Alexandra Ostasiewicz
Reporting from Florida

It’s a brilliantly sunny day on Fort Myers Beach.

Amid the heat and salty air, a massive clean up is under way.

This coast was one of the hardest hit by Hurricane Ian and you can see the signs everywhere you look. Debris and even an abandoned vehicle line the street to the waterfront.

At Coconut Jacks, a team of employees is hard at work trying to salvage what they can.

“We’ve never been hit like this,” the general manager told me.

He estimates that as much as 8ft (2.4m) of water flooded into the restaurant from the storm surge.

They hope the structure can be saved, but are confident that everything inside will need to be replaced.

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America correspondent

On Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis formally requested that the federal government issue a Major Disaster Declaration for his state and cover 100% of the costs of its recovery efforts for the next two months.

In an interview with conservative Fox News talk show host Tucker Carlson that evening, DeSantis – who is in the midst of a re-election campaign and has 2024 presidential ambitions - called on elected officials to “put politics aside” and think about the people who are suffering from Hurricane Ian’s devastation.

Some of his critics, however, have been quick to point out that when the governor was a newly sworn in congressman from Florida in 2013, he voted against $9.7bn in federal aid for New York and New Jersey following massive damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

DeSantis was one of 67 conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives to object to the additional federal aid for Sandy relief, saying some of the spending was unrelated to hurricane recovery and that the entire package was not offset by budget cuts elsewhere and consequently would increase the federal budget deficit.

“It was an eyebrow-raising vote for a Florida lawmaker representing coastal communities susceptible to hurricanes, but one that established DeSantis in Washington's most conservative circles,” writes Steve Contorno in the Tampa Bay Times.

As DeSantis’s focus shifted to the governorship of a state particularly susceptible to hurricanes, however, he has struck a different tone. In 2017 – a year before he was elected - he voted for a $36.5bn hurricane relief package for Texas, Puerto Rico and Florida. And as governor, he has supported a billion of dollars in state spending on climate “resiliency” investment for the state’s coastal communities.

The hard-line backbench conservative who entered Congress nine years ago has transformed into an ambitious governor more willing to open government coffers wide to ease the pain of the victims of natural disaster.

Image source, Reuters

Here's the latest:

• After causing massive destruction in Florida, Hurricane Ian is now heading for South Carolina where it is expected to make landfall later this afternoon
• Forecasters are predicting a storm surge and floods, with the city of Charleston likely to feel the brunt of the storm
• President Joe Biden has approved an emergency declaration for the state, which means recovery funds can be sent more quickly once the hurricane passes
• In Florida, officials and residents are still assessing the damage after Ian tore through its western coast. A rescue operation is under way involving more than 1,000 dedicated personnel who are travelling up and down the coastline
• The state's top disaster official says at least 21 people may have died, but exact casualty figures are still being determined
• Millions have been left without power and drinking water, while many homes have been completely destroyed. A state disaster fund has now raised more than $12m (£10.7m)

The latest forecasts show Hurricane Ian is moving north and will make a second landfall later on Friday along the South Carolina coast.

Ian is then expected to rapidly weaken once it comes onshore and dissipate by Saturday evening.

Nada Tawfik
Reporting from Florida

Image source, BBC/Nada Tawfik

At Legacy Harbour Marina, I met Captain Greg Smith, driving in his car with his wife, Glenda, and their two dogs. They were still visibly in awe of the destruction.

“I’ve never seen something like this,” he said. His family’s roots in Fort Myers go back 150 years, generations have lived through hurricanes. Luckily, his home didn’t sustain much damage, but Hurricane Ian has now put him out of work.

Glenda shows me a picture of their boat at nearby Getaway Marina. It was ripped out of the water and off its pylons during the powerful storm, finally landing on a news crew’s vehicle on the main boulevard.

Captain Greg wanted to stay on his boat to protect it. Glenda wouldn’t let him, telling him his life was more important than a boat.

Now 63 years old, he fears he’s too old to go through the long and agonising process of rebuilding his business.

He says they will be fine financially, but he and Glenda worry how others will feed their families.

The beach is gone at the worst possible time, when many were preparing for the busy tourist season from October to April when they make most of their money. It’s just another cost those here are facing as a result of the storm.

The barrier islands of Sanibel and Captiva, on Florida's gulf coast, were among the first areas to get hit as Hurricane Ian came onshore on Wednesday.

Sanibel Island residents were effectively cut off from support after the three-mile causeway that connects it to Punta Rassa on the mainland collapsed into the sea.

