if you're in the southwest florida counties, you need to be sheltering in place. don't forget that ian will produce hurricane-strength winds and massive floodings not just where it makes the initial land fall, but throughout the state of florida so central and northeast florida will also feel impacts. now while most people in the evacuations did leave, there were some that chose to stay. i was speaking with the sheriff down in charlotte county and while most people did leave, they had a small number of people that just wanted to hunker down and at the end of the day, that's a decision they made knowing they had the ability to evacuate and knowing what the stakes were. nevertheless, safety, life safety, operations will commence as soon as its safe to be able to identify people who maybe in harm's way and in need of assistance and kevin will say -- i'll say a little bit about that but kevin will say more and we'll hear from fwc about their efforts that they have staged and ready to go. if you are still in southwest florida, stay inside until the storm passes. it may

. >> first responders from the local, state, and federal level dissented on southwest florida. the coast guard has been performing rescue missions on the barrier islands consistently since the wee hours of the morning. we have florida guard access on the ground participating in effort and we have our teams come together even while the winds were going. they wanted to get in there on the ground across alligator alley and they are performing rescue efforts again starting with those barrier islands but also look at the places that have the most inland flooding. these operations are ongoing. in total there is 28 large helicopters between the national guard and coast guard that are already performing these active rescue missions and there will be more air assets brought in as the day goes on. we've also been working with hospitals overnight who have been on generator power. we are in a process of evacuating two healthcare facilities to safer locations north. we also are surging more medical personnel into the area. as of 6 a.m. this morning, they have to .2 million power outages but

they were on the ground from jacksonville to southwest florida in the afternoon. they've been working to assess that situation. we also have florida national guard personnel standing by to help the army corps if they need it. but at the end of the day, you know, that is something that will be very, very critical to be able to get that back, and it may require more of a rebuild, maybe it requires some more short-term mediation. they're going through that, but that's clearly a top priority, and we're thankful that fema and the army corps are there helping out. obviously, 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 floridadisaster.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 are expecting more responses this morning. cell phone connectivity is sparse in some areas and sometimes it's easier to get out a text message, so the process has been streamline

. >> during this storm, if you are in the southwest florida counties you need to be sheltering in place. don't forget that ian will produce hurricane strength winds and massive flooding, not just where it makes the initial landfall, but throughout the state of florida so central and northeast florida will also feel impacts. most people in the evacuations did leave, there were some that chose to stay. i was speaking with the sheriff down in charlotte county, and while most people did leave, they had some that wanted to hunker down. and at the end of the day, a decision they made knowing they had the ability to evacuate and knowing what the stakes were. nevertheless, safety, life safety operations will commence as soon as it's safe to be able to identify people who may be in harm's way and who are in need of assistance, and kevin will say -- i'll say a little about that, but kevin will say more, and fwc, about their efforts they have staged and ready to go. if you are in southwest florida, stay inside until the storm passes. it may appear to be calm at some point, you may just be in the e

the extent of flooding left by ian in southwest florida. want to show you a resort on an island west of fort myers. the first picture shows a pool and several nearby houses north shortly before the storm. the pool is completely submerged. a third photo taken a few hours later it is unrecognizable. houses are totally submerged. that's what they were going through in a 3-hour period from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon. >> dana: by tomorrow we'll have photographs from central florida as well. also tropical storm ian battering eastern florida. they expect to see strong winds and heavy rain. we are live in st. petersburg. what are you seeing today, lauren? >> thankfully this area having a little sigh of relief today after they were for the most part spared the worst of ian. we do have quite a few power lines down here. they say the police say there are a number of traffic lights that are out but thankfully this area doesn't have that much damage. talking with the owners of the hotel we're at here, the island grand you can feel the reli

. -- into southwest florida. th this fuel, the state of florida set up six fuel depots to fully support all first response efforts. we think the remaining ports in the state of florida will open between sometime tomorrow and sometime on saturday. there's been a massive amount of supplies staged, we are bringing more into the region, more ambulances, more generators, more food, water, and ice, to full-service mechanical shops to help repair and maintain emergency vehicles, which they and rugged conditions when you're going through water and others, bringing in more tarps and kits for parents of infants and toddlers to give them 10 days' worth of support, and bringing in more high water ladd ers. there are 2.6 million approximately reported power outages throughout the state of florida. that was anticipated. so far, compared to this morning, 200,000 accounts have been restored in southwest florida. 62,000 in sarasota. 33,000 in manatee. 12000 and charlotte. 44,000 in hillsboro. the pre-staging for this was over 42,0

