personnel are in the effected areas. we are coordinating -- >> the governor giving an update on what is being done as the storm goes through georgia. back here in florida, a lot of work needs to be done. we will, of course, stay here reporting on this storm. that wraps up the hour for me. thank you for the privilege of your time. andrea mitchell picks up with more news right now. right now on "andrea mitchell reports," hurricane idalia now a category 1 storm, after slamming into florida's big bend region as a category 3 this morning. idalia now barrels fast northeast through georgia after making landfall in florida at 7:45 eastern this morning. two fatalities have been confirmed with officials continuing to warn of life-threatening storm surge. the super moon and hurricane

combining to push the tides higher and prompt this warning from officials around tampa. >> we have some rivers that are set to crest to pretty high. might look sunny. might be the calm after the storm. the winds and rains have subsided. that surge is delayed. >> just look at this dramatic video from cedar key early this morning. a resident there calling it almost apocalyptic. a bed and breakfast flattened with some condos almost fully sub merg submerged in water. massive wind gusts knocking out this billboard close to where our own nbc's gabe gutierrez was reporting. >> wind gusts, i'm told, are over 100 miles an hour. we are really feeling the brunt of this storm.

good day, everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. following the destructive path of hurricane idalia. the eighth major hurricane to make landfall in the u.s. in six years. take a look at the stunning view of idalia from space courtesy of nasa. we are expecting florida governor ron desantis to give an update in a half hour on all the preparations. we will bring that to you live, of course. joining me now is marissa para in tampa. talk to us about the tampa region and what's happening just north of it. >> reporter: yeah. good afternoon. we are in what's called zone a. this is the mandatory evacuation area. you can probably tell why, for good reason. you can't even tell the difference between the road here -- this is bay shore boulevard for those of you familiar with tampa. it's a main thoroughfare. you can see that there's really no difference between this and

tampa bay, which is completely spilled over, taken over the roads. if you pan the camera to the left, you will see what happens when you try to drive through these types of waters. this was earlier this morning. i will tell you, it was just even last night we saw cars driving through here with no problem. the waters rose quickly. someone clearly got a little too confident. had to be rescued. you can tell we're not getting heavy rain right now. we are not getting wind gusts. it's pretty calm. the tampa mayor has been clear. you will hear it again. this is not over yet. in terms of the concern. we have known for some time, tampa's biggest risk was not about the wind. we are not in the direct path. we were not in the direct path of idalia. the biggest concern was the water, the surge, the storm surge you can see behind me. here is the thing. today is what they call king tide. it happens once or twice a year with the fuller new moon. we are expecting the waters to get higher sometime in the next

few hours. officials are keeping a close eye on that. >> marissa parra, thank you. joining us on the phone, cedar key, florida, city commissioner sue coleson. thanks for joining us. we understand it's a barrier island. talk to me about what you experienced there. i know it was really bad. >> they are out now, our eoc director and our police chief assessing what they can assess. we have a lot of flooding. we still have surge in progress. we can't do a lot of research. the bridges are closed at this time. there will be no oncoming traffic. we know that highway 24 was inundated with water, which is the road preceding the bridges to get to cedar key. right now, there's no entry because the bridges have to be assessed for safety first.

>> how many people live in cedar key? >> approximately 800. >> was the area under a mandatory evacuation? >> we had quite a few left. during the evening, as things got very hairy and scary and it was cat 4 being predicted, which i don't -- i don't know what we were when it came, that sealed the fate for a lot of people. they just left. we are fortunate to have gotten quite a few off the island. hopefully enough. >> yeah. exactly. how bad were the winds? >> the winds were pretty bad. they added to the surge and the wave action. we were -- the winds were really conducive to making the surge much worse. we saw much more water than we

did with others. >> is there any way to estimate the storm surge? >> i would not be able to tell you. i do know what they have assessed so far has been way, way higher. we had an eight-foot surge before. it seems like some of our buildings and some of our areas had way higher water than that. we don't know. i don't know what the official thing will be. i just know it was rough. >> are you at home? >> no. no, ma'am. >> you are in an office? >> no. we are -- we had to leave the city hall. we have set up in a different building. we could not be -- city hall had at least four to six feet of water in it. >> how high is the building? >> no city hall right now. >> my gosh. how many building

you are in? >> we are safe here. we are on a hill. very high hill. which to us is a mountain. right now it looks like a mountain and i'm so glad. >> my gosh. is there water all around you? >> not here, no. we are an island. guess what? there's always water around us. we don't want it on the roads. we like water around us. that's part of our draw. that's what makes us what we are. but we don't want it on the island. >> right now -- you said the causeway, the bridges are out. they are closed. there's no way on or off right now. >> right. the bridges are intact that we can see. they must be tested for safety by the dot before we can allow people on them. visually, they look intact. however, we cannot legally let people on them until the dot clears them. that's the problem. >> we wish you all the best.

thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. >> thank you. >> stay safe. that's the main thing. >> bye-bye. jose diaz-balart has been reporting all morning and joining us now from crystal river, florida, north of tampa. jose, you have been valiant, changing position, talking to people as they drove up in the floodwaters. it looks like the tampa bay is all around you. >> yeah. you were speaking to your guest about water all around. this is right outside the hotel that we at nbc news and msnbc have set up as ground zero for our operations. it's been flooded. it's completely flooded out. this is the essentially entrance to the hotel. the bay is on the other side. these waters just continue to come. two people have already confirmed lost their life because of this hurricane here

in florida. one in gainesville and one near tampa on i75. sarasota airport is reopening. tampa is not. the situation here is that it's just so much water. a little while ago, i spoke to a great family, phil and brenda, who drove their jeep right up to where we were. they evacuated. they will go back home, because they say that their neighbors are actually having to swim out of their houses. listen to that conversation. >> the hood of my jeep. people swimming out of windows right now. >> are you talking about people swimming out of their windows? >> swimming out of their windows. >> we are alive and we are safe. >> the water is probably to the ceiling of our house. >> i think we lost everything. >> they fear that they lost it all. they feel fortunate that they

were able to evacuate. this area is a zone a evacuation. you can see why. i gotta tell you, earlier in the morning, we were seeing the water increase by six inches every 20 minutes. that's what we saw. the water came right into this hotel. you can see that it's still all over the place. a lot of work needs to be done. i gotta tell you, people that were able to get out are feeling very fortunate that they were able to get out. there have been rescues. i'm sure there are going to be more rescues as this morning progresses. >> jose, what about power, electricity? >> electricity is an issue. we saw, when i was waiting to speak to you, two power line trucks come right through here as well as a bulldozer.

power is being reinstituted as quickly as possible. earlier this morning, i think at 6:15 a.m. eastern time, the governor of florida gave one of the recurring press conferences that he has been having, talked about the fact that there was 60,000 at the time households without power, 100,000 households had found their power reconnected just in that eight-hour period. it's a very -- it's a rapid process. there's some things you can't do until there's no water. power is one of them. that's going to be ongoing. >> i was watching the governor this morning. it seems as though they were on top of it in terms of having thousands of telephone workers and electricians working on it. >> yeah. according to the governor,

32,000 linesmen on standby with the trucks. we saw a lot of the trucks. they were just outside here i think it was yesterday. they are all over. 5,500 florida guardsmen that have been activated. the coast guard has been put on standby in the state of florida. all of these efforts and all of this manpower certainly makes a difference. >> the other thing, quickly, jose, it seems to me just watching that there isn't a lot of wind right now. this is so fast moving that it moved past. at least it hasn't been sitting on top of you guys. >> yeah. i can think of -- i was going back to -- i was talking to craig, the former fema administrator and mr. florida on so many issues, just thinking back on hurricane andrew in 1992, august, covering that storm. it was almost equally as fast

moving. and yet, what's interesting about this one is that because of the king tide, because of the high tides, because of all the water, it seems to have left a whole lot more water when you think that hurricane andrew was a cat 5 and this one wasn't as powerful and yet there's a lot of flooding. it's because of the low lying areas we are in. >> thank you for everything. thanks for staying and talking to us. it makes a difference to have you right down there. >> thank you so much. joining us now by phone is craig stephens. chief stephens, thank you. talk to me about the storm surge and what you are experiencing there. >> yes, ma'am. right now in citrus county from us-19 -- we have us-19 shut

down. we have several of our subdivisions, we have water out to us-19 at this time. >> how extensive is this? how bad is the damage? >> as far as damage, you know, we haven't gotten back and did assessments. we're going back and getting people requesting us right now and getting them out of the flooded areas. once that is done, then we can concentrate on doing some assessment. as far as the water in the subdivisions, similar to the '93 storms in march. >> how many people now do you have to rescue? how extensive is that? how many people are trapped? >> right now, i don't know exactly how many people are trapped. i know we just went in and got a

family of five with a dog. we have had -- i think we have -- hold on. i have to look. >> also wondering how you are getting to them. >> what's that? >> how are you getting to them? are you using boats or trucks? >> we have our boats. we have an air boat and two skiff boats. we are working with the sheriff's office. we have a paramedic on a boat with the sheriff's office. we had the national guard with high water vehicles. we are going in and getting these people in and out and making sure they can get to a shelter. >> what about the wind? how bad was it during the height of the storm? >> as far as wind, i don't really think we had too bad of winds.

