesday night that 93% of the ballots cast in the Zaporizhzhia region supported annexation, as did 87% in the Kherson region, 98% in the Luhansk region and 99% in Donetsk.
Pro-Russia officials in the four regions said they would ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to incorporate their provinces into Russia on the basis of announced vote results. Separatist leaders Leonid Pasechnik in Luhansk and Denis Pushilin in Donetsk said they were leaving for Moscow to settle the annexation formalities.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called the balloting “a propaganda show” and “null and worthless.”
“Forcing people in these territories to fill out some papers at the barrel of a gun is yet another Russian crime in the course of its aggression against Ukraine,” it said.
“Regardless of Russia’s claims, this remains Ukrainian territory and Ukraine has every right to continue to fight for their full sovereignty,” said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.
“In response, we will work with our allies and partners to impose additional economic costs” on Russia and supporters of any annexation, she said.
Separately, the U.S. announced an additional $1.1 billion in aid to Kyiv, with funding for about 18 more advanced rocket systems and other weapons to counter drones that Russia has been using against Ukrainian troops. The latest package brings the total of U.S. aid to Ukraine to nearly $17 billion since the Biden administration took office.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged the EU’s 27 member countries to agree on a new package of sanctions on Russia because of the proposed annexations.
The Kremlin remained unmoved amid the hail of criticism. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that at the very least, Russia intended to drive Ukrainian forces out of the Donetsk region, where Moscow’s troops and separatist forces currently control about 60% of the territory.
“Our actions depend not so much on what the Russian Federation thinks or wants, but on the military capabilities that Ukraine has,” he said.
State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington that the U.S. would not object to Ukraine using U.S.-supplied weapons to attack those areas if they are annexed by Russia.
“We have been clear when it comes to certain longer-range systems with our Ukrainian partners that these systems are for use on sovereign Ukrainian territory. If and when this annexation occurs as we expect it will, these areas will remain sovereign Ukrainian territory,” Price said.
After a counteroffensive by Ukraine this month dealt Moscow’s forces heavy battlefield setbacks, Russia said it would call up 300,000 reservists to join the fight. It also warned it could resort to nuclear weapons.
The mass exodus has created miles-long lines for days at some borders, and local Russian authorities on one area along the border with Georgia said they would start providing food, water, warming stations and other aid to those in line. Moscow also reportedly set up draft offices at borders to intercept some of those trying to leave.
The mobilization prompted the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to warn Americans in Russia to leave immediately because “Russia may refuse to acknowledge dual nationals’ U.S. citizenship, deny their access to U.S. consular assistance, prevent their departure from Russia, and conscript dual nationals for military service.”
Previous embassy security alerts issued during the war also advised Americans to leave.
Ukraine’s military and Western analysts said Russia is sending troops with hardly any training to the front line. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, cited an online video by a man who identified himself as a member of Russia’s 1st Tank Regiment, visibly upset, saying he and his colleagues wouldn’t receive training before shipping out to Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson region.
“Mobilized men with a day or two of training are unlikely to meaningfully reinforce Russian positions affected by Ukrainian counteroffensives in the south and east,” the institute said.
“All available information indicates those leaks are the result of a deliberate act,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said. Perpetrators have not been identified.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov said allegations that Russia could be behind the incidents were “predictable and stupid,” saying the damage has caused Russia huge economic losses. A U.N. Security Council meeting was called for Friday at Moscow’s request.
The damage makes it unlikely the pipelines will be able to supply any gas to Europe this winter, according to analysts.
On the battlefield, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Ukraine’s counteroffensive is advancing slowly, meeting a stouter Russian defense.
Local Ukrainian officials reported Russian attacks in the partially occupied Donetsk region that killed five people, and artillery strikes in the southern Ukrainian city of Nikopol. That city saw 10 high-rises and private buildings hit, as well as a school and power lines, said Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the local military administration.
Families of three people killed in the Highland Park Fourth of July parade massacre and dozens who were wounded filed suit Wednesday in Lake County against gunmaker Smith & Wesson, two gun stores, the man who’s been charged in the shootings and his father, accusing them in part of violating Illinois consumer laws in the lead-up to the attack.
“Our legal theory on the complaint is that this was predictable and preventable,” said attorney Anthony Romanucci, whose Romanucci & Blandin law firm is part of a legal team filing 10 lawsuits on behalf of more than 40 individuals or estates asserting the “shooter was the type of a young consumer susceptible to Smith & Wesson’s deceptive and unfair marketing, and was enabled by his father.”
The civil lawsuits now pending in Lake County are separate from the criminal charges that shooting suspect Robert Crimo III faces and assert the defendants violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits consumer fraud and deceptive practices.
An 11th lawsuit was filed by another legal team for a plaintiff and a 12th case, representing another person shot dead, will be filed at a later date. All the lawsuits, which could have wide implications for gunmakers, were filed against the following parties:
The gunmaker, the lawsuits say, “markets its assault rifles to young, impulsive men by appealing to their propensity for risk and excitement” by maintaining an active presence on social media using violent video games — including ones played by Crimo — and social influencers as marketing tools.
“For Smith & Wesson, the younger the shooter, the better,” the lawsuits say.
They say the gunmaker’s marketing campaign continued even though Smith & Wesson “knew or should have known in the last decade, mass shooters have used Smith & Wesson weapons as their weapons of choice.”
