US Business

Hurricane Ian unleashed “historic” devastation in Florida, leaving a yet unknown number of dead in its wake, officials said Thursday, as the storm regrouped in the Atlantic on a path toward the Carolinas.

The storm, one of the most powerful ever to hit the United States, left hundreds of people in need of rescue, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said, while warning it was still too early to get a clear picture of how many people had died.

“We absolutely expect to have mortality from this hurricane,” he said at a press conference Thursday evening.

President Joe Biden, after a briefing at FEMA emergency management headquarters in Washington, said “this could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history.”

The numbers “are still unclear, but we’re hearing reports of what may be substantial loss of life,” he added.

DeSantis said concrete information about casualty numbers could be expected “in the coming days.” 

Fort Myers, where Ian made landfall as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday, took much of the brunt of the storm, as streets became rivers and sea water poured into houses.

Dozens of boats moored in the marina were sunk while others were tossed on to downtown streets.

Trees were toppled by the howling winds of up to 150 miles per hour (240 kilometers per hour).

Earlier on Thursday, DeSantis described the destruction in the southwest part of the state as a “500-year flood event.”

“We’ve never seen storm surge of this magnitude,” he said.

– ‘Horrifying’ –

Tom Johnson, 54, of Fort Myers had a front row seat to the destruction from his apartment on the second floor of a two-story harbourside building.

“I was scared because I’ve never been through that,” Johnson told AFP. “It was just the most horrifying sounds with debris flying everywhere, doors flying off.”

His home was undamaged but one of his neighbors, Janelle Thil, 42, was not so lucky and had to ask other residents for help after her ground floor apartment began to flood.

“They got my dogs and then I jumped out of the window and swam,” Thil said.

When Thil returned to her apartment after the storm passed, she said she opened the door and “had to wait about five minutes for all the floodwaters to come out.”

“I loved my home,” she said. “But I’m alive and that’s what matters.”

According to DeSantis, the area was also dealing with a water main break, which officials were “working to trouble shoot.”

A US Coast Guard official said helicopter crews were plucking people from the rooftops of homes inundated by floodwaters.

Nine migrants had been rescued from a boat that sank during the hurricane on Wednesday, leaving 18 missing, the Coast Guard said. Among them were four Cubans who swam to shore in the Florida Keys.

– Ian regaining strength –

Ian was downgraded to a tropical storm overnight but the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said it regained Category 1 hurricane strength on Thursday afternoon and issued a hurricane warning for the entire coast of South Carolina and part of North Carolina.

Biden declared a “major disaster” in Florida, a move that frees up federal funding for storm relief.

“We’re continuing to take swift action to help the families of Florida,” he tweeted. “I want the people of Florida to know that we will be here at every step of the way.”

Much of Florida’s southwest coast was plunged into darkness after the storm wiped out power.

Tracking website poweroutage.us said 2.3 million homes and businesses remained without electricity in the so-called Sunshine State late Thursday.

Two barrier islands near Fort Myers, Pine Island and Sanibel Island, popular with vacationers, were essentially cut off when the storm damaged causeways to the mainland.

Sanibel Island got “hit with really biblical storm surge,” DeSantis said, and rescuers were using boats and helicopters to evacuate residents who rode out the storm.

Mandatory evacuation orders had been issued in many areas of Florida ahead of Ian, with several dozen shelters set up.

Airports stopped all commercial flights, and cruise ship companies delayed or canceled voyages.

Before pummeling Florida, Ian plunged all of Cuba into darkness Tuesday after downing the island’s power network.

At least two people died in Pinar del Rio province, state media in the country of more than 11 million reported.

Human activity has caused life-threatening climate change resulting in more severe weather events across the globe.

NASA and SpaceX have agreed to study the feasibility of awarding Elon Musk’s company a contract to boost the Hubble Space Telescope to a higher orbit, with a goal of extending its lifespan, the US space agency said Thursday.

