Azadeh Moshiri
Near Fort Myers

Image source, Getty Images

In the US, there’s an informal “Waffle House Index”, which measures the impact of a storm based on how many of the restaurant chain’s outlets are forced to shut down.

In fact, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (Fema) website says it keeps track of Waffle House menus after natural disasters: “A limited menu means an area may not have running water or electricity, but there’s gas for the stove to make bacon, eggs, and coffee: exactly what hungry, weary people need.”

And when it’s closed, a former Fema administrator once said: “That’s really bad.”

We stop by a Waffle House on the road to Fort Myers, and it’s closed. Their power went out for 12.5 hours and they’re working on opening it back up as soon as possible.

One of the Waffle House employees said her neighbourhood of Bradenton is "in pieces".

She says: "Keep driving, you’ll see a lot more damage."

She was right.

Within an hour, we visited a mobile home community devastated by the storm, where people told us they either had nowhere else to go, or it was simply too late.

After becoming a hurricane again, Ian is now heading north towards Georgia and the Carolinas.

A bulletin issued by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) at 21:00 GMT said the storm was 240 miles (390km) south of Charleston, South Carolina.

The bulletin said that storm surge warnings were in effect for Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. It warns that life-threatening flooding may occur in those states as the storm heads north at around 10mph.

Ian is forecast to speed up as it heads towards the coast of South Carolina on Friday night.

Tropical storm force winds extend outward 415 miles from the centre, the NHC said.

It added that Ian will continue to strengthen before landfall on Friday, but will rapidly weaken after that.

Ian made landfall on Wednesday afternoon as a category four hurricane, sweeping across the Florida peninsula, before emerging into the Atlantic Ocean north of Cape Canaveral.

Image source, Getty Images

After losing force over central Florida and being downgraded to a tropical storm, Ian has powered back up and is again a hurricane.

It is now packing sustained winds of 75mph (120km/h), according to the latest bulletin from the US National Hurricane Center.

Those wind speeds rate Ian as a hurricane (category one, the lowest) by just 1mph, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale.

A video shared on social media shows Sandhill cranes in Florida struggling to hunker down as they are buffeted by powerful wind gusts from Hurricane Ian.

Alexandra Ostasiewicz
On the road to Fort Myers, Florida

In Port Charlotte, a coastal community 96 miles (154km) south of Tampa, Tom, 48, and his mother Kathy, 66, who uses a wheelchair, survived Hurricane Ian for nearly 12 hours after the roof blew off part of their home.

“We were in the bathroom and could feel the wall shaking,” Tom told me.

They say the front part of the roof was blown off the building at around 4:30pm on Wednesday and that they rode out the storm through the night for close to 12 hours.

I met them on road. The pair had been planning a move to Colorado at the end of the month, but decided to leave this morning after a traumatic and devastating night.

For Kathy, who has lived in Florida for the past 18 years, the prospect of leaving the state is heart-breaking - but she feels there is little left to keep her here.

“The town is destroyed,” she told me. As is her home of the past six years.

Images from Florida are beginning to reveal the scale of the damage and the extent of the flooding.

Image source, WPLG TV via ABC via REUTERS

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Kayla Epstein
Reporting from New York

Image source, Phoebe Gavin

Hurricane Ian was lashing Florida, and Phoebe Gavin had no idea if her parents were safe.

Myra Jean and Oscar Gavin are in their seventies. They’d fled Sanibel Island for Fort Myers on the mainland ahead of the storm. But their daughter hadn’t heard from them since shortly before 2pm on Wednesday.

So she turned to social media.

“Please help me find my parents,” she tweeted, external, along with a map of their last known location. “If you have footage or have had people check in nearby, please help me.”

With communications knocked out, people across the US have resorted to asking strangers on social media to help locate loved ones. A website called Crowdsource Rescue, external was filled with red dots marking requests for help by Thursday afternoon.

Strangers online replied to Gavin with advice and information from their own family members in the area.

Relief finally came on Thursday, when Gavin's mother made a 30-second phone call from her husband’s phone.

“I was able to hear that they were ok, that they were safe, they were uninjured,” Gavin told the BBC.

Viral images showed the causeway connecting Sanibel Island, external to the mainland all but destroyed. The fate of the Gavins’ home was unclear.

