was a tough one even for them. when we were with the team on the ground, we saw what is behind the scenes when you see those death toll numbers, those tragic milestones, those grim numbers going up, we watched as a team went to a home where they believed there might have been a deceased 90-year-old female. they brought in a human remains dog. they have two types of dogs. life dogs and human remains dogs. in this case, a dog named maui came through, helped narrow the search area. the dog barks when it believes that it smells the odor of potentially a body. the most chilling part of the day was when that dog barked, there was a team of more than a dozen people there and there was silence. there was silence as they then began the work. it wasn t the sort of commotion that you would imagine.
is covering this in ft. myers beach. rescue missions are into the thousands already. what are officials telling you right now that they are up against? reporter: chris, we got a firsthand look at exactly what they re dealing with here. what you see behind me, this bit of damage here, multiple that over and over and over again. and that is what we witnessed when we imbedded with a fema team, florida task force 2, the same group, by the way, that was at surfside and that disaster. so this team has seen a lot. but this is a scale that even to them is overwhelming. we saw just how much they have to comb through to look for signs of life. also, chris, signs of death. it s something we saw as a team had to look for a potential deceased individual in one of the homes we watched them bring in what they call a human remains dog to try to narrow the area where they might be able to find this individual.
effort. it is a herculean effort. we watched as these workers went door to door looking for signs of life and also, unfortunately, you hear a helicopter above me hoping they are going to save some individuals. but they are also looking for signs of death. there are a lot of missing people here. we did witness, as they did their preliminary search, trying to see what they could find, if anyone needed rescuing. we watched as they brought in a human remains dog. it s a dog that s been trained to smell death and to alert these fema teams and help narrow the search area. they suspected potentially a 90-year-old female that was missing at this residence might be deceased there. they brought in this canine. and i witnessed some of the difficult, the heartbreaking moments as they waited to see