many of them cut off with no power or water or food. the aircraft carrier abraham lincoln is on en route to assistance. much of florida cannot see the coverage of what happened. power is out to 6.5 million customers. that s a record. now almost a million more in georgia, more still in south carolina. and in south carolina flooding wasn t the only problem. the storm spawned tornadoes along the way. this waterspout spun off the coast of i ll of palms as the tornado was under a tornado warping. starting this saturday morning the storm moved away from cuba and then started its march north, more than 300 miles north up the florida coastline. it covered the entire state. it battered every city and town in its path from the florida keys to jacksonville and the panhandle. and jacksonville, florida is where we start tonight.
nbc s indicated yes beck is there. katy, jackville flar didn t need this. nowhere in florida did. and i know they had a hard time convincing people to evacuate because they re so far north. jacksonville is closer to val dos a, georgia than orlando, florida. that s right, brian. we were talking to folks here and they were saying they were coming from miami to jacksonville to try to get away from this storm. what they didn t predict is that storm surge that has invaded especially the low lying areas. we are right along the st. johns river and this community is filled with water. this is a public park next to me. hard to see at this point, but a public park that was completely submerged a few hours ago. if there is a silver lining for this, it s that there s a tide moving in and out of this neighborhood and right now we are at low tide, so this water is actually lower than it s been probably several hours. sometime around 2:00 a.m. the
it. yeah, there is a cruelty even to the tide cycle in northern and southern florida. after a long day covering this storm yesterday, our great thanks to katy beck for leading us off from jacksonville tonight. this storm as we said, still going tonight. took it time over florida and ended up staying just over 24 hours. how it changed as it moved north from the vantage point of all our correspondents on the ground to cover it every step of the wa way. reporter: i ll tell you, as far as storm wind and rain, this is the worst of the day. reporter: they actually had reinforcements installed to avoid this from happening. they just completely gave way. reporter: we re in fort lauderdale seeing officially the worst of the day so far. the next four hours are expected to bring tons of wind and rain. reporter: directly above me, i m covered. the rain is hitting me wow.
up in the waters of the gulf from this storm. the florida keys are a mess. many cut off with no power, water or food. the aircraft carrier abraham lincoln is on route with assistance. in so many places, the damage is just as bad as we feared during our live coverage yesterday and most of florida can t see the coverage of what happened. power is out to 6.5 million customers. that s a record. now almost 1 million more in georgia, more still in south carolina and in south carolina, flooding wasn t the only problem. the storm spawned tornados along the way. this waterspout spun off the coa coast. starting saturday morning, this storm moved away from cuba and started its march north. more than 300 miles north up the florida coastline. it covered the entire state. it battered every city and town in its path from the florida keys to jacksonville and the