southwest florida, that includes naples and fort myers and other communities hit by this hurricane. orida congressman byron donalds is with us. i know you've been putting out videos today, you've been all over this today. you've been in contact with the governor, with our senators. you guys got walloped today. how bad? >> it's been devastating sean. the storm surge has been anywhere from as little as three feet to as high as 16, 17 feet. downtown naples, marco island, ba neat a beach, fort myers beach, sanibel cap teva islands, cape corral, fort myers all got a major storm surge, we've never seen anything like this in southwest florida, the damage has been devastating to southwest florida. >> sean: byron you know i know the area as well, i had a condo in naples for a long time. let's talk about sanibel. i heard sanibel got hit particularly hard cap teva same thing. what do you know about what's happened in those areas? >> just complete devastation. we won't fully know until tomorrow the full impacts but sanibel from what i've tab has been seeing easily six feet to ten feet to 12 feet

right now it's southwest florida into central florida. it stops before you get up into st. johns. i don't think flagler or volusia are in it either. flagler, volusia, they had big impacts too. that's something we'll work with them on. we think that will be helpful for the residents of this are why. fuel, by and large, has done really well even with the ports having to shut down because of the storm. you have fuel flowing in. it was good to see these gas stations open in southwest florida. that's something that we've had storms in the past where people were without fuel for weeks or a long time and that's a pain. it makes it harder for people to get back. so we appreciate the staengs that's been paid on that. and then in terms of like telecom service, it is getting better in southwest florida. they are putting more towers in because of the towers that had been destroyed. but i would say that, you know, all the companies i think now are allowing the other consumers to other customers to roam on their network. so that makes it very helpful. so if you're down there, don't try to do wi

it will work its way from southwest florida to the central part of our state. it will have major impact in places like osceola and orange county. it is now projected to exit the state of florida after passing through volusia county, it will go into the atlantic ocean, probably gain strength and run into some other states. once it gets out of florida, it will be taking up a lot of water and that will impact northeast florida, st. john's river,, do ball county. -- duvall county. major category for impact, the storm surge will be severe, a water and flooding for slow-moving storms. very severe impact in southwest florida, but those impacts will continue all through the state. this will not leave the state of florida until sometime friday morning. this is a lot of nasty weather we are in store for the next few days. kevin guthrie is here, i will let kevin come up. >> appreciate your continued leadership on this response to hurricane ian. hurricane ian is currently bringing hurricane force winds and rain to the keys and south florida. our meteorologist just mentioned

thank you. >>> up next, a man who knows southwest florida better than anyone i know. a veteran meteorologist who was there during hurricane charlie and was there for decades and is now riding out hurricane ian he's live with us on all that he esex >>> as ian finally exits southwest florida it's bringing back memories of the last crushing storm to hit the area, hurricane charlie. it was a monster 2004 charlie made landfall just west of fort myers as a cat 4 storm. this video shows what it left behind the storm destroyed entire neighborhoods. officials say the hurricane directly killed 10 people in florida. cost an estimated $14 billion in damages. that's about 21 billion in today's dollars. but hurricane ian dwarfs charlie in size. as of this morning ian's eye had grown to about 40 miles wide so big the entirety of hurricane charlie would fit inside that eye. that's according to a meteorologist with the weather channel. in fact, ian was twice as wide as the florida peninsula to see it on the cover of the miami herald this morning. ian made landfall at almost the exact

i was happy to see the trafficflowing in southwest florida . there's structural problems on the bridges leading to sanibel and pine island but largely they were clearing operations. traffic is flowing in southwest floridaprobably better than would have been anticipated so soon after such major hurricanes . they've also inspected and reopened 100 bridges across the state and this includes 67 high priority bridges affected and reopened in lee, charlotte, sarasota and manatee counties . pine island, sanibel, those will be rebuild efforts. the sanibel bridge has breaks in multiple parts. most held up well. it was where you had it on some of the sandbars and those basically got washed out from underneath. in the meantime kevin can talk about this. they're going to be running barges to bring more heavy equipment on to the islands to help with the response so first responders that have been there by and large coming into error, you have some equipment but their traveling light or just to be able to go and get people as quickly as possible. there have

