products that they produce for sending to the markets not only here in citrus county and across the state of florida but across the country. some of the products end up being shipped all over the world because of the high quality of the things that come out of citrus county. dana: i imagine a storm like this gives them a lot of heart failure as they see what is coming. it does. especially for the fishing industry. it has been disabled for several days now and don t know what it will do to some of the fishing grounds on the west side of the county. the gulf of mexico borders us from the tip of our county on the north end all the way down to the south end. we have some great scallop grounds here. we don t know how that will be impacted. scalloping season continues until sometime a month from now into the latter part of the month of september. we don t know what the storm impact will be on that very fun recreational activity that you get to do in citrus county when
you have blue skies and light winds and all the great things you can enjoy during a typical summer day in florida. dana: sheriff, thank you so much. they are lucky to have you down there and grateful to have you on the show. thank you, dana and bret. thank you for what you do. be safe out there and for folks up north of us we are praying for you. dana: thank you, sir. bret: it is great to talk to authorities and they are in the middle of all this trying to help people out. it is really serious in the back end of the storm, too, as the sheriff talked about. you have a lot of people dying from drowning and accidents that happen after the storm has already passed because this surge water. they have 40 shelters around the state and hopefully people get to safety. dana: look at that video with all the trees that are coming down right there in the middle of the road. it is best to listen to local authorities and if they want you to try to stay home as much as possible or stay in th
county now. one of my colonels that works in the agencies on the west side of the county is sending us photos we are sharing on facebook feed and sending a lot of folks out along u.s. 19 corridor, which is flood zone a in citrus county. a mandatory evacuation zone. while we didn t experience the high winds we would typically get as a storm passes by. the significant nature of this storm that was a category 2 late last night and become a category 3 and worked its way to category 4 a few hours ago before it made landfall up in the big bend area will bring a lot of storm surge potential for us. we re working towards low tide and we ve got very unseasonably high tides right now that have come over parking lots and it s really working its way towards the u.s. 19 corridor. before too long we might see flooding along the flood zone a
people who live here, locals who decided to get away from the town of steinhatchee and get farther away from the river itself to ride out the storm and now they are coming back in for the first time to assess the damage. of course, all of them have been keeping up to date with people who rode out the storm in steinhatchee trying to talk to them on social media and ma am, do you live here? have you seen your house yet? i can t get over there. you will go over to see if you can see it. hopefully it s okay. take care. dana, that s what we re seeing. people coming back to assess the damage for the first time. from what i can see from this vantage point and for some people it won t be good. dana: i have a question. i know looks can be deceiving. the area where you are seems maybe to have come through everything okay. is that your general assessment
janice: not done. ainsley: it is still major hurricane going to impact millions of people. brian: if any state can handle it, been used to it, florida. janice: georgia and south carolina wow. okay. here we go. dana: impact is here. hurricane idalia slams into florida as a category 3 storm. you are looking at perry, florida, floodwaters are moving fast. bill is off today. good morning, bret. bret: this is america s newsroom. this is a big storm, dana. it got to category 4, came