They also assert Smith & Wesson fraudulently markets its M&P line as “used or endorsed” by the military, suggesting that the weapon “will allow civilians to act like service members and engage in combat.”
The gunmaker “facilitates violence for profit,” those suing say, with “marketing and promotion” that aim to attract “young men looking for military-style rifles to act out a perverse combat fantasy of killing as many people as possible.”
Although Crimo owned several weapons, he used the M&P15 in the July 4 attack because, the filings say, of its “militaristic qualities and its perceived fit for carrying out his mission of inflicting the most violence possible.”
— Bud’s Gun Shop in Lexington, Ky., an online gun retailer, and Red Dot Arms, a gun store in Lake County where, in July 2020, Crimo (then 19) picked up the Smith & Wesson M&P15 ordered from Bud’s Gun Shop.
The lawsuits say the two gun stores never should have sold Crimo the assault rifle because they knew his billing address and were “aware that the shooter was a resident of Highland Park or Highwood,” communities where it is illegal for residents to “acquire and possess assault weapons.”
The lawsuits say the shooter “was exactly the type of unstable and impressionable young consumer, obsessed with violence and filled with hatred and depressive thoughts, susceptible to Smith & Wesson’s marketing and more likely to engage in dangerous behavior.”
The filings also reveal the contents of Crimo’s phone, obtained by investigators for the legal team, saying it “contained numerous photos of himself posing with guns, sometimes wearing a ‘Siege’-style mask and sometimes wearing body armor. He was ready to go to war — just as Smith & Wesson told him he could.”
On July 3, Crimo “wrote himself a note on his phone outlining the steps required to conceal his identity during the attack,” according to the filings.
The lawsuits also say that Crimo, “almost a year before the shooting,” posted videos “of what appears to be a portion of Highland Park’s parade.” As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in August, the lawsuits note that, in the days before the attack, the shooting suspect “posted hateful messages on the Documenting Reality message board.”
— Robert Crimo Jr., who signed the papers needed for his son, because he was a minor, to purchase a weapon.
The senior Crimo “enabled the shooter’s thirst for violence by sponsoring his FOID application, despite his knowledge that the shooter was disturbed and threatened violence,” the filings state. The father, the lawsuits say, cleared the way for his son to obtain a weapon despite the younger Crimo’s past threats to kill his family and himself.
By the end of July 2020, the lawsuits say, Crimo, although still a minor, had the Smith & Wesson rifle used in the July 4 attack — his first gun purchase — as well as a Kel-Tec SUB2000, a Remington 700 and a shotgun.
The lawsuits say that each of those being sued “enabled the shooter to carry out a massacre on July 4, 2022.”
The Highland Park cases could have national implications because they aim to build upon a landmark $73 million settlement that the families of nine Sandy Hook Elementary School families won in February against Remington Arms, the maker of the AR-15-style weapon used in the Dec. 14, 2012, attack at the school in Newtown, Connecticut. The lawsuit said the gunmaker’s marketing violated Connecticut consumer law.
“When you think about tobacco litigation, when you think about opioid litigation that has been so successful over the past few years, it’s not just one lawsuit,” said Alla Lefkowitz, an attorney with Everytown Law, which also is representing the Highland Park plaintiffs, along with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, part of the Sandy Hook legal team. “You need numerous successful lawsuits to really make a difference, to really have business reform to really save lives.”
Legal teams representing various plaintiffs — including lawyers from the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence — and Romanucci, Gina DeBoni, David Neiman and Michael Holden from Romanucci & Blandin — joined forces at a news conference on Wednesday at a Northbrook hotel, to send a message to Smith & Wesson — the major defendant.
The legal team, including the Romanucci firm lawyers, Lefkowitz and H. Christopher Boehning of Paul, Weiss — represent more than 40 plaintiffs, including the estates of three people who were killed: Nicolas Toledo, who lived in Mexico and was visiting his Lake County family; Stephen Straus, 88, a stockbroker; and Jacki Sundheim, a staffer at North Shore Congregation Israel.
The Romanucci team filed the first of its 10 lawsuits on behalf of the family of Cooper Roberts, 8, who was left paralyzed after being shot. His twin brother was hit by shrapnel, and their mother, Keely, also was wounded.
As a result of the shooting, Cooper and Keely, the lawsuit said, experience “physical pain, mental suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, anxiety and severe emotional distress” as well as incurring past and future medical expenses and lost future income.
Smith & Wesson, headquartered in Massachusetts, is the main defendant in the case and faces a formidable coalition of lawyers, from Chicago area firms — and from Washington, D.C., — Everytown and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“This coalition is HP Strong, and we will never run out of energy for this fight,” said Ari Scharg.
He is one of the lawyers representing Elizabeth Turnipseed, who on Wednesday morning was admitted to a hospital because of complications stemming from the wounds she suffered when a bullet ripped through her pelvis.
Reading from a statement Turnispeed sent from her hospital bed, Scharg said, “Every night before I go to bed I relive the same memory from that day. It’s the moment I am shot.”
Turnispeed’s lawsuit also asks the court to issue an injunction against Smith & Wesson to “cease its illegal, deceptive and/or negligent marketing campaign.”
All the lawsuits focused on the images Crimo posted on social media depicting himself in violent situations.