many of those are being set up in southwest florida. i've spoke with ceos of at&t mobile there been damages a lot of the infrastructure has weathered the storm fairly well. there may need to be repairs, they feel good about getting up service. and i know some people do have service in those areas. we were able to see that. fdot and more than 1200 personnel on the ground. i'm happy to report the road situation is by and large really good. i was just talking with kevin before he came out here, if we were here yesterday at like noon thinking that what the road situation would look like, i think we thought there would have been a way, way more roads blocked by debris. of course we did have the sanibel there are issues but there's also a lot of roads where the traffic is flowing on i-75 without a problem. most of the other roads are doing really well. sunshine skyway bridge has reopened. we were happy to see that. most school districts are at this it will be reopening either friday or monday. obviously lee and some of those areas may be a li

our weather folks are saying it's the worst case scenario for southwest florida and storm surge and rescues happening in north florida because of all the rain they'll get. >> this is the cone of uncertainty so to speak where we don't know who will get the hardest by this. it looks like it will make landfall between 2:00 and 4:00 this afternoon. we'll be watching that really closely on store tore -- "the story." they had two near run ins with ir ma and the other one in 1993. this area has been largely protected from many of the storms over the decades. this one looks like it is squarely headed towards tampa and south of tampa, sarasota for the landfall. looks like tampa hopefully will skirt the worst of what was thought that could happen there because it's so low lying. but really the whole state is in a situation where they have to be really careful. >> bill: i agree with you on that especially the middle part of the state. we'll talk about this storm tomorrow, the day after. it is going to -- it may drift back out over part of the atlanta ocean and georgia and may parts of north carolina a

after kevin called them i think at like 3:00 in the morning, and they were on the ground in southwest florida until yesterday in the afternoon and they've been work to go assess that situation and we also have florida national guard to help the army corps of engineers if they need it and that will be something to be very, very critical to be able to get that back and it may require more of a rebuild. maybe it will require more short-term remediation and that's clearly a top priority and we're thankful that fema pan the army corps are there helping out. we have, obviously, 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 and over 10,000 have responded and all 10,000 say they were safe and sent the first alert last night and are expecting more responses this morning. cell phone connectivity, sometimes it's easier to get out a text message, so, the process has been streamlined. there's now a stand alone site to report your location, so if y

my house is gone. >> gillian: after leaving a path of destruction across southwest florida, ian, a tropical storm, is packing a punch as it makes its way north. jonathan joins us from atlantic beach, florida. what are you seeing out there this hour? >> hi, gillian. well, we have been keeping a close watch on this berm over here. what you see is what normally would be a pedestrian walkway, a sand walkway in between two natural dunes, but yesterday they brought in heavy equipment to shore it up with sand, trying to keep the heavy surf from spilling over. but periodically see a large wave come and a small amount of water, a relatively small amount of water spill over the berm. not enough to create flooding in this coastal community yet, but it gives you a sense of why local officials are keeping a nervous eye on the shoreline. as the latest path, the projected path of the storm looks like it's going to carry it out a little further into the atlantic. local officials believe that the threat of flooding from rain is a little bit less than it was earlier, but their main concern is going to be sto

the farther inland that you go, you know, in southwest florida, on the coast, you have every sort of threat you need to worry about. storm surge the biggest. some people come to orlando as sort of a safe haven, but it's not totally safe, because you stull have gusts of wind and still have flash flooding, up to 24 inches expected in orlando. you heard governor desantis say, almost like the storm will make its way across i-4, where fororlando is in the center of. take a listen to the national hurricane center. so yeah, the national hurricane center is saying the same thing, that this storm is expected to move across the state, the next 24 hours. really important here, you heard senator rubio talking about the threat to nursing homes. again, i was in fort myers for hurricane irma, and the threat is not over once the storm hits-certain area. it takes days, even more than a week. it took days for people in nursing homes, some of them passed away after hurricane irma, because the generators didn't work, something that florida officials are making sure doesn't happen this time around. liste

that will be able to respond over to southwest florida. boat, vehicle assets, water assets and air assets. and the u.s. coast guard is now stage 4 cutters. they also have shallow draft vessels to provide search and rescue assistants to the flooded areas. there are over 30,000 linemen staged and ready for power restoration efforts across the state of florida. that includes linemen across all of our major utilities. and a lot of these linemen are coming from out-of-state. this is major, major effort. of course, the storm has to pass for the ability of them to get in and access what they need to access. but that's going to be a priority and kevin and his team are going to be working hard on that. i want to thank the 26 states that have sent support to us during this time including tennessee, virginia, montana louisiana, new york, colorado, indiana, new jersey, and georgia. we very much appreciate the assistance. and as this storm hits, we have got massive amounts of assets that are staged, but we are also discussing about ways where we can get

