Shownotes Transcript
Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shea Stevens. It's too soon to speculate on the extent of damage from Hurricane Milton, which left over two million residents and businesses without electricity in Florida.
The storm made landfall on Siesta Key in Sarasota County last night, causing life-threatening storm surge, flash flooding and tornadoes. Here's Governor Ron DeSantis. There's already been 116 tornado warnings with 19 confirmed touchdowns throughout the state, nine flash flood warnings and four additional flood watches with many, many more to come. Speaking last night, DeSantis said he had activated National Guard troops to aid recovery efforts after the storm,
Milton is now in a Category 1 hurricane carrying top winds of 90 mph. False claims and conspiracy theories about the Biden administration's disaster response have been swirling on social media since Hurricane Helene two weeks ago.
Those rumors are now following FEMA as it prepares a response to Milton. NPR's Ho-Jing Nan has more. One post on X says they will shoot FEMA agents if they catch them, quote, blocking and seizing aid. Another urges people not to evacuate from Milton to protect their properties from FEMA. Both of these posts are baseless, and each of them was viewed over a million times.
Woody Nunn is FEMA's senior official deployed to Florida. Rumors are rampant. They are totally rampant. I hadn't heard any of that impacting our response here yet. But he and researchers caution that rumors could damage trust in the government and harm response and recovery. Nunn says that people should heed the calls of evacuation, that this is a matter of life and death.
Huo Qingnan, NPR News. The health ministry in Gaza says the death toll from Israeli military attacks on the region has surpassed 42,000.
As NPR's Aya Patrali reports, the Israeli military is intensifying operations in northern Gaza and has ordered all residents and hospital operations there to evacuate south. The World Food Program says critical aid lifelines to hundreds of thousands of people in northern Gaza have been cut off, with no food aid entering for the past eight days. The UN agency told NPR it's distributing its last remaining food stocks there.
Fuel to North Gaza has also been blocked. Gaza's health ministry issued an urgent plea for fuel to keep generators running in hospitals in the north treating wounded patients from the bombardment.
Kogat, the Israeli military body responsible for civilian affairs in Gaza, denied Israel had halted the entry of humanitarian aid into northern Gaza, but did not immediately provide further details. The State Department says the humanitarian situation in north Gaza is the subject of urgent discussions with Israel. Aya Batraoui, NPR News. You're listening to NPR.
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