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Tag: Service outages

  • North Carolina power cut by shooting could come back earlier

    North Carolina power cut by shooting could come back earlier

    RALEIGH, N.C. — Duke Energy said it expects to restore power ahead of schedule to thousands of homes in a central North Carolina county that have been without electricity for several days after an attack on the electric grid.

    Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said the company expects to have power back Wednesday just before midnight in Moore County. The company had previously estimated it would be restored Thursday morning.

    About 35,000 Duke energy customers were still without power Tuesday, down from more than 45,000 at the height of the outage Saturday.

    The outages began shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday night after one or more people drove up to two substations, breached the gates and opened fire on them, authorities have said. Police have not released a motive or said what kind of firearm was used.

    Sam Stephenson, a power delivery specialist for Duke Energy, said the company has been able to implement “rolling power-ups” in the northern part of the county, giving some customers power in 2- to 3-hour waves.

    North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper called for a thorough assessment of the state’s critical infrastructure Tuesday morning at the monthly Council of State meeting — a collective body of elected officials comprising the executive branch. He said this will likely include discussions with federal regulators, lawmakers and utility companies about how to bolster security and prevent future attacks.

    In the short-term, the state has sent generators to Moore County and is helping feed residents. Law enforcement in surrounding counties has been more vigilant about monitoring nearby substations since the attack, he said.

    “This seemed to be too easy,” Cooper told reporters after the meeting. “People knew what they were doing to disable the substation, and for that much damage to be caused — causing so much problem, economic loss, safety challenges to so many people for so long — I think we have to look at what we might need to do to harden that infrastructure.”

    Mike Causey, the North Carolina insurance commissioner and state fire marshal, called the attack “a wakeup call to provide better security at our power substations.”

    Many businesses around the county that is about 60 miles (95 kilometers) southwest of the state capital of Raleigh are closed at a normally busy time of year for tourism and holiday shopping. Schools are also closed through Thursday, and traffic lights are out around the area. A curfew remains in place from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.

    County officials said 54 people spent Monday night at an emergency shelter at the county sports complex in Carthage, up from 19 people the night before, as temperatures dropped below freezing after sundown. Many more residents have stopped by the shelter for food, warmth, showers or to charge their devices.

    Republican state Sen. Tom McInnis, who represents Moore County, said the General Assembly is awaiting updates on how the perpetrators of this attack might be charged and may consider new legislation related to the punishment when the legislature returns in January.

    “I’m reasonably confident there will be new legislation that will be brought forward in the long session to address the potential that, again, that the crime and the penalty need to be leveled and evened out,” McInnis said at a news conference Tuesday.

    Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said a determined adversary with insider knowledge of how to cripple key components of critical infrastructure is difficult to stop and requires an industry-wide collective defense.

    DHS and energy companies have been monitoring what Harrell, who now leads security for an energy company servicing multiple states, identified as a significant uptick in nefarious online discussions about sabotaging distribution and transmission substations.

    Investigators have said whoever shot up the substations knew what they were doing. But they have not released further information about how much inside knowledge they may have had.

    “What impacts you can impact me, so threat information-sharing is absolutely essential,” Harrell told The Associated Press. “Over 85% of all critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector, so we need to have more regular conversations amongst security partners to identify, disrupt and mitigate” threats to infrastructure.

    ———

    Hannah Schoenbaum is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • EXPLAINER: US power grid has long faced terror threat

    EXPLAINER: US power grid has long faced terror threat

    WASHINGTON — Investigators believe a shooting that damaged power substations in North Carolina was a crime. What they haven’t named yet is a suspect or a motive.

    Whatever the reason, the shooting serves as a reminder of why experts have stressed the need to secure the U.S. power grid. Authorities have warned that the nation’s electricity infrastructure could be vulnerable targets for domestic terrorists.

    Tens of thousands of people lost their electricity over the weekend after one or more people opened fire on two Duke Energy substations in Moore County, which is roughly 60 miles southwest of Raleigh. Nobody has been charged in the shooting as of Monday.

    Here’s a look at what is known about the shooting and why it could have implications across the U.S.

    WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE SHOOTING?

    The outages in North Carolina began shortly after 7 p.m. on Saturday when one or more people opened fire on two power substations in Moore County, the county’s sheriff said. The outages left tens of thousands of people without electricity, and the equipment could take days to repair, according to Duke Energy.

    Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at a Sunday news conference that authorities have not determined a motive. He said someone pulled up and “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one.” The sheriff said that it appeared gates were breached at both sites. The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines, North Carolina reported that a wooden post holding up a gate had been snapped at one of the substations and that it was lying in an access road Sunday morning.

    The sheriff noted that the FBI was working with state investigators to determine who was responsible. He also said “it was targeted.”

    “It wasn’t random,” Fields said.

    Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said that the company has multiple layers of security at each of its facilities but declined to provide specifics. He said that the company has planning in place to recover from events like the shooting and that they are following those plans.

    Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Ruth Clemens said the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has offered support to Duke Energy as it efforts the restoration of power.

    TARGETS FOR EXTREMIST GROUPS

    Federal authorities have warned that the power grid could be a prime target for extremist groups that embrace “accelerationism,” a fringe philosophy that promotes mass violence to fuel society’s collapse.

    In January, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report warned that domestic extremists have been developing “credible, specific plans” to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020. The DHS report warns that extremists “adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure.”

    The department wrote that attackers would be unlikely to produce widespread, multistate outages without inside help. But its report cautioned that an attack could still do damage and cause injuries.

    Members of white supremacist and antigovernment groups have been linked to plots to attack the power grid. In February, three men pleaded guilty to conspiring to attack U.S. energy facilities. Authorities said they were driven by white supremacist ideologies to “sow mayhem and division among Americans.”

    OTHER ATTACKS

    Fears of an attack on the nation’s electricity infrastructure are nothing new. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered grid operators to increase security following a still-unsolved April 2013 sniper attack on a California electric substation.

    The attack on the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s Metcalf Transmission Substation in an isolated area near San Jose, California, caused power outages and led to calls for millions of people to conserve energy.

    The attack involved snipping fiber-optic phone lines and firing shots into the PG&E substation. The FBI said at the time that it found no evidence that it was an act of terrorism.

    Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, who chaired the Senate Energy Committee in 2014, said at the time that it was fortunate the attack didn’t cause a blackout in Silicon Valley, “the horrors of which could only be imagined.”

    In the wake of that attack, FERC and other agencies recommended utilities to take specific measures to protect vulnerable substations, like adding walls, sensors or cameras. Still, many remain exposed in rural areas of the U.S. And experts have warned for years that taking out a few substations could cause rolling blackouts in the U.S., leaving millions without power.

    A Utah man was arrested in 2016 and later sentenced to federal prison time after he used a rifle to shoot the cooling fins of a substation, rupturing the radiator piping and causing the substation to overheat and fail. Court documents said the man had planned to attack other substations as part of an effort to take down power in a large chunk of the western United States.

    WHAT’S THE CHALLENGE IN PROTECTING THE GRID?

    The vastness of American electricity infrastructure makes it difficult to defend. Power plants and substations like those targeted in North Carolina are dispersed in every corner of the country and connected by transmission lines that transport electricity through farmland, forests and swamps.

    “The grid is massive,” said Erroll Southers, a former FBI official and professor of homeland security at the University of Southern California.

    The targets also present an increasing challenge to secure because attackers don’t always have to get as close as they did in North Carolina in order to do damage, Southers said. With the right rifle, skill and line of sight a sniper could take a shot from as far as 1,500 meters (about 4,900 feet) away.

    Protecting substations against a long range rifle shot is “extremely challenging, if not impossible,” he said.

    Southers said all of these challenges mean that protecting the electricity infrastructure can come down to response and backup systems more than defense. “Those are the kinds of things that you put in place to protect, knowing that you may not be able to stop the rifle shot.”

    ———

    Kunzelman reported from Silver Spring, Maryland.

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  • Shootings at power substations cause North Carolina outages

    Shootings at power substations cause North Carolina outages

    CARTHAGE, N.C. — Two power substations in a North Carolina county were damaged by gunfire in what is being investigated as a criminal act, causing damage that could take days to repair and leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity, authorities said Sunday.

    In response to ongoing outages, which began just after 7 p.m. Saturday across Moore County, officials announced a state of emergency that included a curfew from 9 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday. Also, county schools will be closed Monday.

    “An attack like this on critical infrastructure is a serious, intentional crime and I expect state and federal authorities to thoroughly investigate and bring those responsible to justice,” Gov. Roy Cooper wrote on Twitter.

    Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at a Sunday news conference that authorities have not determined a motivation. He said someone pulled up and “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one.”

    “No group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept that they’re the ones that done it,” Fields said, adding “we’re looking at all avenues.”

    The sheriff noted that the FBI was working with state investigators to determine who was responsible. He also said “it was targeted.”

    “It wasn’t random,” Fields said.

    Fields said law enforcement is providing security at the substations and for businesses overnight.

