Visit missing.fl.gov if you or someone you know needs assistance or a safety check. Federal search and rescue teams, including FEMA Urban Search and Rescue, U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of Defense, Customs Border and Protection and the state of Florida, are coordinating rescue efforts with local officials.

More than 100 FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance Team staff are working in the hardest hit communities to help survivors apply for assistance and identify immediate and emerging threats.  

After a disaster, there often are many rumors and misunderstandings. Do your part to stop the spread of rumors by finding and sharing information from trusted sources and discouraging others from sharing information from unverified sources. Find facts about common disaster-related rumors at Common Disaster-Related Rumors | FEMA.gov.

Call your insurance company right away. Take photos to document damage and keep receipts from all clean-up and repair related purchases. These steps may help maximize insurance and federal disaster assistance and payments. If you’ve evacuated, you can still start a claim now and provide specifics later.

To provide information and resources to Hurricane Ian survivors, FEMA published an Ian webpage that includes information on how to donate, volunteer, dispel rumors and find assistance. 

Safety Considerations for Residents

Beware of frauds and scams. All FEMA employees carry an official badge. Federal and local disaster workers do not solicit or accept money. Don’t trust anyone who offers financial help and then asks for money or personal information. Call the FEMA helpline at 800-621-3362 right away if an inspector comes to your house, but you haven’t applied for assistance. This might be a sign of identity theft.

Stay out of floodwater. Standing water may be electrically charged from underground or downed power lines or contain hazards such as human and livestock waste, contaminants that can lead to illness, sharp debris or wild or stray animals. Do not walk, swim or drive through flood waters.

Be careful when cleaning up. Wear protective clothing, including work gloves and sturdy thick-soled shoes. Do not try to remove heavy debris by yourself. Use an appropriate mask if cleaning mold or other debris. People with asthma and other lung conditions and/or immune suppression should not enter buildings with indoor water leaks or mold growth that can be seen or smelled.

Be safe using generators. Generators can help during a power outage but can present serious health and safety risks. Only use a generator outdoors and far from open doors and windows. Visit www.ready.gov/power-outages to learn how to use a generator safely.

Avoid downed power or utility lines. They may be live with deadly voltage. Stay away and report them immediately to your power or utility company. Do not cut or cover fiber optic cables with debris.

Stay off the roads. Emergency workers may be assisting people in flooded areas, restoring electricity or cleaning up debris. You can help them by staying out of the way and off the roads. If you evacuated do not return home until local officials tell you the area is safe.

Place debris wisely. Never place debris near trees, structures or downed powerlines. This makes removal difficult.

Keep paying attention to local officials. If you evacuated because of Ian, keep in mind that flooding is still happening in many locations. Roads may be blocked and power is still being restored. Only return once local officials say it’s safe and you have access to food and water.

State, Federal Response Actions

In Florida, thousands of Florida National Guard members and National Guard members from other states are activated to help with the response.

Administrator Criswell reiterated FEMA’s support for all Ian survivors as the agency continues responding to other active disasters. As of Sunday, FEMA had nearly 10,000 staff deployed to support open and active presidentially declared disasters. This includes more than 2,400 supporting Ian response efforts, 890 in Missouri, 780 in Puerto Rico and 520 in Kentucky.

More than 670 staff are supporting FEMA’s call centers and FEMA is working on contract support for additional operators to assist. Additionally, federal personnel from the Internal Revenue Service and the Census are supporting FEMA’s call centers. As of Sunday, 400 IRS staff and 250 Census staff were helping or training to help answer survivor calls for assistance and minimize wait times.

More than 850 emergency management personnel from other states have been deployed to Florida through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas activated the DHS Surge Capacity Force. The Surge Capacity Force is composed of nearly 7,500 members from other federal agencies who can help augment FEMA’s disaster staffing.

Power restoration continues across Florida, thousands of personnel working to continue restoration where electricity can be restored. Nearly 70% of peak power outages have been restored and fewer than 800,000 power outages remain.

The state of Florida provided 4,000 gallons of diesel to Lee County to power emergency generators to supply water to nearby hospitals. The state is also delivering 1.2 million gallons of water from Lakeland to Fort Myers for hospitals without water.

More than 550 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel are conducting safety inspections, installing generators and assessing power needs.