“Get creative, stay creative,” Gavin said of her crowdsourced search. “Keep asking for help. None of the people who reached out to me with information on the ground were people I actually knew, but they were willing to tell me what they knew because I asked.”

Image source, Getty Images

Search and rescue teams have been deployed since Hurricane Ian made landfall, and wider operations are under way to help the millions of people affected by the storm.

Here are some figures from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's office, that give a sense of the scale of the response:

• Some 5,000 Florida National Guard troops, as well as 2,000 Guardsmen from neighbouring states, are assisting response operations on the ground

• Eight teams with some 800 members are carrying out search and rescue operations
• The Coast Guard has performed dozens of rescues overnight, and together with the National Guard has been landing helicopters on barrier islands as part of search and rescue operations
• 42,000 technicians have been working overnight to resolve power outages affecting more than 2.5m Floridians
• More than 200 public shelters have been opened and are housing roughly 34,000 residents
• About 100 portable cell towers are being deployed in areas that have lost power
• Federal and state officials have provided truckloads of cots and blankets, millions of meals and water bottles, thousands of tarps to protect homes, and hundreds of generators and pumps
• Private sector firms including Walmart and Publix have staged additional supplies, including ice and plywood

Sanibel Island, in south-west Florida, was battered by high winds and heavy rains when Ian came onshore as a Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday afternoon.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that Sanibel Island was hit by a "biblical storm surge" from Hurricane Ian.

The barrier island is connected to the mainland by a single three-mile-long bridge known as the Sanibel Causeway.

The causeway is now badly damaged after a section of the structure collapsed into the sea overnight.

DeSantis said that roads and structures on Sanibel had been destroyed by the flooding, with the bridge to the island now impassible.

Crumbled pavement about half a mile out from the mainland now lies "folded up like an accordion, ripped to ribbons by a powerful storm surge", Tampa Bay Times journalist Zachary Sampson, external reports.

More than 6,000 people normally live on Sanibel Island - and it is unclear how many of them heeded the mandatory evacuation orders they received.

As Hurricane Ian has carved its path of destruction, the storm has knocked out power for more than 2.5m Florida residents. Earlier this week, it brought a total blackout to the island of Cuba.

The outages have created a need for generators - but officials are warning people to take extra precautions.

National Weather Service Director Ken Graham said on Wednesday that more people had died in generator-related incidents during hurricanes than from the impacts of the storms themselves.

At least one death in last week's Hurricane Fiona came from a generator accident.

Ahead of Ian, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission reissued safety parameters that warn generator use can kill in minutes and the exhaust - which contains carbon monoxide - is "a poison you cannot see or smell".

"We have seen people survive storms just to die from carbon monoxide poisoning from their portable generator," the commission tweeted.

Florida residents have been advised that generators should only be used outdoors.

US media report that about a dozen residents in south-west and central Florida may now be dead as a result of Hurricane Ian.

Six of deaths have been confirmed in Charlotte County, commissioner Chris Constance told CNN.

One person who was in hospice care in Osceola County has also died, a local emergency management official told the channel.

Earlier, officials in Volusia County confirmed that one man, aged 74, had died as a result of the hurricane while trying to drain his pool.

Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno has also told CNN that about five people are believed to have died in the county.

Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington

Tropical Storm Ian has already begun its journey over the Atlantic Ocean as it continues to travel west towards North and South Carolina.

The storm is passing over the Gulf Stream - a warm and fast-moving ocean current that travels north along the east coast of Florida.

The path is ideal for super-charging a hurricane, says Hugh Willoughby, a meteorology professor at Florida International University.

"Hurricanes derive their energy from warm ocean water and the Gulf Stream is sort of the warmest ocean water around," he told the BBC.

But while the Carolinas are expected to be hit, they will likely face a weaker storm than Cuba and Florida have endured.

"They get hit more than we do in Florida but the storms aren't as strong," Willoughby said. "Unless we're very, very unlucky it won't be as intense as in Florida."

Alexandra Ostasiewicz
On the road to Fort Myers, Florida

As we drive south along the west of Florida, the damage from Hurricane Ian is becoming more and more apparent.