    “We will have folks out there tonight around the clock,” Fields said.

    Roughly 36,000 electric customers in the county were without power on Sunday evening, according to poweroutage.us.

    With cold temperatures forecast for Sunday night, the county also opened a shelter at a sports complex in Carthage.

    Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said multiple pieces of equipment were damaged and will have to be replaced. He said while the company is trying to restore power as quickly as possible, he braced customers for the potential of outages lasting days.

    “We are looking at a pretty sophisticated repair with some fairly large equipment and so we do want citizens of the town to be prepared that this will be a multiday restoration for most customers, extending potentially as long as Thursday,” Brooks said at the news conference.

    Dr. Tim Locklear, the county’s school superintendent, announced classes will be canceled Monday.

    “As we move forward, we’ll be taking it day by day in making those decisions,” Locklear said.

    The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines reported that one of its journalists saw a gate to one of the substations had been damaged and was lying in an access road.

    “A pole holding up the gate had clearly been snapped off where it meets the ground. The substation’s infrastructure was heavily damaged,” the newspaper reported.

    The county of approximately 100,000 people lies about an hour’s drive southwest of Raleigh and is known for golf resorts in Pinehurst and other communities.

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  • Outages could last days after shootings at substations

    Outages could last days after shootings at substations

    CARTHAGE, N.C. — Two power substations in a North Carolina county were damaged by gunfire in what is being investigated as a criminal act, causing damage that could take days to repair and leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity, authorities said Sunday.

    In response to ongoing outages, which began just after 7 p.m. Saturday across Moore County, officials announced a state of emergency that included a curfew from 9 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday. Also, county schools will be closed Monday.

    “An attack like this on critical infrastructure is a serious, intentional crime and I expect state and federal authorities to thoroughly investigate and bring those responsible to justice,” Gov. Roy Cooper wrote on Twitter.

    Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at a Sunday news conference that authorities have not determined a motivation. He said someone pulled up and “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one.”

    “No group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept that they’re the ones that done it,” Fields said, adding “we’re looking at all avenues.”

    The sheriff noted that the FBI was working with state investigators to determine who was responsible. He also said “it was targeted.”

    “It wasn’t random,” Fields said.

    Fields said law enforcement is providing security at the substations and for businesses overnight.

    “We will have folks out there tonight around the clock,” Fields said.

    Roughly 37,000 electric customers in the county were without power on Sunday evening, according to poweroutage.us.

    With cold temperatures forecast for Sunday night, the county also opened a shelter at a sports complex in Carthage.

    Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said multiple pieces of equipment were damaged and will have to be replaced. He said while the company is trying to restore power as quickly as possible, he braced customers for the potential of outages lasting days.

    “We are looking at a pretty sophisticated repair with some fairly large equipment and so we do want citizens of the town to be prepared that this will be a multiday restoration for most customers, extending potentially as long as Thursday,” Brooks said at the news conference.

    Dr. Tim Locklear, the county’s school superintendent, announced classes will be canceled Monday.

    “As we move forward, we’ll be taking it day by day in making those decisions,” Locklear said.

    The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines reported that one of its journalists saw a gate to one of the substations had been damaged and was lying in an access road.

    “A pole holding up the gate had clearly been snapped off where it meets the ground. The substation’s infrastructure was heavily damaged,” the newspaper reported.

    The county of approximately 100,000 people lies about an hour’s drive southwest of Raleigh and is known for golf resorts in Pinehurst and other communities.

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  • Police: Vandalism suspected in North Carolina power outage

    Police: Vandalism suspected in North Carolina power outage

    MOORE COUNTY, N.C. — Authorities in North Carolina believe vandalism may have caused a power outage that affected thousands of customers Saturday night.

    A mass power outage in several communities beginning just after 7 p.m. Saturday “is being investigated as a criminal occurrence,” the Moore County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.

    “As utility companies began responding to the different substations, evidence was discovered that indicated that intentional vandalism had occurred at multiple sites,” the sheriff’s office said.

    Moore County deputies and other law enforcement responded and were providing security at the affected sites, the sheriff’s office said.

    Utility company Duke Energy said nearly 38,000 customers were without power in Moore County, while the Randolph Electric Membership Corporation reported outages affected nearly 3,000 customers in the county’s southern area, WRAL-TV reported.

    Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said crews experienced “multiple equipment failures” at substations and the power company was “investigating signs of potential vandalism related to the outages,” WRAL reported.

    Duke Energy said power was expected to be restored Sunday, but the wait could last until 10 p.m. Brooks said the company would update customers when information was available, WRAL reported.

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  • Tornado threat continues as southern towns assess damage

    Tornado threat continues as southern towns assess damage

    JACKSON, Miss. — Tornadoes damaged numerous homes, destroyed a fire station, briefly trapped people in a grocery store and ripped the roof off an apartment complex in Mississippi and Alabama, and meteorologists said the threat of dangerous storms remained Wednesday near the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

    The National Weather Service had warned that strong twisters capable of carving up communities over long distances were possible as the storm front moved eastward from Texas, threatening a stretch of the United States where more than 25 million people live. Emergency responders had no reports of fatalities, but were waiting for daylight to make sure.

    The “threat for supercells capable of all severe hazards continues,” forecasters said, after multiple tornado warnings were issued starting Tuesday afternoon and continued through the night.

    In the west Alabama town of Eutaw, video from WBMA-TV from showed large sections of the roof missing from an apartment complex, displacing 15 families in the middle of the night.

    “We’ve got power lines, trees just all over the road,” Eutaw Police Chief Tommy Johnson told WBRC-TV. “In the morning when we get a little daylight, we’re going to do a door-by-door search to make sure no one is trapped inside or anything like that.”

    A suspected tornado damaged numerous homes during the night in Hale County, Alabama, where the emergency director said more than a third of the people live in highly vulnerable mobile homes.

    “I have seen some really nice mobile homes tied down, but they just don’t stand a chance against a tornado,” Hale County Emergency Management Director Russell Weeden told WBRC just ahead of the storm.

    The weather service confirmed that tornadoes hit the ground in Mississippi. Images of the wreckage in Caledonia showed a grocery store damaged, a fire station shredded and a house toppled, but Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency Director Cindy Lawrence told WTVA-TV that everyone escaped injury.

    Hail stones crashed against the windows of City Hall in the small town of Tchula, Mississippi, where sirens blared and the mayor and other residents took cover. “It was hitting against the window, and you could tell that it was nice-sized balls of it,” Mayor Ann Polk said after the storm passed.

    High winds downed power lines, and flooding was a hazard as more than 5 inches (13 centimeters) of rain fell within several hours in some places. More than 50,000 customers in Mississippi and Alabama were without electricity Wednesday morning, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outages.

    About 100 people hunkered down in a tornado shelter in Starkville, Mississippi, where Craig Ceecee, a meteorologist at Mississippi State University, said he peered out at “incredibly black” skies. Ceecee has assembled a database of Mississippi tornado shelters, and found several towns without any.

    “I’ve had to go through events without (shelters), and trust me, they were scary,” Ceecee said.

    Meanwhile, heavy snow has snarled traffic in some parts of the Upper Midwest.

    Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport tweeted Tuesday afternoon that its runways were closed due to fast snowfall rates and reduced visibility. Air traffic websites showed some inbound planes circling or diverting to other airports such as St. Cloud, Minnesota, and Fargo, North Dakota. The National Weather Service reported nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters) of snow on the ground at the airport by noon.

    The airport said it was able to reopen its first runway hours later, and planes were landing as scheduled on Wednesday.

    ———

    Michael Warren in Atlanta, Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Michael Goldberg in Jackson, Mississippi; Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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  • Water boil order issued for more than 2 million in Houston

    Water boil order issued for more than 2 million in Houston

    HOUSTON — More than 2 million people in the Houston area were under a boil order notice Monday after a power outage caused low pressure at a water purification plant, officials said.

    The order — which means water must be boiled before it’s used for cooking, bathing or drinking — also prompted schools in the Houston area to close Monday. It was issued Sunday after a power outage at a water purification plant, the city’s public works department said.

    Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said on Twitter that the city believes the water is safe but a boil order was required because of the drop in water pressure. He said water sampling would begin Monday morning, and the boil order could be lifted 24 hours after the city is notified the water is safe.

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  • Small plane caught in power lines after crash, passengers OK

    Small plane caught in power lines after crash, passengers OK

    GAITHERSBURG, Md. — A small plane crashed into and got stuck in live power lines Sunday evening in Maryland, causing widespread power outages in the surrounding county as officials tried to extricate the plane.

    It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were aboard. Pete Piringer, chief spokesperson for the Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service, initially tweeted that two people were on the plane. He later posted a video message that said three people were on board and uninjured.

    The video showed a small white plane positioned nose up near a power tower. The plane was stuck about 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground, and the transmission lines remained live, complicating rescue efforts, Piringer said.

    “Everything is still energized at this time,” he said.

    The utility Pepco reported that about 80,000 customers were without power in Montgomery County.