Generators arrived at the Generator Staging Base in Immokalee, Florida. The Defense Logistics Agency is delivering additional generators to Craig Field, Alabama in anticipation of state requests.

FEMA and its feeding partners are serving tens of thousands of meals per day and are working with state partners to increase that capacity daily. Large scale feeding operations will increase this week.

Points of distribution began distributing food, water and ice in Lee and Charlotte counties.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has two mobile labs in Gainesville and Fort Myers to increase water analysis capacity.

FEMA activated a medical support contract for ambulances and paratransit seats. More 840 missions have been completed.

FEMA’s Incident Management Teams, Mobile Communications Operations Vehicles and Mobile Response Support teams are deployed in Atlanta, Fort Myers, Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Tallahassee supporting response efforts.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared a Public Health Emergency for Florida and South Carolina. HHS Disaster Medical Assistance Teams under the National Disaster Medical System are supporting medical centers in Charlotte, Lee and Sarasota Counties. Other medical support including task force teams, pharmacists and the Kidney Community Emergency Response program for people who need dialysis.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Routine non-criminal immigration enforcement operations will not be conducted at evacuation sites, or assistance centers such as shelters or food banks. Additionally, officers will be vigilant against any effort by criminals to exploit disruptions caused by the storm.

Resources to Jumpstart Recovery

Florida survivors who live in Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Flagler, Hardee, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Orange, Osceola, Pinellas, Polk, Putnam, Sarasota, Seminole, St. Johns and Volusia counties and affected members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida can apply for federal assistance at www.disasterassistance.gov, by calling 800-621-FEMA (3362) or by using the FEMA App. Survivors using a relay service, such as a video relay service, captioned telephone service or others, give the FEMA operator the number for that service. More than 83,000 survivors have applied for assistance to help begin their recovery.

Small Business Administration disaster loans are available to businesses, homeowners, renters and nonprofit organizations in some Florida counties. Applicants may apply at disasterloanassistance.sba.gov under declaration #17644. For help, call 800-659-2955 or send an email to DisasterCustomerService@sba.gov.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management has a webpage dedicated to emergency information for Hurricane Ian survivors. Visit www.floridadisaster.org/info.

If you are one of the 1.6 million Floridians, 76,000 Georgians or 201,000 South Carolinians with flood insurance, contact your insurance agent or carrier to file your claim immediately even if you’re evacuated and suspect flood damage. Be sure to ask them about advance payments. The National Flood Insurance Program has ample adjuster resources available to process claims quickly and fairly. To learn more about how to start your flood insurance claim, visit Floodsmart.gov.

Mental health resources are available. Survivors experiencing emotional distress can call or text the Disaster Distress Helpline at 800-985-5990. The national hotline provides free 24/7, crisis counseling for people who are experiencing emotional distress related to any natural or human-caused disaster. Deaf and Hard of Hearing ASL callers can use a videophone or ASL Now.

Florida residents who did not evacuate but now need to leave their home can visit www.floridadisaster.org/shelter-status for open general and special needs shelters in Florida. If you do leave your home, do not leave pets or animals behind.

Florida residents can call the Florida State Assistance Information Line at 800-342-3557 to receive up-to-date information regarding Hurricane Ian.

Medically dependent residents of Florida who need electricity to operate medical equipment, transport services to evacuated due to a medical condition or need help getting medication during a disaster can register for assistance at FloridaDisaster.org/SNR.

If you need assistance locating a missing friend or relative call the Red Cross at 800-733-2767 and provide as much detail as you can to assist us in potentially locating your missing loved one. You can also complete a form at missing.fl.gov for yourself or with the last known location of your loved one(s). This information will help rescue workers locate you and your loved ones as quickly as possible

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has free reunification assistance for children and families impacted by disasters. If you or someone you know is missing a child related to a disaster or any other incident, please immediately call 911 and then 800-THE-LOST for assistance.

The Internal Revenue Service announced tax relief for individuals and households affected by Hurricane Ian that reside or have a business anywhere in the state of Florida. If you are in one of the designated Florida counties for individual assistance or a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, you now have until Feb. 15, 2023, to file various individual and business tax returns and make tax payments.