in decades the strongest on the southwest florida coast ever, leaving residents stranded and homes with nobody to rescue them we're tracking where the monster storm is now and where it's headed in coverage from across the region it's midnight on the east coast, 9:00 p.m. in the west. i'm shepard smith. this is the news on cnbc >>> hurricane ian is now making land fall. with winds of 155 miles per hour that is just shy of a category five. >> the storm is incredibly dangerous. it's life-threatening. >> this may be the best depiction i've ever seen of what storm surge actually looks and feels like. >> didn't expect it to be this bad here. >> we're getting hammered right now. these are some of the strongest winds we've seen. >> three hours earlier, there were cars lined up on the right and left now look at it. >> it is going to continue to move through the state through much of tomorrow, and there's going to continue to be a number of adverse effects. >>> also tonight, the urgent warning to americans still in russia >>> ambush in philadelphia, the deadly attack on high school football playe

it is all focused on the southwest florida and fort myers area. counties, charlotte, sarasota, issued curfews because of the threat, especially under the cover of dark with just the amount of water that we saw in areas like fort myers beach just devastating, homes, picking up vehicles and boats in some cases, flooding businesses, the effects have been unimaginable, unrecognizable even. i can tell you, so many in tampa bay are -- were on guard, ready, so many people listened to evacuation orders, they got out expecting things to be worse, i'm sure they feel lucky, seeing our friends a few hours south of us what they are dealing with this morning. >> carley: nicole valdez, thank you, high tide is 5:45 this morning, more water to come along the coast, the last thing all the areas need. bring in tom potter, from naples, florida, riding out the storm with his family. he joins us by phone, his power is out. you are 50 miles south of fort myers, which bore the brunt of the storm. how are things where you are right now? >> good morning, carley and todd, t

consider the center of the storm is in southwest, florida.e are in the northeastern corridor of the state and so this hurricane is really announcing its arrival well in advance in this area. the main concerns here are flooding. both from storm surge but also from the heavy rains. people here remember hurricane erma back in 2017. which caused severe flooding in portions of downtown jacksonville, and other parts of duval county. and so the mayor urging residents in low lying areas who experience flooding back in 2017 to take this storm very seriously. jesse? >> jesse: all right. thanks, jonathan. let's go over to chief meteorologist rick reichmuth at the fox news weather center. all right? been here the whole hour, wrap it up. >> rick: power outages are climbing now at about 1.6 million households. everywhere you see that red about 75% at least to the people without power right now. we are in the dark. hopefully they can get some of that power restored back tonight. going to take a long time for that to weaken. hurricane warnings in effect stil

let's listen in. >> from the local, state, federal level, descended on southwest florida. the barrier islands consistently since the wee hours of the morning. we have florida guard assets on the ground participating in efforts, and we have our teams who -- they got there even while the winds were going. they wanted to get in there, get on the ground across alligator alley. and they are performing rescue efforts, again, starting with those barrier islands, but also looking at the places that had the most inland flooding, and these operations are ongoing. in total, there's 28 large mostly chinooks and black hawks, helicopters, between the national guard and coast guard that are already performing these active rescue missions, and there will be more air assets brought in as the day goes on. we've also been working with hospitals overnight who have been on generator power. we're in the process of evacuating two health care facilities. we also are getting more medical personnel into the area. as of 6:00 a.m. this morning, we have 2.02 million reported power outages, but outside

the radar showing hurricane on on the left hand side of your screen and nearing landfall in southwest florida. right now, we understand the storm could make landfall the eye of the storm within the next hour or so. the eye is just about 20 miles west of fort myers and punta gorda, florida. theresa beginning to come down and stop signs are flying in the ford myers area. we'll continue to follow this story for you and bring you the very latest swing out to wall street now because look, we haven't seen numbers like this in a while. wall street is rallying toward its first gain and more than a week dow jones is up almost two full percentage point gain right at 29,700 plus gaining 566 points s and p is just over that 2% gain. nasdaq is up by more than 2% as well. new at noon. governor newsom is in san francisco this afternoon where he's helping to take action against our state's housing crisis. the governor as well as state, local and housing and labor leaders at the future site of an affordable housing development in the city's richmond district, governor, newsom signed a bill package to build mo