    The crash took place in Gaithersburg, a small city about 24 miles (39 kilometers) northwest of Washington, D.C.

    Piringer didn’t state a suspected cause for the crash.

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  • Backup power used at Ukraine nuclear site to fend off crisis

    Backup power used at Ukraine nuclear site to fend off crisis

    KYIV, Ukraine — Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was relying on emergency diesel generators to run its safety systems Thursday after external power from the Ukrainian electric grid was again cut off, Ukrainian and U.N. officials reported.

    Fighting in Ukraine has repeatedly damaged power lines and electrical substations that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant requires to operate in-house safety systems, forcing operators to turn to backup generators to cool its six reactors until regular power is restored. All six reactors have been shut down. The generators have enough fuel to maintain the plant in southeastern Ukraine for just 15 days, state nuclear power company Energoatom said.

    “The countdown has begun,” Energoatom said, noting it had limited possibilities to “maintain the ZNPP in a safe mode,” raising fears of a potential nuclear disaster.

    The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed the switch to backup diesel generators and said that underlines “the extremely precarious nuclear safety and security situation at the facility.”

    The development “again demonstrates the plant’s fragile and vulnerable situation,” said Rafael Grossi, the director general of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, adding that relying on diesel generators ”is clearly not a sustainable way to operate a major nuclear facility.”

    “Measures are needed to prevent a nuclear accident at the site. The establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone is urgently needed,” he said.

    Russia and Ukraine have traded blame during the war for shelling at and around the plant. Energoatom said Thursday that Russian shelling knocked out the last two high voltage transmission lines feeding the Zaporizhzhia plant. Russia gave a different account, blaming Ukraine.

    The Russian state-run news agency Tass quoted an official at Russia’s nuclear power operator, Rosenergoatom, as claiming that Ukraine had switched off the two power lines. The official, Renat Karchaa, confirmed that emergency backup diesel generators had to be switched on to run safety systems, but denied the problems had been caused by Russian shelling of power lines. He said the move deprived the city of Energodar, where plant’s workers live, of heating.

    Russian forces have occupied the plant since the early days of the war. The plant is located in the Zaporizhzhia region, part of which has been occupied by Russian forces and illegally annexed, along with three other provinces, by Russian President Vladimir Putin last month.

    Although Putin signed a decree transferring the nuclear plant to Russian ownership, Ukrainian workers continue to run the plant.

    Energoatom said Russian officials are trying to connect the power station to Russia’s power grid so it could supply electricity to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and Ukraine’s Donbas region, annexed by Putin this fall.

    Across the Dnieper River from the power plant, the city of Nikopol was also shelled again, damaging residential buildings, a gas station and several businesses, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said Thursday.

    The U.N. nuclear agency is also tracking Russia’s unfounded claims that Ukraine is planning to set off radioactive “dirty bombs.” The IAEA said Thursday its inspections have found no evidence to support such claims after examining three locations in Ukraine.

    Western nations have called Moscow’s repeated claim “transparently false.”

    Russia used drones, missiles and heavy artillery to hit several Ukrainian cities, leaving six civilians dead and 16 wounded, according to the president’s office. Attacks in Zelenskyy’s native city of Kryvyi Rih left several districts without electricity or water.

    Further east in the Donetsk region, battles continued for the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, where authorities said the population was under constant shelling and living without electricity or heat. Over the past day, six cities and villages in the region came under attack from Russian heavy artillery, while in the northeast, three Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, officials said.

    On the humanitarian front, seven ships carrying 290,000 tons of agricultural products set sail from Ukrainian seaports for Asia and Europe, a day after Russia agreed to resume its participation in a wartime agreement allowing the export of Ukrainian grain. Putin said Moscow had received assurances that Ukraine wouldn’t use the humanitarian corridors to attack Russian forces.

    Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko denied that Kyiv had made any new commitments.

    “Ukraine did not use and did not plan to use the grain corridor for military purposes. The Ukrainian side clearly adheres to the provisions of the grain agreement,” Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cautioned Thursday that Russia’s decision did not mean the deal would be extended after it expires Nov. 19.

    Russia had suspended its participation in the grain deal last weekend, citing an alleged Ukrainian drone attack against its Black Sea fleet in Crimea. Ukraine didn’t claim responsibility for the attack, and Zelenskyy said Wednesday that Moscow’s return to the agreement showed “Russian blackmail did not lead to anything.”

    In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned British Ambassador Deborah Bronnert on Thursday to protest what it alleges was the participation of British instructors in the Oct. 29 attack by drones on Black Sea fleet facilities in Sevastopol, Crimea. Bronnert made no comment after the meeting.

    Under the grain export deal, Russia was supposed to be allowed to resume fertilizer and grain exports, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday he hadn’t seen progress on that issue.

    The ships that set sail Thursday from Ukraine included one carrying 29,000 tons of sunflower seeds for Oman and one carrying 67,000 tons of corn to China.

    Since the deal was reached in July, 430 ships have exported 10 million tons of Ukrainian agricultural products to countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said export volumes in October “could have been 30-40% higher if Russia had not artificially blocked inspections.”

    U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hailed the 10 million-ton milestone and appealed to all parties to renew the agreement.

    “I’m not optimistic, I’m not pessimistic. I’m determined,” Guterres told reporters in New York, emphasizing it’s important to clear obstacles for Russian food and fertilizer exports, which include insurance and port guarantees for Russian ships that Western businesses have avoided.

    The grain deal is one of the few areas where the warring parties are cooperating. Another is exchanges of prisoners and the bodies of war casualties. Both sides announced another prisoner exchange Thursday, this involving 107 military personnel on each side.

    Elsewhere, a Ukrainian military official said Russia is using Belarusian territory to launch drone strikes. Oleksii Hromov, a representative of the Ukrainian military’s General Staff, said Iranian drones are flying into Ukraine from a military base in the Belarusian city of Luninets, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.

    Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has supported Russia’s attack on Ukraine, prompting international criticism and sanctions against his government in Minsk.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Ukraine: Russian shelling damaged nuclear plant power lines

    Ukraine: Russian shelling damaged nuclear plant power lines

    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s nuclear operator said Thursday that Russian shelling damaged power lines connecting Europe’s largest nuclear power plant to the Ukrainian grid, leaving the plant again relying on emergency diesel generators.

    As fighting in Ukraine has damaged power lines and electrical substations, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has repeatedly operated on backup generators to cool its reactors and keep other safety systems running until regular power could be restored. The generators have enough fuel to maintain the plant in southeastern Ukraine for just 15 days, state nuclear power comany Energoatom said on its Telegram channel.

    “The countdown has begun,” Energoatom said, noting it had limited possibilities to “maintain the ZNPP in a safe mode,” raising fears of a potential nuclear disaster.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency said Thursday that the plant’s latest switch to backup power further underlines “the extremely precarious nuclear safety and security situation at the facility and the urgent need to establish a protection zone around it.”

    The development “again demonstrates the plant’s fragile and vulnerable situation,” Rafael Grossi, the director general of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said.

    Relying on diesel generators ”is clearly not a sustainable way to operate a major nuclear facility,” Grossi added. “Measures are needed to prevent a nuclear accident at the site. The establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone is urgently needed.”

    The plant’s six reactors are not in operation, but outside electricity is needed to cool its spent fuel. Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for months amid the war for shelling at and around the plant that the IAEA has warned could cause a radiation emergency.

    Russia gave a different account, blaming Ukraine. The Russian state-run news agency Tass quoted an official at Russia’s nuclear power operator, Rosenergoatom, as claiming that Ukraine had switched off two power lines providing the nuclear plant with electricity.

    The official, Renat Karchaa, said the move deprived the city of Energodar, where plant’s workers live, of heating. He confirmed that emergency backup diesel generators had to be switched on to cool the reactors and run other safety systems, but denied the problems had been caused by Russian shelling of power lines.

    Russian forces occupied the plant during the early days of the war. The plant is located in the Zaporizhzhia region, part of which has been occupied by Russian forces and illegally annexed, along with three other provinces, by Russian President Vladimir Putin last month.

    Although Putin signed a decree transferring the nuclear plant to Russian ownership, Ukrainian workers continue to run the plant.

    The latest loss of reliable electricity overnight came when Russia shelled two power lines that were connecting the plant to the Ukrainian grid in “an attempt to reconnect the nuclear plant to the Russian power system,” Energoatom alleged.

    Across the Dnieper River from the power plant, the city of Nikopol was also shelled again, damaging residential buildings, a gas station and several private enterprises, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said Thursday.

    Other Ukrainian cities were also hit, with Russia using drones, missiles and heavy artillery that left six civilians dead and 16 others wounded, according to the president’s office. Energy and water facilities were struck in Zelenskyy’s native city of Kryvyi Rih, leaving several districts without electricity or water.

    Further east in the Donetsk region, battles continued for the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, where authorities said the population was under constant shelling and living without electricity or heat. Over the past day, six cities and villages in the region came under attack from heavy artillery, while in the northeast, three missiles hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, officials said.

