Image source, Getty Images

US president Joe Biden will soon deliver remarks at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which is tasked with assisting states and individuals in times of crisis.

He is expected to provide an update on the support given to Florida and other US states as they deal with the impact of Hurricane Ian.

Earlier today, Biden said he was sending Fema's administrator, Deanne Criswell, to Florida on Friday to check in on response efforts and on whether more support is needed.

He also spoke to the commissioner of Lee County in Florida about providing immediate help for search and rescue missions and restoring power.

How a president responds in times of crisis in the US can come under intense scrutiny.

George W Bush’s reputation was badly damaged for his response to Hurricane Katrina. And more recently, President Trump was widely criticized for his response to Hurricane Maria – namely for throwing paper towels into the crowd in Puerto Rico.

Many will be watching to see what support the Biden-Harris administration will provide in the days and weeks to come.

Follow along for updates.

Victoria Gill
Science correspondent, BBC News

Image source, CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

The powerful winds from Hurricane Ian are pushing the sea on to the coast in what the US National Weather Service has called a “catastrophic” storm surge.

Climate scientists point out there is a “clear link” between these powerful, destructive surges and the warming of our planet.

“The impact is greater now than it would have been without human-induced climate change, as sea levels are higher,” says Dr Liz Bentley from the Royal Meteorological Society.

On top of this, warmer air that holds more moisture is compounding the flooding - and the damage and misery it causes - by bringing heavier rain at the same time.

Dr Reinhard Schiemann from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science says the climate-related increase in the peak wind speed also makes surges stronger.

Tropical storms already produce the strongest storm surges, Dr Schiemann adds. And because climate change also slows down the speed at which hurricanes travel, “a particular area can be affected by all these combined impacts of the storm for even longer”.

Azadeh Moshiri
Reporting from St Petersburg, Florida

Image source, Getty Images

The storm’s strong rains and punishing winds barrelled over St Petersburg in Tampa Bay on Wednesday.

With its low-lying buildings, residents were dreading what they’d wake up to.

But looking around today, it’s clear it’s been spared the worst of the storm.

We’re now leaving Tampa Bay behind to make our way further south to Fort Myers.

That’s where the storm has caused extensive damage, and where communities will be reeling from the devastation to their city.

The two-hour drive will give us a chance to witness Ian’s own journey, and what it’s left behind in its wake.

Officials in Volusia County, northeast of Orlando, Florida, have confirmed that a man has died as a result of Hurricane Ian.

At a news conference, they said a 74-year-old man went out during the storm to try to drain his pool and died. His death is the first to be confirmed officially.

Image source, Getty Images

As we reported earlier, President Joe Biden spoke this morning with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and pledged further federal assistance.

According to a White House readout of the call, Biden said he was sending Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator Deanne Criswell to the state on Friday to "check in on response efforts and see where additional support is needed".

Fema is the federal agency tasked with helping Americans before, during and after a hurricane with their disaster relief and assistance needs.

Thousands of Fema personnel are already on the ground in Florida, and Criswell - helming operations from Washington - has also directed millions of meals and litres of water to be pre-positioned in the state.

The president is due to deliver remarks at the agency's headquarters later on Thursday.

Lee County, where the city of Fort Myers is located, is one of the areas hit hardest by Hurricane Ian.

The county's government has released a statement in which it says search-and-rescue efforts are under way, as well as response and recovery efforts.

Officials also say they are assessing infrastructure and structural damage in the county.

"All 15 shelters the county opened prior to Hurricane Ian remain open. All will remain open. Emergency Management and its partners are working on increasing food and water supplies, as it’s anticipated residents with flooding or structural damage need a place to go," the statement said.

Local officials were at the Sanibel Causeway and in the Matlacha area, where extensive damage had occurred, it added, while bridge inspectors across the county were assessing all bridges.

Image source, Reuters

Tropical Storm Ian is expected to become a hurricane again later on Thursday before making landfall for the second time on Friday, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) has said in its latest advisory, external.

It also issued a hurricane warning for the entire coast of South Carolina.

Tropical Storm Ian is now about 25 miles (40km) north-east of Cape Canaveral, where Nasa launches rockets into space at the Kennedy Space Center.

Ian's maximum sustained winds have picked up to about 70mph (110km/h) and it is expected to become a hurricane again by evening, and make landfall as a hurricane on Friday, with rapid weakening forecast after landfall.

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 (51cm) of rainfall.

The NHC also notes that Ian is a large cyclone, with winds of tropical storm intensity extending more than 400 miles from its eye.

Image source, .

Renee Smith, a resident of Punta Gorda, a small town in south-western Florida, has described the "terrifying" experience of surviving the hurricane.

She is a carer for her husband Christopher, who has advanced prostate cancer and is paralysed from the chest down.

Overcome with tears, she told the MSNBC news network that she had hidden under the kitchen table but "before I hid, I had to protect my husband".

She said she had tied him to his bed with blankets, and duct-taped pillows and plastic bags against the sideboard and windows.

She also put a life-jacket on him, "so that if the water came in, he wouldn't drown", she said.