Turnipspeed’s lawsuit noted Smith & Wesson’s ads are “appealing to young and predominantly male consumers … who are excited by and attracted to reenacting their video experience in real life.” Those ads “gamify the use of firearms in real life, glorify the lone gunman and the militaristic design of the M&P15.” Smith & Wesson aimed its ads and marketing on social media platforms “disproportionately visited by younger consumers.”
Matthew Sims, the lawyer representing the estate of another man killed in the massacre, Eduardo Uvaldo, said the family also plans to file a lawsuit. Uvaldo’s wife, Maria, was also wounded in the attack.
Lauren Bennett, one of the plaintiffs, was sitting with her family near Walker Bros. restaurant along the Central Avenue parade route when she was hit in her lower back, the bullet exiting through her left hip. Her mother-in-law, Terrie Bennett, was shot in the arm. Her mother, Debbie Samuels, was grazed by a bullet. Other family members, according to their lawsuit, including her two young sons and husband, continue to suffer from emotional distress.
“We’re dealing with really, really, bad players out there who have my blood on their hands, and I feel these people need to be stopped,” Bennett said in an interview. “And anything we could do to stop them, maybe, from making one more gun, selling one more gun to the wrong person, then, I think that is a step in the right direction.”
With her husband, Michael Bennett, looking on, plaintiff Lauren Bennett, who was wounded in the Highland Park Fourth of July parade massacre, speaks at a news conference in Northbrook about lawsuits she and others filed.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
The lawsuits are requesting a jury trial and are seeking unspecified monetary damages.
A bullet punctured the lung of Michael Zeifert, a banker, who is still recovering. He was at the parade with his family. He said he hopes that the lawsuit “holds accountable” the “parties who enabled this.”
His wife, Christine, an optometrist in Highland Park, said in an interview that she saw the gunman firing at the crowd from the rooftop of a sundry store, dressed like a woman. Police have said Crimo disguised himself as a woman in an effort to blend in with the crowd.
The Zeiferts’ four children were at the parade. Now, making them feel safe is “hard,” Christine Zeifert said.
Regarding suing, she said, “I think, as a mom, I have to somehow” continue to press “for positive change.”
Smith & Wesson has not yet responded to a request for a comment. Michel Rioux, owner of Red Dot Arms in Villa Park, declined to comment on the lawsuits. He threatened to call the police if a reporter didn’t leave the property.
Turns out “Sí, se puede” isn’t just a rallying cry. It’s a threat.
Gov. Gavin Newsom just learned that the hard way.
On Wednesday afternoon, after a morning of glory in which Newsom signed a number of important laws to break the logjam on affordable housing in California, word started leaking out that he would also put pen to paper on Assembly Bill 2183, a measure by the United Farm Workers meant to make it easier for those who labor in our fields to form a union.
It’s a bill Newsom has fought against vehemently for months and promised to veto if it reached his desk. But for weeks since it actually landed in his lap, it has mushroomed into a political nightmare.
The Capitol stairs have become home to dozens of farmworkers holding a vigil to demand his signature. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris put out public statements in support of it, as did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Newsom’s political mentor. Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello traveled to Sacramento to sing “This Land Is Your Land” with union members.
The president on Sunday schooled Newsom on Labor Day politics by endorsing United Farm Workers legislation that could help the UFW organize.
At the same time, Newsom helped dig his own hole by going after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his despicable stunt of flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Newsom rightly spoke out against using vulnerable humans for political points — only to find himself knocked around for failing to stand up for the vulnerable migrants in his own state.
That one was the nail in the coffin for his opposition to the farmworker legislation. Though he is most certainly not running for president, vetoing this bill would have been both a talking point and a real problem within the labor movement if he was to make such a run.
Why Newsom has been so adamantly against the legislation has always been a bit murky. Officially, the argument was that he was concerned that the proposal could have given UFW too much time and leeway when it came to organizing — months and months to gather signatures from workers who may have moved on to other employers by then.
The last-minute deal to sign the bill includes changes that will have to be made via superseding legislation next term, including fixes that give the Agricultural Labor Relations Board more power over the new system, and capping the number of union drives that can happen over the five-year life of the bill before its provisions come up for renewal.
Unofficially, some griped that as a winery owner, Newsom was too close to growers and their interests. They pointed out that his PlumpJack brand, which is being managed in a blind trust while Newsom is in office, expanded to buy another winery even as farmworkers marched 335 miles to the Capitol to fight his promised veto.
Against that backdrop was the contention from some — fair to a point — that UFW was a weak union that hadn’t organized so much as a dinner dance in years.
It was likely that perception, that UFW was small and decrepit, that led Newsom to think a veto of the bill was possible.
Back when this fight started, it may have been a reasonable political calculation that the union made famous by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez decades ago was a relic — venerated but irrelevant. Its membership had fallen to a few thousand, its organizing record is slim, and the agriculture industry had changed to rely more and more on undocumented workers who are migratory and often too vulnerable to risk angering an employer by signing a union card. The threat of deportation for those who battle their farm bosses is real and pervasive.
But that was a huge misread of who and what the farmworkers are in California. I’m not saying that with the 20/20 of hindsight, now that Newsom has been backed into a political corner and the ink is drying. The warning signs were large and flashing.