obviously, we have a lot of debris on the ground. nothing that isn't from a normal storm. i would say that what i saw was tropical force. i didn't see anything on the coast. i'm sure the coast was a lot worse than what i saw. >> indeed. citrus county fire chief, craig stephens, you have to get back to work. thank you for taking time to talk to us. >> yes, ma'am. you have a good day. >> good luck to all of your people. joining us now is florida's state fire marshall and chief financial officer. we have to -- we can't keep meeting like this in the middle of hurricanes year after year. >> that's exactly what i was thinking. >> the governor said this morning that he hoped they would get through this year without one. here we are. what are you learning about the damage? >> the areas of concern were taylor county, levy county, surge up to 12 feet in some areas.

part of what your broadcast has shown is what happened in the tampa bay area. those areas during hurricane ian and irma, the water was sucked outof tampa bay. there's folks that probably weren't prepared for the type of flooding they experienced because the last two storms did not bring any floodwaters into that part of the state. the up side to it is where the storm is hit it's not as densely populated as other parts of the state. we do have 900 urban search and rescue team members on standby. some are rolling towards that area right now as they assess the damage. you can't put the 18 wheelers on the road until the wind dies down. they will tip over. >> if i'm correct, as you are pointing out, it was not as populated. this is not ft. myers beach,

thankfully. >> yeah. taylor county, for example, is about 23,000 people. there's that many people in ft. myers beach alone. the areas are still a beautiful part of the state. low lying but not as densely populated. taylor county, their emergency operations center lost power. they had to evacuate during the storm to go regroup at the airport. there's been some curves that the storm threw at us. we will learn from every disaster that we have. it's not if, it's when a storm will hit florida. i'm grateful for the incredible effort, the leadership of the governor, but all the urban search and rescue, first responders. 54 canines, 200 boats, a navy of support coming to help these men and women that weathered the storm. >> does the national guard in florida have enough high water boats for rescues?

>> they do. basically, they will be -- there are 200 boats they will use. there will be other resources and assets that are outside of that that will come to bear. every sheriff's departmenthas boats. most police departments do. the resources, like with the chief you talked to, they will have their own resources to bear in addition to what we will bring in as state resources into that market. >> vehicles as well? >> yeah. the high water -- a lot of the high water vehicles, a lot of them are army surplus vehicles we reconfigure. we change them into almost a high-rise school bus. it's amazing how effective they are. very durable. they make it into those areas, load people up and we get them to safety. it's unfortunate, every storm there's those that won't heed the warnings. they will not evacuate.

unfortunately, we put our first responders in harm's way when they don't heed the warnings. again, this part of the state hasn't soon a storm in over a generation of this magnitude. sometimes the fear and the threats sometimes are just not taken as seriously. it's unfortunate. we are here to save lives every day. >> thank you for what you do. thank you very much. >> take care. >> you too. good luck out there. i want to check in with maggie vespa in tallahassee. thousands are without power there. tell us what officials are telling you. >> reporter: that's right. miraculously, you can tell the weather is cleared up quite a bit. it seems like the worst is far behind at this point. almost immediately, when wind gusts were bad, when the rain was pounding, power and utility crews were out working to restore power to affected parts

of the area. that includes our hotel behind our camera crew. we have power back. tallahassee -- i will walk so you can see how clear and how beautiful a day this has become in this area. tallahassee feels like it has been spared. we talked to the sheriff a few minutes ago. they are already moving into both recovery mode, going out to search for damage, assess damage that they might not know about. the city has a ton of trees. they may have come down. power restoring. what's happening right now is that more affected counties, especially in areas like tampa and east and south, they are out assessing their damage. the sheriff said what's going to happen is over the next several hours and days, those municipalities, those agencies -- i will let drivers go by. people are trying to get home who were evacuated. those municipalities will put out calls for help saying, hey, for instance, tallahassee, we know you didn't get hit that hard. we could use your first

responders in our area helping us assess the damage. the sheriff here in leon county, he told us he is thanking his lucky stars that things are not far worse. we don't have major reports of damage or injuries. he says he knows, as do others in tallahassee, a major area, that other parts of the state were hit far worse. they will need help for quite some time. >> maggie vespa in tallahassee, thank you so much. joining us now, angie lassman. >> it's a category 1 now. still with winds about 85 miles per hour and moving at a good pace. one thing to note, it's going to continue the general northeast direction here over the next 12 to 24 hours before it moves offshore. we have torrential rain across southern georgia. we have seen alerts of water rescues happening.

