this damaging wind line treat it like a line of severe thunderstorms south to north. i think the tree damage potential is really high here. so if you haven t lost power here north of i-4 you are probably going to lose it here tonight. it is just rocking and rolling and we have to watch out for the tornado threat, too. we have the right front quadrant of the storm so it is in these bands that come in off the ocean. you get these quick spin ups and that is what gets us in trouble with the brief tornadoes that we have had through the day today in much of florida. put that map, can you show me where sarasota is on there. we will go south from the area we have been talking about. we will bring that up right now. south of tampa. tampa, braydenton. sarasota most of the storm has passed sarasota at this point. i want to go to stephanie standing by in sarasota. what is the situation there right now?
category 2 is not as bad as category 4, and they re going to want to get out of the house. they have cabin fever. they ve been in the house for 24 hours. they re going to want to come outside and see what s going on. we re asking for folks to stay put. we re also asking for folks not to call 911 unless it is an emergency. don t call if your power is out. don t call if you have questions about whether things are open. call only in the event of an emergency. we want to make sure we get to those folks that have had property damage as a result of fallen trees, and there have been some. frankly we re concerned about flooding at this point. we want to make sure we can get out and assess that damage and make sure folks don t get stuck in their cars and that it s safe to travel. the mayor of sarasota, our thoughts are with you. we ll be with you all night as we cover the storm. let s go over to steve sauce that before we wrap up this hour. you don t want to be deceived just because of the lo
hurricane irma is churning up with devastating category 2 force and sustained winds of 100 miles per hour. the eye of the storm passing along southwestern florida slamming naples on its way towards cities like fort myers, tampa, sarasota. at one point during the day water levels in naples increased by seven feet in just 90 minutes. this as residents in those cities all the way up to the state s capital of tallahassee are bracing for the storm. we have been covering this for a long time. the storm isn t even half way done through florida. flooding has begun in miami as surging storm waters has pushed into the financial district. flood waters on major streets throughout the city are
what those 911 calls have largely been and what is your situation as you know it with respect to power right now in sarasota? well, we are at about half of fpl s power, about 130,000 are without power here throughout sarasota county. that s about half of what fpl serves here in our region. so we have had a lot of sporadic outages, and people have been on and off. but we re a lot better than we could be. here i am, and we have power, and we have friends that have been out of power all day. so, you know, it differs from street to street. mayor, because of communication outages in different places, a lot of people are depending on the things they hear on national television to call their people in florida and tell them what the latest is. what is your message to the people of sarasota now as they go to sleep tonight? they ll wake up in the morning. there s a temptation after the cabin fever of being inside to get out there and explore. what do you want people to know? well, first of
elevated. so now you re just it s ratcheting up. mike, take a second. you need a second? reporter: yeah. i m good. it s always great when we guys in the studio tell them, hey, take it easy. relax. we do that all the time because we re trying to make sure our reporters are staying safe out there, but that is exhausting, exhausting work to be out there in danger. there s a mental anxiety to it, and the actual physical anxiety of being blown away by those winds. we ll continue to cover this storm all the way through the night and through tomorrow. shelly freeland joins me by phone right now. she is the mayor of sarasota, florida. down here as you can see, the worst of the storm is beyond sarasota. mayor, in fact are you feeling any substantial wind and rain right now? oh, yes, absolutely. we can hear the wind howling. i can hear it at my home here in sarasota. the rain is pounding, and the wind is howling.