In July, after 16 years of being on their own, UFW rejoined the umbrella of labor unions known as the California Labor Federation. UFW leaders were onstage with Lorena Gonzalez, the daughter of a farmworker and a former legislator, when she took over as leader of that organization and vowed that every union would fight with them.
Former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez takes over Wednesday as head of the California Labor Federation. The United Farm Workers will join the umbrella organization under her leadership.
Just days ago, a who’s who of Latino activists and legislators wrote a letter to Newsom urging his signature.
“For a generation of Latino leaders, there is no struggle more personal, more inspiring, or more urgent than that of the farmworkers,” the letter from more than two dozen prominent Latinos read. “Most of us are here because our parents or grandparents came to this country to work in the fields.”
How many in California can relate to that, even if their parents worked in factories or restaurants instead of fields? My own father is a South Asian immigrant, different continent, different struggles. But I feel that deep, personal and urgent call to help others who come here, willing to work and fight for something better.
The fact that our governor didn’t see the power of that pull for so many Californians is a blind spot. The Democratic Party and Newsom have long been criticized for taking the Latino vote for granted. The handling of this bill shows a lack of understanding that the politics of all immigrants, beyond party or even religion, are the politics of hope — that the children of immigrants won’t work in fields, and that their children will be the ones signing bills.
Failing for immigrants has always meant more than a personal loss. It’s a generational loss that people who have risked everything to be here aren’t willing to endure.
That’s why “Sí, se puede” has never had the luxury of being about wishes and desires.
European security officials on Monday and Tuesday observed Russian Navy support ships in the vicinity of leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines likely caused by underwater explosions, according two Western intelligence officials and one other source familiar with the matter.
It’s unclear whether the ships had anything to do with those explosions, these sources and others said – but it’s one of the many factors that investigators will be looking into.
Russian submarines were also observed not far from those areas last week, one of the intelligence officials said.
Three US officials said that the US has no thorough explanation yet for what happened, days after the explosions appeared to cause three separate and simultaneous leaks in the two pipelines on Monday.
Russian ships routinely operate in the area, according to one Danish military official, who emphasized that the presence of the ships doesn’t necessarily indicate that Russia caused the damage.
“We see them every week,” this person said. “Russian activities in the Baltic Sea have increased in recent years. They’re quite often testing our awareness – both at sea and in the air.”
But the sightings still cast further suspicion on Russia, which has drawn the most attention from both European and US officials as the only actor in the region believed to have both the capability and motivation to deliberately damage the pipelines.
US officials declined to comment on the intelligence about the ships on Wednesday.
Both Denmark and Sweden are investigating, but a site inspection has yet to be done and details on exactly what caused the explosions remains sketchy. One European official said that there is a Danish government assessment underway and it could take up to two weeks for an investigation to properly begin because the pressure in the pipes makes it difficult to approach the site of the leaks — although another source familiar with the matter said the probe could begin as soon as Sunday.
The prime ministers for both Denmark and Sweden said publicly on Tuesday that the leaks were likely the result of deliberate actions, not accidents, and Sweden’s security service said in a statement Wednesday that it cannot be ruled out “that a foreign power is behind it.” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday evening also called the leaks “apparent sabotage” in a tweet.
But senior Western officials have so far stopped short of attributing the attack to Russia or any other nation.
The Kremlin has publicly denied striking the pipelines. A spokesman called the allegation “predictably stupid and absurd.”
CNN has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on the presence of the ships.
Investigation into the leaks
The Danish government is taking the lead on the investigation and has put in place an exclusion area of five nautical miles and a 1 kilometer no-fly-zone, according to European sources familiar with the matter.
Other than Sullivan, US officials have been far more circumspect than their European counterparts in drawing conclusions about the leaks.
“I think many of our partners have determined or believe it is sabotage. I’m not at the point where I can tell you one way or the other,” a senior military official said Wednesday. “The only thing I know there is that we think the water is between 80 and 100 meters [deep] at that location where the pipeline is. Other than that, I don’t know anything more.”
But one senior US official and a US military official both said Russia is still the leading suspect – assuming that the European assessment of deliberate sabotage is borne out – because there are no other plausible suspects with the ability and will to carry out the operation.
“It’s hard to imagine any other actor in the region with the capabilities and interest to carry out such an operation,” the Danish military official said.
Russia has requested a UN Security Council meeting on the damaged pipeline this week – something the senior US official said is also suspicious. Typically, the official said, Russia isn’t organized enough to move so quickly, suggesting that the maneuver was pre-planned.
If Russia did deliberately cause the explosions, it would be effectively sabotaging its own pipelines: Russian state company Gazprom is the majority shareholder in Nord Stream 1 and the sole owner of Nord Stream 2.
But officials familiar with the latest intelligence say that Moscow would likely view such a step as worth the price if it helped raise the costs of supporting Ukraine for Europe. US and western intelligence officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is gambling that as electricity costs rise and winter approaches, European publics could turn against the Western strategy of isolating Russia economically. Sabotaging the pipelines could “show what Russia is capable of,” one US official said.
Russia has already taken steps to manipulate energy flows in ways that caused itself economic pain, but also hurt Europe. Russia slashed gas supplies to Europe via Nord Stream 1 before suspending flows altogether in August, blaming Western sanctions for causing technical difficulties. European politicians say that was a pretext to stop supplying gas.
“They’ve already shown they’re perfectly happy to do that,” one of the sources said. “They weight their economic pain against Europe’s.”
