How to connect to emergency satellite on iPhone and Android before Hurricane Milton
(NEW YORK) — Hurricane Milton is forecast to bring a slew of devastation to Florida’s west coast as the Category 3 storm makes landfall in the Tampa area Wednesday evening.
In addition to physical damage to the region, power blackouts and cell service outages could last for days after the storm hits, as was seen in the wake of Hurricane Helene late last month.
As residents prepare for impact, there are several satellite connection options available for the latest iPhone and Android models to facilitate contact with loved ones and emergency personnel in the face of outages.
iPhone
With iPhone 14 or more recent models, users can connect devices to a satellite to text emergency services, request roadside assistance, message friends and family and share locations, even without cellular and Wi-Fi coverage, according to Apple.
However, because satellites are located hundreds of miles away from Earth and move rapidly the user experience may be impacted by the low bandwidth, according to the company.
“In ideal conditions with a direct view of the sky and the horizon, a message might take 30 seconds to send. It might take over a minute to send under trees with light or medium foliage,” the company notes on its website.
Apple recommends being outside with a clear view of the horizon, moving away from obstructions such as trees, sending shorter messages and updating to the latest IOS for best results.
To connect to a satellite, swipe down from the top right corner of your iPhone to open Control Center, then tap the Cellular button on the right. Tap Satellite, then choose a satellite feature.
Ahead of the storm and for emergencies at large, Apple recommends having emergency contacts and important medical information added to your Medical ID within the Health app.
Android
For Android users hoping to connect to Google’s satellite services, the models with the capability include the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
Called Satellite SOS, “This feature will be activated once all the necessary software and APIs are updated and the service is registered with the satellite network,” according to Google.
The company says users will be notified once the feature is active but the status can be checked in the settings app.
On the Pixel models listed above, if you need to contact emergency services without a mobile or Wi-Fi network, dial 911 and you’ll find an option to use Satellite SOS in the dialer.
Tap Satellite SOS and then press start, from there you’ll fill out the emergency questionnaire.
To set up emergency contacts to receive updates on your location and status when using Satellite SOS, Android users should go to the phone’s Personal Safety app.
Starlink
In a collaboration with T-Mobile, Elon Musk’s Starlink is offering direct-to-cell service for areas expected to be impacted by Hurricane Milton.
“We have accelerated the rollout of Starlink direct to cell phone connectivity for areas affected by the hurricanes,” Musk wrote on X early Wednesday morning. “This is being provided free of charge by SpaceX and TMobile to help those in need,” he added.
New users can activate Starlink for free and the service will work for carriers outside of T-Mobile, according to Musk.
If a phone connects to a Starlink satellite, it will have one to two bars of signal and show “T-Mobile SpaceX” in the network name, according to SpaceX.
“Users may have to manually retry text messages if they don’t go through at first, as this is being delivered on a best-effort basis,” the company wrote on X.
“The service works best outdoors, and occasionally works indoors near a window,” SpaceX added.
(LAURINBURG, N.C.) — A Waffle House employee was fatally shot in North Carolina by a customer who became “agitated and verbally abusive” toward employees after placing his order, according to the Laurinburg Police Department.
Officers responded to a report of shots fired shortly after midnight Friday at a Waffle House in Laurinburg, where they found 18-year-old Burlie Dawson Locklear suffering from a gunshot wound, police said.
Locklear was transported to Scotland Memorial Hospital where he later died.
An investigation revealed the suspect came to the Waffle House and ordered food, but while it was being prepared he became “more agitated and verbally abusive toward the employees,” according to police.
He walked away from the restaurant after being given his food, but turned while walking to his car and fired two shots toward the Waffle House, striking Locklear, police said.
The suspect then fled the scene, police said.
Police described the suspect is a 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10 Black male with light skin, long dreads, facial hair including a beard and mustache. He was last seen wearing a dark blue hoodie, blue jeans and white shoes.
The suspect was operating a dark gray vehicle, possibly a 2014 Chevrolet, according to police.
The investigation into this incident is active and police are asking anyone with information to contact them.
(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — The man arrested for allegedly trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump on a Florida golf course is expected to appear before a judge Monday.
Ryan Wesley Routh was ordered to appear in a West Palm Beach federal court for a pre-detention hearing. Routh, 58, has already been charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number for the Sept. 15 incident that took place at Trump International Golf Club.
Trump was playing golf on the course when a Secret Service agent spotted a gun barrel poking out from the tree line near the sixth green, according to investigators.
The agent then fired in the direction of the rifle and saw Routh fleeing the area and entering his Nissan vehicle, according to the criminal complaint.
Routh was allegedly 300 to 500 yards away from the former president and did not fire any shot, according to investigators. Trump was not in Routh’s line of sight, according to the Secret Service.
Witnesses reported the license plate number to authorities, and the suspect was stopped and detained.
In the area of the tree line where the suspect was seen, agents found a digital camera, two bags, including a backpack, and a loaded SKS-style 7.62×39 caliber rifle with a scope, according to the complaint. The serial number on the rifle “was obliterated and unreadable to the naked eye,” the complaint states.
Routh did not enter a plea for his initial charges and his arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 30.
The investigation is ongoing and the FBI has been going through Routh’s social media and criminal history and speaking with family members to get more clues.
Routh suggested Iran should feel “free to assassinate Trump” and himself in a self-published book from February 2023.
In the book, which ABC News has unearthed following Sunday’s incident, Routh directed an apology toward Iran, apparently for his previous support for Trump, who withdrew the U.S. in 2018 from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.