intense rains. you can see it with the radar returns, to the north -- this has not moved a lot, this swath of really intense rain right over douglas. folks along i75 in southern georgia are going to continue to see this heavy rain for a little while longer. no surprise, of course, we have the bright green flood watch in place. notice what's happening into portions of northern florida and southern georgia. we have a flash flood warning. impressive amounts of rain. reports of three to six inches, but some of the reports inching closer to -- with radar indications showing us closer to six to eight inches of rain occurring in a very short amount of time. water, the number one killer when it comes to these systems. we are really telling folks to heed the warnings. we have the flash flood warning in effect right now. let's focus on storm surge.

we are dealing with -- these are the amounts we are seeing across the area right now. cedar keys just above six feet. where jose is, we are talking nearly six feet. the numbers are not going to decrease any time soon. we will continue dealing with those conditions across that area for a little while longer as the system moves out towards the southeast. >> thank you so much. joining us now is michael brennan, the director of the national hurricane center in miami. michael, what are you and your team looking for now? what is the status of the storm? >> we are most concerned about the rainfall flooding. that's a huge risk stretching from georgia all the way into portions of south carolina and coastal north carolina as we go through the next 24 to 36 hours. wilmington, columbia, that's where we have the highest risk of flash flooding. flash floodings kill more people in this country in the last ten years than any other hazard. that's our biggest concern and most widespread concern for

life-threatening impacts as we go through the next day or so. >> those are highly populated areas along the coast. >> that's right. not just along the coast but inland as well. you can get fast flooding in urban areas. if it rains hard enough fast enough, you can get flash flooding developing very quickly. >> what about storm surge? that's related to the flooding and the level of rain. are we still seeing a big storm surge? >> yeah. we are seeing high water levels along the west coast of florida. they will recede as we come out of high tide and as the winds die down here, the water levels will come down. it's still dangerous from the big bend down to the tampa bay area. tonight, we will see storm surge develop here in savannah and charleston. we could see three to five feet above ground level as we move into the high tide cycle tonight. this is a dangerous spot as well. there's a storm surge warning in effect for these areas. >> you said this is a fast

moving storm. at this point, is that still the case? could it weaken? could it strengthen as it keeps moving? >> the winds associated with the circulation of the storm are going to decrease as the system moves inland. it's moving quickly at 20 miles per hour. that's going to take the system near the savannah area by later tonight and then offshore of north carolina as we go through the day tomorrow. it's not going to have a lot of time to weaken. that's why the strong winds are spreading inland so far into georgia and eventually into south carolina where we have hurricane warnings in effect over here on the east coast. >> michael brennan at the hurricane center, thanks to you and your colleagues for all their help throughout this storm emergency. joining us now is the crystal river city manager. thank you for being with us. we saw flooding earlier. we were talking to jose. you were as well. tell us the situation now. what are your big concerns?

>> we had a rough couple of hours this morning. the rain brought on as well as the flooding from the surge. pretty hard hit. the sheriff's office did a great job ensuring the safety of people. our residents are as resilient as they come. they want to make sure they get everything squared away as quickly as possible. we can't heed enough that we have more coming today. we have a high tide about 4:27. all that will do is multiply the storm surge later today. we have another round coming today. >> what about people who are still -- still need to be rescued, how is that working? >> there are several search and rescue teams out there. the fish and wildlife and sheriff's office has partnered with our fire department. they have been out rescuing people. people try to take their cars in

spots they shouldn't have been. they were on top of their cars. they rescued those folks. they are doing a great job. i haven't heard any casualties or anything related to this. it's been a very successful trip for them out there to keep them coming. they are patrolling the waterways. we haven't had rain in a while, which is good news for us. it has not started subsiding that much yet. >> good luck to you. crystal river, clearly badly flooded. we are tracking the storm and its impact on the florida gulf coast. more continuing coverage of hurricane idalia right here as it moves up the coast. you are watching "andrea mitchell reports." we will be back in 60 seconds. s. s can feel rough on your skin? for softer clothes that are gentle on your skin, try downy free & gentle downy will soften your clothes without dyes or perfumes. the towel washed with downy is softer, and gentler on your skin. try downy free & gentle.