Both islands had been placed under mandatory evacuation orders, but it is unclear how many local residents heeded those warnings.

More than 6,000 people typically live on Sanibel Island, while Captiva Island is home to about 300.

On Thursday evening, first responders from Miami-Dade County posted video of them rescuing stranded residents from both locations.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Florida

Argentine immigrant Alejandro Carrera has been in Fort Myers for 14 years, attracted by the "nice weather and the American Dream".

He's lost count of how many hurricanes and storms he's seen in that time. But he says nothing could have prepared him for Ian.

"I saw a boat that was basically sitting in someone's living room," he tells me in Spanish. "We have been so lucky that nobody has been found dead here. This is the worst I've seen."

He fears though for friends of his who live in nearby Sanibel Island, who refused to leave despite repeated warnings.

"Some people are stubborn, or maybe just have a death wish," he says, shaking his head and using a profanity. "It may cost them their lives."

But Alejandro says he's an optimist. Even Ian has left him with something to be positive about.

"We will rebuild," he says. "And I work in construction. I'm going to have a ton of work!"

At least 21 people may have died as a result of Hurricane Ian, Florida's top disaster official Kevin Guthrie says.

Speaking at a Friday morning briefing, Guthrie says only one death has so far been confirmed and that is in Polk County.

But he said there are also 12 deaths in Charlotte County and eight in Collier County, all of which have not been officially confirmed.

Guthrie says deaths can only be confirmed once the state medical examiner determines the death was directly related to the storm.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is speaking at a morning briefing on Hurricane Ian.

He is flanked by President Biden's top disaster official, Deanne Criswell of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).

"There's been a Herculean effort" to rescue people across the state, DeSantis says.

"There are over 1,000 dedicated rescue personnel who are going up and down the coastline."

He said state and local officials were still assessing damage and working to restore power, with about half of residents in hard-hit Lee County and Charlotte County having already had their power restored.

The state has contacted over 20,000 Floridians and continues to reach out to others sheltering in place to ensure they are safe, the governor added.

A state disaster fund has now raised more than $12m since its creation on Wednesday.

Image source, Tannen Maury / EPA

Just under two million homes and businesses in Florida are stillwithout power after the state was battered by Hurricane Ian.

That's down from more than 3.3 million power customers who have been affected by the storm since it hit Florida's Gulf Coast on Wednesday.

Emergency workers have been trying to reach stranded Florida residents as Ian heads on towards North and South Carolina, leaving behind deadly floodwaters, downed power lines and widespread damage.

Duke Energy Corp said it was readying crews to respond to potential power outages across the Carolinas, according to Reuters.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Florida

Just before 08:00 local time on Friday, we're seeing huge queues of cars waiting to fill up on petrol.

We're about 15 miles east of Fort Myers in the town of Estero, in a huge shopping complex which has just one filling station.

Dozens of cars are approaching the gas station from each end - all barely moving. We've seen similar scenes at two other stations as we approach Fort Myers.

Sixty-year-old Dean Perfetti - who was waiting to fill up multiple jerry cans - told us he'd already been there over an hour.

Perfetti considers himself lucky: he only had "landscape" damage to his house.

Many of the stores in the complex are still without water. The shortages have prompted Publix - an enormous grocery store - to put yellow caution tape around its washrooms to ward off customers in need of a working toilet.

At a store next door, school text book vendor Kamal said the storm was by far the worst he's seen in 10 years living in the area.

"It was crazy," he said. "Thankfully my house just has cosmetic damage. It could have been a lot worse."

Hurricane Ian is projected to reach the coast of South Carolina later on Friday, move over the east of the state and then travel up to North Carolina.

According to the National Hurricane Center's latest advisory, external, Ian is currently about 105 miles southeast of Charleston, the largest city in South Carolina with some 800,000 people.

Ian's maximum sustained winds have remained around 85 mph (140kmph) and NHC forecasts say winds of tropical storm intensity are ongoing across much of the coast of the Carolinas.

Life-threatening storm surge and hurricane conditions are expected in the region by afternoon.

Ian is however expected to rapidly weaken after it makes landfall, become a so-called extratropical low - a cyclone with a low pressure centre - by the time it moves over North Carolina and dissipate by Saturday night.

These satellite images show Hurricane Ian's progression as it first barrelled across Cuba in the Caribbean on Tuesday before heading to Florida.

Ian was downgraded to a tropical storm after making landfall in Florida on Wednesday and Thursday.

But as it moved into the Atlantic Ocean it regained its hurricane strength and is now heading for South Carolina and Georgia.