they were in southwest florida from jacksonville by early this afternoon.y're helping to diagnose and hopefully be able to remedy that. but that's going to be something that's very, very important for the county to get fixed. in the meantime, we're assisting health care facilities to provide working water because they need that to be able to take care of their patients. we're shuttling water from lakeland into health care facilities. right now there are 20 trucks en route with 60,000 gallons of water. and i think they have been able to fix some of the water. one of the three hospitals has been able to fix the water problem there. so that's good news. port tampa, port everglades, the fuel is flowing in to some of our major ports, so you're seeing a lot of fuel flowing throughout the state. more than 330,000 gallons of fuel have already been moved in to southwest florida. i actually saw a couple of the gas stations open in the ft. myers area when we were there today. with this fuel, the state of florida set up six fuel depo to say support all efforts, and we

it's past port charlotte and moved inland along the southwest coast of florida. the winds are starting to come down a little bit, but we're still seeing really dangerous storm surge along the southwest coast of florida. we're seeing the hurricane force winds spread inland and they're going to continue to spread inland across central florida tnight, reaching places like orlando, so, we're going to have really dangerous conditions overnight, in addition to the really heavy rainfall that's going to develop across florida tonight and on thursday. >> you mentioned the storm surge. you warned of catastrophic surge, 8 to 12 feet possible in some places, even more. we've seen the images now, cars disappearing under the sea water. homes destroyed. families trapped. this was a really serious situation. it's the kind of situation you cannot survive if you don't heed the warnings. >> yeah, that's very true. we were seeing -- expecting storm surge of 12 to 18 feet above ground level, so, that's really not survivable in these areas along the southwest coast of florida. those wa

southwest florida, obviously we have been through storms before. hurricane irma the most recent one, so now the key thing is, number one, people being safe, staying in their leaving, and number 2, doing assessments as quickly as we can so aid necessary for southwest florida comes in so we can restore life as quickly as possible. >> sandra: that's the thing. we are still waiting for official landfall here and once that happens it's going to be quite some time for authorities to be able to really get in there for search and rescue efforts and obviously to assess the overall damage. as it always is the case with hurricanes. but you are looking at one of the most significant we have seen in recent history, congressman. >> you are absolutely correct. we are already getting the reporting from some of our emergency offices back home of the level of storm surge that they are seeing currently. the concern right now is what that looks like over the next hour, hour and a half as we continue to go into high tide and then you see some of the back side of that s

cocoa beach, florida, as we are covering the path of now tropical storm ian who made landfall in southwest floridaegory 5 hurricane in the past 24 hours. and moments ago, florida governor ron desantis said that lee county, florida, is in a, quote, difficult situation. for more, let's bring in the sheriff of that county, carmine marceno. do you know anything at this point about fatalities in your county? >> i can tell you it's been real rough and we eastern in a difficult scenario. we tracked the storm by second, by minute, by hour, unpredictable and fierce. it came through, a strong cat 4, two miles an hour under a cat 5, and it was very slow moving. it hit us really hard and now we're finally getting to the point of assessment. >> do you know anything about casualties at this point? i'm seeing reports the situation out of your county is dire. >> it's rough. right now we have multiple agencies from all over assisting us. a lot of times we have calls for 911 that we can't even access people because the bridges are compromised or the water level is way too high. so it's also so early to tell, i don'

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

he says his community is praying for southwest florida. >> all in this together. shomari stone, thanks. adam, that storm surge, wow. and just relentless, this ian. >> yeah, it's because winds were able to strengthen back up as the center of circulation was over the atlantic waters but now that it's inland, we are going to see this storm meet its demise thankfully but still very large. the widespread stead rain from columbia, south carolina, all the way up toward the jersey shore and even though the precipitation is a little more spotty along the coasts of north carolina, within some of these bands that we've seen making their way onshore there can be some embedded tornadoes that we'll need to watch out for as we head through the evening hours dealing with the heavy rainfall along the carolina coast already between 3 and 6 inches of rain have fallen some of these numbers are going to continue to go up as we head into the overnight hours but the worst of the storm was at landfill shutes folly island, 92 miles per hour winyah bay, closer to where it made landfill had

there are as much as we're focused on southwest florida very important when you have a storm of this i think at landfall it's going to be behind only the labor day hurricane, hurricane andrew, hurricane michael in terms of intensity. i think we're going to end up seeing that. it may end up being a category 5 but at a minimum, it going to be a very strong category 4 that will rank as one of the top five hurricanes to ever hit the florida peninsula so that damage is on going. it's very, very important but the fact is, there's going to be damage throughout the whole state and people in other parts of the state be prepared for some impacts and you are seeing counties in different parts of the state issue evacuation orders, clay county in northeast florida, which we do anticipate some major, major flooding events in fortnortheast florida. the pokfolks familiar with the johns river know you'll see this. clay county has mandatory evacuations of low lying areas. flagler county issued mandatory e v evacuations of the barrier islands and nassau issued evacuation orders for low lying areas. st.