Floridians who use Veterans Affairs medical centers and clinics and need urgent care services should call 877-741-3400. Find a list of open VA centers at Find VA Locations | Veterans Affairs. Additionally, the Heritage Health Emergency Pharmaceutical Refill Program is activated in Florida, call at 866-265-0124, option 1 with questions. The hotline is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET, and weekends from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. ET. Veterans needing emergency refill locations can visit va.hhspharmacy.com/locations/index.html.

Visit Hurricane Ian | FEMA.gov for information and resources available for Florida residents affected by the storm. The page is available in Creole, Simplified Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish and Vietnamese.

How to Help

After a disaster, people come together to help. To make the most of your contributions, it’s important to follow guidelines for donating and volunteering responsibly. 

Please do not self-deploy. If you want to volunteer as part of the Hurricane Ian recovery, visit Florida’s official volunteer portal at VolunteerFlorida.org to find volunteer opportunities.

Think long term. There will be volunteer opportunities for months, often years, after the disaster. A list of agencies with volunteer opportunities can be found on the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster website at www.nvoad.org.

Cash is the best donation.  After a disaster, people always want to help, but it’s important to donate responsibly. When people support voluntary organizations with financial contributions, it helps ensure a steady flow of important services to the people in need after a disaster. find national and local charities at www.nvoad.org.

Source: FEMA.GOV

“We must understand our critical vulnerabilities and challenge all assumptions, processes and everything that’s been developed for the counterterrorism fight,” Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga said July 27.

Speaking during the Association of the U.S. Army’s inaugural Warfighter Summit and Exposition near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Braga said special operations forces must “consider every space, every domain contested.”

“As a nation, we need industry, academia, warriors, policymakers to come together for a whole-of-nation—not just whole-of-government—approach to innovate against future threats,” Braga said as part of a panel discussion focused on the future of irregular warfare.

Special operations forces provide commanders with “asymmetric options with tailorable solutions” and a “unique mindset to prevail in any conflict,” Braga said.

Today’s strategic environment requires Army Special Operations Command to optimize force structure and modernize for multidomain operations, he said. From the proliferation of technology to challenges from peer adversaries such as Russia and transboundary complexities such as pandemics and climate change, the force faces “unprecedented challenges,” and it must prepare for a growing prevalence of irregular warfare, Braga said.

Irregular warfare requires “continuous” effort, forward presence and strong relationships with partners and allies, Braga said. The Army’s special operations troops benefit from “deep generational relationships” with their partners, Braga said.

With more than 2,800 special operations soldiers deployed to 77 countries, the Army maintained those deployment cycles even during the height of the global war on terror, he said. “We didn’t step away from those generational relationships,” he said. “[Special operations forces] depend on these strong relationships with our allies and partners, and that requires deliberate investment and really can’t be built overnight.”

To prepare for the future, the Army also must focus on intellectual training, said Carolyne Davidson, assistant professor of strategic studies at the National Defense University.

“Your brains are a massive capability,” she said. “If we can’t think nimbly about competition and how to use the tools we have effectively and efficiently, we’re going to lose the vital edge we have.”

Irregular warfare requires an educated force, Davidson said. “We need smart technologies, absolutely. We need human ingenuity. We can’t have smart bombs and not-too-smart personnel. We need both, and the stakes are really high.”

Soldiers must be able to think strategically, creatively and critically, Davidson said.

“The global threat landscape is as complex and challenging as it has been in decades,” Braga said. “Today’s challenges are truly a team sport, and [Army Special Operations Command] will be ready for the [People’s Republic of China] pacing threat and the Russian acute threat.”

Source: Association of the United States Army

The incident occurred on July 24, when agents from Laredo South Station acted on a request for assistance from Texas Department of Public Safety troopers with a suspected stash house on North Seymour Avenue. Over 50 undocumented individuals were taken into custody.  Record checks revealed that the migrants apprehended were from Guatemala. All were medically screened before being processed accordingly.

Help take a stand against criminal organisations and report suspicious activity such as human and/or drug smuggling by contacting the Laredo Sector Border Patrol

Source: CBP

The BVLOS Operations Forum, which includes the UK’s leading beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operators, brings together organisations at the cutting edge of uncrewed flight to learn from each other’s experiences collectively improve their operations, and jointly develop solutions to the challenges faced by this fast-growing industry.

The ever-increasing number of operators believe there are huge potential benefits to achieving routine BVLOS flights – including increased connectivity, decarbonisation, and economic opportunities for all parts of the country.  Because innovation in this sector has moved so quickly, regulations have not yet caught up, meaning BVLOS flights are still restricted to specific areas.  