The new Nord Stream 2 pipeline had yet to enter commercial operations. The plan to use it to supply gas was scrapped by Germany days before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.
US, European and Ukrainian officials have been warning for months, however, that critical infrastructure – not only in Ukraine but also in the US and Europe – could be targeted by Russia as part of its war on Ukraine.
The US warned several European allies over the summer, including Germany, that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines could face threats and even be attacked, according to two people familiar with the intelligence and the warnings.
The warnings were based on US intelligence assessments, but they were vague, the people said – it was not clear from the warnings who might be responsible for any attacks on the pipelines or when they might occur.
The CIA declined to comment.
Der Spiegel was the first to report on the intelligence warnings.
CNN’s Alex Marquardt and Oren Liebermann contributed to this report.
Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida’s southwestern coast Wednesday as one of the most powerful storms in U.S. history, tearing apart homes and buildings and leaving some residents stranded as storm surge flooded communities.
The storm made landfall near Cayo Costa as a Category 4 storm Wednesday afternoon with maximum sustained winds measured at a stunning 150 mph — only 7 mph slower than a Category 5, the highest status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale of Hurricane Intensity. It slowed as it lashed the state and was downgraded to a Category 3 storm Wednesday night, the National Hurricane Center reported.
“It is going to have major, major impacts in terms of wind, in terms of rain, in terms of flooding,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned in a briefing Wednesday. “So this is going to be a nasty, nasty day, two days.”
As of 8 p.m., the storm’s center was located 30 miles northeast of Punta Gorda, Florida — about 95 miles south-southwest of Orlando. The storm was moving north-northeast at 8 mph with maximum sustained winds at 115 mph, according to the hurricane center. Ian will continue to move slowly, slamming much of the state with life-threatening storm surge, catastrophic winds and flooding, the National Hurricane Center said.
Latest developments:
► More than 1.6 million are without power in Florida, a number that’s expected to continue to rise.
► In Naples, Fla., the first floor of a fire station was inundated with about 3 feet of water and firefighters worked to salvage gear from a firetruck stuck outside the garage in even deeper water, a video posted by the Naples Fire Department showed.
► Residents described the terror after a tornado tore through a condominium complex near Delray Beach, ripping off roofs and turning over vehicles. “I felt things blow past my head and face,” resident Jim Travis said. “When I opened the door, my apartment was destroyed.” Read more.
HURRICANE TRACKER: Where is Ian headed? See the map.
IAN FORECAST: Ian likely to spend days dumping rain on Florida. Here’s the outlook.
911 callers report being stranded in homes
Hurricane Ian’s massive wind gusts, storm surge and flooding have wiped out 911 emergency call centers and trapped people in their homes, officials said Wednesday.
The storm forced the rerouting of emergency calls and delayed responses in Lee, Hendry and Glades counties, DeSantis said during a Wednesday evening briefing.
And in the coastal city of Naples, the sheriff’s department reported on Facebook that it was getting “a significant number of calls of people trapped by water in their homes” and that it would prioritize reaching people “reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water.”
Earlier in the day, the sheriff’s office said multiple parking garages had flooded with cars underwater.
1.6 million without power in Florida. Restoring it could take days, weeks
More than 1.6 million Floridians were without power as of 7:30p.m. ET, according to PowerOutage.us.
“That number is going to grow,” DeSantis said. “You’re going to get more power outages.”
The massive hurricane could force Florida Power & Light (FPL) to do a “complete rebuild” in some parts of Florida’s west coast, which could take days or weeks, the utility company told CNN.
“What we’re seeing already just from some of the early visuals, we expect that there are going to be parts of our system on the West Coast, which will need to be rebuilt and that is going to take longer — could be a number of days, could be a matter of weeks, depending on the nature of the damages,” said Dave Reuter, chief communications officer for Florida Power & Light.
More customers, he said, will be losing power as the path of the storm crosses central Florida.
Coast Guard looks for Cuban migrants after boat sinks off Florida Keys
Four Cuban migrants swam to shore in the Florida Keys, and three others were rescued from the ocean after their boat sank Wednesday, shortly before Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwest Florida. But it’s possible that 20 more people are still missing, officials said.
The four Cubans reached Stock Island, just east of Key West, and reported their vessel sank because of inclement weather, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chief Patrol Agent Walter N. Slosar posted on Twitter.
The U.S. Coast Guard initiated a search and rescue mission for 23 people and managed to find three survivors about two miles south of the island chain, officials said. The survivors were taken to a local hospital for symptoms of exhaustion and dehydration. Air crews continued to search for the remaining migrants.
Ian larger than 2004 Hurricane Charley that caused 31 deaths
Hurricane Ian is following an eerily similar path to the strongest recorded hurricane to hit Southwest Florida — and it is nearly three times its size.
Hurricane Charley ravaged Southwest Florida in August 2004, and 31 people died in relation to the hurricane, the CDC said.
But despite its damage, Charley was a relatively small hurricane: it was fairly contained to a limited area in its swath across Florida. The worst storm surge was around seven feet in a small area of the state’s west coast.
Hurricane Ian is much larger. As of Wednesday morning, its area of hurricane-force winds was nearly three times larger than Charley’s, up to 45 miles from the center, and its area of tropical-storm-force winds extended outward up to 175 miles.