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preparing for heavy flooding as idalia is moving through georgia, coming up from florida. that's where we find lindsey reiser. are you starting to feel the impact? >> reporter: thanks for having us. we know idalia entered georgia as a category 1 hurricane this morning. some people in the state are without power. they have been experiencing high winds and flash flooding. here in savannah, we had heavy rain this morning. as you can see at the river, we see whitecaps but it's a lull in the storm. we are expecting to get tropical storm force winds this evening. between 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. is what the governor said. we will keep an eye on it. it looks like the strongest winds will be later this evening. >> thank you so much. we will jump to governor ron desantis in florida on what is his assessment. >> there are more than 250,000

accounts that are currently out of power and in need of restoration. as you would imagine, the counties that have the highest percentage of power outages are the counties in the main pathway of the storm. utility workers are actively working to restore power in all affected areas. they have started doing that as soon as it was safe to do so. those restoration efforts are ongoing. we do anticipate you could have -- that these power outage numbers could go higher. the restoration numbers are going to go higher as well. all eight urban search and rescue teams are deployed. our national guard has folks in places like taylor county. they are getting on scene there to do things like clear major pieces of the roads and get

debris that has been knocked around. so there's a lot of moving parts there, kind of at ground zero. we have a national guard unit there. the general will talk more about that. coast guard is active, including with rotary wing assets. florida fish and wildlife has both boats and vehicles en route. florida department of transportation has been conducting cut and toss operations, starting at the southern part of the state as the storm moved through southwest florida, clearing those roads and then moving all the way up north. they are en route to clear all the way up to taylor county. right now, tampa airport is going to reopen for incoming flights at 4:00 p.m., by 3:00 a.m. tomorrow it will be fully reopened. gainesville airport will reopen tonight. tallahassee airport will reopen first thing in the morning. the ports in tampa and manatee are undergoing assessment.concl

will resume operations, assuming all is well, which we anticipate they will be. there are as of now no confirmed fatalities. those fatalities are things that get confirmed by the florida department of law enforcement. we don't have any confirmed fatalities yet. if you have any questions about how things are unfolding in your area, you can go to floridadisaster.org. they will update that with the latest information. we have a really good retail in terms of all the counties, i think other than the big bend proper, the tampa bay area, things are good. leon county is doing well. we are still assessing what is all going on on the ground in the places that had the initial impact. we are probably going to be --

i'm going to try to get down to some of the counties today. we have a lot of people that are going in offering assistance from the state perspective, helping these counties be able to stabilize the situation. for more updates on this, i'm going to bring up kevin guthrie from the florida division of emergency management. >> thank you, governor. the biggest impacted area we have following up on what the governor said is perry. right now, we know we have a couple businesses have caught on fire. a few that have roofs knocked off. maybe potentially one collapse. we are getting some conflicting information on that. we do have crews that are there working hand in hand with taylor county sheriff's office and taylor county fire rescue. that's going on. madison county is another county that has been impacted. they have a lot of debris on the

ground. they have about 99% power outages in that particular county. again, we do have resources heading in that direction. will let the general talk about that. he has one of his task forces heading in that direction. other than that, very specific detail, we continue to search, secure and stabilize areas that we can do that in. most of what we are doing in the big bend area is initial search. i will say this. i know we don't have anybody from the cfo office here. in search and rescue in ft. myers, we were able to clear a lot of houses quickly because of the footprint of ft. myers. in the big bend, you may have two houses that are on a five-mile road. that is going to take a very long time to clear those. we have more than enough assets, more than enough resources to get that done in a timely

manner. but i want to set expectations. some of this is going to take longer than what we experienced with initial search and rescue in ft. myers just because of the landscape. we will have to do a lot of tree cutting and a lot of push emergency access to get into those areas to then do the securing and stabilizing. we are working through all of that. we have maintained communication with all of our counties. we had a couple of 911 centers that went down briefly for about 20, 30 minutes. again, all 911 are answered. local officials are working through and we are supplementing to help them get through calls as quickly as possible. i will reiterate that even though we have 911 calls, there is no one in distress that has not been taken care of. the ones in distress, we got folks to immediately. we have a lot of people that have called 911 saying i'm in my

house. i'm okay. i need help. they are 100% okay. we are going to get to those folks as fast as we can get our emergency access teams into them. >> that's kevin guthrie of the florida emergency management. we will return to that conference in a moment. i want to go to gabe gutierrez. the hurricane first landed there. it was a category 3. there were winds at 125 miles per hour. it was pretty -- really rough there this morning. you have gotten through it. talk to me about what it is now compared to before. >> reporter: we are here just outside of keaton beach. we rode out the storm in perry. we saw extensive tree damage, downed power lines, a collapsed gas station. this is the main road into

keaton beach. behind me you can see the sheriff. first responders heading into this beach and checking to see for any survivors. they are trying right now to see if -- who decided to ride it out and whether they are okay. we are told to hang back for a few moments while the first responders are able to do their job. i can tell you that earlier this morning, when we were in perry, there was extremely powerful winds, well over 100 miles an hour. that was 20 miles inland. you can only imagine just how powerful the wind gusts must have been here at the beach where this powerful storm idalia first made landfall. we are still learning -- we are trying to learn the full extent of the damage here in keaton beach. this was where that eye first made landfall a little earlier this morning. we are hoping to get behind this roadblock. some residents have been trying to come in. this is that main road.