    Separately, seven ships carrying 290,000 tons of agricultural products set sail from Ukrainian seaports heading to Asia and Europe, a day after Russia agreed to rejoin a wartime agreement allowing the export of Ukrainian grain and other commodities.

    In announcing Russia was rejoining the pact, Putin said Moscow had received assurances that Ukraine wouldn’t use the humanitarian corridors to attack Russian forces.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cautioned Thursday that Russia’s decision to rejoin did not mean the deal would be extended after it expires on Nov. 19.

    Russia had suspended its participation in the grain deal over the weekend, citing an alleged drone attack against its Black Sea fleet in Crimea. Ukraine didn’t claim responsibility for an attack, and Zelenskyy said Wednesday that Moscow’s return to the agreement showed “Russian blackmail did not lead to anything.”

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told media that Ukraine has never used the grain corridor for military purposes.

    In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned British Ambassador Deborah Bronnert on Thursday in connection with the alleged participation of British instructors in the Oct. 29 attack by drones on Black Sea fleet facilities in Sevastopol, Crimea. Bronnert made no comment after the meeting.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday he hadn’t seen progress regarding the export of Russian fertilizers and grain, despite the reimplementation of the Ukrainian part of the U.N.-sponsored grain deal.

    Speaking to reporters, Lavrov also said Russia was pleased that the Ukrainian leadership had signed guarantees “that no attempts would be made to use humanitarian routes in the Black Sea for military purposes.”

    Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko denied that Kyiv had made such commitments.

    “Ukraine did not use and did not plan to use the grain corridor for military purposes. The Ukrainian side clearly adheres to the provisions of the grain agreement,” Nikolenko wrote on Facebook. “Our state did not take on any new obligations.”

    The ships that set sail Thursday included one carrying 29,000 tons of sunflower seeds for Oman and one carrying 67,000 tons of corn to China.

    Since the deal was reached in August, 430 ships have exported 10 million tons of Ukrainian agricultural products to countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. The infrastructure ministry said export volumes in October “could have been 30-40% higher if Russia had not artificially blocked inspections in the Bosphorus.”

    Meanwhile, Kremlin-backed authorities in the Donetsk region and Zelenskyy’s office announced another prisoner exchange Thursday, this involving 107 military personnel on each side.

    ———

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  • Russian authorities advise civilians to leave Ukraine region

    Russian authorities advise civilians to leave Ukraine region

    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine told all residents of the city of Kherson to leave “immediately” Saturday ahead of an expected advance by Ukrainian troops waging a counteroffensive to recapture one of the first urban areas Russia took after invading the country.

    In a post on the Telegram messaging service, the pro-Kremlin regional administration strongly urged civilians to use boat crossings over a major river to move deeper into Russian-held territory, citing a tense situation on the front and the threat of shelling and alleged plans for “terror attacks” by Kyiv.

    Kherson has been in Russian hands since the early days of the nearly 8-month-long war in Ukraine. The city is the capital of a region of the same name, one of four that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and put under Russian martial law on Thursday.

    On Friday, Ukrainian forces bombarded Russian positions across the province, targeting pro-Kremlin forces’ resupply routes across the Dnieper River and preparing for a final push to reclaim the city. Ukraine has retaken some villages in the region’s north since launching its counteroffensive in late August.

    Russian-installed officials were reported as trying desperately to turn Kherson city — a prime objective for both sides because of its key industries and ports — into a fortress while attempting to relocate tens of thousands of residents.

    The Kremlin poured as many as 2,000 draftees into the surrounding region to replenish losses and strengthen front-line units, according to the Ukrainian army’s general staff.

    The wide Dnieper River figures as a major factor in the fighting, making it hard for Russia to supply its troops defending the city of Kherson and nearby areas on the west bank after relentless Ukrainian strikes rendered the main crossings unusable.

    Taking control of Kherson has allowed Russia to resume fresh water supplies from the Dnieper to Crimea, which were cut by Ukraine after Moscow’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula. A big hydroelectric power plant upstream from Kherson city is a key source of energy for the southern region. Ukraine and Russia accused each other of trying to blow it up to flood the mostly flat region.

    Kherson’s Kremlin-backed authorities previously announced plans to evacuate all Russia-appointed officials and as many as 60,000 civilians across the river, in what local leader Vladimir Saldo said would be an “organized, gradual displacement.”

    Another Russia-installed official estimated Saturday that around 25,000 people from across the region had made their way over the Dnieper. In a Telegram post, Kirill Stremousov claimed that civilians were relocating willingly.

    “People are actively moving because today the priority is life. We do not drag anyone anywhere,” he said, adding that some residents could be waiting for the Ukrainian army to reclaim the city.

    Ukrainian and Western officials have expressed concern about potential forced transfers of residents to Russia or Russian-occupied territory.

    Ukrainian officials urged Kherson residents to resist attempts to relocate them, with one local official alleging that Moscow wanted to take civilians hostage and use them as human shields.

    Elsewhere in the invaded country, hundreds of thousands of people in central and western Ukraine woke up on Saturday to power outages and periodic bursts of gunfire. In its latest war tactic, Russia has intensified strikes on power stations, water supply systems and other key infrastructure across the country.

    Ukraine’s air force said in a statement Saturday that Russia had launched “a massive missile attack” targeting “critical infrastructure,” adding that it had downed 18 out of 33 cruise missiles launched from the air and sea.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later said that Russian launched 36 missiles, most of which were shot down.

    “Those treacherous blows on critically important facilities are characteristic tactics of terrorists,” Zelenskyy said. “The world can and must stop this terror.”

    Air raid sirens blared across Ukraine twice by early afternoon, sending residents scurrying into shelters as Ukrainian air defense tried to shoot down explosive drones and incoming missiles.

    “Several rockets” targeting Ukraine’s capital were shot down Saturday morning, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging service.

    The president’s office said in its morning update that five suicide drones were downed in the central Cherkasy region southeast of Kyiv. Similar reports came from the governors of six western and central provinces, as well as of the southern Odesa region on the Black Sea.

    Ukraine’s top diplomat said the day’s attacks proved Ukraine needed new Western-reinforced air defense systems “without a minute of delay.”

    “Air defense saves lives,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

    Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said on Telegram that almost 1.4 million households lost power as a result of the strikes. He said some 672,000 homes in the western Khmelnytskyi region were affected and another 242,000 suffered outages in the Cherkasy region.

    Most of the western city of Khmelnytskyi, which straddles the Bug River and had a pre-war population of 275,000, was left with no electricity, shortly after local media reported several loud explosions.

    In a social media post on Saturday, the city council urged local residents to store water “in case it’s also gone within an hour.”

    The mayor of Lutsk, a city of 215,000 in far western Ukraine, made a similar appeal, saying that power in the city was partially knocked out after Russian missiles slammed into local energy facilities and damaged one power plant beyond repair.

    The central city of Uman, a key pilgrimage center for Hasidic Jews with about 100,000 residents before the war, also was plunged into darkness after a rocket hit a nearby power plant.

    Ukraine’s state energy company, Ukrenergo, responded to the strikes by announcing that rolling blackouts would be imposed in Kyiv and 10 Ukrainian regions to stabilize the situation.

    In a Facebook post on Saturday, the company accused Russia of attacking “energy facilities within the principal networks of the western regions of Ukraine.” It claimed the scale of destruction was comparable to the fallout earlier this month from Moscow’s first coordinated attack on the Ukrainian energy grid.

    Both Ukrenergo and officials in Kyiv have urged Ukrainians to conserve energy. Earlier this week, Zelenskyy called on consumers to curb their power use between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. and to avoid using energy-guzzling appliances such as electric heaters.

    Zelenskyy said earlier in the week that 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed since Russia launched the first wave of targeted infrastructure strikes on Oct. 10.

    In a separate development, Russian officials said two people were killed and 12 others were wounded by Ukrainian shelling of the town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region near the border.

    ———

    Kozlowska reported from London.

    ———

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  • Putin adds martial law in Ukraine regions, limits in Russia

    Putin adds martial law in Ukraine regions, limits in Russia

    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin doubled down Wednesday on his faltering invasion of Ukraine with a declaration of martial law in four illegally annexed regions and preparations within Russia for draconian new restrictions and crackdowns.

    Putin’s drastic efforts to tighten his grip on Ukrainians and Russians follow a series of embarrassing setbacks: stinging battlefield defeats, sabotage and troubles with his troop mobilization.

    The martial law order belies the Kremlin’s attempts to portray life in the annexed regions as returning to normal. The reality is that a military administration has replaced civilian leaders in the southern city of Kherson and a mass evacuation from the city is underway as a Ukrainian counteroffensive grinds on.

    The battle for Kherson, a city of more than 250,000 people with key industries and a major port, is a pivotal moment for Ukraine and Russia heading into winter, when front lines could largely freeze for months. It’s the largest city Russia has held during the war, which began Feb. 24.