“This is way, way, way bigger than Charlie,” DeSantis said during a press conference Wednesday.
Ian’s winds prompt rare ‘extreme wind warning’
An extreme wind warning was in effect was in effect for portions of southwest Florida for extremely dangerous hurricane winds as Ian came ashore. “Treat these imminent extreme winds as if a tornado was approaching and move immediately to an interior room or shelter NOW!,” the National Weather Service warned.
Storm slowing down means 24 hours of ‘wind pushing water’
National Weather Service Director Ken Graham said the storm was moving at 9 mph and was slowing down. It will take 24 hours or more to cross the state, he said – “24 hours of rainfall, 24 hours of wind pushing the water.”
Some areas will see 24 inches of rain, some will see storm surge of 18 feet, he said.
“This is a devastating storm for parts of Florida, not just on the southwest coast but inland,” he said. “This is going to be a storm we will talk about for many years to come. It’s a historic event.”
Georgia, South Carolina to see Ian’s fury
Ian was expected to weaken after landfall, the hurricane center said, but the storm could remain near hurricane strength when it moves over Florida’s east coast Thursday. And could still hold its power as it approaches the northeastern Florida, Georgia and South Carolina coasts late Friday.
Heavy rainfall will spread across the Florida peninsula through Thursday.
“Widespread, life-threatening catastrophic flooding is expected across portions of central Florida with considerable flooding in southern Florida, northern Florida, southeastern Georgia and coastal South Carolina,” the service said in an advisory.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp issued a state of emergency order for the entire state and said up to 500 National Guard troops were preparing to be called up if needed.
FEMA: Storm surge, flooding biggest concerns
Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Deanne Criswell says her biggest concern is the expected storm surge and inland flooding from heavy rains as the storm crawls across Florida over the next two days. She urged residents across the state to heed the warnings of local officials for the “historic and catastrophic impacts that we are already beginning to see.”
“Water is dangerous, period,” Criswell said at a briefing Wednesday. “From coastal storm surge to inland flooding, the majority of the state of Florida is in Ian’s crosshairs.”
Tornadoes also were a risk. Twisters were possible through Wednesday night across central and south Florida, the hurricane center said. CBS4-TV reported that least 10 mobile homes were damaged by a possible tornado Tuesday in Davie, a Broward County city of 110,000 people 25 miles north of Miami. Another possible tornado also was reported in Broward County.
The Storm Prediction Center said Wednesday that “the risk of a few tornadoes should gradually increase across parts of central and east-central Florida this afternoon, with a potential focus from Lake Okeechobee northward to near Orlando during the next few hours.”
Cuba remained in the dark early Wednesday after Hurricane Ian knocked out its power grid and devastated homes, businesses and valuable tobacco farms when it hit the island’s western tip Tuesday as a Category 3 storm. Authorities were working to gradually restore service to the country’s 11 million people, Cuba’s Electric Union said in a statement.
“The damage is great, although it has not yet been possible to account for it. Aid is already pouring in from all over the country,” Cuban President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez said on Twitter. “Rest assured that we will recover.”
Airports, transit, theme parks brace for storm
Airports in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Key West were closed Wednesday. Orlando International was scheduled to shut down at 10:30 a.m., and at least 700 flights in and out were canceled by early Wednesday.
Miami-Dade County suspended Metrobus, Metrorail and other transit services “until further notice.” Disney World theme parks and Sea World in Orlando all closed ahead of the storm.
A couple from England on vacation in Tampa found themselves faced with riding out the storm at a shelter. Glyn and Christine Williams of London were told to leave their hotel near the beach when evacuations were ordered. Because the airport shut down, they could get no flight home.
“Unfortunately, all the hotels are full or closed, so it looks as though we’re going to be in one of the shelters,” Christine Williams said.
President warns oil companies about price gouging
President Joe Biden on Wednesday warned oil and gas companies against increasing prices for consumers as Hurricane Ian neared landfall.
“Do not, let me repeat, do not use this as an excuse to raise gasoline prices or gouge the American people,” Biden said at the start of a conference on hunger in America.
Biden said that the hurricane “provides no excuse for price increases at the pump” and if it happens, he will ask federal officials to determine ”whether price gauging is going on.”
Contributing: Douglas Soule and Sergio Bustos, USA Today Network-Florida; The Associated Press
John Sasaki, the spokesman for the Oakland Unified School District, said at a news conference that “what happened today was wrong. It was very traumatic. It was devastating to our school community.”
He added that counseling would be available for students.
Seth Feldman, the executive director at Bay Area Technology School, said of his teachers, “I cannot believe how quickly our folks jumped into action.”
In an interview, Mr. Feldman said the shooting occurred just minutes before school let out for the day, when the hallways would have been flooded with students. “Five minutes later,” he said, “and this would have been tragic.”
He added that the charter school’s campus security officer had been shot in the leg, and that one of his administrators, Ryan Hughes, had pressed on a student’s wound to try to stem the bleeding.
“He pressed,” Mr. Feldman said. “He put his hands on him to make sure that he could be OK.”
Matthew Benjamin, a high school teacher at Bay Area Technology School, said he was walking down a hallway when he heard what sounded like gunshots, one after another, right around the corner.
“It was a blur,” Mr. Benjamin said. “I just instinctively turned around. I jumped back into the classroom; I told everyone get down. Kids were starting to flip out, and I grabbed hold of the door.”
