displaced and, you know, once tomorrow when we wake up and see the destruction of what this storm has caused, it could have an effect on doubt in the more floridians. so, and then we're all going to be looking for homes. so it's going to be it's going to be tough it is it's already been so tough for you and so many floridians were really hoping for the best for you, debbie, and for your son as well? >> well, i'm glad that you're safe tonight and right now. thank you very much for joining us thank you. >> you have a good night. >> goodnight and thank you for watching at home tonight. cnn's coverage of this hurricane and how it is affecting the state of florida continues >> right now anderson cooper with cnn's breaking news coverage of hurricane milton. the powerful category two storm is currently

tearing through florida's gulf coast because right now, moving east across central florida, the ones in a century storm made landfall near siesta key with winds north of 100 miles per hour, there have been tornado outbreaks, historic flash flooding, and life threatening storm surge. you name it this storm has it. i mean, look at tropicana field in st. pete petersburg. the wind has been so strong that the roof is now largely torn off. the ballpark was had to be a shelter a shelter for first responders. now, thankfully, a local affiliate reports that no one has been hurt. we've got a team of reporters of meteorologist all fanned out covering every part of this dorm as we enter the midnight hour i'll begin with you, anderson, who is live in bradenton where you have been in the thick of it. and right now we're watching you get thrown by the storm. how are things happening right now? can you hear us? >> yeah. yeah. i got to tell you it's really surprising. i mean, it felt like a little

while ago has kind of died down, but i'm we're now by the river. it is now really just pouring out. take a look at this. this is a tree that it's been uprooted. the roots are still patch of ground who was in and is still connected there's actually like a water pipe that's i guess in part of the root system that is now still connected and pouring water out of the pipe but the tree is almost completely knocked over. that's been knocked over by the wind we just noticed this. i'm not sure when that happened. i think it happened pretty just a short time ago but i don't know if feel if you could pan over here, but look at this water i mean, this is like the ocean and this is the riverwalk in braden ten at 9:00, thought the wave started coming over here but we have not seen anything like this until now it was up to me ankush, about 15 minutes

ago, i would say it's now i mean, with these waves it's up to my knees almost just below my knees and now this water is really, really coming onshore in bigger and bigger waves. so i don't know if this is a guston, maybe it's good to check him with chad myers de of this is just a band of the store, but i'm really surprised to see the amount of water that is now coming ashore when it seemed like an hour ago that the winds have died down. but the water certainly has not died down anderson. >> we're watching all night and saying this transcript really evolution of how things are going right now. we're watching the wind looks like you are getting thrashed the water levels rising. what's the temperature like? what are you seeing around you? are you seeing debris that is projecting in any way? what's happening yeah. >> so i mean the temperature it

was getting very cold about an hour ago. i actually went inside a change because i'm just sopping wet. i changed like a warmer shirt. so it's it's cold. i mean, anybody who's outside, you start to shiver randi kaye, i think in sarasota. vote, sorry, a ready. what's the situation where you are there you. >> i keep thinking that the winds are going to die down and they just keep picking up and also hear the temperature has dropped significantly. it's called ai, like you have changed shirts a couple of times just to try and stay warm so we are experiencing a similar a similar thing here in sarasota. we've seen winds of about 102. we were at the were just nearby and sarasota airport and the wind tends to come and go right right now, it takes a little dip and its energy and then it tends to come back. i mean, it was actually pushing the down the

driveway of the place where we are. but we have seen a lot of a fair amount of destruction around where we are. we've seen this fence which is which has blown apart. this was the fence that was dividing between divided this house to the house next door to us. but we i also checked in with the backyard of the house that we're at in this neighborhood? for heard, which has been completely evacuated. and there's a tree in the pool. >> all of the pool furniture has gone to one side of the yard, so that just gives you an idea of the power of these winds that we're seeing. >> but anderson, the real concern which we may not see until morning is what the storm surge is like here in sarasota? downtown sarasota, certainly because we're only about 20 minutes or so from siesta key, where hurricane milton did come across. it did make landfall near siesta key and so the storm surge coming over those barrier islands were siesta key is and then into the sarasota bay and then into downtown sarasota is the concern storm surge expected to be about nine to 13 it's unclear at this

point what we're going to see, but we won't we won't really know that until it's safe to go back over to that area. we had over here to higher ground in order to avoid basically what you're experiencing there in tampa in braden ten anderson we are by the way. so waterlogged. i can barely hear what you're saying. ready. but i i think we're going to move up land because this is getting ridiculous. i mean, the waters now homeless. pass my knees so let's let's go back to laura and i'll regroup the check laura, let's take it and lola, we'll get to higher ground anderson get to safety, were watching that when thrashing, let's go to cnn meteorologist chad myers. chad, what is the tracks showing now we're watching what's happening. and braden ten, what's going on? >> well, you don't i mean, the bulk of the worst part of this storm considering that what we see from anderson is not the

