state of emergency tonight, it comes as florida is dealing with catastrophic damage from in, at least 17 people dead tonight. there are fears that that number will go up. cnn s chief climate correspondent is bill weir, and he joins me now. bill, hello once again to you. you say this is some of the worst damage you ve ever seen in your career. covering these disasters. tell us what you saw? well, by that i mean, don, there are certain sort of moments and scenes in storms that are just burned into your brain, katrina for a lot of the reasons that we all know. that was such a man made disaster in so many ways, same with maria in puerto rico. you think about those comedians. michael which took apart the panhandle. but i will always remember, i will equate even with what i saw today in st. james city. that s on pine island. and this is a tight little community, a lot of manufactured homes, mobile homes, people whose vote might be worth more than their home, and all of it complet
all smashed together. definitely not supposed to be here, carried here by the storm along with other pieces of the dock. there s a couple of oars scattered around, other miscellaneous pieces of boats. and then, if you just go over here, i want to show you something really interesting. this right here, this is another boat, of course on that side, this is the boat line. if you follow this boats line it goes all the way over here, it took, this is a piece of dock, it s still attached to it stop. this boat carried its own dark through the wind through the storm surge over to dry land. so, if you come with me, i get my photographer to come over here, great up, as we walk down here, i just want you to know we re only looking to talk with some of the boat owners, they apparently live on some of these boats or lived on them. and are completely distraught, because this was their home, this was their livelihood like so many other people, in this storm they lost everything they