driving in here was very difficult. a short time ago, it was impassable as first responders were cutting through downed trees, trying to be the first ones to reach that beach on the other side of the roadblock. >> gabe, we saw some incredible pictures we were showing on a split screen with you of houses wiped out, the roof cut off. kevin guthrie was saying that unlike ft. myers, it's not as dense, so it takes longer to check each house. there might be two houses along a stretch of five miles. it's going to take them a while, but they will get there eventually. >> reporter: that's exactly right. this is a more rural part of the state. not as heavily populated as we have seen in other hurricanes, like ian. previous storms really includes irma and michael that i have

covered. this is a part of the state of florida that normally doesn't see storms that are just this powerful. earlier this morning, whether i was in perry, the story then was the wind speed. other parts of florida as we have seen -- you have seen the dramatic pictures of the flooding. that's mostly the catastrophic storm surge that we keep hearing about. in perry where i was, there was no storm surge because it was 20 miles inland. the winds were the story there. this part of florida, keaton beach, not only did they get the massive winds, they also got storm surge. we are waiting to learn how much damage there was here at the point of impact, the point of landfall here in florida's big bend region. this is different from so many other storms because, yes, the small bit of good news, this isn't as much of a populated area as perhaps some other parts of the state. but still, if you live here, this is devastating all the same. first responders are going door

to door checking for survivors as we speak. >> we are showing that gas station, just totally wiped out that you drove past in perry. one of the things that's been notable from the briefings that i've been watching the governor all morning and now just now again, they were prepared for this. they seemed to have a lot of utility crews ready to go. it's a fast moving storm. so they were able to begin recovery -- rescue and recovery very quickly, right? >> reporter: yeah, that's right. it's a very different storm than some others we have seen. years ago we covered hurricane harvey in texas and louisiana. that storm hung for a very long time, dumping hour after hour of rain. this one blew through pretty quickly. now it is on to other parts of the country. thankfully, that speed makes it for the people here -- it was in and out. heavy winds for a couple hours or so.

then it moved on. still, even though it moves quickly, it can be devastating, can be catastrophic if you live in a mobile home or an older home that perhaps wasn't built in the last few years. those high winds are just absolutely devastating. to your point about officials here in florida being prepared, florida is very used to big storms. they have been warning people to get out for days here. we spent time in cedar key yesterday. that mayor -- we have been seeing pictures of the storm surge that swamped cedar key. we see emergency responders that are coming down there road and about to cross. you can see -- there's an air boat coming as well. right now, we are looking live at the first responds in the state of florida at the point of landfall. keaton beach, you see first responders bringing in their boats, trying to make sure that they can get to the people that need rescuing at this point.

we are being told to hold back while they run their initial checks. that's why we are waiting at this checkpoint. you can see a massive response unfolding here in keaton beach, the point of landfall of the massive, monstrous hurricane that hit the region that isn't used to it. it seems local officials were prepared. they had been urging people to evacuate for days. they met some resistance. some people didn't want to leave. in cedar key yesterday, the mayor makin a employee for -- making a plea for people to get out. some residents here decided to ride it out. we talked to one earlier, he decided to go to perry at the hotel where we rode out the storm. he was coming back to try and make it back to check on his property. that damage assessment is underway as we speak. you just saw those first responders heading in there. some of the first first responders to get into keaton beach, hours after it made

landfall. >> gabe gutierrez, thank you so much. your experience is invaluable. we appreciate it. now we will go back to governor desantis at the podium. >> it was probably within the hour, within the last 30, 40 minutes. >> this morning, at what time did it become too dangerous for people in the big bend area to evacuate? >> what would you say? >> probably the last evacuations happened between midnight and 2:00 a.m. >> do you have any idea how many people stayed? with ian there was a form families filled out. >> on this particular one, we did door to door because it was a little bit different scenario with less people. florida highway patrol and local sheriff's office agencies had 100 people that stayed. up into taylor county was more

in the 50ish range that was confirmed. i'm sure other people did stay as well. >> would you say that florida -- or tallahassee has dodged a bullet? >> i think if you look -- if we were sitting here last night, we had a track that was bringing the eye maybe into leon county. they shifted that this morning. i would say leon -- this was -- from where we were when it was going there, this is the shift. you go out -- i've been out. there's been rain and wind. there's some debris. nothing, i think, like if that wall would have impacted tallahassee. i think you would have seen significantly more damage. that helped tallahassee. >> is there any bridge damage like we saw during ian, sandoval island? >> i'm going to let jarrett come up. i don't think we identified that. there are in the tampa bay area,

