dead. the governor was saying it could be the most deadly storm in florida's history. death toll expected to be excessive. it hit there category 4. expected to hit charleston at lunch time at a category 1. yesterday it was a tropical storm. >> dana and bill will take it from here and have a press conference and watch for the radio. >> bill: good morning, it's friday morning. ian returning to hurricane strength as you wake up and join our coverage getting ready for another hit on the u.s. sights set on south carolina along the border with north carolina. here we go again. dana, good morning. >> dana: i'm dana perino and this is "america's newsroom."enter we'll hear from governor ron desantis who saw the damage firsthand and it is unbearable to see. ian is bearing down on south carolina expected to make landfall today with storm surge up to seven feet. look at this scale of the devastation starting to come

into sharper focus. this picture shows fort meyers beach one of the hardest-hit areas before the hurricane and here it is after. homes wiped out. sea of debris and rubble stretching to the horizon. there is this marina during normal times in fort myers. and then after. a scene of utter destruction. >> the damage throughout florida. 2 million still without power. it will continue for some time. ten people are confirmed dead thus far. the number may change as search and rescue teams work their way through the flooded neighborhoods. we're moments away as dana mentioned and get an update from the florida governor ron desantis back in tallahassee. team fox coverage. city manager marty lawing is standing by. robert ray is back with us today. we begin with track of ian. adam klotz is in our studio

watching that. >> we still have a hurricane as we remember this storm left the coast of florida as a tropical storm but we've spent a good chunk of time over the atlantic ocean. winds currently at 85 miles-per-hour. we're moving to the north at nine miles-per-hour. everything you see is infray red raid area. the center of circulation is behind that. likely talking about a landfall just after lunch. conditions will linger there for hours and hours and hours. here is the category 1 storm and stay a category 1 hurricane as it makes itself closer to landfall there. likely just to the north of charleston toward myrtle beach. the worst weather happens on the northeastern side. wherever we see landfall the winds will be worst on the northeast side of the storm where the storm surge will be the worst and winds worst. it will lift into north carolina, virginia, a lot of rain as this system works that direction. we have hurricane warnings from

savannah stretching to myrtle beach. a large area here where you'll talk about at least tropical storm force conditions, heavy rain consistent winds. fox model does a really good job of showing that center of circulation showing that heavy rain as it moves onshore. i'm taking you at 2:00 p.m. still looking at the center of circulation at the coast getting into kind of that borderline there of south carolina, north carolina, all of that wind running into the outer banks. very heavy rain across the large area. it lifts further up as you get into friday evening. rain going to be a problem well off the coastline. the real strong winds still lingering into 5:00 and that will be what pushes and drives all of this storm surge. we've been seeing winds out of the -- coming out of the east moving up onshore for the last 24 hours. the water is already piled up along the shoreline. the storm moves that way and suddenly you get a wall of

water. seven feet will do a ton of damage. we'll see power outages and, of course, the flooding. so there is a lot still on the way. >> bill: thank you adam klotz. dana, here is the governor. >> send onto the scene in southwest florida. there is life rescue making sure people are okay following up on any type of calls. there has been really a great effort. the assessment of what has been damaged that will impact the entire community. of course, the power is a big issue. there are people that are working. i think lee and charlotte have 15% restored. there will be able to be more restored likely in the relatively near future. there is going to be some that will require some rebuilds and so the utilities, fpl was down there first thing. they understand that and are prepared to do it. the other issue with lee county they've asked support from they

had a water main break for the county water utility. that means that the county does not have water at this point. and you need that to be able to function in society. they've requested support from fema and then we fema was able to provide the army corps of engineers and they were on the ground after kevin called them at 3:00 in the morning yesterday. they were on the ground from jacksonville in the afternoon. they've been working to assessing that situation. we also have florida national guard personnel standing by to help the army corp if they need it. that will be something very critical to be able to get that back. it may require more of a rebuild. maybe it will require some more short term remediation. they are going through that. that's clearly a top priority. we're thankful that fema and the army corps are there helping

out. we have -- there is a lot of folks in affected areas that evacuated. some did shelter in place. as of last night, we've contacted over 20,000 floridians that filled out a shelter in place survey on florida disaster.org. over 10,000 have responded and all 10,000 said they were safe and the state sent the first alert late last night and expect more responses this morning. cell phone activity is sparse. it's easier to get out a text message. the process has been streamlined. there is now a stand alone site to report your location. so if you're having issues contacting your family via phone and if you are sheltering and want them to know you're safe there is a website missing.fl.gov. these forms are triage by staff