He said he yelled at students to “get down.” Mr. Benjamin’s class locked the windows and hunkered down for about an hour.
Editor’s Note: Affected by the storm? Use CNN’s lite site for low bandwidth. You also can text or WhatsApp your Ian stories to CNN +1 332-261-0775.
Hurricane Ian made landfall along the southwestern coast of Florida near Cayo Costa around 3:05 p.m. ET Wednesday with winds near 150 mph, making it a strong Category 4 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm is delivering a catastrophic trifecta of high winds, heavy rain and historic storm surge to the state and is set to cause significant power outages and flooding as it moves at a slow pace across central Florida over the next day or two.
Hurricane Ian is tied for the strongest storm to make landfall on the west coast of the Florida peninsula, matching the wind speed of Hurricane Charley in 2004.
Already, over a million Florida utility customers were without power as of 3:45 p.m., according to PowerOutage.us. Officials in Cape Coral and Punta Gorda reported significant impacts, and the storm surge set records for the highest water levels ever observed in Fort Myers and Naples.
“The storm surge is very significant. We’re seeing cars and boats float down the street. We’re seeing trees nearly bent in half,” Frank Loni, an architect from California staying in Fort Myers Beach for the storm, said midday Wednesday. “There’s quite a bit of chaos on the streets.”
Water levels in Fort Myers have risen more than 6 feet over the past seven hours and still rising as strong winds continue to push water from the Gulf of Mexico ashore, according to CNN Meteorologist Brandon Miller.
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office, south of Fort Myers, reported people being trapped in their homes, according to the department’s post on Facebook. The Sheriff’s Office said it’s in “call triage mode” and getting numerous calls of people trapped by water.
“Some are reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water. We will get to them first. Some are reporting water coming into their house but not life threatening. They will have to wait. Possibly until the water recedes,” the post read.
To make matters worse, the Lee County’s 911 system is down and calls are be rerouted to Collier County Sheriff, according to the post.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis requested President Joe Biden approve a major disaster declaration for all 67 counties in the state due to Hurricane Ian, his office said in a news release. DeSantis is also requesting that President Biden grant FEMA the authority to provide 100% federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures for the first 60 days from Ian’s landfall.
‘Historic’ storm surge expected to bring extensive flooding
Much of west-central Florida and places inland face disaster: “Historic” storm surge up to 18 feet is possible and could swallow coastal homes; rain could cause flooding across much of the state; and crushing winds could flatten homes and stop electricity service for days or weeks.
“This is a wind storm and a surge storm and a flood storm, all in one,” CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said. “And this is going to spread itself out across the entire state. Everybody is going to see something from this.”
Mandatory evacuations were ordered for flood-prone areas on the coast, and the National Weather Service warned those who stayed behind to move to upper floors in case of rising water levels.
“This is a powerful storm that should be treated like you would treat” a tornado approaching your home, Gov. Ron DeSantis said around 8 a.m.
Images showed extensive flooding in coastal neighborhoods in Naples, where officials asked residents to shelter in place until further notice.
In some areas, such as Charlotte County, Florida, 911 response teams have stopped emergency service due to the high winds and dangerous conditions. Sarasota Mayor Eric Arroyo said on CNN’s “At This Hour” that police officers were being taken off the streets due to the wind speeds and hazardous conditions.
“It is too late to evacuate at this point,” Arroyo said.
• Storm surge: Some 12 to 18 feet of seawater pushed onto land was predicted Wednesday for the coastal Fort Myers area, from Englewood to Bonita Beach, forecasters said. Only slightly less is forecast for a stretch from Bonita Beach down tonear the Everglades (8 to 12 feet), and from near Bradenton to Englewood (6 to 10 feet), forecasters said.
Lower – but still life-threatening – surge is possible elsewhere, including north of Tampa and along Florida’s northeast coast near Jacksonville.
• Winds: Southwest Florida is facing “catastrophic wind damage.” Winds near the core of Hurricane Ian could exceed 150 mph, with gusts up to 190 mph, the hurricane center said. Multiple locations, including Sanibel Island, already have recorded wind gusts above 100 mph.
Ian is expected to retain hurricane strength for some time as it crosses the peninsula, with hurricane warnings issued for not only southwest Florida but also much of central Florida from coast to coast.
• Flooding rain: Because the storm is expected to slow down, 12 to 24 inches of rain could fall in central and northeastern Florida – including Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville. That makes for a top-of-scale risk for flooding rainfall across this area.
Where the hurricane is headed
Prior to nearing Florida, Hurricane Ian pummeled Cuba on Tuesday, leaving at least two dead and an islandwide blackout.
Since then, residents of Florida’s vulnerable Gulf Coast have been boarding up and leaving in droves on congested highways. More than 2.5 million people were advised to flee, including 1.75 million under mandatory evacuation orders – no small ask in a state with a large elderly population, some of whom have to be moved from long-term care centers.
Storm surge already was rising late Wednesday morning – more than 4.5 feet above normal highest tides was recorded before noon in Naples, already higher than the previous record there of 4.02 feet from Hurricane Irma in 2017.
After making landfall, Ian’s center is expected to move over central Florida through Thursday morning. Heavy rain and flooding also is possible in southern Florida, Georgia and coastal South Carolina. The governors of North and South Carolina have already declared states of emergency in their respective states.