some bridges were closed. some because of water. some because of wind. structurally, i haven't got fly reports they are problematic. closer to ground zero, those bridges are not passable. that's primarily because the water is overflowing. is that accurate? >> that's accurate, governor. we are in the process of doing damage assessments. we haven't seen anything anywhere close to what we saw on sandoval island. we have to wait until the water recedes to find out what's going on. we have not seen any major damage yet. >> have you seen any significant river flooding inland? whether it's -- >> so, short answer is, we are starting to see some reaction. all of this rain is going to have to drain into those basins. usually what happens is we don't see the actual river action for

24, 48, sometimes as much as 72 hours after the fact. the st. johns river is a slow responding river. if you remember back during hurricane ian, that almost took 45 days to correct itself on that particular body of water. it's going to take a little bit of time for them to completely react and then, obviously, go back down. >> the one thing -- the storm moved faster than some of the other ones have moved. some of these things will dump water and they go so slow. this one moved a little bit faster, which is at least when you talk about flooding, is a little bit better than when they are slow. >> is speed the reason -- >> what does it look like for recovery for some of the counties? >> we are in the process of doing -- of course, stabilize, rescue, recovery, whatever needs

to be done right off the bat, power, save lives, all that. that's without saying. then there will be damage assessments to see what all we are looking at in terms of damages in each of the counties. there's going to be debris, of course. that's going to be something that's going to need to be done. the counties are not going to be able to afford that on their own, even with a 75% cost share with the federal government. i would imagine that the state would want to help these fiscally constrained counties. the legislature has wanted to do that. we may be seeking better cost share as well. there's going to be things that are going to need to be taken care of. these are the counties -- they have small budgets. expenses like this are not things they could absorb the way some of our wealthier counties could. >> i saw that there was an oak tree that felt on the governor's

mansion here in tallahassee. are your wife and kids okay? >> we are fine. she called me about 45 minutes ago and told me. it's an ancient oak tree split in half. part of it fell. i don't know if they're going to have to cut down the whole tree. if they do cut down the whole tree, that's just going to be more room for my kids to hit baseballs in, and so in some respects for us, even though the tree was nice, we'll make do and be quite all right. >> can you comment on some of the health care facilities this these smaller counties. did any of them have to close? >> i'll let kevin do -- i've spoken with a number of the main chains who had closed hospitals in the tampa bay area. they're all doing very, very well. most of them are going to be reopening today if they haven't already done that, and of course they have a footprint further up

into the nature coast. you want to talk about -- >> so we did have a couple of facilities and nursing homes that did have to do some evacuations, but they did that as a part of the evacuations that we called for two days ago. to date as of this minute, there have been no reports of any issues insides health and medical industry, whether that's assisted living facilities, skilled nursing facilities, nursing homes or hospitals. everybody is reporting what we would call green and they're good to go and everything's all right. >> do you know give or take how many patients would have helped residents, would have had to be transferred? >> i don't have those numbers right here. we could get with the agency for health care administration and figure out what those numbers actually were. >> talk about the discrepancies between some numbers that are being reported on fatalities and citing fhp and you saying that

there's no -- >> so right, so there's a process for confirmed fatalities that just goes through law enforcement and medical examiners and then they do that. so that has not been done yet where we've had a confirmation. now, i know there's unconfirmed reports those may end up becoming confirmed, and then of course we deal with this in every storm. what is a fatality that is a direct result of the storm versus what would be something where, you know, you have a fatality that's unfortunate but may not necessarily have a causal factor with the storm. for example, in fort myers beach, you know, people, there were fatalities because of that storm surge, no question. well, if you're out the day after the storm and you're picking up debris from a yard and somebody has a fatal heart episode, does that count as a storm-related death. so they always argue these things backwards and forwards. but when there are confirmed fatalities, those fatalities will be put out by the

authorities, but there's just a process that goes through with that. now, the unconfirmed, i think there have been unconfirmed reports of traffic fatalities and that may be storm related, it may not, or was on target in these various parts of the state of florida. okay, we'll have more updates as the day goes on. we probably will end up visiting some of these areas as soon as it's safe to do so, and we'll be assessing on the ground and mobilizing any additional resources as is necessary. thanks. >> governor ron desantis and his department of transportation and emergency management team there saying that so far they have no confirmed fatalities, but he did acknowledge that there have been reports of -- well, he didn't give the number, we had heard earlier two traffic deaths that may or may not be related. so there's a question as to whether that can be attributed to the storm. i want to bring in savannah van johnson, mayor johnson in