worst, is now up in orlando all the way down toward kissimmee and then what anderson is seeing is the backside of the eye, which is supposed to start calming down, but it certainly hasn't. what anderson has experiencing and you have to follow the lines of the rain when you follow the lines of the rain anderson is right there under the a and palmetto. so the wind is blowing off the ocean all the way in a straight line, an into that river riverwalk. that's why we're getting that significant surge there for all day long. the wind has been blowing the water out of tampa bay. and now, because we're going to switch it because now the eye is that way. now the wind is going to blow the water back into tampa bay. we're not going to get six to nine feet, but we will get maybe two to four because now as the wind moves away, changes direction, we start to push that water up st. petersburg just had a wind gusts to 82. this is far from being done. tampa just had a wind gust to

78, i think a big story here is how much rain has fallen everywhere that you see purple through here. that's ten inches of pete had 16 inches of which eight fell in two hours five hours, five inches in one hour, three inches. the next hour, and then it kind of slowed down a little bit. but there is significant flooding going on here in lakeland, especially farther inland because it doesn't have a chance to just wash back into the ocean. so it is going to be a flooded mess to the east of tampa and probably as far east as orlando to right now, the latest advisory just came in. we're down to 100. but you can see what one 100 just did to tampa and what it did to bradenton. and anderson cooper standing right there. >> let's actually go back to anderson right now who remains in bradenton anderson? the wind, the rain is now above it means that the water, what are you experiencing >> so we've moved from that location. that was just

bananas. how much waters pouring over now so we moved about. i don't know, 200 feet or so, 300 feet up. so we're on higher ground but it is just i mean, that's yeah, there's a lot of water coming coming along the riverwalk i'm not sure how much longer that's going to continue for which obviously chad will be able to tell us in a little bit. but it is just the wind is coming from the north tampa's that's the north campus up that way as chad was saying, that witness coming from the north down here, it will change directions according to chad at some point but yeah, it's just it's an extraordinary thing i'm really i'm really struck. i'm sorry. what was that repeated bird what do you see in

>> let's bring until we're we're having trouble hearing you anderson at the moment. that's bringing do we have bill weir who is in st. petersburg? we see him in pretrial. the camera. bill, can you hear us? >> you got me. >> yet? we hear you, bill. what you experienced it? >> yeah, i got you, laura. hi, can you can you see me out so if anybody's been watching for the past several hours, you've been hearing me harping on about the tower cranes and st petersburg that the city put out a war according and said, look, we know this is dangerous, but it takes months to disassemble these things. we just don't have the time. so be worn. well. >> one of them came down right here on central avenue, as you can see, carlos can zoom in down there one of the for tower cranes downtown has collapsed in these wins, there's another one, right above a source sort of keeping our distance i hope you'll understand. we don't want to get too close down there. there was one you can see the flashing lights. so one first responder has at least knows it happened, it came out, but if it looks like it fell

into a building on the left side of the street here, smashing into these lawsuits over here according to social media, there's some pretty stunning pictures of the damage from that as well. and then of course there's tropicana field we talked about in the last hour that teflon roof that was ripped to shreds. one of our affiliate reporters it gives us a look inside to take listen to this you. >> this is tropicana field. >> the roof are big portion of it has ripped off. >> we're looking inside tropicana field we are seeing extreme damage to try. we had actually there was a report we saw in line earlier of a fire and we were waiting to confirm that and now we just made it up to the fifth floor of the hotel. we are in and just i mean it's hard to believe what we're looking at

laura was a staging ground for first responders tomorrow that plan may be changing as a result of that as well. >> but you're just getting a little glimpse of the violence of this store mean the crain's coming down that route. who knows what first light is going to reveal here in pinellas county phil, can you show us that crane again in the area because to thinking about, as you mentioned, the balance of this storm for it to be able to do that type of damage that alone the tropicana field, but show us that crane area again, what you're seeing a shot wow what we're seeing being on there, but it's

sort of if you can imagine right but if you can imagine this crane was mounted to the side of this tower. that's under construction to the right of your screen there, collapsing to the left and onto the building across the street hopefully nobody is down here and endanger anyone but just as an indication of the force of these winds phil just seeing the power of this storm are looking at a sign, obviously is still in nature that is just flapping in the wind as if it was paper in some respects, you've got the destruction, you're describing. we see the force the way and we even heard you sort of have your body mood from the sheer force of what we're seeing out there, anderson was talking about the temperature having dropped. we heard from chad myers about the expectation that the water would be repopulating the different areas, not the tune of six to nine feet, but maybe two to four, i wonder are you experiencing any levels of