>> and the population shift in southwest florida so telling there, rob, thank you for sharing. and thanks to you and your crew during this hurricane. our thanks to rob, ginger, victor, the entire team in the storm zone. and we'll have more here in just a moment. >>> but we do turn to the other major news this thursday night and the stunning turn in the war in ukraine. vladimir putin now on the eve of a major speech, expected to formally annex four occupied areas of ukraine. and what paved the way? those referendums the u.s. calls a sham. those alarming images, pro-russian soldiers armed with assault rifles going door-to-door to collect ballots in eastern ukraine. here's our chief foreign correspondent ian pannell in ukraine tonight. >> reporter: tonight, just days after we saw russian forces with assault rifles going door-to-door, ordering people to vote in russian-occupied ukraine, vladimir putin poised to take those results and illegally declare those areas parts of russia. a formal signing ceremony takes place behind the walls of the kremlin tomorrow. the annexation is stoki

what we are saying today in southwest florida is the aftermath of that. joining me now craig fuchsia, he's a former fema administrator under the emblem administration, and a state director in the state of florida, so he knows a thing or two about the aftermath of a hurricane in that state. first of all craig your personal experience, just assessing the scope of the damage, what's your initial assessment? >> well, the way i've been describing it, this is southwest florida's hurricane andrew. it's gonna change a lot of things. when you think about hurricane andrea, as a big force of change, the way that state response to disasters but also the generation of statewide building cuts. i think what we're gonna see coming out of southwest florida and looking at the damages, look at what the water did, what the storm surge did is hopefully as we rebuild we won't build back the way it was. we will build it for the future and will build it for the risk that these storms are not once in a lifetime events but will be more frequent. >> andrew was in 92, that hit south

the time has run out and why i'm so scared and the prayers need to be said for this portion of southwest florida. >> harris: a couple of things, correction from me. it is flagler, i struggled with that. i apologize. 270,000 people in florida now without electrical power. even as the winds, the outer bands are moving in from hurricane ian, it is coming in with a fury. last quick question. you said not much difference between a cat four and cat five. does it matter in terms of how long it takes the intensity of those winds to die down? >> we are going to see the storm weaken in the next 12 to 24 hours but still be intact because we have a hurricane warning in orlando. we are still expecting hurricane-force winds well inland and to the atlantic side of florida up toward the georgia area. we still have hurricane watches and advisories in those areas. we expect the storm to hold together in the next 12 to 24 hours. the catastrophic damage we're expecting is going to be along the coast. >> harris: water. >> absolutely. >> harris: we can hide from the wind but you have to run from the water. we'll chec

a hurricane in a water log in southwest florida. streets and buildings completely flooded, as you can see here. power knocked out to two million people. and one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the united states . the hurricane making landfall wednesday afternoon near jocasta. a protected barrier island just west of fort myers in the hours since landfall in have moved inland, hurricane force winds likely to be felt well into central florida. yeah, thanks again for sticking with us right here on fox. whether i'm local customer. >> and i'm jim enah. thank you for joining us and a special welcome to those watching on fox news channel. well, the 2:00 a.m. advisory is in mike lindell, still a category one hurricane. so no major changes there, although and continues to shift and land continues to weaken just a bit, right? >> not necessarily under that threshold. of a category one hurricane just yet. usually if it's if we see maximum sustained winds at or below seventy five miles per hour, it would then be classified as a tropi