in tallahassee and dispatched to responders on the ground. in addition to the rescues yesterday, rescue personnel have gone to more than 3,000 homes in the hardest-hit areas going door-to-door to check on the occupants of those residences. there are over 1,000 dedicated rescue personnel going up and down the coastline. they also are going to be doing more and more inland in some of our counties inland portions of charlotte and lee but also de soto and hardy counties. i think hardy county is the most without power. i think they're 99% without. so you see the really troubling images of washed-out home on the fort meyers beach and it is ground 0 and very important. it was such a big storm there are affects far inland. the personnel are sensitive to that and they'll be helping. we've opened two major points of

distribution for food and water this morning. the spring training facility for the tampa bay race in charlotte county and the lee county sports complex, spring training facility for the minnesota twins. these are pods that are much bigger than normal pods. fuel has been moved in to support the response. i think what we are finding with the fuel is the fuel supply is flowing. it is just a matter of the gas stations need to have power to be able to operate. if they have a certain number of pumps they're required to have a generator. i was in lee county yesterday and saw some of the larger gas stations were operating. that's a good sign. as of 6:00 a.m., there were 1.9 million people, customers without power. right now the hardest hit areas are hardy 99% without power as of this morning. charlotte and lee have 85% without and de soto is at 80%

without. sarasota, collier, manatee close to half of the customers there are without power. hillsborough and pinellas 15 to 18% are without power. these crews have been on the ground since it was safe to do so and working 24/7 to be able to restore power throughout the state of florida. over 42,000 linemen and associated personnel that are on the ground. f dot has had over 1300 people on the ground and cleared 1100 miles of roadway. happy to see traffic flowing in southwest florida. there are some structural problems in some of the bridges leading to sanibel and pine island. by and large there were toss and clear operations. traffic is flowing in southwest florida probably better than would have been anticipated so soon after such a major hurricane.

we appreciate that. reopened 800 bridges across the state. this includes 67 high priority bridges inspected and reopened in lee, charlotte, sarasota and manatee counties. pine island, sanibel, those are going to be rebuild efforts. the sanibel bridge had breaks in multiple parts of it. it was not where the water and pylons were. it was where you had it on some of the sandbar and that basically got washed out from underneath. in the meantime kevin can talk about this, he is -- they will be running barges to bring more heavy equipment onto the island to be able to help with the response. the first responders that have been there by and large coming into the air have some equipment but they are traveling lighter just to be able to go and get to people as quickly as possible. there have been six healthcare facilities evacuated in

southwest florida. they were having problems with water ob problems with power for an extended period of time. we're also prioritizing getting power and running water to the rest of the areas healthcare facility. 157 facilities that lost power that now have power restored. the ports, tampa bay, miami, everglades are reopened for fueling. between today and tomorrow all the ports in the state of florida up and down both coasts will be operational. food and water, massive amounts and kevin is sensitive to the water situation in lee. so i would say this is an extraordinary amount of water that has been staged and continuing to be brought into the area. so fema has activated their individual assistance program so if your need of help of recovering in those affected counties you can go to disaster assistance.gov or call one-#

hundred-621-3362. 34,000 people have already registered with fema. make sure if you are looking at claims on your property you document that, take photos, make sure you have it. we want you to be able to be made whole as quickly as possible. there will be in conjunction with fema, the state of florida and the local communities what are called disaster recovery centers. those will be set up very soon. that will be a place, if you need help with things like individual assistance, you can go. although you don't need to go there. you can do all this online. there is also going to be insurance villages set up under the leadership of cfo. you will have rain and wind claims. it is our view that these claims need to be paid very quickly so that people can get back on

their feet. i want to thank the first lady for spearheading our efforts for volunteer florida and activate the florida disaster fund where people can donate. if you want to contribute you will be joining a lot of people who have done a lot of money and we have over $12 million with 24 to 36 hours after the storm hits. pretty incredible that that's happened. if you want to do, go to florida disaster fund.org, florida disaster fund.org. more than 12 million has come in and a lot of interest to do a lot more. why is that important? fema has certain things they can do via statute regulation. but if it falls outside of that they just can't do it. it is not the way it works. so when you enlist private organizations they can be a little more nimble and tailor their response to more unique needs that citizens may have. you have people that have been

