much. let s go to tampa with anderson cooper. reporter: we talked a lot, john, about first responders, and we re now starting to hear about some of the things they have to respond to during the nighttime hours and even today they ll be responding to a lot of calls. i want to have you meet some folks from coral springs, florida which is north of fort lauderdale. it was a dispatcher, and assistant fire chief all join me now. lou, you got a call. the call came in it was about a woman who was giving birth, what was the call? well, yeah, it s, you know, the life of 911 dispatcher is 24/7, 365 and i want to say thanks for having us on. during a crisis like this you never know what s going to happen. usually it s not positive, this one is very pleasant, because of electric emergency in a negative way, it was a positive, we were going to bring life into the
will take a long time. it s so big, so many places, you ve said it exactly correctly. we re looking at the entire state of florida. we had 20 million people in the state of florida. you know, five million customers without power. probably going to be larger numbers as we head north. they only have so many crews. they re calling in crews, trust me, from all over the united states. i remember we had crews here from canada looking at it, going, you know, here i am to help florida. i remember after super dome sandy, he said, great to have you here, the recovery effort has begun already in this state. allison. john, we re obviously not just covering this morning the after the math of irma, but also, today, marks the 16th anniversary of 9/11. so about four minutes from now the country will observe a moment of silence and we will take you to washington and the pentagon from that, when we come right back. kevin, meet your father.
thought they were going to escape the worst of the storm has had historic storm surge. we had someone on, they told us they haven t seen water like they have in the river there since the 18 hundreds. now, john, you re in another place, miami, where it was not suppose to be the worst and yet the duration and the intensity caught everybody by surprise, including your legs. reporter: yeah. i appreciate that, chris. your hair held up well in the storm out in naples, as well. look, this went on for such a long time here in miami as the wind bent around the peninsula here. it did push the water into the streets where i was standing. there was four feet of water. yesterday it turned into the brickled river with water gushing down the street and into the first floor is here some of these buildings. this is the area right now in miami now covered with mud and
sources here that they lost 10 lives in this storm. so we saw what it did there. we saw it was similar to the keys. we re going to have to check. we ll take off after john s we ll all be in the field today and we ll report that, john. reporter: yeah, chris, i think assessing is the key word anderson just used it right now. so many people driving by and trying to get a sense of what the damage was, when they ll be able to come back. you know, miami not hit by the eye wall, but still hit by hurricane irma, you know, such a relentless storm. well, you re all doing a wonderful job, i can say. thank you so much for all information and being there in the eye of the storm, literally there for us, cnn s coverage will continue after this quick break. stay with cnn.
haven t poured out here. and light rain, some winds. but, you know, obviously, it could have been a lot worse and i think, you know, everybody here has got to be thankful. this is not a direct hit from cat 3 storm, which is what it was here, john. people are driving around with looks of relief on their face today, no question about that, anderson. joining me now to figure out what happened next and how the response will go, former director and emergency manager here in the state of florida. david, what we didn t necessarily see we knew was happening was enormous movement of resource bs ever the storm, there s going to be more even starting right now. absolutely. it s really in two phases, life saving, moving resources down to help the locals to do what they can. the other is life sustaining. one of the secrets here in florida is state logistic warehouse, 300 truckloads of water shs that s about close to