FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla.  — Monday saw the start of a temporary split access plan for the town of Fort Myers Beach, which will only allow residents on the island Wednesdays through Sundays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the foreseeable future.

According to Councilman Bill Veach, this was a request set by Lee County to speed up the debris removal process.

"It feels like your heart got torn out," said Steve Duello, a resident of Fort Myers Beach. “My mom and dad brought it in ’83.”

Duello is completely heartbroken after losing his family home of nearly 40 years because of Hurricane Ian. He said his cinderblock home was like a fortress and where he and his family escaped Missouri's bitterly cold winters.

“We spend about seven to eight months of the year down here; my grandkids love it. My boys and their wives all love it,” Duelllo said.

But through love comes pain. Duello said his home would be flattened—even more painful, he said, was learning about the town's decision to restrict what days residents like him have access to their property.

“It’s the worst thing I’ve gone through; there are a lot of worst things to go through, but this is my worst,” Duello said.

Veach's response to residents who are heartbroken about the limited access was that if the debris removal process isn't conducted in a timely manner, it will have a high cost.

"This was actually brought up by the county. The county was gracious enough to take over debris removal, which is a huge expense," Veach explained.

An expense that he said could cost millions of dollars. Veach added that debris removal is a top priority, mainly with the hard deadline set by FEMA.

"We have 60 days to do that,” Veach said.

After those 60 days, FEMA will stop covering the costs, leaving a bill of millions.

"If we end up getting straddled with the expenses—even a small portion, it could bankrupt the town,“ Veach said.

This is why the county requested to limit residents on the island on certain days while essential response teams are working.

“When they are stuck in traffic like we were stuck in traffic, they are not doing their job,” Councilman Veach said.

The town announced that 96 percent of power lines had been restored on Estero Boulevard, which gave Duello a silver lining to his dark cloud.

“It’s nice to see some light on Estero Boulevard. Things have been so dark and gloomy,” Duello said. "Now there’s at least some lights on. So yeah, it is a little bit good. I’m struggling to find anything good right now."

Councilman Veach said with so much "devastation" on the island. The county isn't sure if it can get all the debris removed in 60 days and might have to request another extension from FEMA.

Briana Brownlee at WFTX first reported this story.

CINCINNATI —

The Health Collaborative's Christa Hyson said Ohio hospitals are doing everything in their power to get shots in arms as quickly as possible.

Right now, their focus is still vaccinating front-line health care workers, making up the very first phase of vaccine rollout.

But Tuesday, Gov. Mike DeWine announced a clear deadline.

"We are telling our hospitals today that they need to finish that up, they need to finish it up by midnight on Sunday," DeWine said.

That deadline is aimed at keeping the process moving as phase 2 is set to begin Monday.

But is it a realistic ask?

"It totally depends on the capacity of that individual hospital, so for some it might be very easy, for others, they have hundreds of staff, maybe even thousands," Hyson said.

UC Health has given the first doses to more than 6,800 employees.

The system employs 12,000 people total.

Hospital officials said they will be giving second doses passed that Sunday deadline, although they don't believe it'll interfere with efforts to begin vaccinating Ohioans ages 80 and older, as part of phase 2.

"As they become vaccine providers, they're hoping we get more regular shipments, current activities shouldn't dictate future deliveries," Hyson said.

We reached out to Tri-Health, The Christ Hospital and Mercy Health for their phase 1 vaccine numbers, but have not received them.

Officials at The Jewish Hospital told us:

"We will continue to offer the vaccine to employees who want it, even if that extends beyond Sunday."

WASHINGTON —

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that as many as 1,500 Americans may be awaiting evacuation from Afghanistan, a figure that suggests the U.S. may accomplish its highest priority for the Kabul airlift — rescuing U.S. citizens — ahead of President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline despite growing concerns of terror threats targeting the airport.

Untold thousands of at-risk Afghans, however, still are struggling to get into the Kabul airport, while many thousands of other Afghans already have been flown to safety in 12 days of round-the-clock flights.

On Wednesday, several of the Americans working phones and pulling strings to get out former Afghan colleagues, women's advocates, journalists and other vulnerable Afghans said they have seen little concrete U.S. action so far to get those Afghans past Taliban checkpoints and through U.S-controlled airport gates to promised evacuation flights.

“It’s 100% up to the Afghans to take these risks and try to fight their way out,” said Sunil Varghese, policy director with the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Blinken, echoing Biden's earlier declarations during the now 12-day-old evacuation, emphasized at a state department briefing that “evacuating Americans is our top priority.”

He added, “We’re also committed to getting out as many Afghans at-risk as we can before the 31st," when Biden plans to pull out the last of thousands of American troops.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a security alert warning American citizens away from three specific airport gates, but gave no further explanation. Senior U.S. officials said the warning was related to ongoing and specific threats involving the Islamic State and potential vehicle bombs, which have set U.S. officials on edge in the final days of the American drawdown. The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing military operations.