dislocated, you have people that no longer have homes, and so there will be a wide variety of things that they are going to need in the coming days, weeks, and months. volunteer florida. if you want to volunteer your time visit www.volunteer florida.org to find volunteer opportunities. it is one way you can make an impact and people really appreciate the outpouring of support. i want to commend the folks that we were able to meet with down in southwest florida. this has been a major event, of course, and these people have been working around the clock to be able to serve their constituents and serve their communities. we appreciate the dedication. we appreciate the perseverance. we know there are a lot of difficult days ahead but they've done a great job standing up for the people of their community. i will let kevin give a brief on the state response and we'll have the fema administrator come up and provide perspective from

fema. >> thank you, governor. so thank the governor but i want to thank the agencies represented here to my left especially fema administrator and the united states coast guard, others that are not here that are certainly on that floor behind me. lieutenant colonel miller from the u.s. army core out of jacksonville and many other partners. captain, if you can grab that up here. i want to thank them before i covered them up with a sign. we're in the 72 hour area of search, secure, stabilize that i talked about yesterday. everything i want to talk about right now is that about search, secure and stabilize. so we continue to have our fire rescue partners search and rescue going in there and

conducting what we call the hasty search and coming back to do the primary search and a secondary search. i think it's very important for everybody to know over a 72 hour period there are three searches conducted. hasty search is very quick see if they see any survivors that are alive or in a traumatic situation and start to move those individuals to safety. that has been conducted. now we're in the primary search area which is now we're doing a also more detailed search and a second search behind that. stay safe. i want people to make sure they are safe. this comes down to personal preparedness -- the person, individual response. generator safety. we've been talking about it and talking about it and talking about it. we still get reports of people operating their generators inside of a garage, operating their generators outside of a cracked window with a cord

running through the window and we are having continual issues with carbon monoxide. i'm just saying we're still having carbon monoxide issues. please operate your generators in a safe mode. that also includes not having electrical cords actually run through puddles of water. let's make sure we have them elevated and not running through p putt -- puddles of water. if you don't know what it is, don't cut it. if you don't know how to cut it, don't cut it. let the professionals come in and do that. we have more than 2,000 resource requests from our impacted local partners and more than 1700 are in process or completed. i think there is a very important bullet to note here. a lot of counties put in mission requests for bulk food and water

when we had a 45, 50 county disaster. now we have counties starting to cancel their food and water. so when we say 201,700 and we have the 300 gap i want people to understand. we're filling 1700. some of those will be canceled because they aren't impacted at the county level. we have mobilized diesel to provide water to hospitals. we've provided two for hernando county sheriff's staff to use drones for photography and video of flooded areas in de soto county. i want to make sure i take this time to say thank you to our restoration crews who have been able to take 500,000 individuals and get them power back. we're down to 1.9 million in the power restoration area that still need to be restored.

again thank you to our first responders. i want to bring in -- we're starting to get questions about food and distribution points. i will ask brian to give this graphic that we have made here. this is important for a couple of reasons. we talk about a family personal preparedness plan. so what we've done here, we're in day number 2-3 of the response disaster. this is where your personal family plan is being executed. this is why we've asked and partnered with fema on this. have 3 to 7 days of water. we talk you hear me talk a lot about 5 to 7 in florida. again, days 1-5 personal family plan. this is the food and water that you had. now we do have food and water in shelters if you go to a shelter. the next phase is in orange moves us from the family plan over into the national guard and

local community level point of distribution plan that will run for somewhere between 72 hours and about 120 hours. so 3 to 5 days. so as we exit that, again we're way back over here, we will then come in with mass feeding kitchens. the mass feeding kitchens are designed to provide hot meals three times a day to the most impacted communities that still don't have food and water. we are getting some questions, the first lady is getting some questions and i want to make sure we take the opportunity to educate individuals as a part of how everything ties together. so again, personal plan, national guard food distribution plan, which is water and dry food at our points of distribution. and then we'll move into a hot feeding kitchen plan. i thought it was important for everybody to understand how that connects and that as we continue to get questions about that, where is your government, today