water in the area rising or the conditions worsening as you're standing there now of the geology of tampa bay and where we are in the water, the dynamics of the water moving around st. petersburg was spared that kind of catastrophic storm from search that we were fearing. >> it looks like tampa is getting much worse flooding on the other side of the bay than we are here. but again, i'm i'm sort of limited just to this downtown area as well. the wind is just coming and going. you think it's starting to fade a little bit and it kicks back up again. with such force, it takes your breath away but yeah, that's that's the state of play right here and st. pete in right now. but this storm has been changing it's sort of personalities by the hour phil please stand by and stay safe. >> i actually want to go over to tampa where boris sanchez is

boris, what are you experiencing over there? and many thought that tampa would have a directed we'll get the worst of it. tell me what you're experiencing on the ground there concern that tampa would see its first direct hit from a hurricane in about 100 years fortunately, for residents in this area, the hurricane tilted down slightly, it landed closer to the sarasota, but this area is still felt the impacts were anticipating potentially an eight to 12 foot storm surge. i always in tampa bay earlier and we had to get out because the water started pounding against the seawall. the wind was extraordinarily powerful. we got rain that was coming horizontally slamming into us like pellets. we've moved to an area with a higher elevation and earlier tonight we saw the water start to pick up in his neighborhood. it got as high as the sidewalk started to come over the sidewalk. it appeared to go into a local business at one point, a car got stalled further down the street, but now that water fortunately, laura is starting to recede and

the wind has died down considerably over the last hour-and-a-half or so. the concern is again, this is an area of higher elevation. there are other parts of this area that we're underwater when we move from that other location almost five hours ago. so you can imagine those areas are likely inundated. you're talking about a ten to 14 inch rainfall. that's roughly with tampa gets between four and six months. it all came down roughly in the matter of a day and intensely as well. so you're looking at a scenario where tree parts are flowing past us right now. and you're looking at a scenario where the debris that was left behind by hurricane hermine can't helene about a week ago, that category four storm that hit the big bend area, but with those massive bands that hit areas like tampa and further south, all that debris was scattered around towns, scattered around pinellas county, for example, i was walking. you're a pilot yesterday that was upwards of 20 feet high. we saw some of it

near appear on the water yesterday. i'm curious to see how residents in that area are doing after this storm swept through laura for us, i mean, we're thinking about how that debris might be impacting the community. are you seeing anyone around there? i know earlier tonight, you had talked about seeing somebody driving a vehicle at one point, abandoning the car. what what can you tell us about the population around you? >> yeah. laura, i'm glad to say that was the last person that i saw in and it was close to the height of the storm. so i'm hoping even as we feel wind gusts picking up right now i'm hoping that that gentleman is okay. he seemed very disoriented earlier in the day that we did see what one local official described as a disaster tourists, these folks that came out during the store in the early initial phases of the storm trying to take selfies and that sort of thing officials have been warning about doing that kind of thing ever since the storm indicated

since forecasters prognosticating that the storm was headed in this direction, they were asking residents to shelter in place. they were asking folks that were in evacuation zones to get out. fortunately, it appears that most of them, especially along the barrier islands, treasure island, where i was yesterday, most of them did, but there were still some folks that wanted to stay behind. one of them was a gentleman that was on a boat in tampa bay and he decided to ride out the storm there. i'm hoping we get good news about him. laura i certainly hope so. >> we are saying that 2 million people right now, boris, two million are without power in those areas. this is unbelievable. think about the power of this storm. i want to bring in the vice mayor of sarasota, gen. a. hern kotch, vice mayor. thank you so much for joining us. i understand that you are sheltering at your brother's home. you like 2 million others have lost power and you lost an hours ago, even facing 100 mile per hour gusts for hours what has this been

like yeah, this has certainly been quite the ordeal, something we have never experienced in sarasota that i know of we often have these hurricanes and you see them coming. >> they go parallel to the coast. >> they hit south of us. are they hit north of us, but this sarasota what's from the beginning slated to be hit and that has been the case in the past and it's never really happened. and this is really quite shocking for all of us and it comes on the heels of hurricane helene and so i think for a lot of our residents were still shell-shocked from that and now this hitting us is quite serious and as your reporter said earlier we'll see a daybreak. what, what is revealed as far as damage and what we're going to do with