he mentioned that he was heading down to the southwest of florida.a gorda, just a little east of where steve harrigan is reporting. so he is en route and we'll see him and the first lady. >> dana: he wanted to assess the damage himself and get a feel for what's going on on the ground. he will brief at 1:45 p.m.enter let's go to ashley webster in pinellas park, florida. >> listening to steve harrigan's report remarkable. you were asking him about the emotions there. the emotions here further up the coast from fort myers and up say we got lucky. tampa, st. petersburg was looking like it could take a direct hit. the storm now moved further south and into the fort myers area. i'm in a typical neighborhood pinellas park, a suburb of st. pe petersburg. this is what we're seeing. a big oak tree came down. florida had a lot of rain before hurricane ian turned up on the scene. the root system has been saturated. so it didn't take much as far as winds to topple these things over. that's exactly what happened here. thankfully it fell toward the street and not t

we saw those images of cars jamming onto roadways as residents fled southwest florida to try to escape hurricane ian, but now, and forgive me, there's a siren, now with that rain and more rain and wind expected to move through central florida, many of those people who evacuated are now forced to h hunker down and ride out the storm here in orlando. i spoke to them here in our hotel, many of them with pets, all of them with cherished belongings, when they left their homes to try to get away from the storm that will meet them here. i spoke with the mayor here, i asked him, how are you making sure that floridians are taking this storm seriously? he said, because the hurricane season has been so quiet so far, there's no fatigue. this is their first real storm of the season and as you can see from the very empty roads behind me, many people seem to be taking it seriously. >> janai norman, thank you. >> our team coverage and we'll check back in with ginger later here. >>> to the other major news this wednesday night, the u.s. urging americans to leave russia immediately. warning that those w

i'll work with anybody who wants to help the people of southwest florida and throughout our state. >> tucker: amen. that's the spirit. governor ron desantis of florida, thank you very much for taking the time. appreciate it. >> thanks. >> tucker: so when the sun comes up tomorrow, part of that state is going to look different from the way it did this morning. we'll have that. but tonight we're going to continue to monitor what hurricane ian is doing as it sweeps across the peninsula. what's interesting is how little time it took for political ghouls to make political points about a humanitarian disaster like hurricane ian. they just jumped right in. vote for us. this will never happen again, because it turns out they control the weather. we've got details just ahead. hi, i'm karen. i lost 41 pounds with golo and i've kept it off for a full year. i've been dieting for decades. with golo, i can enjoy my life. i don't feel like i'm restricted, i feel like i'm just living my life. >> tucker: this is a fox news alert. hurricane ian as we've told you has crushed the state of florida, more t

history soaked southwest florida, tearing apart structures and stranding people in their homes. you're watching "fox and friends first"s, i'm todd piro. >> carley: i'm carley shimkus. storm surge is a major threat across the state. residents are urged to stay inside. our team is on the ground, crews mobilize before sunrise and senior meteorologist is here tracking ian in new york city. >> todd: phil keating, where we begin our coverage in st. petersburg, we got the latest update the hurricane has been downgraded to a tropical storm, what are you seeing right now? >> good morning, had u.s. coast guard helicopter land across the water at tampa general, now flying off, they have a real busy day doing search and rescue operations all day, still unknown whether they have numerous people that need to be rescued or whether the day will actually be better than they feared. here in tampa right now issue most people are still sleeping after a night of heavy pounding rain and wind, but for the most part, the bulk of the storm right now, not raining here issue mostly moved east by now, slam

small hours of the morning, first responders from the local state and federal level descended on southwest floridae florida guard assets on the ground participating in efforts and we have our usar teams who got going while the winds were going and they are performing rescue efforts starting with barrier islands but looking at places that had the most inland flooding in these operations. in total, there are 28 large, mostly black guard and chinook helicopters performing missions and there will be more air assets brought in as the day goes on. we've also been working with hospitals overnight, we've been on generator power, we've been in the process of evacuating to health care facilities to safer locations in the north and are bringing more medical personnel into the area. as of 6am we have 2.02 million reported power outages but outside of southwest florida we might have additional or —— additional outages. there are 1.5 million outages in seven southwest florida counties. lee and charlotte are basically off the grid at this point. sarasota has 250,000 without power, hillsborough 222,000, similar i

in southwest florida, this is a lesson from irma. they have people that are calling leave behind teams. so when the storm passes, their job is to clear the runway asks make sure we can resume air operations as quickly as possible. there's going to be a need to bring in things like food and water via the aircraft. so you want to have the runways up and running. there's going to be things going into that and it's going make a big difference. we have 5,000 guardsmen. we have 2,000 from other states. they have been talking about search and rescue teams. there are five of them ready go. our florida fish and wildlife kobs vags commission placed their special operations group in broward county. that's high water vehicle, shallow draft boats and helicopters that are ready for immediate deployment once it is safe to do so. we now have total throughout the state we've got over 40,000 personnel line, linemen, and associated personnel that are involved with restoration of electrical services and power services that are stationed in the state of