we are in the process of moving national guard to the bulk food has gotten to those two locations. now we move to the community plan, that local national guard element that will set that up. i'm working with lee county today, which is the most impacted county. they have eight community pods that will be opening hopefully in some form or fashion moving cars through them later today in eight locations. i will let sandra take the lead on announcing those locations on the local level for her staff so when they're ready, we're ready. we want the tie all that together. last thing i want to talk about now as individuals start to move debris to their curbside, you must -- you must separate it into piles. my communications team will give graphics at another update today. the 5:00 or this evening update. we'll tell people how to

separate their debris into piles. but if you are doing it now, vegetation needs to be in its own pile. structural, furniture, building materials, plumbing issues, that needs to be in a separate pile. then we call it household hazardous waste. your cleaning supplies, batteries, pesticides, anything that is hazardous goes into its own pile. electronics, tvs, computers, things of that nature go into its own pile. the last pile is what we call white goods or appliances. they need to go in a separate pile. vegetation, structural. household hazardous waste, electronics and appliances. as always, when moving stuff, if it is too heavy, get help. these are absolutely avoidable deaths and absolutely avoidable

injuries. get people to help you. we have many faith-based community groups. we have team rubicon, individuals willing to help you get that stuff to the roadside. please be safe. use gloves, goggles, make sure you wear boots and look for power lines that may be mixed up in all this debris. thank you for allowing me to do an extended briefing and provide you more detail. we'll be back this afternoon for more information. >> administrator. >> thank you, governor, thank you first for allowing me to join you here today. i would also like to recognize my regional administrator. she has been on the ground since before this storm hit working side-by-side with director guthrie. it is not just that. our regional office works with the state of florida and all states within region four throughout the year to make sure we're planning, coordinated and when we have an event like this we can assist and support the

state with their needs. what we have done prior to landfall, as we did stage a lot of search and rescue resources to support the great efforts happening here in the state of florida. we have those resources available as the state needs it. we've also begun to move in food and water into those points of distribution to support what you just heard from director guthrie and the governor. what i want to say is we're here to support. fema is here to support these ongoing efforts right now to continue the life-saving missions that are still ongoing. but also to begin to support the recovery mission. as you heard the governor say, the president did declare a major disaster declaration for individual assistance as well as public assistance. public assistance will allow us to reimburse a lot of costs for the first responders doing an amazing job. allow us to reimburse overtime costs for all the work they're doing to establish illize this incident and on the individual assistance side there are 13 counties that have been designated for individual

assistance. we'll add more as we continue to do assessments and as it is safe to go into the neighborhoods we'll continue to add more counties so individuals can apply for assistance through fema. i want to reiterate how you can do that. go to disaster assistance.gov or call 1-800, 621 -- or go to the fema app. i want to let people know we are going to have teams of individuals going into the shelters to help them register for assistance. many people are away from their home and may not have access to internet and cell phone. we'll send teams to go to the shelters to begin the recovery process for them. governor, i want to commit to you and on behalf of the president we're here to support the recovery. we'll go into the stabilization but already started planning for what the recovery is going to be because we know this is going to be a very complicated and

complex recovery and make sure we have the right resources. i appreciate the opportunity to join you today so i can see firsthand what some of the needs are. i brought recovery and response personnel with me to make sure we are bringing the right resources to support the governor's needs and what his concerns are. thank you very much. >> any questions? >> i have two quick ones. first of all do we have an update and casualties and you meet with the administrator today. what does the state of florida need? >> i think the number one thing that we need that they provided, the army corps to support lee county and their water situation. critical to get that infray structure back up and running. you look at the storm. there was significant damage but you have a lot of folks who had minimal or maybe no damage and getting them back, make sure they are in their homes and have running water, electrical, all of that is going to make all the other efforts so much better. so we appreciate that but i

think that is probably the number one priority, kevin, would you say? it's probably the number one priority and the army corps are the experts. hopefully they get a diagnosis and plan and the county can fix it. i'll let kevin talk about the other. >> so where we stand right now on fatalities is i'll break it down by county. we have one confirmed fatality in polk county. we have 12 unconfirmed fatalities in charlotte county. we have eight unconfirmed fatalities in collier county, and we are still processing through the situation with the hasty search that i mentioned before in lee county. now, let me talk about confirmation and unconfirmed. people die in disasters that have nothing to do with the disaster, right? the medical examiner is the one