our cities that's sort of where we are at the moment. >> it so unbelievable to think about as my colleague bill weir talked about the violence of this storm, wondering what daylight would bring. and vice mayor, i mean sarasota was bracing for a storm surge that was forecast and nine to 13 feet. do you have any idea of how the city it doing in terms of that storm surge now well, as far as we know, we do have flooding throughout parts of the city. >> but the storm surge is something that people should absolutely take seriously. we're not out of the woods yet we're still pulling through it i think that i was told that as soon as we get out of the back end of this, there still are several hours. we are spokes have to stay inside, stay safe, be very aware that this surge storm surge is not something to take lightly. i think a lot of us experienced that during the last hurricane hern hurricane

helene and we know what it brings and so you know, because the eye is passed us, we are now still in it and still bracing for what may come vice mayor, have you heard anything in terms of injuries? >> or specific damage called for any rescue. >> i did hear have somebody driving over the ringling bridge, not too too long ago. >> i think it was when the i was passing, but i think as your previous reporter had said, there are those folks who were still go out and the take this as a game and it's night game, it's not a sport, and it's something that we all need to take very, very seriously as far as damage goes for the moment. we're not having any reports of anything serious that we know of. >> i know we've had like i said, some flooding. we've had power outages. >> we've had very fierce winds that have taken down trees and

power lines but at the moment the city of sarasota, at least our team is ready to go as soon as it's safe. >> we're going to send in our first in tactical team to assess the damage and make sure the streets are safe because folks are going to want to get back to their homes those who evacuated. >> and we think a large portion of our city did evacuate, were not sure it's pretty anecdotal but we want to caution our citizens to please wait until they get the sunshine from the city of sarasota that is actually safe to be on those roads. so we're ready to go or our staff is prepared, our police department is prepared. the ems is prepared our public works department is prepared. so we are ready to go and to make sure that our citizens are safe we certainly hope that remains the case. >> vice mayor gen. a. heard koch. thank you so much for

joining us. we're thinking about your city and the communities around it. i do want to go back to chad myers right now, our meteorologist just to give us a sense of where things stand and the trajectory of hurricane milton really the people in orlando and kissimmee are seeing the worst of it right now, just take back to when it was actually making landfall with winds out of the west in venice at 107, blowing the water on the shore. >> this is the area that experienced the storm surge. don't know how much it will have to wait until things get brighter, will have to take a look. sarasota, right there with a north wind and then also tampa and st. pete with an east wind, you've got all of the ai almost the entire section of the i had wind speeds somewhere in the ball park of 100 or so miles per hour these two white boxes are flash flood emergencies. there is flash flooding going on in those areas right now and is could be in a dangerous place for you. they don't put those out there. you just in the middle

of nowhere there has to be something where it's reported and it is significant flooding in populated areas. here's your eye for color all the way up to orlando. that's where the rain is, right now back out here to where our reporters are, the wind coming off of the ocean. now, that isn't going to begin to blow that water back on to shore. and anderson was experiencing it right there. he's in bradenton paul meadows is just right next to it. so there you get the idea and the wind blowing back into the bay by the time this goes far enough to the east, this wind will be pushing and notice how the wind, the rain is moving in that direction. that's the same way the wind is moving to so as it begins to push back into the bay later on tonight, that's when the bay will fill go back up with water, even though it's a low right now, it won't be for long. orlando just had a wind gusts to 60 to st. pete, still blowing hours after this thing went by at 87 miles per hour. last hour?

>> here's where the rain has been the worst everywhere that you see purple has been ten inches of rain or more already on the ground and we know st. pete had 16 and that had a wash off that had a runoff that had to go someplace. we still have winds of 100 miles per hour. this is the latest from the hurricane center. it is still a category two hurricane, even though it's been onshore now for about 33.5 hours, it is still packing that type of wind punch and that's what we're going to expect for the rest of the night. and then here north of orlando, that stay toner almost up toward cinnamon beach, seeing some spots there with ten more inches of rain expected laura can looking back to that footage that we saw, a tropicana field with the roof blown off. how strong would that wind have had to be to do that level of damage? well, we had winds at the surface at a weather station at 106. you take that wind and you put it

up higher in the sky with less friction on the ground, no buildings down here, you move that wind higher in the sky and that wind accelerates. it is not 106. it was likely one and 20 on top of where that building was. and that's when you get one tear and all of a sudden, it's that weak link. you get one tear in that entire property was going to lose its roof. now, the unfortunate part is i saw i don't know thousands, maybe 1,000 people out there with cuts that were prepared to sleep there because that's where the first responders were going to shelter. now, i don't think that's going to happen. they're going to find someplace else maybe in the hallways, maybe in the mezzanine, may be under the field. >> but boy, that's a mess. >> pretty unbelievable to think about this, chad, stick with us. we need to have your expertise today. i want to get right as well to adam lucio. he it's a storm chaser who is making his way through tampa as we speak, we have one the line, adam, you're not too far away.