made landfall as we mentioned in southwest florida about 3 o 05 eastern time. s 150 miles per hour turned off power for hundreds of thousands of people maybe a million at this point. charles watson is in sarasota, florida this evening. good evening, charles. >> good evening, bret. i can tell you we are not experiencing the same leveling of winds as our friends further south that are closer to the eye of hurricane ian but no doubt about it the whipped be here in sarasota is still ferocious. you take a look all around us, and you just see large tree limbs down. we have seen a big debris being thrown all over the place. that's on top of the unrelenting rain that has fallen here all day long. when everything is all said and done, they are expecting 5 to # inches of rain. when you are talking about that much rainfall in such a short amount of time, you have got to think about the saturated ground and the possibility of some of these large trees toppling over, possibly on people's homes, certainly concerning if they stuck around to ride this storm out and possibly bre

we are focused on southwest florida, which is where we saw the worst of the storm in their history. but we also have to pay attention to northeastern florida and these coastal areas that are very vulnerable to storm surge and heavy rain, which is what is happening right now. >> harris: and the governor was talking about how much rivers and lakes and things that are in areas around places like orlando and as you move on to jacksonville. we talk about things that take 31/2 to 51/2 hours to drive to on a good day causing a lot of rising water for people to watch out for as the rain pome else them right now. any way they will adjust this category scale the way they did the scale for hurricanes to take into effect not just the wind and the rain but the surge capability and the massive size? >> that's a good question. if you look back to hurricane katrina. at one point it was a category 5 at its strongest. it rapidly intensified in the gulf of mexico and made its approach to louisiana and mississippi it weakened to a category 3. a 30-foot storm surge that doesn't quantify for the category

real important your device already here how those plans in place if you're in southwest florida. the time is to be safe and be where you are and of the places, you know, central part of the state, northwest, even the east coast of florida with you some storm surge and winds as this takes the time to move across the state slow. it's going to take 24 hours or so once it makes landfall to make to the other side of the state across the peninsula. such waiver hours of of rainfall, 24 hour of winds pushing water. we already heard it, administrator criswell we talked about this for years, and it's true. water we have to talk about the water. 90% of adults in this tropical system comes from the water. the storm surge, the rain. not just on the coast but also in once we have to talk about it. life-threatening can devastating storm surge forecast. this is brand information over the last hour or so. think about some of these values. longboat to inglewood six to te. inglewood to bonita beach 12 to 18 feet storm surge. that's above ground. that's up your pant leg. that's a lot of water. it's d

now we saw the massive destruction that this caused in southwest florida. the concern in central florida is for historic flooding. some good samaritans jumped into action rescuing an elderly man trapped in his car in rising floodwaters. scenes like these somewhat common as ian roared into southwest florida with a vengeance as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the u.s. this morning ian is still churning its way across the state after making landfall yesterday as a category-four hurricane with 150 mile-per-hour winds. the streets and the sea became one and the same across the region, like in this neighborhood near naples. >> it's been that surge that has been the biggest issue and the flooding that has resulted as a result of that. and some areas, we think it hit 12 feet. >> reporter: in tampa strong gusts sent this traffic light crashing to the ground. at its peak, the hurricane knocked out power for some two million people. even with the lights out, this hotel remained open for those escaping the storm. >> i just pulled over, pulled in. no reservat

florida. the orlando area which is also seeing record flooding as ian goes in from the southwest scraping acrossll of florida. it is now ready to create another path of destruction further north. much more ahead. stay with us. learn momore at deere.com becocoming a morning person starts the night before with new neuriva relax and sleep. it has l-theanine to help me relax from daily stress. us, shoden ashwagandha for quality sleep. so i can wake up refreshed. neuriva think bigger. president biden signed the inflation reduction act in law this afternoon. ok, so what exactly does it mean for you? out of pocket costs for drugs will be capped. for seniors, insulin will be just $35. families will save $2,400 on health care premiums. energy costs, down an average of $1,800 a year for families. and it's paid for by making the biggest corporations pay what they owe. president biden's bill doesn't fix everything, but it will save your family money. liz, you nerd, cough if you're in here! shh! i took mucinex dm for my phlegmy cough. what about rob's dry cough? works on that too, and lasts 12 hours. 12 hour