    A trickle of evacuations from the city in recent days has become a flood. Local officials said Wednesday that 5,000 had left out of an expected 60,000. Russian state television showed residents crowding on the banks of the Dnieper River, many with small children, to cross by boats to the east — and, from there, deeper into Russian-controlled territory.

    In announcing martial law effective Thursday, Putin told his Security Council, “We are working to solve very difficult large-scale tasks to ensure Russia’s security and safe future.”

    Putin’s army is under growing pressure from a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has clawed back territory. The Russian leader is also faltering after the sabotage of a strategically important bridge linking Russia with Crimea, assassinations of Kremlin-installed officials in Kherson and mistakes he himself has admitted in his partial troop mobilization.

    Putin’s martial law declaration authorized the creation of civil defense forces; the potential imposition of curfews; restrictions on travel and public gatherings; tighter censorship; and broader law enforcement powers in Kherson and the other annexed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.

    In an ominous move, Putin opened the door for restrictive measures to be extended across Russia, too. That may lead to a tougher crackdown on dissent than the current dispersal of antiwar protests and jailing of people making statements or providing information about the fighting that differs from the official line.

    The severity of new restrictions inside Russia depends on proximity to Ukraine.

    Putin put areas nearest Ukraine on medium alert, including annexed Crimea, Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, Rostov. Local leaders are authorized to organize territorial defense, ensure public order and safety, safeguard transportation, communication and energy facilities, and use these resources to help meet the Russian military’s needs.

    Leaders in these border areas can also carry out resettlements of residents and restrict freedom of movement. Leaders in other areas have been granted similar powers, depending on their alert level.

    In the Kherson region, Ukrainian forces have pushed back Russian positions on the west bank of the Dnieper River. By pulling civilians out and fortifying positions in the region’s main city, which backs onto the river, Russian forces appear to be hoping that the wide, deep waters will serve as a natural barrier against the Ukrainian advance.

    Russia has said the movement of Ukrainians to Russia or Russian-controlled territory is voluntary, but in many cases, they have no other routes out, and no other choice.

    Under martial law, authorities can force evacuations. Ukraine’s national security chief, Oleksiy Danilov, said on Twitter that Putin’s declaration is “preparation for the mass deportation of the Ukrainian population to the depressed regions of Russia to change the ethnic composition of the occupied territory.”

    For months, reports have circulated of forced deportations, and an Associated Press investigation found that Russian officials deported thousands of Ukrainian children to be raised as Russian.

    Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Putin’s decree is illegal, calling it part of his effort “to deprive the inhabitants of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine of even basic human rights.”

    Russian authorities played up fears of an attack on Kherson, seemingly to persuade residents to leave. Text messages warned residents to expect shelling, Russian state media reported.

    One resident reached by phone described military vehicles leaving the city, Moscow-installed authorities scrambling to load documents onto trucks, and thousands of people lining up for ferries and buses.

    “It looks more like a panic rather than an organized evacuation. People are buying the last remaining groceries in grocery shops and are running to the Kherson river port, where thousands of people are already waiting,” the resident, Konstantin, said. The AP is withholding his family name, as he requested, for his safety.

    “People are scared by talk of explosions, missiles and a possible blockade of the city,” he added.

    Leaflets told evacuees they could take two large suitcases, medicine and food for a few days.

    Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, called the evacuation “a propaganda show” and said Russia’s claims that Kyiv’s forces might shell Kherson “a rather primitive tactic, given that the armed forces do not fire at Ukrainian cities.”

    Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said the operation could presage intense fighting and “the harshest” tactics from Russia’s new commander for Ukraine, Gen. Sergei Surovikin.

    “They are prepared to wipe the city from the face of the Earth but not give it back to the Ukrainians,” Zhdanov said in an interview.

    In a rare acknowledgement of the pressure that Kyiv’s troops are exerting, Surovikin described the Kherson situation as “very difficult.” Russian bloggers interpreted the comments as a warning of a possible Kremlin pullback. Surovikin claimed that Ukrainian forces were planning to destroy a hydroelectric facility, which local officials said would flood part of Kherson.

    Incapable of holding all the territory it has seized and struggling with manpower and equipment losses, Russia has stepped up air bombardments, with a scorched-earth campaign targeting Ukrainian power plants and other key infrastructure. Russia has also increased its use of weaponized Iranian drones to hit apartment buildings and other civilian targets.

    Russia launched numerous missiles over Ukraine on Wednesday. Ukrainian authorities said they shot down four cruise missiles and 10 Iranian drones. Energy facilities were hit in the Vinnytsia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.

    Air raid sirens blared in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, sending many people into metro stations for shelter. Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced the city would start seasonal centralized heating on Thursday at lower temperatures than normal to conserve energy.

    A Ukrainian energy official, Oleksandr Kharchenko reported Wednesday that 40% of the country’s electric system had been severely damaged. Authorities warned all residents to cut consumption and said power supply would be reduced Thursday to prevent blackouts. One area where power and water were reported knocked out due to overnight shelling was Enerhodar. The southern city is next to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is one of the war’s most worrisome flashpoints.

    Missiles severely damaged an energy facility near Zelenskyy’s hometown, Kryvyi Rih, a city in south-central Ukraine, cutting power to villages, towns and to one city district, the regional governor reported.

    ———

    Karmanau reported from Tallinn, Estonia.

    ———

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  • Putin escalates war with martial law as he faces threats

    Putin escalates war with martial law as he faces threats

    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin doubled down Wednesday on his faltering invasion of Ukraine with a declaration of martial law in four illegally annexed regions and preparations within Russia for draconian new restrictions and crackdowns.

    Putin’s drastic efforts to tighten his grip on Ukrainians and Russians follow a series of embarrassing setbacks: stinging battlefield defeats, sabotage and troubles with his troop mobilization.

    The martial law order belies the Kremlin’s attempts to portray life in the annexed regions as returning to normal. The reality is that a military administration has replaced civilian leaders in the southern city of Kherson and a mass evacuation from the city is underway as a Ukrainian counteroffensive grinds on.

    The battle for Kherson, a city of more than 250,000 people with key industries and a major port, is a pivotal moment for Ukraine and Russia heading into winter, when front lines could largely freeze for months. It’s the largest city Russia has held during the war, which began Feb. 24.

    A trickle of evacuations from the city in recent days has become a flood. Local officials said Wednesday that 5,000 had left out of an expected 60,000. Russian state television showed residents crowding on the banks of the Dnieper River, many with small children, to cross by boats to the east — and, from there, deeper into Russian-controlled territory.

    In announcing martial law effective Thursday, Putin told his Security Council, “We are working to solve very difficult large-scale tasks to ensure Russia’s security and safe future.”

    Putin is under growing pressure from a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has clawed back territory, sabotage of a strategically important bridge linking Russia with Crimea, assassinations of Kremlin-installed officials in Kherson and mistakes he himself has admitted in his partial troop mobilization.

    Putin’s martial law declaration authorized creation of civil defense forces; the potential imposition of curfews; restrictions on travel and public gatherings; tighter censorship; and broader law enforcement powers in Kherson and the other annexed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.

    In an ominous move, Putin opened the door for restrictive measures to be extended across Russia, too. That may lead to a tougher crackdown on dissent: dispersal of antiwar protests and the jailing of people making statements or providing information about the fighting that differs from the official line.

    The severity of new restrictions inside Russia depends on proximity to Ukraine, covering freedom of movement and other security steps.

    In the Kherson region, Ukrainian forces have pushed back Russian positions on the west bank of the Dnieper River. By pulling civilians out and fortifying positions in the region’s main city, which backs onto the river, Russian forces appear to be hoping that the wide, deep waters will serve as a natural barrier against the Ukrainian advance.

    Russia has said the movement of Ukrainians to Russia or Russian-controlled territory is voluntary, but in many cases, they have no other routes out, and no other choice.

    Under martial law, authorities can force evacuations. Ukraine’s national security chief, Oleksiy Danilov, said on Twitter that Putin’s declaration is “preparation for the mass deportation of the Ukrainian population to the depressed regions of Russia to change the ethnic composition of the occupied territory.”

    For months, reports have circulated of forced deportations, and an Associated Press investigation found that Russian officials deported thousands of Ukrainian children to be raised as Russian.

    Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Putin’s decree is illegal, calling it part of his effort “to deprive the inhabitants of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine of even basic human rights.”

    Russian authorities played up fears of an attack on Kherson, seemingly to persuade residents to leave. Text messages warned residents to expect shelling, Russian state media reported.

    One resident reached by phone described military vehicles leaving the city, Moscow-installed authorities scrambling to load documents onto trucks, and thousands of people lining up for ferries and buses.

    “It looks more like a panic rather than an organized evacuation. People are buying the last remaining groceries in grocery shops and are running to the Kherson river port, where thousands of people are already waiting,” the resident, Konstantin, said. The AP is withholding his family name, as he requested, for his safety.

    “People are scared by talk of explosions, missiles and a possible blockade of the city,” he added.

    Leaflets told evacuees they could take two large suitcases, medicine and food for a few days.

    Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, called the evacuation “a propaganda show” and said Russia’s claims that Kyiv’s forces might shell Kherson “a rather primitive tactic, given that the armed forces do not fire at Ukrainian cities.”

    Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said the operation could presage intense fighting and “the harshest” tactics from Russia’s new commander for Ukraine, Gen. Sergei Surovikin.

    “They are prepared to wipe the city from the face of the Earth but not give it back to the Ukrainians,” Zhdanov said in an interview.

    In a rare acknowledgement of the pressure that Kyiv’s troops are exerting, Surovikin described the Kherson situation as “very difficult.” Russian bloggers interpreted the comments as a warning of a possible Kremlin pullback. Surovikin claimed that Ukrainian forces were planning to destroy a hydroelectric facility, which local officials said would flood part of Kherson.

    Incapable of holding all the territory it has seized and struggling with manpower and equipment losses, Russia has stepped up air bombardments, with a scorched-earth campaign targeting Ukrainian power plants and other key infrastructure. Russia has also increased its use of weaponized Iranian drones to hit apartment buildings and other civilian targets. In the invasion’s opening stages in February, Russian commanders had seemingly sought to spare some utilities they might need.

    Russia launched numerous missiles over Ukraine on Wednesday. Ukrainian authorities said they shot down four cruise missiles and 10 Iranian drones. Energy facilities were hit in the Vinnytsia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.

    Air raid sirens blared in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, sending many people into metro stations for shelter. Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced the city would start seasonal centralized heating on Thursday at lower temperatures than normal to conserve energy.

    A Ukrainian energy official, Oleksandr Kharchenko reported Wednesday that 40% of the country’s electric power system had been severely damaged. One area where power and water were reported knocked out due to overnight shelling was Enerhodar. The southern city is next to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is one of the war’s most worrisome flashpoints.

    Missiles severely damaged an energy facility near Zelenskyy’s hometown, Kryvyi Rih, a city in south-central Ukraine, cutting power to villages, towns and to one city district, the regional governor reported.

    In Chernihiv city, Iranian drones left three people wounded, said Regional Gov. Viacheslav Chaus.

    ———

    Karmanau reported from Tallinn, Estonia.

    ———

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  • Co-CEO of SKorean chat app steps down over service outage

    Co-CEO of SKorean chat app steps down over service outage

    SEOUL, South Korea — A top executive of South Korea’s largest mobile chat app, Kakao, stepped down on Wednesday over a widespread service outage that triggered an outpouring of complaints in a country that is heavily reliant on such technology.

    Namkoong Whon, who became Kakao’s co-CEO in March, said he will resign to focus on his role as the leader of the company’s emergency task force for solving the technical problems exposed by the outage, which was caused by a fire at a data center near Seoul on Saturday.

    The fire initially paralyzed most of Kakao’s services, causing huge disruption in a country where millions of people rely on the apps to chat with friends, wire money, and hail taxis. Critics say the severity of the outage and Kakao’s slow recovery efforts highlighted the company’s poor backup systems and its overreliance on outsourced servers.

    Kakao said most of its services were operating normally as of Wednesday morning. SK C&C, which hosts Kakao’s servers at its data center in Pangyo, reportedly resumed providing full levels of electricity to those servers earlier on Wednesday after restoring the damaged systems.

    “Because of the data center fire, I feel more miserable than ever and take to heart my grave responsibility. I will step down to demonstrate Kakao’s willingness for renovation and change,” Namkoong said in a news conference.

    Kakao’s sole CEO is now Hong Eun-taek. He said the company is investing 460 billion won ($322 million) to build its own data center in the city of Ansan, which it plans to complete within a year. The company also plans to establish another data center in nearby Siheung by 2024.

    “We have learned our lesson from the fire, and our own data centers will be built as facilities that will be safe from fires and natural disasters like earthquakes, tidal waves and typhoons,” Hong said during the news conference.

    According to market analysis firm WiseApp, Kakao’s free chat app had around 45 million active users as of April, a huge presence in a country with a population of around 51 million. The company has used the popularity of the app to branch out to banking, online shopping and Uber-like taxi services in recent years. Its app also has been part of the country’s COVID-19 response, including reservations for vaccines and use of QR codes for infection tracing.

    Kakao’s chat users had dropped to around 39 million during the outage in the weekend as people began using other alternatives such as Facebook’s Messenger, Telegram and Naver’s Line, WiseApp said.

    South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said Kakao’s service outage also exposed the problems of its dominant market presence and added that the country’s antitrust watchdog was examining competition issues.

    “If a market becomes distorted by a monopoly or a severe oligopoly, especially to the extent where the (services) begin to function like a national infrastructure, the government should of course respond with necessary measures to protect the interests of people,” Yoon said Monday.

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  • Puerto Rico to probe power bill complaints following outage

    Puerto Rico to probe power bill complaints following outage

    SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau announced Thursday that it will investigate how a private company has handled complaints about electric bills after Hurricane Fiona knocked power out to the entire island.

    The announcement comes as a growing number of customers in the U.S. territory complain about being charged for electricity when they didn’t have power and receiving higher than normal power bills.

    The Independent Office of Consumer Protection urged the bureau last week to investigate difficulties in filing such complaints.

    The bureau called on Luma Energy to immediately stop any practice that prevents consumers from objecting to bills via telephone or online, and to extend the deadline for clients to file their complaints, among other things.

    It also demanded that Luma Energy submit evidence within 10 days that it was complying with the bureau’s orders.

    Luma said in a statement that during Hurricane Fiona and the state of emergency — as a way to prioritize critical calls — it implemented a temporary measure to direct billing inquiries only through its app, web portal, mail or in-person visits.

    “As soon as the emergency passed, we resumed our normal operations, and customers have been able to discuss their bills by phone,” the company said.

    Of Luma’s 1.47 million clients, more than 8,800 remain without power almost a month after Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico’s southwest region as a Category 1 storm.

    Luma officials have noted that restoring power in part has been complicated by the crumbling state of Puerto Rico’s grid, which was razed by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Reconstruction of the grid has only recently started.

    Luma, which took over the transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico more than a year ago, has faced growing criticism about lengthy outages that occurred frequently even before Fiona hit.

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  • In Ian’s wake, Florida residents brave a slow wait for power

    In Ian’s wake, Florida residents brave a slow wait for power

    BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. — Nearly a week after Hurricane Ian smashed into Florida and carved a path of destruction that reached into the Carolinas, more than half a million statewide residents faced another day without electricity Tuesday as rescuers continued their search for those trapped inside homes inundated with lingering floodwaters.

    At least 78 people have been confirmed dead from the storm: 71 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba since Ian made landfall on the Caribbean island on Sept. 27, and in Florida a day later.

    Search and rescue efforts were still ongoing in Florida, where more than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide.

    But for many Florida residents, power restoration has become job one.

    In the town of Naples, Kelly Sedgwick was just seeing news images Monday of the devastation Ian had caused, thanks to power that was restored four days after the hurricane slammed into her southwestern Florida community. Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Bonita Springs, Catalina Mejilla was still using a borrowed generator to try to keep her kids and their grandfather cool as they waited for their power to be returned.

    Ian knocked out power to 2.6 million customers across Florida when it roared ashore with 150-mph (241-kph) winds and pushing a powerful storm surge.

    Since then, crews have been feverishly working to restore electricity infrastructure. State officials said they expect power to be restored by Sunday to customers whose power lines and other electric infrastructure is still intact.

    About 520,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity Monday evening — an amount nearly equivalent to all the customers in Rhode Island.

    For those who were getting power restored, it was a blessing. Sedgwick said she was “relieved” to have her power back and praised the crews for their hard work: “They’ve done a remarkable job.”

    But for those who were still waiting, it was a difficult slog.

    “The heat is unbearable,” Mejilla said. “When there’s no power … we can’t make food, we don’t have gas.” Her mother has trouble breathing and had to go to a friend’s house who had electricity. “I think they should give power to the people who are most in need.”

    Eric Silagy, Chairman and CEO of Florida Power & Light — the largest power provider in the state — said he understands the frustrations and said crews are working as hard as they can to restore power as soon as possible. The utility expects to have power restored to 95% of its service areas by the end of the day Friday, he said.

    A utility spokesperson said the remaining 5% comprises mostly cases where there’s a special situation making it difficult to restore power, such as the home being so damaged it can’t receive power or the area still being flooded. Those outages do not include customers whose homes or businesses were destroyed.

    Another major electricity provider in the hard-hit coastal region — Lee County Electric Cooperative — said Monday it expects to hit the 95% mark by the end of Saturday. That figure does not include barrier islands like Sanibel that are in its service area.

    Power restoration is always a key challenge after major hurricanes when high winds and flying debris can topple power lines that distribute electricity to homes or in more severe storms, damage major parts of the electric infrastructure such as transmission lines or power generation.