you've been surveying damage in east tampa. what are you seeing there? >> yes. right now, we're roadways, both very slow going for up. and we're had to dodge a lot of downed trees, even some road signs making our way through the east side of tampa, rate of st. petersburg so that there's a lot of debris on these roadways and a lot of road flooding and we're still seeing distant power flash throughout the area. some of those strong wind gusts our continuing even into this hour we know that 2 million people right now are without power as hurricane milton continues to go through florida, where were you add them as the storm hit? >> and what did you see in those moments? >> we were in sarasota the arena just outside of downtown similar to what we're experiencing in tampa, we saw a lot of power flashes was a lot of downed trees brought down wires. the were a couple sailboats that washed up. to

the highway that goes on the west side, of downtown at the difference i way it is and we had to evacuate where we were sitting there because the storm surge that comment, we had to retreat over to our parking garage shelter that we started out the day before people are calling this a monster storm. everyone was bracing. i wonder from you as a storm chaser, how this compares to others you've been in there with some of the stronger ones that i've experienced. one thing that was unique about it was the eye. and we got almost into the center of that. there wasn't a lot of rain in the eye and it had a very flat calm eye for about 20 minutes so and then the backside of that eyewall whipped up really fast. so the conditions were changing rapidly compared to some of the other ones that i've experienced have you seen anyone that has stayed behind or any people that have not

been falling the evacuation warnings, is there a large group people who did not? have gotten out. we've been driving for about an hour-and-a-half now and we've seen i think three cars the whole time as we were coming down the evacuation lines, i saw were some of the biggest that i've ever seen in any storm. so people certainly took it seriously. we did we did see a couple of people walking around in downtown sarasota, but we were also there for about six hours and you know, we only saw maybe three people the entire time. so it appears most people they're either hunkered down in a safe shelter or they got out. >> i certainly hope that the morning will bring, you know, the information and safety for communities all across florida as well. adam lucio. thank you so much. stay safe you as well. >> thank you we have much more on hurricane milton's slamming into florida, including an

update on that toppled crane that we saw in st. petersburg, stay with us look at the news we can ask questions like, what does a comedy show doing on cnn? >> though people have spoken i have something racist you go to hell, moving on. >> right, up freestyle. >> that's too much i want donald now, can you splice them? >> the via got news for you saturday at nine on cnn and streaming next day on max did you know there's a detergent that gets your dishes up to 100% clean, even in an older dishwasher, try cascade platinum plus for sparkling clean dishes, even on the toughest jobs, just scrape load and you're done switch to cast gabe platinum plus conclave, the pope is dead the throne is

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right now. brian, the eye is now east of tampa just. so getting hit pretty hard that video of anderson. >> i heard anderson and our colleague, randi kaye talk about a resurgence of the storm, where they were in bradenton and sarasota. we're kind of getting a resurgence of the storm here in downtown tampa as well. the wind is still really pounding us. it is blown going the way. hold on something shifted above us. >> there has been a transformer that has blown a few times above us freak now is without power. and something just shifted above us. so we have to really keep an eye out here i'll talk about the transformers in a second because that's been a real issue here. but first, another extraordinary event we were able to film just a few minutes ago is reverse storm surge in tampa bay. we've ventured about six blocks away from here. that was tough to get there because the roads are so flooded. we got to the edge of the bay, but we couldn't get right to it because the water and the road was so deep. so

our colleague duger mcconnell got out on his own on foot through the water real risk to his own safety to film the storm, the reverse storm surge on tampa bay. and it was really extraordinary because it means that all the water, most of it, at least in the bay, got pushed out to the ocean reverse storm surge, that very rare occurrence. we're told our cnn weather team and i are talking about what that means. it all got pushed out into the ocean. it looked almost like a dry riverbed. this video we're showing you of that. it was really extraordinary to see hardly any water in tampa bay looked like a dry riverbed. but we are told of course that what goes out has to come back yet again, that storm surge he's going to be pushed back into tampa bay. and we're going to see what that does to the actual water levels at sea. kind of tips over the edge of the bay there. again, it's still very dangerous out here. the wind is still crushing us down here in downtown tampa. also, we have some video of a