Image source, .

Image source, Reuters

It's not just the US that has been thrown into disarray by Hurricane Ian.

Last night, Cubans took to the streets to bang pots and protest across several neighbourhoods in the capital Havana as the country entered its third day of blackouts following the seismic storm.

The massive storm caused Cuba's grid to collapse earlier this week, knocking out power to the entire island of 11 million people, flattening homes and obliterating fields.

For some Cubans - already reeling from shortages of food, fuel and medicine - the prolonged blackout was the last straw.

Jorge Luis Cruz, of Havana's El Cerro neighborhood, stood in his doorway on Thursday evening banging a metal pot and shouting in anger.

Dozens of others on side streets around his home could be heard banging pots from terraces and rooftops in the dark. "This isn't working, enough of this," Cruz told Reuters. "All my food is rotten. Why? Because we don't have electricity."

Cruz said his family did not want him to take to the street out of fear he would be hauled off to jail. "Let them take me," he said.

The storm has cut a swathe of destruction across the Florida peninsula, leaving lives in pieces.

Many people have had their homes damaged or destroyed, and are searching for new accommodation.

This video captures some of the damage, which is estimated to total billions of dollars.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Florida

Image source, Rex Features

No deaths have so far been confirmed in the devastated Florida city of Fort Myers, according to the town’s fire chief.

Speaking to local NPR affiliate 91.3 WLRN early on Friday morning, Chief Tracy McMillion said that while authorities are still working on a detailed damage assessment of the “catastrophic devastation”, it is increasingly clear that Hurricane Ian “totally changed the face of our charming city”.

“Concrete blocks flew more than half a mile,” he said. “Boats are on roads in areas that they shouldn’t even have gotten to.”

McMillion added that coastal parts of the city, as well as the city’s downtown area, have “taken a beating”.

“These are the things that made our city really charming,” he added.

Many local residents remain without power in the town. McMillion said that authorities are currently focused on making sure residents have all the supplies they need and on repairing critical infrastructure.

We’re on our way to Ft Myers now and will be able to bring you some updates from the town shortly.

The impact of climate change may have increased Hurricane Ian's rainfall by as much as 10%, according to a group of scientists.

"Climate change didn't cause the storm but it did cause it to be wetter," Michael Wehner, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the scientists behind the new finding, told the AFP news agency.

While the impact of climate change on the frequency of storms is still unclear we know that increased sea surface temperatures warm the air above, making more energy available to drive hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons. As a result, they are likely to be more intense with more extreme rainfall.

The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.

As Hurricane Ian heads towards the coast of South Carolina, meterorologists are warning of life-threatening storm surges and winds of 140km per hour (87mph).

Tens of thousands of residents have moved away from low-lying land.

In Florida, the focus has now turned to a massive search and rescue operation after Ian caused widespread damage across the state on Wednesday and Thursday.

Image source, .

We are restarting our coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, as North and South Carolina brace for impact as the storm barrels towards the states, 36 hours after causing massive destruction in the US state of Florida.

• At least 12 deaths have so far been confirmed in south-west Florida as a result of Hurricane Ian
• The governor of Florida says it may be some time before the number of deaths caused by the hurricane is known
• More than two million homes and businesses were without power in Florida early on Friday
• People in South Carolina have left coastal towns as the storm approaches, with the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) warning of life-threatening storm surges and hurricane conditions along the Carolina coast later in the day
• In central Florida, river flooding will continue through next week

• More than 700 people had been rescued from Charlotte and Lee Counties, the two worst hit areas
• US President Joe Biden has warned that Ian - which hit on Wednesday as a category four storm - could be the deadliest in the state's history
• In Puerto Rico, a massive clean-up effort continues as after ten days since Ian first hit, more than 269,000 households are still without electricity

It's nearly 01:00 in Florida and we are pausing our live coverage.

Here are the latest developments:

• Ian has strengthened to a category one hurricane, after being downgraded to a tropical storm

• It is now over the Atlantic Ocean, and gaining strength before it's projected to make landfall again in South Carolina on Friday
• At least 10 people have died - they have been reported in Charlotte County, one of the areas worst hit by the storm so far

• Damages in Florida are estimated to be in the billions of dollars
• Officials are warning people to stay away from floodwaters, with alligators, snakes and sewage reportedly spotted

• Nearly 2.2m customers in Florida have no electricity as of late Thursday night

• A 18:00 curfew remains in effect for Lee County, Florida - the hardest-hit region