Some progress has been achieved, and the Forum has actively supported recent policy initiatives which set out a positive direction from the Government and the regulator.  However, operators are still operating in restricted spaces.  While these have allowed the sector to hone operations and develop real opportunities for BVLOS services, many operators, including members of the BVLOS Operations Forum, have now outgrown the available capacity and the constraints are posing a genuine challenge to their business model.  

Looking for ways to address that, while encouraging ever-increasing safety standards is the central mission of the Forum.

“The BVLOS Operations Forum has given those seeking to operate uncrewed aircraft beyond-visual-line-of-sight a platform to work together, and a means for driving change and establishing a safe and workable regulatory regime that will benefit the industry as a whole” said Russell Porter, Head of UTM Programmes at NATS and Chair of the BVLOS Operations Forum.

“This method of working together has been used by traditional airspace operators for many years and has contributed to the robust safety culture that exists today.  By uniting uncrewed operators with extensive experience and equally extensive ambition we can develop a similarly robust safety culture, and collectively plot a course toward safely integrated BVLOS operations.” 

The founding members of the Forum include ARPAS UK, Blue Bear, Callen Lenz, Flylogix, Maritime & Coastguard Agency, NATS, Network Rail, sees.ai, Skyports and Windracers, all of whom are actively involved in developing BVLOS operations, and some of whom are already operating BVLOS flights commercially.

The shared goal is to achieve routine BVLOS operations, outside of restricted areas and integrated with other traffic, making uncrewed aircraft a safe and effective option in the aeronautical toolbox.

Source: Air Traffic Management

“We can do a lot of things that the nation asks us to do, but that’s not really our reason for being,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said on July 28. “The Army exists for one purpose, and that’s to protect the nation by being ready to fight our nation’s wars along with the joint force. We are a warfighting organization, and we should never forget that.”

The keynote speaker to open the second day of the Association of the U.S. Army’s inaugural Warfighter Summit and Exposition near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, McConville said the Army is living in “very, very challenging times.”

“I’m not sure, in my 41-plus years of service, I’ve seen a more potentially dangerous time for our country and for our military,” McConville said. 

At Fort Bragg alone, the Army has called on its soldiers to respond to several no-notice missions, McConville said. “We’ve asked a lot of the troops from Fort Bragg,” he said.

The XVIII Airborne Corps is deployed to Europe to bolster allies and partners there amid the fighting in Ukraine, while the 82nd Airborne Division just returned from there, he said. “For those in the 82nd, we have deployed you four times, no-notice, in the last three years, and every single time, you have excelled,” McConville said.

It’s appropriate that the Warfighter Summit is being held near Fort Bragg, he said. “We’re here at Warfighter Town, USA,” he said. “This is where the greatest units in the world train, live and deploy from.”

It’s also fitting that a summit focused on the warfighter is taking place now, as the U.S. faces the “acute threat” of Russia and the “pacing threat” of China, McConville said. 

“As we talk to many of our European colleagues and our allies, it was unimaginable not too long ago that we could have an unprovoked attack like this on the European continent,” he said about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In the Indo-Pacific, China has an economy “nearly equal to ours or, depending on how you measure it, bigger than ours,” and it is building a “world-class military to challenge us and to challenge the world order,” McConville said.

The Army also can’t take its eye off other persistent threats, including North Korea, Iran and violent extremist threats, he said. “It’s a very, very busy time for our military and our Army,” he said.

This is why the Army needs to remain focused on the threats of today but also the challenges of tomorrow, particularly as the force transitions its focus from counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations to irregular warfare and large-scale combat operations, McConville said.

“For many of our leaders, this is an inflection point,” he said. “It’s a major shift in how we do business.”

What’s certain is the Army will face a future fight where it is contested in all domains—land, sea, air, cyber and space—and it will have to be nimble and mobile while contending with communications and navigation systems that are jammed or degraded, McConville said.

McConville said that the Army is also taking close notes on lessons learned from the fight in Ukraine.

“There are lots of lessons to be learned about what’s happening in Ukraine, which if our doctrine works, which of our weapons systems work,” he said. “We’re going to take advantage of that and take the lessons we need to set the Army on the right path for the future.”

Source: Association of the United States Army