transformer that kind of aren't now not too far away from us. sparks shot out of it. and that that happened in the transformer that's right above my head several times this whole section of the city has lost power everything is on the hotel behind me is on generator power so you can see, just look at the power of the rain and the wind that's hitting me right now, even as the storm maintains category two status east of here in orlando, just take a look at what the tail end of this storm is doing to us here in tampa still, laura, it's really extraordinary we it's really rare that you see something of this strength and this duration in one place. and you kind of, you kind of think of that magnifying itself over the entire region of western florida, the tampa st. pete area and it is still pretty relentless at this hour. >> the transformers that you're experiencing. and again, please stay safe. i know you're saying something shifted above you, bryan are you seeing this pattern around the city? we

know that 22 million people are already without power in florida but there's a danger is it can't hear it to the danger that he's waiting to us about what's happening there. we've lost the audio with brian todd, but just underscores the real danger involved with these transformers sparking out the 2 million people who are without power right now in florida, there is a danger there's people to be very, very vigilant continuing hurricane milton has made landfall it is triggered tornado outbreaks all across florida in this, this large tornado crossing over i95 on the eastern side of the state was one of at least 17 tornadoes reported. more than 110 tornado warnings have been issued across the state. and sadly, we have now learned that multiple people have been killed. i want to bring in sheriff keith pearson, share from st. lucie county in florida, sheriff i'm so sorry to hear about the loss of life in your county. what can you

tell us about the victims there? what happened? >> you know, the earlier today is the first wave of this storm. milton came through our areas, not used to seeing any kind of tornado activity. >> we had one tornado pop up. >> it actually struck our sheriff's office taking out a 10,000 square-foot red iron structure that was housing all of our emergency equipment. in preparation for hurricane milton shortly after that, maybe 20 minutes later. all of our alarms have gone off, all the messages came out. there are deputies reported at least visually seeing six tornados on the ground ripping through our county and northern direction leaving hundreds of homes devastated, completely totaled and unfortunately struck retirement community that was mainly modular homes where we did have loss of life and we have crews on scene right now working through the hurricane conditions that we're facing right now to rescue anybody

who's still inside there i mean, these trailers are just deadly the state of there, they're lifted off their foundation we're not going to get into how many, but i could tell you it's more than one person who's lost their life that we've already recovered, begin, we're focusing right now on getting all of our resources in there to rescue those those individuals that could be trapped inside these homes and it's is there are the rescue operations can find that it took their community or are you seeing this all around your county where we confined to about a half a half square mile radius, although this, these tornadoes riddled our county housing for miles on end and other counties around us. >> but there were fortunate enough to make there no loss of life there, just complete destruction the loss of life that we're focusing on. it is a mobile home community that's a 55 and older community. so we have elderly folks in there we have the type of construction it just it went right through

the middle of this community and it left a path of destruction there governor desantis had sent down the national guard, which was here within an hour, as well as specialized search and rescue teams that specialized in that. >> we have over 200 people, including our local fire rescue deputies people that are out here and right now where i'm outside our power keeps cutting out we're facing, i would guess debate about 50 mile-an-hour wind right now with gusts, pump it up and down, and it's only going to get worse here we are on the east coast i heard you were reporting earlier that's on the west coast. >> so we're on the entire opposite side of the state of florida and we're feeling these effects here. >> we're having this devastation here. i just pray to god that anybody else who's facing the challenges of this storm could weather the through away that would be okay. but our deputies and our troops are going to be out there during the storm to ensure that we rescue everybody who can be rescued. >> share keith pearson, we will be following this. we sincerely hope that people can be rescued and that there can be safety in your community. thank you so much for keeping us up to date

on what's happening. there. i appreciate that. >> i want to go to cnn's chief climate correspondent, bill weir. >> he's on the scene in st. petersburg, florida. bill, we just heard from what's happening on the east coast. tell me what's going on, where you are right now. what are you experiencing? >> i tell you what laura right now, there's a gust blown against my back that could lean against a wall we thought it was dying down. we thought the worst was over as the back end of this storm close to pass st. peak. but it's still got some life, it's still got a lot of kinetic energy and it's just spreading it all over this county right now, we got a little bit closer to the fall and crane here in st. petersburg one of four of them downtown, i think. according to the city, no injuries in this crane collapsed. thankfully it fell off a it, spilling this

high-rise that's under construction across the boulevard and into loss on the other side of the street here but it is still gala, spin it around and carlos, look, take a look over here let us marvel at the perennial fixture of hurricanes the disaster tourist out running around. look, we're out here to provide information. >> so people know what's happening in their towns and really to avoid this, you don't have to come out here and risks catching a street sign across the back of the head. >> but that's human nature they haven't even been cooped up that long, so there's no yes for that. but this is just one little sample of the physical damage. i'm afraid we may be seeing at sunrise, laura between the tropicana with getting ripped off. those are the at least the most visual, the most obvious to us right

