good day, everyone. i m andrea mitchell in washington. president biden will speak this afternoon about the federal government s coordination with leaders in georgia, south carolina and, of course, hurricane ravaged florida. we expect to hear from ron desantis later this hour. let s begin with nbc s kathy park in charleston, south carolina. residents are used to flooding in that historic district. this looks like it s going to be an unprecedented event. reporter: yeah. good afternoon. that s absolutely right. hurricane ian is still barrelling this way. we are getting slammed with these heavy bands of rain and wind. every so often we get slammed with wind gusts you see right now. this is the pattern that we have been experiencing all morning long. i want to show you what s happening behind me. that s the ashley river you are seeing behind me. there s sawgrass, and it s almost covered by the water. it s high tide. that s the big concern throughout the day. the combination of
into the hub for all of the search and rescue efforts and the ever growing relief effort here to help those in those northern bahamian eyes of grand abaco, treasure key and grand bahama. the rescue efforts you can hear the helicopters probably going over me, we do know that those coast guard choppers are working nonstop, trying to reach those inaccessible areas as you mentioned to bring the critically injured here, but what we ve seen become the growing need or the people who may not necessarily be injured to the point where they need to be immediately evacuated, but those folks who simply have nowhere else to go on those hard-hit islands who are now growing dehydrated by the day, many not having a real meal since before dorian struck and that is why relief efforts are starting to at least try to gain a foothold in those hard-hit areas. we know the airports have been reopened in marsh harbor, and in treasure key, on the abacos islands. we know the planes loaded with supplies are expect
chesky have been in the bahamas talking to prime minister and other residents about the aftermath as we ve talked about how slowly the storm is moving. it sat on top of the bahamas. and we re just reporter: sorry, we had a communication issue here. i can tell you we re standing at nassau airport. coast guard choppers, a team of four are working hand in hand, getting those people off abaco island. we know the first place they made contact was specifically a clinic that was used as a shelter in marsh harbor. they were able to bring several pregnant women and several people who were suffering from medical ailments from that clinic here to nassau where they were taken to a nearby hospital where they re receiving much needed medical care.
barrier island with your family, now is really the time to make sure that you have everything you need because we know that later on this afternoon, this evening, and into tomorrow morning, we ll start getting the bad weather coming here that is now, as al said, hitting miami, hitting the west palm beach area coming to the more northeastern part of florida. chris? thanks so much, mariana. i want to turn to morgan chesky who is in the bahamas where we saw the worst of the storm. morgan? we re here in nassau because the weather conditions have finally cleared up, we re getting a true sense of the search and rescue mission for abaco island. four coast guard choppers are making nonstop runs going to abaco, picking up the injured and bringing them back here where they can get in these ambulances and get much-needed medical treatment. one of the officials described the injuries as what you d expect. trauma to the body. cuts, broken bones in some instances, and we re also told
to the east, abaco island. conditions have finally improved to the coast guard choppers have medevaced 19 people. six in critical condition. rescue efforts will be ongoing. right now there is an emergency management plane flying over abaco island to see just how bad the devastation is. the prime minister just in the few glimpses he has seen in the videos coming in, he said it was catastrophic and unprecedented. and he says in my lifetime he has never seen a storm this powerful wreak so much havoc. and the mission today is going to be how can we help the people in need, home to about 5,000 to 6,000 people? only a few hundred chose to evacuate ahead of hurricane dorian in the low-lying areas. and a testament to this storm s power is when it brought the storm surge of 20 feet it covered a lot of low-lying