canada and all around the world. i m kim bruun hoover. we begin with breaking news with what some call a once in a half century extreme weather happening right now in florida as we speak up to 20 inches of rain has fallen in parts of south florida in the past few hours with more in the forecast. well, that led to a flash flood emergency, the highest possible level of flood warning. so what you see here is the ford lauderdale hollywood international airport, which is partly underwater and closed until at least noon on thursday , the city of fort lauderdale has activated its emergency operations center and plans to issue a local state of emergency. officials also say airboats and high water vehicles will join rescue operations in the coming hours. for the latest, we go to meteorologist separately, ritz here in atlanta, who s keeping an eye on all of this? obviously relief folks in florida used to storms , but you know what we re seeing now so unusual. take us through what they
canada and all around the world. i m kimberly, who were coming up this hour on cnn newsroom historic rainfall in south florida leads to serious flooding power outages closing of the fort lauderdale international airport will tell you when the extreme weather will move out of the area, plus a late night ruling by a federal appeals court on the suspension of the abortion inducing drug. we ll have details, and president biden celebrates his family roots during his three day visit ireland just ahead we ll go live to dublin for a preview of today s events. live from atlanta. this is cnn newsroom with kim bruun huber. and we begin with what some call a once and a half century extreme weather event happening right now in florida, up to 20 inches of rain has fallen in parts of south florida the past few hours with more in the forecast. well that led to a flash water emergency, the highest possible level of flood warning. so what you re seeing here is the ford lauderdale hollywood int
feet high, could plunge into the neighborhood. it s just one of the many gulf coast communities still suffering from catastrophic flooding. it s been quite an operation. some of our major thoroughfares have become impassable even as the water recedes, there s washouts. so we have a long, long recovery period. all of this following hurricane ian s destructiv ive h across florida. it slammed into the gulf coast as a category 4 hurricane. entire towns leveled. florida governor ron desantis is expected to give an update on the situation later on in this hour. we ll take that for you live. let s send it down to boris sanchez with our coverage from ft. myers, florida. boris? fred, you just broke the news that we have been dreading all day. initially, when we got up this morning, officials had told us that the death toll from hurricane ian was hanging at around 45 fatalities, and you just broke the news, 64 people killed by hurricane ian here in the state of florida and potent
officials in florida now say at least 66 people are confirmed dead, more than half the fatalities are here amid the widespread devastation in lee county, home to fort myers. the sheriff there says there have been more than 600 rescues in that county alone. near sarasota police officers evacuated a neighborhood early this morning as a levee appeared in danger of collapsing. that threat, a 15-foot wall of water crashing into the neighborhood. just a short time ago the state reopened a 12-mile stretch of interstate 75 in both directions bet an over flowing river has forced a closure there. governor desantis said overflowing lakes and rivers have also created havoc. there s also other areas where we may expect additional flooding. i was touring central florida with some of the aerial tours. there was more standing water in central florida than there was in southwest florida from the imp immuno impact of the storm serurge. i want to bring in jim acosta in fort myers, one of th
collier or county, florida, where 911 services are down as search and rescue efforts continue across the state. rachel: search and rescue efforts still underway across the state as 30 people have been confirmed dead with 27 deaths in florida alone. more than 1 million people many florida still without power. here with us today is representative greg steube, he s from the house foreign affairs committee, and, of course, he is from florida. what do you know about this leveesome because we ve been getting conflicting reports, congressman. so i talked to the sheriff and, unfortunately, he couldn t join you because he could give you an update. if they were trying, northport from police and the sarasota sheriff s department has been trying to get people out on boats and and airboats, and they were actually using that intersate area to go back and forth and bring individuals from their homes to the interstate because that was the only way to get them in and out either by airboat o