now. but a couple of years ago, the tampa bay newspaper did an investigation. tampa bay times, and found that this county is the most vulnerable in the entire state to flooding something like 700 vital buildings are at risk of flooding. and a category one storm. another 400 in a category to this came ashore as three as we know. and it's just a freakish sort of passaro storm in the amount of water it's carrying and it's timing coming after helene so a lot to go before we get through the bright dawn hopefully a clear skies at people assess what's really happened here. >> laura, fail, we're watching this. the force of that wind literally moving. your body, knowing what's done to the crain's, knowing the urgency of what this violent storm has brought, the water that's coming in the fact that he for a walking around is always so mind-boggling to me that they

don't appreciate the true danger, but just talk to us about what you're seeing because this is an area i think that was also impacted by hurricane helene. and here you are not even a week-and-a-half later what's happening? >> yeah, that's the thing. it's so heartbreaking these are the sorts of events i was just sort of reflecting on the idea that anderson, i years ago, we covered katrina at the same time and that was kind of one once in 100 years, sort of lifetime storm that there were primetime concerts and specials and fundraisers the whole country was focused on that disaster for so long. but now these storms come and we don't have time to absorb the last one. i mean, the poor folks in asheville, it all of the devastation of that storm they need attention too. they need help, they need linemen trying to get their power on. but now that this is compounded one after another. it's really going to test resilience

definition of disaster preparedness, these bigger storms, more frequent one after another on an overheating planet, it's sadly sort of a reality now, but this is one of those things as we heard from other guests tonight, if not for helene which had storm surge records and really rocked people's worlds floridians who had ridden out plenty of storms and thought all, they never hit here. >> they, that probably saved some lives. >> they got out in this particular in their case, but in this storm, some people who evacuated the coast here you go be careful for crying out loud people who evacuated the coasts inland now have these super cell tornado outbreak which have already cost lives bit of shelter. >> we thought this was dying down enough and we'd be able

to come out a little better do or for i think we're going to we're going to go safe, please. we're watching you and see the force of that wind. and of course, the water out there. thank you so much for bringing us to all of this news. it's so important, but please stay safe i know he's talking to people right now trying to say inside, can we hear what they're saying to him we have a lot more on our special coverage of hurricane milton in just a moment. >> how many should i decorated? have ran half blue? >> that's a really tough call. >> who are you if you look at the latest data, you're probably going to need a lot of those purple sprinkles how this guy really knows his stuff what does a robot know about love it takes a human to translate that, weaken our hearts into something see and hold etsy if

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affordable i'm randi kaye covering hurricane milton in sarasota, florida. and this is cnn we're back now with our breaking news coverage of hurricane milton. >> i want to bring in cnn meteorologist chad myers. chad,

we are following this closely. you so much so what is the latest tonight? >> we still have flash flood emergencies to the east and northeast of tampa. and i think that's important because we're not really getting any on the ground kind of coverage here. but there are areas here around lakeland on the way to kissimmee that have already picked up ten inches of rain this evening alone. and this large area purple when we have a small area, yeah, that can drain off, but when you cover entire counties in ten inches of rain or more, you are going to get flash flooding and it is still raining. that's part of the problem. it is still raining. it is still windy. windy, and orlando, wendy's still here in tampa, wins coming off the ocean the palmetto into st. pete. we are seeing gusts still around 90 miles per hour. look at daytona beach 53, just had a gust to at their orlando, just had a gust to 47 so the storm has not really given up everything of

its energy, and we didn't think that it would. we knew it would likely move all the way across the entire peninsula of florida. and still remain a hurricane. and it is still according to the hurricane center, a 100 mile per hurricane still at this hour. here's the rain that's still going to come. still backup to the north of orlando and all the way off the coast at least another four to six inches of rain still to come up there. what else is going on? well, we still have the wind on shore. venice all the way down to punch a gorda down to fort myers. we do know that that swear the surge happened didn't happen in tampa because the wind was actually offshore here. and onshore here. that's how surge happens. so we still don't know exactly what happened down there. we likely won't even know until morning when we get some pictures either some aerials or

something on the ground, whether there was is that ten to 15 foot surge? it is likely this storm was a category five for a very long time, building up that surge. and i use this earlier and my wife told me i was corny. but if you take not the first time, but if you take a cup of coffee you take a cup of coffee and you blow on the top fuel going to see a little ripples on the top of your coffee. and they're going to blow to the other side of your coffee cup and that's what storm surge is. you're just taking wind and you're blowing little ripples of water, a little ripples of water all the way to the coast. and then it hits the coast and the coast gets in the way and the water goes on that's a very visual analogy. >> i like it, but i'm always on the wife's side. chad myers, other than that, i would have been yours. thank you so much. >> it's just another dad-joke you know well, tell you something. >> thank you for being here. stay with us. we need your expertise. i want to bring in right now former fema administrator for the obama administration, craig few gate.