that makes that determination. they are the lead agency at the local level to determine when they investigate that this is either disaster-related or not disaster-related. if it's disaster-related we talked about it for three days. storm surge, rising water, things of that nature, or indirect the stuff that led up to it after the fact. so with that being said we have 12 unconfirmed fatalities in charlotte county, we have eight unconfirmed fatalities in collier county. one confirmed fatality in polk county. it brings us up to 21 people. we have an identified situation that was done during the hasty search of some fatalities. we do not know exactly how many were in the house. let me paint the picture for

you. the water was up over the rooftop, right? but we had a coast guard rescue swimmer women into it and he could identify there appeared to be human remains. we don't know how many or what the situation is. before we comment on that we want to be transparent but we just don't know that number. we have a couple of other situations where we had that particular type situation. so right now the number we're going with is we have 21. we have identified a situation for sure that we know we have something in but until the water recedes and we get the special equipment again we have to have special equipment to get in there. the governor has already talked about we can't get it over there. we'll talk about that. we have a 20 by 40 foot barge that has been delivered that we can now start traversing hefsh year equipment in the search rescue called hackneys. like beer delivery trucks that have specialized equipment that we can get on the barge and get

on the other side and start doing some technical type of rescue. once we get to that point we can probably give you better numbers. today 21 unconfirmed, one confirmed. >> on the survey, you said there were 20,000 people that responded to the survey. does that mean 10,000 have not responded and they're not okay? >> it's not what that means. so for instance right now we have 14,000 people just in lee county i believe -- across the three counties, 14,000 people in shelters. so we are now -- we did an automation of collecting data . we're now at a point where in this 10,000 is we're physically having to find people. do they have communications? can we get them on a cell phone?

in the hardest impacted area we may not have cell phone capability. it will take us some time. if you recall when i was here for hurricane michael we had over 30,000 people and we went to 3,000 and then 300. it just happened organically over time. if you recall between indirect and direct deaths for hurricane michael i think we only had 77. that number will continue to squeeze itself down as we have the ability to get to shelters and find people registered inside shelters and via the fema website on the phone. person to person with fema and we'll start to be able to whittle those numbers down between federal and state and local data and that number will continue to shrink. again, we are way ahead -- way ahead of where we were at for hurricane michael when i was here for that. we were 30,000 weeks into that situation. we're down to less than 10,000 and only day two. that number will continue to

come down drastic lick. >> that 10,000 number just maybe the combination of whether they are missing, out of contact, out of power, the location might have changed or what exactly -- how would you consider the categories? >> all that you mentioned. what categories will we put this into in those without power, without communications, those trying to still reconnect with loved ones. at the end of the day it's all those categories. again, we will shrink that. it will organically shrink day-by-day. the pod that's right behind me are human services. there are people dedicated to doing nothing but that and taking the information that comes from urban search and rescue and connect with the data and whittling that list down. >> the number of missing people right now? >> again, missing people is a local law enforcement jurisdiction, all right?

so if you want to ask questions about what are the missing person numbers, that's got to be a local county sheriff or local law enforcement ask. >> speaking with county sheriffs, appreciate the transparency on casualties. do you think the message that the lee county sheriff put out was pre-mature for makes your messaging more difficult. >> when you have a storm bearing down on your community and hitting the community, people going through that and working but you have a lump in your throat because you don't know what's going to happen. i think that was done because there is concern for the well-being of the people of lee county. there is a concern of the damage that the storm has done. clearly it's packed a big wallop. when you look at some of these things like you see a house totally washed out, it is

nothing but a concrete slab on fort meyers beach you pray to god no one was in that. some of these things the people on sanibel that have the real big houses could hunker down and pass and their homes are raised and the surge tear ing probably protected from. some of these others, particularly some of the older construction didn't stand a chance in that. so you just hope those were folks that had left or that those structures were not occupied. i think it was just about, you know, the concern for what they were facing and the fact that you did have people that, as the storm was in process, there were people that were really concerned with what they were seeing with the water rising and what not. i am, i think -- i think kevin would agree as the search and rescue folks have gone to a lot of these areas, fortunately you are not finding desperate people waving saying -- it's usually there are some people brought off the island and thankful.