The suspect was also a booster of a number of causes, including the war in Ukraine, an ABC News analysis of his apparent social media profiles shows.
As authorities try to unravel the motive and details of the case, sources said investigators were looking at whether Routh was frustrated with Trump’s position on Ukraine.
(WASHINGTON) — House Republicans on Monday released the results of a sweeping three-year investigation they say is the most detailed public accounting yet of the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that left behind hundreds of Americans and thousands of allies, some so desperate they clung to U.S. planes as the last military aircraft departed Kabul in 2021.
The report by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul — which relied on interviews with 18 top officials and 20,000 pages of documents — blames the White House, its National Security Council and the State Department for being slow to listen to military generals who warned the security situation would deteriorate quickly once U.S. troops began to depart.
The investigation did not, however, find evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris played any role in the planning or execution of the evacuation, although she expressed public support for President Joe Biden’s decision at the time.
Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have suggested Harris is culpable, noting past comments by the vice president that she was the “last person in the room” when Biden decided to leave Afghanistan.
“Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” Trump told National Guard members and their families in Detroit last month on the anniversary of the 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport during the evacuation, which killed 13 U.S. service members and some 170 Afghans.
The Biden administration pushed back on the findings by Republicans, calling it a partisan effort that sought to cherry-pick facts ahead of an election.
The Republican probe also is being released ahead of the first political debate between Harris and Trump, which ABC News is hosting on Tuesday night in Philadelphia. Trump and GOP loyalists are expected to hammer the Democratic administration for failing to prepare for a Taliban takeover once U.S. troops began to depart.
“The chaos and devastation that took place in August of 2021 has forever damaged U.S. credibility in the eyes of our allies, while emboldening our adversaries like China, Russia and Iran,” said McCaul, R-Texas. “Yet, not a single person was fired and, to this day, no one was ever held accountable by President Biden or Vice President Harris.”
Last week, McCaul issued a subpoena for Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s testimony on the withdrawal, threatening to hold him in contempt if he doesn’t testify on Sept. 19. In a written statement, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller noted that Blinken has already testified on Afghanistan and the State Department provided the 20,000 pages of documents the committee was relying on to inform its investigation.
“Though the secretary is currently unavailable to testify on dates proposed by the committee, the State Department has proposed reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing,” Miller said. “It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena.”
On the investigation, Miller accused Republicans of politicizing the war and “presenting inaccurate narratives.”
“The State Department remains immensely proud of its workforce who put themselves forward in the waning days of our presence in Afghanistan to evacuate both Americans and the brave Afghans who stood by our sides for more than two decades,” he said.
While many of the details included in the Republican investigation have already become public through media reports and internal government reviews, among the more interesting details come from inside-the-room accounts of U.S. Embassy personnel.
At one point, according to Republicans, staff grew so panicked at the rushed evacuation that they began filling Tupperware containers with passports and visa foils to burn as Taliban forces arrived outside their building. Classified documents were eventually left behind in the scramble, according to the report, although the report doesn’t say how many or what type.
Meanwhile, the NSC was slow to establish criteria for who was eligible for evacuation, a standard the report says changed hourly. At one point, electronic visa letters known as “hall passes” were given to eligible Afghans, but the documents were so easily replicated that bootleg copies began circulating and the U.S. quickly scrapped the plan, according to the report.
The report also paints a picture of a State Department and NSC slow to understand the danger U.S. personnel were in as the Afghanistan government collapsed and the Taliban took control.
Ambassador Ross Wilson, who was brought out of retirement in the Trump administration to serve in Afghanistan and was the top American diplomat in Kabul at the time of the withdrawal, was allegedly reluctant to trigger a military-led evacuation, according to the report. Wilson has spoken publicly before that his staff worked feverishly in those final days to try to process as many travel documents as possible to help qualified people evacuate.
Biden has defended the State Department’s handling of the evacuation in the wake of the operation.
“In the 17 days that we operated in Kabul after the Taliban seized power, we engaged in an around-the-clock effort to provide every American the opportunity to leave. Our State Department was working 24/7 contacting and talking, and in some cases, walking Americans into the airport,” Biden said in 2021 in the wake of the withdrawal.
Biden and other Democrats have also defended the decision to pull out U.S. troops and shutter the embassy after 20 years in the country, saying their options were limited after Trump struck a deal with the Taliban to depart by May 1, 2021.
Trump’s agreement with the Taliban included the departure of U.S. troops and the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons so long as the Taliban promised not to collaborate with al-Qaeda or engage in “high-profile” attacks.
Wanting to bring an end to the war and concerned that Taliban fighters might target American service members if the U.S. reneged on the deal, the Biden administration stayed the course but amended the U.S. withdrawal deadline to Aug. 31, 2021.
“He could either ramp up the war against a Taliban that was at its strongest position in 20 years and put even more American troops at risk or finally end our longest war after two decades and $2 trillion spent,” said Sharon Yang, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations. “The President refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”
Military generals in charge at the time have previously testified that their recommendation to Biden earlier that year was to maintain some 2,500 troops beyond that date regardless of what Trump had agreed to.
“At the end of 20 years, we the military helped build an army, a state, but we could not forge a nation. The enemy occupied Kabul, the overthrow of the government occurred and the military we supported for two decades faded away,” Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the withdrawal, testified last March.
“That is a strategic failure,” he said.
ABC News’ Emily Chang, Matthew Seyler and Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.