    Silagy said the utility has invested $4 billion over the last 10 years to harden its infrastructure by doing things such as burying more power lines, noting 40% of their distribution system is now underground. The utility is also using more technology like drones that can stay aloft for hours to get a better picture of damage to the system, and sensors at substations that can alert them to flooding so they can shut off parts of the system before the water hits.

    Silagy said he’s seen during Ian where those investments have paid off. On Fort Myers Beach, for example, where so many homes and businesses were wiped away, concrete utility poles remain standing, he said. Silagy said the company also didn’t lose a single transmission structure in the 8,000 miles (12,875 kilometers) they have across Florida.

    Meanwhile, rescue and salvage efforts across Florida remained difficult. In DeSoto County, northeast of Fort Myers, the Peace River and tributaries reached record high levels and boats were the only way to get supplies to many of the county’s 37,000 residents.

    Ian washed away bridges and roads to several barrier islands. About 130 Florida Department of Transportation trucks started work on building a temporary bridge to Pine Island and by the end of the week should be finished on a structure drivers can carefully traverse at slow speeds, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a news conference Monday.

    The governor said a similar temporary bridge is planned for nearby Sanibel, but will take more time.

    Elsewhere, the hurricane’s remnants, now a nor’easter, weren’t done with the U.S.

    The mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts were getting flooding rains. The storm’s onshore winds piled even more water into an already inundated Chesapeake Bay.

    Norfolk and Virginia Beach declared states of emergency, although a shift in wind direction prevented potentially catastrophic levels Monday, said Cody Poche, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia

    President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit Florida on Wednesday. The president was in Puerto Rico on Monday, promising to “rebuild it all” after Hurricane Fiona knocked out all power to the island two weeks ago.

    Meanwhile, in Florida neighborhoods still without power, many residents have been sharing generators to keep things such as refrigerators cool and using outdoor grills to cook food.

    In Bonita Springs, Paula Arbuckle was sitting outside her one-story home while the sound of the generator under her carport roared. She bought a generator after Hurricane Irma slammed into this area in 2018 and left her neighborhood without power. She hasn’t used it since then but after Ian knocked out the lights she’s been sharing it with her next door neighbor. Arbuckle said it’s hard being without power.

    “But I’m not the only one,” she said. Gesturing to her neighbor’s house she said: “I have a generator. They have a little baby over there. So we’re sharing the generator between the two homes.”

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Bobby Caina Calvan in Fort Meyers; Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee; Frieda Frisaro and David Fischer in Miami; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • In Ian’s wake, Florida residents brave a slow wait for power

    In Ian’s wake, Florida residents brave a slow wait for power

    BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. — Nearly a week after Hurricane Ian smashed into Florida and carved a path of destruction that reached into the Carolinas, more than half a million statewide residents faced another day without electricity Tuesday as rescuers continued their search for those trapped inside homes inundated with lingering floodwaters.

    At least 78 people have been confirmed dead from the storm: 71 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba since Ian made landfall on the Caribbean island on Sept. 27, and in Florida a day later.

    Search and rescue efforts were still ongoing in Florida, where more than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide.

    But for many Florida residents, power restoration has become job one.

    In the town of Naples, Kelly Sedgwick was just seeing news images Monday of the devastation Ian had caused, thanks to power that was restored four days after the hurricane slammed into her southwestern Florida community. Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Bonita Springs, Catalina Mejilla was still using a borrowed generator to try to keep her kids and their grandfather cool as they waited for their power to be returned.

    Ian knocked out power to 2.6 million customers across Florida when it roared ashore with 150-mile-per-hour (241-kilometers per hour) winds and pushing a powerful storm surge.

    Since then, crews have been feverishly working to restore electricity infrastructure. State officials said they expect power to be restored by Sunday to customers whose power lines and other electric infrastructure is still intact.

    About 520,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity Monday evening — an amount nearly equivalent to all the customers in Rhode Island.

    For those who were getting power restored, it was a blessing. Sedgwick said she was “relieved” to have her power back and praised the crews for their hard work: “They’ve done a remarkable job.”

    But for those who were still waiting, it was a difficult slog.

    “The heat is unbearable,” Mejilla said. “When there’s no power … we can’t make food, we don’t have gas.” Her mother has trouble breathing and had to go to a friend’s house who had electricity. “I think they should give power to the people who are most in need.”

    Eric Silagy, Chairman and CEO of Florida Power & Light — the largest power provider in the state — said he understands the frustrations and said crews are working as hard as they can to restore power as soon as possible. The utility expects to have power restored to 95% of its service areas by the end of the day Friday, he said.

    A utility spokesperson said the remaining 5% comprises mostly cases where there’s a special situation making it difficult to restore power, such as the home being so damaged it can’t receive power or the area still being flooded. Those outages do not include customers whose homes or businesses were destroyed.

    Another major electricity provider in the hard-hit coastal region — Lee County Electric Cooperative — said Monday it expects to hit the 95% mark by the end of Saturday. That figure does not include barrier islands like Sanibel that are in its service area.

    Power restoration is always a key challenge after major hurricanes when high winds and flying debris can topple power lines that distribute electricity to homes or in more severe storms, damage major parts of the electric infrastructure such as transmission lines or power generation.

    Silagy said the utility has invested $4 billion over the last 10 years to harden its infrastructure by doing things such as burying more power lines, noting 40% of their distribution system is now underground. The utility is also using more technology like drones that can stay aloft for hours to get a better picture of damage to the system, and sensors at substations that can alert them to flooding so they can shut off parts of the system before the water hits.

    Silagy said he’s seen during Ian where those investments have paid off. On Fort Myers Beach, for example, where so many homes and businesses were wiped away, concrete utility poles remain standing, he said. Silagy said the company also didn’t lose a single transmission structure in the 8,000 miles (12,875 kilometers) they have across Florida.

    Meanwhile, rescue and salvage efforts across Florida remained difficult. In DeSoto County, northeast of Fort Myers, the Peace River and tributaries reached record high levels and boats were the only way to get supplies to many of the county’s 37,000 residents.

    Ian washed away bridges and roads to several barrier islands. About 130 Florida Department of Transportation trucks started work on building a temporary bridge to Pine Island and by the end of the week should be finished on a structure drivers can carefully traverse at slow speeds, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a news conference Monday.

    The governor said a similar temporary bridge is planned for nearby Sanibel, but will take more time.

    Elsewhere, the hurricane’s remnants, now a nor’easter, weren’t done with the U.S.

    The mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts were getting flooding rains. The storm’s onshore winds piled even more water into an already inundated Chesapeake Bay.

    Norfolk and Virginia Beach declared states of emergency, although a shift in wind direction prevented potentially catastrophic levels Monday, said Cody Poche, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia

    President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit Florida on Wednesday. The president was in Puerto Rico on Monday, promising to “rebuild it all” after Hurricane Fiona knocked out all power to the island two weeks ago.

    Meanwhile, in Florida neighborhoods still without power, many residents have been sharing generators to keep things such as refrigerators cool and using outdoor grills to cook food.

    In Bonita Springs, Paula Arbuckle was sitting outside her one-story home while the sound of the generator under her carport roared. She bought a generator after Hurricane Irma slammed into this area in 2018 and left her neighborhood without power. She hasn’t used it since then but after Ian knocked out the lights she’s been sharing it with her next door neighbor. Arbuckle said it’s hard being without power.

    “But I’m not the only one,” she said. Gesturing to her neighbor’s house she said: “I have a generator. They have a little baby over there. So we’re sharing the generator between the two homes.”

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Bobby Caina Calvan in Fort Meyers; Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee; Frieda Frisaro and David Fischer in Miami; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

    In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

    FORT MYERS, Fla. — People kayaking down streets that were passable just a day or two earlier. Hundreds of thousands without power. National Guard helicopters flying rescue missions to residents still stranded on Florida’s barrier islands.

    Days after Hurricane Ian carved a path of destruction from Florida to the Carolinas, the dangers persisted, and even worsened in some places. It was clear the road to recovery from this monster storm will be long and painful.

    And Ian was still not done. The storm doused Virginia with rain Sunday, and officials warned of the potential for severe flooding along its coast, beginning overnight Monday.

    Ian’s remnants moved offshore and formed a nor’easter that is expected to pile even more water into an already inundated Chesapeake Bay and threatened to cause the most significant tidal flooding event in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region in the last 10 to 15 years, said Cody Poche, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

    The island town of Chincoteague declared a state of emergency Sunday and strongly recommended that residents in certain areas evacuate. The Eastern Shore and northern portion of North Carolina’s Outer Banks were also likely to be impacted.

    At least 68 people have been confirmed dead: 61 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba.

    With the death toll rising, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the federal government was ready to help in a huge way, focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the United States. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit the state on Wednesday.

    Flooded roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated amid limited cellphone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity and the internet. Officials warned that the situation in many areas isn’t expected to improve for several days because the rain that fell has nowhere to go because waterways are overflowing.

    Fewer than 700,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity by late Sunday, down from a peak of 2.6 million.