many of the people on sanibel saying we're fine. thanks for coming by and doing that. there will be more that happens in the next few days but i do think the response was very, very quick. i think it absolutely has made a huge difference and if you just look at where we are in rescues now. over 700 rescues. >> 700,000 rescues the cfo office has over 3,000 touch points. we made touch points in the field and rescued 700. >> those guys have worked really hard and especially you think who was the first one to get over there literally driving through tropical storm across alligator alley was task force two out of miami. who is that? when did we see them last in a public way? at the surfside disaster, we saw many other task forces from around the state and country that came in. so when they are doing this, it

is obviously important work but these are not easy missions to be doing on. it was not easy for them to be on that pile in surfside and search for people and unfortunately find many, many people who were killed in that collapse. so now they are in a situation where they are looking and hopefully they find people that are okay or that the buildings are empty. but you don't want to have to see people that had gone -- that didn't make it through. so it's a physical, it's putting yourself out there in harm's way but it does also take a toll. kevin, why don't you talk about the mental health we're dealing with here. >> sure. so in the mental health category, if you recall very early on in the desantis administrator the first lady took on the role of providing for first responder mental health to include hiring the first ever in the division a state mental health coordinating

officer. sarah newhouse is the coordinating officer and housed in the division of emergency management and in a disaster situation she reports to the first lady to help coordinate those disaster mental health services not only for mental health in general but focused on first responder mental health. you will see already there are already embedded what we call critical incident stress management teams. those are already on site and you will continue to see first responder mental health resources come into the area including fema's first responder mental health services as well as individual mental health services as well as ours. we have a person. i'm titled the state coordinating officer to coordinate all the state agencies but we have a person that takes a subset of mental health and the state mental health officer that works underneath me and the first lady

for disaster mental health. >> thanks, guys. >> dana: we just brought to you the full press conference from governor ron desantis and his team there including kevin guthrie, the director of the florida department of emergency management and the fema director. they answered a lot of questions and explained what's happening there now and what people need to be prepared for, that help is continuing to be on the way. there are over 14,000 people in shelters still. over 700,000 rescues, bill. i know you'll take us through one of the things that you can show us on the map what the governor was talking about. >> bill: we heard a lot of names, locations and islands and thought give viewers an opportunity to give southwest florida and a better sense how the shore came on shore and why you see the damage you do. a couple things i point out. if you were to draw a straight line west to east charlotte county is to the north, lee county to the south. we heard that many times. collier county is further down

here in a naples area. when the storm arrived on wednesday between 1:00 and 2:00 if i'm right about that with the eyewall east coast time. this is the eyewall first made landfall. why is that important? these islands are low lying. we talked earlier in the week about sanibel island having three feet elevation off the shore. if you have a storm coming from due north/northeast and it has gathered all this strength and it is a category 4 and you don't have much to stop it, what happens here, dana, you see the waterways that run up here? they have different tributaries and rivers, etc. this is the sound. you think about this water coming up here up in the sound into charlotte harbor. there is a river to the south -- to the north of fort myers, the river here.

they were talking about the tides changing every six hours that comes in and out and get an assessment of the tides. it's what they were talking about with the gulf of mexico being pushed onshore. i would just circle this area here because this is primarily what the governor was talking about. a better idea and description. this is pine island located here. he said that was cut off. this is sanibel island down here. he said that was cut off. yesterday when we talked about that bridge that had a break in it? that's located right as you head out into sanibel island. again, we are only 48 hours into this and the only access you can get to these islands is by boat. this down here is fort myers beach. we showed you, all this aluminum from the subdivision has been tossed around and that happened

down here around the fort myers beach area that we can show you coming up next hour. it gives you a better idea with the geography and what folks are trying to deal with down there. >> dana: you know that area better than i do. i've been there quite a bit. a highly populated area. there are a lot of homes, a lot of property, a lot of businesses. so a lot of people will face some difficulties. >> bill: just a point on that. when you don't have a hurricane for 100 years you get more comfortable and build more and think it's a great life. it is. they've taken it very hard at the moment. the reason we carry these briefings in full is because it's where we get our best information. the next time they do it we'll bring it to you from florida as well. >> dana: now to one of florida's hardest hit cities fort myers. robert ray is there for us. what do you see this morning? >> dana and bill, good morning and your description of the geography is so important. i'm glad you did that to show

exactly how the storm came in and why there is all this damage. here in fort myers at coopers landing dock we talk about the aluminum. here is some of it and some of the debris that officials were talking about that they want people to sort out. they want people to put vegetation in one pile, they want people to put appliances in another pile. this is part of a fence that has been ripped apart, the wind and surge from over there and you look at the vessels behind me, guys, these are rental yachts that people can take onto the gulf of mexico from the beautiful bay near downtown fort myers. we heard officials talk about all the search and rescues down on the barrier islands that you all were just so smartly showing. fort myers beach, sanibel island, pine island devastated completely. we see those pictures in the air and it is hard to imagine that a