Having lived through Hurricane Charley - the last storm to devastate the region - 18 years ago, Smith said Ian was far worse and lasted much longer.

She said: "Charley was less than an hour. The sun came out afterwards. There was no torrential rain."

Ian, by contrast, ripped her chimney off the roof. Smith said she was too afraid to even look outside.

She added that her husband had been due to have an operation this week, which she said could have helped him walk again, but it has now been postponed.

More pictures are coming in of the extensive damage wrought by Hurricane Ian.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, get

Samantha Granville
Reporting from the road to Fort Myers

It's very dark here, it's raining on and off, you go through patches of intense downpour, then it stops. The one thing that's very consistent is the roads, like the one I'm on from Tallahassee to Fort Myers, being deserted.

My car is the only vehicle on the road heading south that looks like a passenger car. I have passed a convoy of emergency response trucks.

The clouds are moving so fast above me it's crazy. Normally you see clouds move, but now it's like they're speeding across the sky.

It was nearly impossible to get petrol this morning. I had to go to seven different petrol stations, because all of the nozzles elsewhere were covered with plastic bags. The gas trickled out so slowly, it took me over 15 minutes to fill up the car - and that was half a tank.

As I've driven by, I've noticed lots of tree branches have fallen, and a mobile home's wooden furniture was scattered across the site. There seems to be a police officer every couple of miles doing speed radar checks, even though there's no-one on the road. I'm pretty surprised police are being deployed to do speed control when things are pretty bad just an hour south.

As we wait for images to come in from this morning, we've seen pictures of firefighters from the Floridian city of Naples wading into waist-high waters yesterday to rescue people stranded by the storm - and to salvage their own equipment after the fire station was inundated with water.

Image source, Naples Fire-Rescue Department/Reuters

Image source, Naples Fire-Rescue Department/Reuters

Image source, Naples Fire-Rescue Department

John Sudworth
On the road to Fort Myers

There’s plenty of traffic moving south along the Interstate 75 highway heading towards the area hit hardest by Hurricane Ian - the city of Fort Myers and the surrounding Lee County, still about an hour’s drive away.

Just ahead of us, a convoy of at least 30 police cars with blue lights flashing is heading in the same direction, an indication of the scale of the emergency response along the gulf side of the peninsular.

With the storm losing power and now heading out into the Atlantic, the roads are dry, with wind speeds dropping almost to nothing.

It’s a marked contrast to the situation little more than 12 hours ago when Ian came ashore along this coastline with 155 mph (249 km/h) winds, and carrying with it a huge storm surge that brought down bridges and flooded streets and homes.

Residents in and near the hurricane's path were ordered to leave their homes earlier in the week, but many Floridians decided to remain and seek shelter indoors.

Mark Pritchett, who lives in the city of Venice, some 95km (60 miles) south of Tampa, described the "terrifying" moment he stepped outside his home as the hurricane made its way across the Gulf of Mexico.

"Rain shooting like needles. My street is a river," he said in a text message to the Associated Press news agency.

Emergency crews have been sawing through fallen trees to reach people in their flooded homes.

Portable cell towers are now being deployed across the state, but millions of people are still without electricity and virtually no mobile service, unable to call for help in the hardest hit areas.

In Lee County, where many roadways and bridges are impassable, the sheriff said his office had received thousands of 911 emergency calls.

“It crushed us,” Sheriff Carmine Marceno told ABC News. “We still cannot access many of the people that are in need.”

There has been severe damage in many parts of Florida, including here in Fort Myers where boats have been pushed up on a causeway in the south-western city.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis and his top hurricane officials have just ended their briefing.

Here are some of the key details we've learned:

• The historic storm has done extensive damage to homes and "still poses a major threat"
• The devastation in central Florida amounts to a once in a 500 year flood event, according to DeSantis
• The governor spoke with President Biden this morning and asked him to expand a major disaster declaration issued earlier on Thursday
• Search and rescue missions have been under way since the early hours of the morning
• More than 2.5 million people remain without power
• The governor's office has not confirmed media reports of two fatalities or a police report suggesting there may have been hundreds of fatalities in Lee County
• Some 30,000 first responders are coming to the state, DeSantis said
• A state disaster fund has raised $1.6m since its creation on Wednesday

As Ian moves across central Florida on Thursday morning, the state's top emergency management official is warning it still poses a major threat.

Central and north-east Florida are currently in the hurricane's path, Kevin Guthrie said at the briefing.

The governor continues.

"The impact of the storm is historic," he says.

"We've never seen a flood event like this. We've never seen [a] storm surge of this magnitude.

"It's going to end up doing extensive damage to a lot of people's homes."

As we reported earlier, President Joe Biden has approved a major disaster declaration for nine counties in the state of Florida.

Governor DeSantis said he had spoken with Biden this morning to thank him - and ask for more support.

"I told him 'thanks for this' but because the storm has moved inland and caused a lot of potential damage in the center part of our state, we are going to be asking for those counties to be expanded."

The declaration makes federal funds available to help those affected.

There has been major flooding in central Florida, the governor says. "It is a [once in 500 years] flood event."

The storm will set records, he adds.