track. where dangerous hurricane ian is heading next. classrooms turned into bedrooms. we visit shelters and speak to families riding out the storm together. my main focus was getting them to safety. o donnell: and remembering legendary cbs newsman, bill plante, who covered more than half a century of history. this is the cbs evening news with norah o donnell, reporting tonight from tampa, florida. o donnell: good evening to our viewers in the west, and thank you for joining us. as we come on the air tonight, the state of florida is being pummeled by hurricane ian. the massive category 4 storm storm made landfall this afternoon with winds at 150 miles per hour. but at this hour, ian is still a dangerous category 3 hurricane. ian ian slammed ashore north of fort myers, with dangerous winds and catastrophic storm surge. tonight hurricane ian is dumping tremendous amounts of rain along the i-4 corridor. ian has already dropped 18 inches of rain. to get a better understan
off of the gulf coast there. we re not going to get a sense of it until tomorrow. but yes, it looks pretty path down in. and we ll be talking about this later in the hour. thanks, chris. and thank you for joining us. hurricane ian continues to create a swath of in made landfall just after 3:00 this afternoon in southwestern florida, near k o connor, a island off of the coast of fort myers. ian came ashore as a category four hurricane with 150 mile per hour winds. just a few miles per hour shy of a category five. only for hurricane stronger than that have made landfall in the united states ever. but it is not just the strength of the storm, it is the size. this is the view of hurricane in from the international space station this afternoon. just showing how massive the storm is. the national river describes in as battering the florida peninsula with tied and winds, and flooding. ian has just now weakened to a category two storm with maximum sustained winds of 105 miles
gulf coast more than five people rescued in charlotte and lee county so far. if you need to be evacuated step out of your front door. the fort meyers fire chief said they conducted 200 water rescues overnight. lee county was the hardest hit. this is a home on fire after the storm. fire crews as you can imagine unable to reach it. this is a neighborhood completely inundated as you can see floodwaters have yet to receive. new video from the lee county sheriff s office confirming the work worse. whole towns have been completely level and mayors giving details about their town out the day. i came here in the mid-70s and was on the police department for 25 years and saw a lot of storms. this is by far the worst storm i have ever witnessed. debris is everywhere. my yard looks like a war zone. as of this hour there is some places that are impossible to reach by road. this is the only bridge destroyed in multiple spots as a result of hurricane ian. this is fort meyers bea
hour. the category 4 storm is currently barreling across southwest florida with winds up to 150 miles per hour. more than 1.5 million people in the state are currently without power, and that number is growing. but the most imminent and life-threatening concern is the storm surge. some areas seeing 12 to 18 feet. to give you an idea of just how severe that is, a meteorologist for the national hurricane center says no one alive has seen 12 feet of storm surge in that area, and many areas could take years to recover. just take a look at this surge today. the dangers are a reality for many who chose to hunker down and wait out the storm despite the evacuation orders. take a look at what family told nbc affiliate wbbh as their house flooded. so this is ft. myers beach on cutlass drive. it s four of us. four of us? on cutlass drive. and you re on the second floor already? yeah. six of us in here. do you have do you have a roof? 15 feet of water now. there s 15 fe
to be seen. there are programs that fema has. but it is not going to be commensurate to having had a policy. this is an issue we will have to d deal with. we deal with this. when you have this about the homeowners policy will cover certain things, but the flood policy covers probably the most significant risk for most homeowners in florida given the risk of flooding that we have in so many parts of our state. so we re sensitive to that. there is, obviously, going to be some folks that are going to be in need of support and relief and we are, obviously, going to work as best we can. i will say that people have been asking about some of the overall homeowners insurance with like citizens. citizens i think right now between 6 and 7 billion of surplus. their modelling for this was that they would still have between 4 and 5 billion in surplus. so they view themselves as being able to weather this. individual carriers have to go through a stress test to be able to have their polici