savannah, georgia, good to see you again, sir. >> we have to stop meeting like this. >> yes. but tell me about your preparations and what you're experiencing already. has the brunt of the storm begun to hit you all in savannah? >> well, we have and our hearts certainly go out to those, our friends in florida and south georgia that are being impacted. we start off with rain and wind. we know that our impacts will really start coming this afternoon. the conditions here will deteriorate as the day goes on. between 5:00 and 10:00 we're expecting it to be over us, and again, obviously we're very concerned about the wind. we're already under a hurricane warning, a storm surge warning. always very dangerous, low lying land like savannah. >> your governor, governor brian kemp gave an update in the last hour. let me just play part of what he

had to say. >> most of the people across the state of georgia will not feel the impact of this storm, but for those that were in the line of the storm, it is very hard hitting, and we're certainly watching that as it continues to move through the state. we had multiple counties in the affected area that are seeing winds in the 70 to 80 miles per hour and some gusts up to 90. we know by radar it looks like we may potentially have in some areas 9 to 10 inches of rain. the good thing is this is a narrow storm and is very fast-moving, so it's not sitting on us and dumping even more rain than that at one time. >> mayor johnson, do you have all the resources that you need so far for what you anticipate to be this emergency? >> well, so we practice for this all year long. we know that from june to december we have enhanced activity in our environment, so

we prepare for that. we train for that, and so we're okay for the best that we can do. we have to wait until it actually comes, we'll ask our residents to hunker down, ride this out, not to go anywhere they absolutely don't have to, and we'll assess after the storm has passed. as the governor said, it is a fast-moving storm. it is somewhat narrow in scope, but the narrow in scope goes right over savannah. we're very concerned about the impacts as it relates here. there's a king tide expected as well, so we're surrounded by water, so we're also very concerned about the flooding impacts. >> well, we'll be thinking of you and the best of luck as everything heads your way. thank you so much, savannah mayor van johnson. joining us now, we're now going to charleston, south carolina, and mayor john teklenberg,

-- anticipaing there? >> we're expecting our impact mostly overnight. stay home tonight, stay safe, and this will pass in the morning. in fact, normally when a storm passes through you get beautiful weather afterwards, if you look at our forecast for the upcoming labor day weekend, it's going to be beautiful here in charleston, our beautiful historic city, so we're very resilient because like mayor johnson, we're well rehearsed. we've experienced a named storm on average once a year the last eight years, and so i wouldn't say we're experts at this, but we are well-prepared and with the category 1 or tropical storm, we are prepared for the worst, but hoping for the best and thinking of the folks down in florida and lower georgia who are even seeing worse impacts. >> what kind of winds are they telling you to prepare for?

>> so we'll be right in the 70 miles per hour range, gusts this evening, but it should be midnight to 3:00 in the morning, we're hoping everybody will stay out of harm's way. the main concern we've had in charleston from the start was the fact and mayor johnson mentioned this, king tide, and when it happens twice in one month, by the way, it's a blue moon tide. so this week we have blue moon tide, and that confluence of the extra high tide along with the storm, the rain, the wind, particularly when it's pushing water from the atlantic up into charleston harbor is a recipe for flooding. we have flooding and have to close streets even on a king tide when there's no tropical storm. so that's been our main concern all along. >> do you have the equipment that you need and the manpower, person power. >> for this level storm we do.

if this had been a three or four course it would be a whole 'nother matter, but we are well equipped, we've been providing sandbags to our citizens. we've been cleaning drains out. we've been putting pumps in place in strategic locations to help with drainage. we have high water rescue vehicles with our fire department. we're ramped up with personnel both on public safety and maintenance, so we're ready for what comes tonight. you got to watch and see what happens and then respond in the morning. >> the beautiful city of charleston, south carolina, is clearly ready, and wishing you all the best. at least it's going to be the overnight storm mayor john tecklenburg. i want to thank all of our guests and correspondents, our stalwart correspondents who have been out, gabe gutierrez and

jose, of course, and everyone else who has been out in the storm, and that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." follow the show on social media, @mitchellreports, and continuing coverage with chris jansing starts right now. good day, i'm chris jansing, and this is msnbc's continuing live coverage of hurricane idalia. right now it's a category 1 hurricane that has carved a devastating and deadly path across northern florida. now, slamming georgia with winds as high as 85 miles per hour. we are now getting our first look at the damage left behind. these are live pictures from crystal river, the flooding already several miles inland, and it could get worse when high tide hits later today. while there have been two deaths reported, governor desantis just said he cannot confirm that they are directly tied to the storm. he did