let anyone know that if they have a boat, get people. our coverage of hurricane ian continues now with anderson cooper 360. the sheriff here in lee county told reporters about the afternoon destruction that is everywhere tonight. no words to describe what we saw and are seeing in the present tense, which is important to note, because this is an ongoing disaster in florida and potentially in coastal carolina. hurricane in yes, it is a hurricane again taste is taking ada. this is what it did to fort myers beach. is the most impressive storm ever to hit this part of florida. here is our first look at the area from above. it is far from the only look at the destruction that can be revealed from the air. in struct the barrier islands hard severing the bridge to pine island, as you can see here, along with the santa bell causeway which is impassable tonight. it also did considerable damage to marinas up and down the coast, pushing even larger boat around like toys. florida
of the florida coast of that this is sanibel island, an island decimated by hurricane ian. right now there s no way to get help in to sanibel. the only bridge that connected the island to the mainland, it s a long causeway, it s caved in. so there s no way to get on or off the island unless you travel by boat. and that s been incredibly difficult for anyone to do. and that loss right now spans the florida coast. i ll show you cape coral. our bill weir was here today. this is a picture he took. you can see home after home totally destroyed and flooded. the ones that are still standing, you can see siding ripped off. at one point ian s winds were 155 miles an hour. we re going to have much more from bill weir in a moment. not far from where he took those images, ft. myers beach, striking images of what is left. not much. the beach community 48 hours ago looked like that. now, take a look at this. estero boulevard, 24 hours later. a restaurant called the whale surrounded by debr
storms. have you seen anything like this? never. i ve been here since 2000 and i ve never seen anything close to this, including charlie. what do you do now? nothing. so, there is one road in and one wrote out about 3 miles down the road. there s a big misconception that the bridge is out. i just want to clarify, the bridge is not out. but the road that leads to the bridge has been washed away. we cannot get back to the mainland. the bridge to the right is also out. we cannot go to the island. we are trapped in a 5 mi.b2 yeah. chip, please stay safe. if you need to get out, i hope you will be able to. i know just talk to the admiral and coast guard and they re working hard to get everybody out. thank you so much for everything. thank you so much.