The renowned observatory has been operating since 1990 about 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth, in an orbit that slowly decays over time.

Hubble has no on-board propulsion to counter the small but still present atmospheric drag in this region of space, and its altitude has previously been restored during Space Shuttle missions.

The proposed new effort would involve a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

“A few months ago, SpaceX approached NASA with the idea for a study whether a commercial crew could help reboost our Hubble spacecraft,” NASA’s chief scientist Thomas Zurbuchen told reporters, adding the agency had agreed to the study at no cost to itself.

He stressed there are no concrete plans at present to conduct or fund such a mission until the technical challenges are better understood.

One of the main obstacles would be that the Dragon spacecraft, unlike the Space Shuttles, does not have a robotic arm and would need modifications for such a mission.

SpaceX proposed the idea in partnership with the Polaris Program, a private human spaceflight venture led by payments billionaire Jared Isaacman, who last year chartered a SpaceX Crew Dragon to orbit the Earth with three other private astronauts.

“This would certainly fit within the parameters we established for the Polaris program,” Isaacman said in response to a question about whether reboosting Hubble could be the goal for a future Polaris mission.

Asked by a reporter whether there might be a perception that the mission was contrived in order to give wealthy people tasks to do in space, Zurbuchen said: “I think it’s only appropriate for us to look at this because of the tremendous value this research asset has for us.”

Arguably among the most valuable instruments in scientific history, Hubble continues to make important discoveries, including this year detecting the farthest individual star ever seen — Earendel, whose light took 12.9 billion years to reach us.

It is currently forecast to remain operational throughout this decade, with a 50 percent chance of de-orbiting in 2037, said Patrick Crouse, Hubble Space Telescope project manager.

A cyber specialist who worked at the US National Security Agency and an army doctor and her wife were charged Thursday in separate cases with seeking to sell US secrets to foreign governments.

In one case, cybersecurity expert Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 30, spent less than four weeks working at the NSA, the government’s huge and powerful signals intelligence agency, before he suddenly quit, citing family problems at the end of June.

In the few weeks he was at the NSA, he printed out top secret documents, and after leaving he offered them for sale in encrypted online communications to what he thought was an agent of a foreign government. 

But he was actually dealing with an undercover FBI agent. 

The foreign government was not identified by the Justice Department.

But an FBI affidavit filed in court pointed to Russia, saying that Dalke was communicating via a dark web website created by the Russian international intelligence agency, the SVR, to attract leakers and turncoats.

Dalke, who the charges said had deep financial problems and had expressed unhappiness with American society, was provided two initial cryptocurrency payments worth more than $4,900, in exchange for evidence that he had top secret information.

Dalke asked for $85,000 for full documents, saying he had $237,000 in debts.

After he was paid another $11,422 worth of cryptocurrency, he and the undercover agent arranged for an electronic handover of documents in Denver, Colorado on Thursday.

Dalke was arrested at the handover location, and has been charged with three violations of the Espionage Act.

If convicted he faces a possible sentence of death or life in prison.

In a second case announced Thursday, a doctor for the US Army, Major Jamie Lee Henry, and her wife, Anna Gabrielian, a Russian-speaking instructor of anesthesiology at Johns Hopkins University, were charged with offering to sell the health information of US military and government personnel to Russia. They were apparently motivated by the Ukraine war.

An undercover FBI agent contacted Gabrielian in August after she reached out to the Russian Embassy in Washington offering the couple’s assistance, according to the indictment.

In an August 17 meeting, Gabrielian told the agent that “she was motivated by patriotism toward Russia,” the indictment said.

Henry meanwhile told the agent that she “was committed to assisting Russia,” and wanted to join the Russian army in Ukraine, it said.

“The United States is using Ukrainians as a proxy for their own hatred toward Russia,” she told the agent, according to the indictment.

The two were charged with conspiracy and multiple counts of illegally disclosing private health information.

Conspiracy charges can bring up to 20 years in prison.

Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the “Star Wars” film series, announced Thursday his support for a fundraising drive to buy drones for Ukraine as it battles “the evil empire.”

Hamill is the latest celebrity ambassador to back Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s UNITED24 fundraising platform, which was launched following Russia’s invasion.

The actor, who as Skywalker used his X-wing spacecraft to disrupt the diabolical “Galactic Empire,” will specifically spearhead a project to provide drones to the Ukrainian army.

“I know for certain that Ukrainians need drones to protect their land, their freedom and the values of the entire democratic world,” Hamill said in a statement.

“Right now is the best time for everyone to come together and help Ukraine stand up in this war with the evil empire.”

The “Army of Drones” project acquires remote-controlled flying drones, and funds their maintenance and pilot training, in order for the Ukrainian army to “constantly monitor the 2,470- kilometer- (1,500-mile-) long frontline and provide an effective response to enemy attacks,” according to its website. 

The Ukrainian military has received almost 1,000 drones via the program, which also allows people to donate their own drones as well as cash.

Other UNITED24 ambassadors include actor-singer Barbra Streisand and former Ukrainian football player Andriy Shevchenko.

Zelensky earlier posted on his Telegram account photos of himself on a video call with Hamill, with a caption describing the actor’s “difficult yet very important mission.”

“The light will win over darkness. I believe in this, our people believe in this,” added Zelensky in a joint statement with Hamill.

Suzanne Clarke wades through waist-deep water, struggling to reach her daughter’s apartment as she drags a kayak behind her.

When she finally reaches the home, she loads her two small granddaughters into the boat and pushes them toward higher ground, where she has parked her car on a freeway.

The building where Clarke’s daughter lives, in McGregor, a small city in southwestern Florida, was flooded Wednesday as Hurricane Ian thrashed over the community, which is situated along the Caloosahatchee River. 

“I am very stressed, it’s been rough,” said 54-year-old Clarke. “I came early. The water was really, really high and I was scared.”

A day after Ian’s fury was unleashed, the inhabitants of Lee County — one of the areas most affected by the storm — are left to count the damage inflicted over the last several hours, now standing under a radiantly sunny sky. 

Some six miles (10 kilometers) away in Iona, only a few particularly large cars dare to navigate through a flooded street. 

Resident Ronnie Sutton spent the night with a friend in a town south of here called Cabo Coral. Even though he hasn’t been able to get to his house yet, he is sure the water has destroyed everything. 

“It’s terrible,” the 67-year-old said. “I guess this is the price you pay for being at sea level. Sometimes it comes back to bite you.”

– Boats in the street –

Ian battered this section of southwestern Florida for hours on Wednesday, leaving behind scenes of destruction, including splintered trees, felled traffic lights and shattered glass.

In Fort Myers, a quiet city of approximately 83,000 people, the rising Caloosahatchee River pushed dozens of small boats — usually anchored at the local marina — up into the streets of downtown, where they remained Thursday on the now-dry ground. 

Tom Johnson witnessed the flooding up close from his apartment on the second floor of a two-story building. 

Wednesday afternoon, he saw how the hurricane propelled two boats up into his complex’s courtyard in a matter of just five minutes. 

“I was scared because I’ve never been through that,” recalled 54-year-old Johnson, whose home was not damaged, gesturing to the crafts still laying there.

“It was just the most horrifying sounds, with debris flying everywhere, doors flying off.”

One of Johnson’s neighbors, Janelle Thil, was not as lucky. Her ground-floor apartment began to flood, but she was able to ask another resident for help to get out. 

“They got my dogs and then I jumped out of the window and swam over there,” Thil said, pointing to a vacant second-floor unit where she and others took refuge. 

The 42-year-old had finished clearing out the mud that found its way into her home, and began gathering her few possessions that were not lost in the flood. 

“I cried a little bit when I finally got to my apartment,” she said. “Opened the door and I had to wait about five minutes for all the floodwaters to come out.”

“I loved my home, but I’m alive and that’s what matters.”