    Criswell told “Fox News Sunday” that the federal government, including the Coast Guard and Department of Defense, had moved into position “the largest amount of search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before.”

    Still, recovery will take time, said Criswell, who visited the state Friday and Saturday to assess the damage and talk to survivors. She cautioned that dangers remain with downed power lines in standing water.

    More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency management agency.

    Rescue missions were ongoing, especially to Florida’s barrier islands, which were cut off from the mainland when storm surges destroyed causeways and bridges.

    The state will build a temporary traffic passageway for the largest one, Pine Island, DeSantis said Sunday, adding that an allocation had been approved for Deportment of Transportation to build it this week and construction could start as soon as Monday.

    “It’s not going to be a full bridge, you’re going to have to go over it probably at 5 miles an hour or something, but it’ll at least let people get in and off the island with their vehicles,” the governor said at a news conference.

    Coast Guard, municipal and private crews have been using helicopters, boats and even jetskis to evacuate people over the past several days.

    In rural Seminole County, north of Orlando, residents donned waders, boots and bug spray to paddle to their flooded homes Sunday.

    Ben Bertat found 4 inches (10 centimeters) of water in his house by Lake Harney after kayaking there.

    “I think it’s going to get worse because all of this water has to get to the lake” said Bertat, pointing to the water flooding a nearby road. “With ground saturation, all this swamp is full and it just can’t take any more water. It doesn’t look like it’s getting any lower.”

    Elsewhere, power remained knocked out to at least half of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston. In North Carolina, the storm downed trees and power lines.

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Rebecca Santana in Ft. Myers; Brendan Farrington and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee; David Fischer in Miami; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Va.; and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

    In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

    FORT MYERS, Fla. — People kayaking down streets that were passable just a day or two earlier. Hundreds of thousands without power. National Guard helicopters flying rescue missions to residents still stranded on Florida’s barrier islands.

    Days after Hurricane Ian carved a path of destruction from Florida to the Carolinas, the dangers persisted, and even worsened in some places. It was clear the road to recovery from this monster storm will be long and painful.

    And Ian was still not done. The storm doused Virginia with rain Sunday, and officials warned of the potential for severe flooding along its coast, beginning overnight Monday.

    Ian’s remnants moved offshore and formed a nor’easter that is expected to pile even more water into an already inundated Chesapeake Bay and threatened to cause the most significant tidal flooding event in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region in the last 10 to 15 years, said Cody Poche, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

    The island town of Chincoteague declared a state of emergency Sunday and strongly recommended that residents in certain areas evacuate. The Eastern Shore and northern portion of North Carolina’s Outer Banks were also likely to be impacted.

    At least 68 people have been confirmed dead: 61 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba.

    With the death toll rising, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the federal government was ready to help in a huge way, focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the United States. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit the state on Wednesday.

    Flooded roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated amid limited cellphone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity and the internet. Officials warned that the situation in many areas isn’t expected to improve for several days because the rain that fell has nowhere to go because waterways are overflowing.

    Fewer than 700,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity by late Sunday, down from a peak of 2.6 million.

    Criswell told “Fox News Sunday” that the federal government, including the Coast Guard and Department of Defense, had moved into position “the largest amount of search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before.”

    Still, recovery will take time, said Criswell, who visited the state Friday and Saturday to assess the damage and talk to survivors. She cautioned that dangers remain with downed power lines in standing water.

    More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency management agency.

    Rescue missions were ongoing, especially to Florida’s barrier islands, which were cut off from the mainland when storm surges destroyed causeways and bridges.

    The state will build a temporary traffic passageway for the largest one, Pine Island, DeSantis said Sunday, adding that an allocation had been approved for Deportment of Transportation to build it this week and construction could start as soon as Monday.

    “It’s not going to be a full bridge, you’re going to have to go over it probably at 5 miles an hour or something, but it’ll at least let people get in and off the island with their vehicles,” the governor said at a news conference.

    Coast Guard, municipal and private crews have been using helicopters, boats and even jetskis to evacuate people over the past several days.

    In rural Seminole County, north of Orlando, residents donned waders, boots and bug spray to paddle to their flooded homes Sunday.

    Ben Bertat found 4 inches (10 centimeters) of water in his house by Lake Harney after kayaking there.

    “I think it’s going to get worse because all of this water has to get to the lake” said Bertat, pointing to the water flooding a nearby road. “With ground saturation, all this swamp is full and it just can’t take any more water. It doesn’t look like it’s getting any lower.”

    Elsewhere, power remained knocked out to at least half of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston. In North Carolina, the storm downed trees and power lines.

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Rebecca Santana in Ft. Myers; Brendan Farrington and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee; David Fischer in Miami; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Va.; and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • Feds vow major aid for Hurricane Ian victims amid rescues

    Feds vow major aid for Hurricane Ian victims amid rescues

    FORT MYERS, Fla. — With the death toll from Hurricane Ian rising and hundreds of thousands of people without power in Florida and the Carolinas, U.S. officials vowed Sunday to unleash an unprecedented amount of federal disaster aid as crews scrambled to rescue people still trapped by floodwaters.

    Days after Ian tore through central Florida, carving a deadly path of destruction into the Carolinas, water levels continued to rise in some flooded areas, inundating homes and streets that were passable just a day or two earlier.

    With branches strewn across the grounds of St. Hillary’s Episcopal Church in Ft. Myers, the Rev. Charles Cannon recognized the immense loss during his Sunday sermon but also gave thanks for what remained. That included the church’s stained-glass windows and steeple.

    “People think they have lost everything, but you haven’t lost everything if you haven’t lost yourself,” he said.

    Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the federal government was ready to help in a huge way, focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the United States. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit the state on Wednesday.

    Flooded roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated amid limited cellphone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity and the internet. And officials warned that the situation in many areas isn’t expected to improve for several days because all of the rain that fell has nowhere to go since waterways are overflowing.

    Nearly 850,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity Sunday, down from a peak of 2.67 million.

    Criswell told “Fox News Sunday” that the federal government began to arrange the “largest amount of search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before” to supplement Florida’s resources.

    Even so, recovery will take time, said Criswell, who visited the state on Friday and Saturday to assess the damage and talk to survivors. She cautioned that dangers remain.

    “We worry a lot about the direct impacts from the storm itself as it is making landfall, but we see so many more injuries and sometimes more fatalities after the storm,” Criswell said. “People need to stay vigilant right now. Standing water brings with it all kinds of hazards — it has debris, it could have power lines, it could have hazards in there that you just don’t know about.”

    At least 54 people have been confirmed dead: 47 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba. The weakened storm drifted north on Sunday and was expected to dump rain on parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, according to the National Hurricane Center, which warned of the potential for flash-flooding.

    More than 1,000 people have been rescued from flooded areas along Florida’s southwestern coast alone, Daniel Hokanson, a four-star general and head of the National Guard, told The Associated Press.

    In rural Seminole County, north of Orlando, residents donned waders, boots and bug spray to paddle to their flooded homes on Sunday.

    Ben Bertat found 4 inches (10 centimeters) of water in his house by Lake Harney after kayaking there.

    “I think it’s going to get worse because all of this water has to get to the lake” said Bertat, pointing to the water flooding a nearby road. “With ground saturation, all this swamp is full and it just can’t take any more water. It doesn’t look like it’s getting any lower.”

    Gabriel Madling kayaked through several feet of water on his street, delivering sandbags to stave off water that had crept to his doorstep.

    “My home is close to underwater,” Madling said. “Right now, I’m just going to sandbag as much as I can and hope and pray.”

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday that multibillionaire businessman Elon Musk was providing some 120 Starlink satellites to “help bridge some of the communication issues.” Starlink, a satellite-based internet system created by Musk’s SpaceX, will provide high-speed connectivity.

    The bridge to Pine Island, the largest barrier island off Florida’s Gulf Coast, was destroyed by the storm, leaving it accessible only by boat or air. Some flew out by helicopter.

    An aerial photo of the Mad Hatter Restaurant on nearby Sanibel Island that was posted on social media shows a mostly vacant patch of sand where the restaurant used to be. The staff is safe, according to a message on the restaurant’s Facebook page.

    “The Mad Hatter Restaurant, unfortunately, is out at sea right now,” the Facebook page reads. “The best news from this devastating scene is that there is still land for us to rebuild.”

    Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson on Sunday defended Lee County officials from accusations that they had been slow in ordering evacuations on Tuesday ahead of the storm, a day later than some other counties in the area did.

    “Warnings for hurricane season start in June. So there’s a degree of personal responsibility here. I think the county acted appropriately. The thing is, a certain percentage of people will not heed the warnings regardless,” Anderson said on the CBS show “Face the Nation.”

    Elsewhere, power remained knocked out to at least half of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston.

    In North Carolina, the storm downed trees and power lines. Two of the four deaths in the state were from storm-related vehicle crashes, and the others involved a man who drowned when his truck plunged into a swamp and another killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator in a garage.

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Rebecca Santana in Ft. Myers, and Brendan Farrington and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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