storm could create moments like that and governor desantis even discussing that and the amount of logistics that is happening here on the ground right now from the state to the local to the federal government is amazing. it is an orchestra of people coming in to try to help this area recover and get people out of harm's way. just tremendous situation right now. the updated number is about people that are in shelters, the death count and the people that are being taken out of these places. i can tell you, yesterday again to your point about down on the barrier islands, we drove from here, fort myers, about ten miles or so trying to get on the island of fort myers beach. of course we got to the bridge there. that bridge is okay thankfully. officials wouldn't allow us on because the active search and rescues there. on our drive down there you could still see standing water,

1, 2 feet and convoys of vehicles going through trying to make their way. if you look from side to side on the streets, all we saw was neighborhoods in destruction with trees down, roofs that were off, boats like you see behind me pushed up from other bodies of water laying on the ground, and that's the thing. it is just going to take so long to remove all this debris and it is impressive that the state of florida is telling people to pile it in certain methods like this. that is a very smart thing right now as they try to make this a safe place as they get people out of harm's way and try to make this beautiful area good again. it will take a lot of time. >> dana: robert ray, thank you so much. your reporting is incredible and those images are dramatic. michael waltz is from the eastern part of florida, a congressman. we talked about southwest florida. what did you see in your counties along the east side?

>> a 1, 2, 3 punch, dana. the hurricane which was moving so slowly was just dumping foot after foot after foot of rain on top of ground already saturated from a very wet summer pushing water up the rivers and into the tributaries. as soon as the wind hit the atlantic ocean it swings around like a big right hook to cause storm surge. we have roads knocked out. breaches of our dunes, we have some bridges that frankly need to be checked by engineers probably before they are reopened to traverse safely. and we have sewage plants that have been completely swamped. florida power and light does an amazing job. they are getting the electricity back on. cell service is spotty but my local officials are telling me this was worse than matthew and worse than irma for us even on the east coast. the fear is people didn't take

it seriously because we were further away from the original impact. we were right in its path and it will take a long time to recover. >> bill: federal government has added many counties to the major disaster declaration. that's really important for getting the debris cleared out of here. you look at the streets and see how much is left over including orange county, orlando, osceola, seminole and polk county that runs across the i- four corridor moving to the northeast. >> my counties on the east coast in the path of the hurricane have not been added. and we'll continue to push the administration to do so. here is why that's so critical. there are so many other pieces to this. there is a corps of engineers, hud for low income areas, there is even the u.s. department of agriculture for all of our farmers. many of our crops have been flooded and destroyed.

so there are other aspects to this than just fema. these people are going to need help. we need that major disaster declaration for my counties in the east and northeast of florida as well. >> dana: congressman, thank you so much. we'll stay in touch with you. there is a long road back but back you all will be indeed. thank you for joining us today. >> bill: these disaster response teams across the country rushing into florida to help. there are a lot of them, too. one is called team rubicon, a veteran-led nonprofit out of los angeles. art de la cruz is the ceo. what's the stouts of your team now? >> we have teams working hard here. we are currently in fort charlotte. finished our second work order clearing roadways and reconnaissance teams all over the county trying to figure out what type of unmet needs our volunteers can bring their skills to address to help the

community recover. >> bill: it's early. how best have you assessed how you can help? >> you know, we know there are certain things that are part of our skill set, tarping roofs, moving debris, clearing roadways, cutting up trees that have fallen down and clearing them and the path. we know we have to muck out houses. we know that stuff will happen and it's moving. there are other things we know that will come up that we can address. those things from tarping roofs to help people try to recover part and parcel to what we do. >> dana: are you able to start doing some of that right now? >> yeah, we are. we've actually got two roof clearance teams working their way again clearing out roadways like the one behind me an hour ago it was impassable. we're trying to cut our way in and out of the communities at the direction and coordination

with the emergency managers. these reconnaissance teams will be incredibly important. finally we have individuals that are part of the emergency operation centers here. coordination across all these different agencies will be incredibly important. >> bill: your signal broke up a little bit. how many men have you brought in? most of them are veterans are they not, if not all? >> yeah, we are a veteran-led humanitarian organization. we have probably got 30 on deck now but we have the team in chicago planning the movement of subsequent waves. this will be a massive operation. it will take a lot of people and a lot of time. we'll get the train moving. >> dana: art de la cruz, thank you so much. we're seeing new video coming out of orange county. as art was just explaining, talk about mucking out houses. this water is all the way up to