Because Ian slowly approached land, the worst conditions could remain over some areas for eight or more hours.
“Widespread, life-threatening catastrophic flash, urban, and river flooding is expected” across central and southern Florida, the hurricane center said.
By late Thursday, Ian is due to emerge over the Atlantic Ocean, where it could strengthen again and affect another part of the US.
Parts of far southern Florida by early Wednesday morning had begun feeling the storm’s effects, with tropical storm-force winds and at least two possible tornadoes reported in Broward County, including at North Perry Airport, where planes and hangers were damaged. Major flooding was being reported in Key West due to storm surge, along with power outages.
Schools, supermarkets, theme parks, hospitals and airports had announced closures. The Navy moved its ships, and the Coast Guard has shut down ports. As winds pick up, gas stations may temporarily run out of fuel, DeSantis said.
Life upended as Floridians prepared for landfall
In Tampa, police went door to door Tuesday in a mandatory evacuation zone, making sure residents were ready to flee. Earlier projections had Ian on track to slam Tampa Bay, and even as the hurricane’s path shifted south, mandatory evacuations and preparations continued, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said.
Law enforcement officials around the state warned that people who stayed behind in evacuation areas cannot expect rescuers to respond to calls for help during the storm when winds are high.
“If you call for help, once we pull (officers) off the road … we’re not coming. … We’re not putting people in peril when (others) didn’t heed the mandatory evacuation order,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Wednesday.
Not everyone moved. Chelsye Napier, of Fort Myers, stayed home with her fiance and cats despite being in an evacuation zone, she told CNN Wednesday. They waited “because we don’t know anyone down here,” and ultimately decided to stay put, she said.
“If anything happens, we have everything that we need here. We’ve got food, we got water. We have everything that we need here,” she said. “So it’s all OK for right now. We’ll see, though, later on.”
Preparations across Florida have been underway for days as residents braced for Ian’s wrath. People lined up to pick up sandbags and flocked to stores to stock up on supplies like water and batteries.
And as the hurricane marched closer, the closures began.
Across Florida, 58 school districts have announced closures due to storm as campuses turned into shelters for evacuees. Disney World is set to close Wednesday and Thursday, as is Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex. And hundreds of Publix grocery stores shut their doors Tuesday evening, expected to remain closed through Thursday.
As millions were told evacuate, 176 shelters opened statewide and hotels and Airbnbs opened to people leaving evacuation zones, DeSantis said.
Local governments and state agencies also prepared those living in nursing homes and other senior care facilities to evacuate.
Florida has around 6 million residents over the age of 60, according to the state’s Department of Elder Affairs – nearly 30% of its total population. As of Tuesday, all adult day cares, senior community cafes and transportation services in evacuation zones are closed, according to the department.
Authorities also readied services to fan out and respond to calls for rescue and then, in the aftermath of the hurricane, for recovery and repair efforts.
Nearly 400 ambulances, buses and support vehicles were responding to areas where the hurricane was expected to make landfall, according to the governor’s office.
DeSantis activated 5,000 Florida National Guard members for Ian’s response operations, and 2,000 more guardsmen from Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina were being activated to assist.
Florida urban search and rescue teams also were prepping.
“We have five state teams that are activated with additional five FEMA teams that are in play,” Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said at a news conference Tuesday night. “We have over 600 resources to bear in addition to these out-of-town teams.”
CNN’s Amy Simonson, Judson Jones, Brandon Miller, Allison Chinchar, Michelle Krupa, Amanda Musa, Jamiel Lynch, Melissa Alonso, Amanda Watts and Rachel Ramirez contributed to this report.
Suspicious leaks reported on the Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Germany represent a “severe safety and environment hazard,” according to experts at the Eurasia Group.
Nord Stream operator Nord Stream AG reported Tuesday that both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines have sustained “unprecedented” damage via three known leaks, adding it was impossible to estimate when the gas network system’s working capability would be restored.
Danish and Swedish authorities declared a no-shipping zone around the location of the suspected leak in their maritime zones while Denmark raised its power and gas safety alert level.
Henning Gloystein, director of energy, climate and resources and senior analyst Jason Bush, both at Eurasia Group, said in a note Tuesday that while German and Danish authorities said the cause of the leaks was unknown, “unplanned leaks to undersea pipelines are rare as they are designed to avert accidental damage.”
“Several EU sources said sabotage seemed likely. Neither pipeline was delivering commercial gas at the time of the leaks, yet given both lines were still pressured and each has the capacity to pipe around 165 million cubic metres of methane-heavy gas per day,” they said, adding: “Leaks of this size are a severe safety and environmental hazard, especially should Russia not stop pumping gas into the system.”
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines have centered heavily in the breakdown of relations between Europe and Russia because of the war in Ukraine. The new Nord Stream 2 pipeline had not even opened when the German government refused to certify it for commercial operations after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the functional Nord Stream 1 pipeline is currently not being used to deliver Russian gas to Europe after Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, said there was a technical fault with a turbine that could not be fixed due to Western sanctions.
The latest report of leaks make it even less likely that gas supplies to Europe will resume before the winter, analysts now say.
“Depending on the scale of the damage, the leaks could even mean a permanent closure of both lines,” Eurasia Group said.
Gazprom declined to comment when approached by Reuters.
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