have our fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth with us. rick this has been rough so far. really has. three things, the storm surge that broke records in fort myers and naples as well by a lot by the way, three feet higher than we had ever seen from any kind of storm surge in the past. that obviously causing all that flooding right along the immediate coast. then we have the winds, actual verified winds of 140 miles an hour in cape corral. a lot of this wind was really prolonged because it s such a slow-moving storm and then you have the rainfall. because it s so slow we get rainfall that just continues to batter the state and we ll see big time inland flooding concerns. this made land fall in the exact same space that hurricane charlie came on shore in 2004 which is amazing to have two massive hurricanes or two strong hurricanes like this come on shore in the exact same spot, hard to imagine, because it came on so strong, it s still a category 2 hurricane after having
refuges that are there. one of our major wildlife hospitals is on sanibel island in southwest florida. so pure devastation right now. let s talk about rescue and relief efforts. i assume there s going to be people that need to be rescued in fort myers, likely naples, likely sarasota. tell me about those efforts and when will they likely start? well, one of the concerns is the evacuation orders may not have been residents who railroad not in the direct coastal region. southwest florida, we ve been through hurricanes before and through the last several ones, even hurricane ian irma citizens were able to hunker down and ride through the storm. the storm surge warning is where the devastation is. that storm surge turned out to be real. those evacuation operations look like they re going to begin tomorrow morning when first responders can get out and it s safe. the winds are still high.
sarasota, and now people that are living in tampa, saint pete, that area, you are being told at this hour to shelter in place, those of you that were not evacuated joining us now with much more on what his state is now facing is florida senator marco rubio is with us. senator first our prayers, our thoughts are with our fellow americans, our floridian friends, sorry you re all going through this. this is a rough one. what do you know especially about southwest florida, what happened naples, fort myers, et cetera, sarasota? well, i think the reporting that preceded me on the air kind of describes the images we re going to begin to see tomorrow. we know that the storm surge is very significant, historic really and i think we re all going to be shocked by some of the images that are going to emerge. one of the water gauges that measures in fort myers was high an hour ago and rapidly rising so there s still a threat there and even as we re dealing with that, we recognize this storm is
and do the right thing. we just have to keep everybody safe and our rescuers will get to you. sean: senator rick scott thank you. joining us in sarasota charles watson is with us. charles what s going on there? sarasota got hit pretty hard today. yeah, sean. you know, i was going to tell you that conditions seemed to be getting favorable as ian is moving more north and east, but, that said, we are still seeing some pretty gusty wind here, that s certainly contributing to a lot of debris that s being blown around and power outages. and speaking of power, fortunately we are near hospitals. so we believe we re on the same grid. so we haven t had the misfortune of losing power today, but that is certainly not the case for most people in sarasota county. as we p, three-quarters of the county are without power right now. and that s something that folks are probably going to have to
because the friction pulled it in. so what happens is, this is going to get to the atlantic coast and it s going to get there, i think tomorrow afternoon. it looks like it s coming quicker, a little bit quicker to movement all right? once it gets there it s all bets off off for north. the national hurricane center has issued the hurricane watch from northeast florida to south carolina. remember we were on last night saying i m really concerned about this. sean: let me get your focus for one second here if i can. all right. sean: so it comes in from naples, north of naples pretty much the ground zero where this landed, which is fort myers, north of that sarasota then tampa. okay. so it s coming in from the west coast of florida. it then is slightly turning left headed right up to orlando, as we mentioned earlier, and it s picking up steam the whole time, still category, hurricane category winds with it. so strong winds, still dangerous for people. then it makes its way more