at least the middle of the first floor. >> bill: this is the orlando area. just like we showed you on the map a moment ago. if you have all this low-lying area throughout the state of florida, if you are three feet elevation from sea level and you have ten feet of water coming onshore, what chance do you stand? and just like we showed you the rivers and the harbors in southwest florida that were inundated with the water just pushing it further into the state of florida, a similar thing happened in orlando. what stuns me, dana, that storm went through orlando 24, 36 hours ago at a minimum and you are still facing this standing water in areas like this. >> dana: they said the ground was saturated before the storm came through. this is like a condo or hotel type of thing. you will have a huge amount of restoration. this is just one of these areas

that we can show you. think of how large and highly populated this county is. they have a lot of cleanup ahead of them. >> bill: from orange county, florida, we showed you that and also in southwestern florida. michael waltz takes care of northeastern florida and now ian is back to hurricane one status taking aim at the south carolina shore. when you look at these storms you can divide it in four. f four quad rants. if it hits and high tide that area around myrtle beach across the border into southwestern north carolina, they are in for it next in the target site. >> dana: they're preparing in charleston. we know there were evacuation orders. governor kemp was on "fox & friends" talking about savannah and that area. look at charleston right in the

crosshairs. again, populated area there on the coast. they are more experienced, i would say. it hasn't been 100 years since they had a hurricane. they've had a lot more. hilton head in the area as well. >> bill: so hurricane ian has cut off sanibel from the rest of florida. a big section of that causeway that connects the island to land is wiped out. how do you fix this? how long does it take? we've seen some hurricanes in the gulf of mexico that have cut off major routes like interstate 15 that runs east/west there. it is several months before you are able to get the army corp of engineers and reestablish that connection. >> dana: holly smith is the mayor of sanibel. we are sorry for what you are going through. we hope you are doing all right. give us an assessment from your standpoint of what sanibel is dealing with. >> well, we are dealing with an

unprecedented situation on our island. we did everything that we could to prepare. everything we could to get the word out to please evacuate. this ended up being absolutely the perfect storm that we had hoped we would never see in our lifetime. right now we are on day two of daylight. we have our teams going out. the most important thing that we can do right now is get out for search and rescue. so boots were on the ground early yesterday morning going throughout the island doing wellness checks to see if people were okay to stay as we went to find more critical needs throughout the island. that is continuing. our -- we're also starting our structural teams heading out there today. i'll be on the ground there today. i needed to make sure it was safe and make sure the first responders got out there first to help with the people that are in need. as you were saying, we are cut

off. it is going to be a long-term recovery. but i can tell you that i was on the phone with governor desantis. i think they were already thinking several steps ahead. we will have the full support. this will be a long road. >> bill: how many people are on the island still? >> i'm still as we're speaking, i get texts saying with new people hey, please come. it is great we're getting that information from all around. we estimated so far -- this list is growing, 200 households remained on the island. we don't know the number of people and pets that were in those residences. we are getting that information as it comes through. so it is a pretty complex situation that we have. >> dana: they have a good leader in you, mayor. thank you for joining us today. we'll stay in touch. you can bet on that. >> thank you very much. appreciate it. >> dana: now ian setting its sights on south carolina, a

third landfall set for the carolina coast hours from now as floridians continue to assess the damage left in ian's wake. >> it is sort of numbing. not my first hurricane but my first total loss. no, he's seizing the moment with merrill. moving his money into his investment account in real time and that's... how you collect coins. your money never stops working for you with merrill, a bank of america company. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high blood potassium. ask your doctor about entresto for heart failure. entrust you heart to entresto. >> dana: south carolina bracing for a revived hurricane ian. the category 1 storm a couple hours from landfall there. after leaving a devastating path of destruction across florida. new images show all of this to us. florida officials now say at least 21 people are dead. welcome to a new hour of "america's newsroom."enter i'm dana perino. that's not the news we wanted to have. >> bill: i'm bill hemmer. good morning. forecasters predicting life threatening storm surge along the coast of south carolina and georgia into north carolina and northeast florida continues. here is what we believe we know. the governor is telling us 700 have been rescued so far. primarily in