craig, thank you for being with us in this moment when we are seeing hurricane milton continued to batter florida. we don't actually yet know what the extent of the damage is going to be, but we know that more than 1 million homes and businesses fact more than 2 million are already without power. what do you expect to see as milton moves through well just will continue to increase as we get the heavy rain we're going to see more flooding inland. and as demeanor all just pointing out is this storm starts to pull out tomorrow we'll start getting a better idea of damages, but a lot of the rescue departments that have shut down as soon as they can and they won't wait until it's a clear day, will start getting out, start doing an initial search and rescue. >> and that's i think we're going to find out how much damage and we're previous areas of impact took place we know the federal government pre-staged some supplies and also personnel including over

1,400 search and rescue personnel, 20 million meals, 40 million liters of water more than 400 ambulances, 60 dod high-water vehicles, and 20 helicopters when would they be able to deploy these resources deployed some already today in the tornado outbreaks that occurred itself, florida, the rest of them are in and around the areas ready to go as soon as conditions permit. and part of that will be at the direction of state as they identified the hard hit areas. we're already seeing reports that in st. pete they've had some snicket problems with the water system looking at boil water order. >> so we already know that there are areas were infrastructure has been impacted that will be targets for a lot of these resources milton, this is coming. >> hurricane milton coming just two weeks after hurricane helene. i mean i do wonder from your experience how much more difficult does that make it for florida's recovery operations

and frankly, not just the exhaustion, the first responders, but the exhaustion of resources responders well, in 2004, we were hit four times when i worked for governor and push is director of emergency management, florida it really comes down to you. >> just have to focus on a couple of really basic operations, lifesaving, life sustaining. and getting the infrastructure back up and try to get that done quickly. please say your reset before you get any more disasters so it's something that unfortunately, florida has had a lot of experience getting hit multiple storms as something they practice. and again, with this storm coming on top of helene for all practical purposes, the state emergency team and the fema team working with them hadn't really stops there for helene while the fema administrator, as you may know, deanne criswell says that more than 70,000 people are in shelters right now. i wonder how long you might expect them

to have to stay there given the power conditions, given what we don't yet know about the destruction of this hurricane well, that's what we're going to tell people to stay where they're at and let the local officials determine how bad and one areas you can safely returned in what areas you're not going to be able to. >> people that evacuated in those coastal communities probably are going to have to wait longer other residents may be able to return as early as tomorrow, given that they may be going back when there's no power, but their homes weren't damaged well, fema, as you know, is also dealing with rampant misinformation and misinformation about the federal government's response. >> they've had to launch a website just to try to debunk the rumors, president biden address it today this afternoon, as well. have you ever seen this level of disinformation in your time at fema well we've seen the need for rumor control. >> we ended up doing it during superstorm sandy, but we never

really had it at that level where we have such a diffuse information system. were so many people are turning to social media influencers for the news and again, we tell people if you want to know what's going on joon to your local broadcasters tuned to the people that are talking to the local state officials, because that's where the actual information is coming from about what you need to know in your community craig fugate. >> thank you so much thanks for having me news coverage of hurricane milton more than 2 million peoplere without power across florida as milton marches across the state of florida, just the last hour tampa suspended emergency services why? >> because wind in the city top more than 100 miles per hour, those wins, they are so powerful that it actually is treaded treaded a part of the roof and tropicana field home,

of course, the tampa bay rays. it was all supposed to be a shelter for first responders. one reporter was actually there as the roof was ripped apart something unbelievable to show you, this is tropicana field the roof, a big portion of it has ripped off. we are looking inside tropicana field we are seeing extreme damage to try. we had actually there was a report we saw in line earlier of a fire and we were waiting to confirm that and now we just made it up to the fifth floor. the hotel we are in and just i mean it's hard to believe what we're looking at it really is, i mean, hurricane milton is now a category two storm with winds of 100 miles per hour. it made landfall just south of sarasota around 8:30 p.m. eastern as a category three hurricane at that time with 120 mile per hour winds those those extreme winds