Even away from the coast, standing water has flooded some roadways, trees and branches are strewn about, and signs and buildings show clear signs of wind damage.

Shops, restaurants, and petrol stations are all closed and without power as residents search fruitlessly for opportunities to resupply.

Aerial images from Florida have provided an early glimpse into the scale of the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian.

On the ground there are reports from survivors who struggled to make it through a terrifying night of strong winds and rising water.

"You either have to swim or drown," one woman said.

Image source, Getty Images

If you're just joining us or in need of a recap, here are the latest developments as Tropical Storm Ian continues to wreak havok across parts of Florida:

• More than 2.6 million people in Florida are without power as the storm continues to lash the state
• Hurricane Ian has been downgraded into a tropical storm, but the National Hurricane Center has said it is likely to become a hurricane again later
• It is forecast to bring further heavy rain, damaging winds and storm surges as it heads towards Georgia and North and South Carolina
• A hurricane warning has been issued for the entire coast of South Carolina
• President Joe Biden has said it could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida's history and that early reports suggest substantial loss of life, though numbers are still unclear
• Speaking at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said the government would cover the full costs of search and rescue and clearing debris, as well as helping rebuild government buildings and giving financial support to individuals who did not have enough insurance
• One man, aged 74, has died as a result of the hurricane, officials in Volusia County have confirmed
• Florida's gulf coast is no longer under a warning, but portions of east central and north east Florida can expect up to 20 inches (51 cm) of rainfall

John Sudworth
Reporting from Fort Myers, Florida

Fort Myers was in the direct path of the hurricane as it came ashore and, less than 24 hours later, I'm standing with Pastor James Macon from the city's River Church, surveying the damage.

In the marina, boats are stacked on top of each other, bits of the floating harbour have been driven inland and everything is covered in mud and debris.

"I've never seen nothing like this in all my years in Florida. I've been here since 1982 and I'm lost for words right now," he tells me. "This is, wow."

Pastor James says he's been driving around looking for people in need of help and he's particularly worried about homeless people who might have been out last night.

But he says he has so far seen no evidence of a large number of casualties.

"I have a lot of friends around here, I've visited their houses and so far, so good," he tells me.

"By the grace of God, we did endure this thing."

Read John Sudworth's full report from Fort Myers

Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington

Image source, Getty Images

While Ian has already started to push across Florida into the Atlantic, the devastation left by the storm may be among the worst in the state's history.

"I spend a lot of time studying hurricane damage, and I'm thinking it will be $100bn (£90bn) in damage and several hundred fatalities," said Hugh Willoughby, a meteorology professor at Florida International University. "I hope I'm wrong."

Basic rebuilding and construction efforts will take until the new year, he said, though a full recovery in the area will take "several years".

The storm is still dumping catastrophic levels of rainwater in sections of the state, with at least two bridges - the Sanibel Causeway and Pine Island bridge - partially destroyed.

Parts of the state will likely be unrecognisable, said Erik Salna, associate director of the International Hurricane Research Center.

"From what we're seeing now, Fort Myers beach, Bonita Beach, Naples - these places are going to look dramatically different when this is finally done," Salna said. "We just hope that the people who were asked to evacuate did."

US president Joe Biden said his government will cover the full costs for clearing debris and search and rescue efforts in Florida.

He added his administration will cover the majority of costs to rebuild schools and other public infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Ian.

Individuals who don't have enough insurance on their homes will also get support, Biden said. His government is offering them:

• $37,900 for home repairs
• Another $37,900 to recover lost items, anything "from automobiles to a lost wedding ring"

Biden also warned oil and gas executives not to take advantage of this tragedy and raise prices for Floridians.

President Joe Biden concluded his talk at Fema headquarters by appealing to the people of Puerto Rico, saying the federal government has not forgotten about them.

"To the people of Puerto Rico, we have not gone away," Biden said.

"I am committed to you and the recovery of the island, we will stand by you no matter how long it takes to get it done."

Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Fiona last week, as it still struggles to rebuild from the impact of deadly Hurricane Maria in 2017.

US President Joe Biden is now speaking at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).

"This could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida's history," Biden said, saying numbers are unclear but he is hearing there may be substantial loss of life.

Follow along for updates.