Blinken said the State Department estimates there were about 6,000 Americans wanting to leave Afghanistan when the airlift began Aug. 14, as the Taliban took the capital after a stunning military conquest. About 4,500 Americans have been evacuated so far, Blinken said, and among the rest “some are understandably very scared.”

The 6,000 figure is the first firm estimate by the State Department of how many Americans were seeking to get out. U.S. officials early in the evacuation estimated as many as 15,000, including dual citizens, lived in Afghanistan. The figure does not include U.S. Green Card holders.

About 500 Americans have been contacted with instructions on when and how to get to the chaotic Kabul airport to catch evacuation flights.

In addition, 1,000 or perhaps fewer are being contacted to determine whether they still want to leave. Blinken said some of these may already have left the country, some may want to remain and some may not actually be American citizens.

“We are providing opportunity," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said of those Afghans, who include dual Afghan-American citizens. "We are finding ways to get them to the airport and evacuate them, but it is also their personal decision on whether they want to depart.”

On a lighter note, the U.S. military said an Afghan baby girl born on a C-17 military aircraft during the massive evacuation will carry that experience with her. Her parents named her after the plane’s call sign: Reach.

She was born Saturday, and members of the 86th Medical Group helped in her birth aboard the plane that had taken the family from Kabul to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Two other babies whose parents were evacuating from Afghanistan have been born over the past week at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the U.S. military hospital in Germany.

In Washington on Wednesday, Blinken emphasized that the U.S. and other governments plan to continue assisting Afghans and Americans who want to leave after next Tuesday, the deadline for Biden's planned end to the evacuation and the two-decade U.S. military role in Afghanistan. “That effort will continue, every day, past Aug. 31,” he said.

Biden has cited what he U.S. says are rising security threats to U.S. forces, including from an affiliate of the Islamic State terror group, for his determination to stick with Tuesday's withdrawal deadline. Germany has said Western officials are particularly concerned that suicide bombers may slip into the crowds surrounding the airport.

The U.S. Embassy has already been evacuated; staff are operating from the Kabul airport and the last are to leave by Tuesday.

Biden said this week he had asked his national security team for contingency plans in case he decides to extend the deadline. Taliban leaders who took control of Afghanistan this month say they will not tolerate any extensions to the Tuesday deadline. But Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen tweeted that “people with legal documents” will still be able to fly out via commercial flights after Tuesday.

U.S. troops are anchoring a multinational evacuation from the airport. The White House says the airlift overall has flown out 82,300 Afghans, Americans and others on a mix of U.S., international and private flights.

The withdrawal comes under a 2020 deal negotiated by President Donald Trump with the Taliban.

Refugee groups are describing a different picture than the Biden administration is when it comes to many Afghans: a disorganized, barely-there U.S. evacuation effort that leaves the most desperate to risk beatings and death at Taliban checkpoints. Some Afghans are reported being turned away from the Kabul airport by American forces controlling the gates, despite having approval for flights.

U.S. military and diplomatic officials appear to still be compiling lists of eligible Afghans but have yet to disclose how many may be evacuated — and how — private Americans and American organizations said.

“We still have 1,200 Afghans with visas that are outside the airport and haven’t got in,” said James Miervaldis with No One Left Behind, one of dozens of veterans groups working to get out Afghans who worked with the U.S. military during America’s nearly 20 years of combat in the country.. “We’re waiting to hear from the US. government and haven’t heard yet.”

Marina LeGree of Ascend, a U.S.-based nonprofit that worked to develop fitness and leadership in Afghan girls and young women, described getting calls from U.S. officials telling the group’s interns and staffers to go to the airport for evacuation flights, only to have them turned away by American forces keeping gates closed against the throngs outside.

One Afghan intern who went to the airport with her family saw a person killed in front of them, and a female colleague was burned by a caustic agent fired at the crowd, LeGree said.

“It’s heartbreaking to see my government fail so badly,” said LeGree, the group’s American director, who is in Italy but in close contact with those in Kabul.

U.S.-based organizations, speaking on background to discuss sensitive matters, cite accounts from witnesses on the ground as saying some American citizens, and family members of Afghans with green cards, still were having trouble pushing and talking their way into the Kabul airport for flights.

Kirby said the U.S. military will preserve as much airlift capacity at the airport as possible in the coming days, ahead of Tuesday's deadline. The military will “continue to evacuate needed populations all the way to the end,” he said. But he added that in the final days and hours there will have to be a balance in getting out U.S. troops and their equipment as well as evacuees.

Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, the deputy director of regional operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had conducted another helicopter mission beyond the perimeter of the airport to pick up people seeking to evacuate.

The number of U.S. troops at the airport has dropped by about 400, to 5,400, but the final withdrawal has not begun, Kirby said Wednesday.