Now i ll see you tomorrow evening. I m kaitlan collins. This is the source hurricane helene is about to slam into florida and i expected to make landfall and just a couple of hours from now, it s now an extremely dangerous category four storm and winds are now up to 140 miles per hour. If it stays this strong, it ll be the strongest storm to ever make landfall in florida s big bend region. That s the area that we re keeping a close eye on. This hour, more than half 1 million people there have already lost power. And forecasters are predicting tonight that the storm surge in some areas could be unsurvivable reaching as high as 20 feet surges and high winds were already the reason for the closures of several major bridges in the tampa area that we saw tonight? officials, there are telling residents to shelter in place, that it is going to get worse and don t go outside. Emergency managers and one florida county are being so blunt with their warnings for those who are in low lying areas a
least 50 miles from the center. and the eye is about 25 miles across. so if you throw in hurricane winds of 50 miles on either side of that, you re talking about 125 miles swath of hurricane force sustained winds. so it s a very large hurricane. richard, one of the things we know about these storms is as the eye shrinks, which it does from time to time, you said it s about 25 miles across, the winds normally strengthen. are we seeing any signs to give us any suggestion about which way that part is going? not right now. both the noaa p-3 aircraft, the plane that we fly down at low altitude right through the teeth of the eye wall as well as the air force c-130 planes, both of those aircraft have indicated
because there s plenty of work to do. i get overwhelmed looking over your shoulder at the work that needs to be done. great story that you re saying but as you look behind you, the amount of work that needs to take place is certainly more than an individual can grasp. reporter: absolutely. it s even bigger than we first thought, drew. the initial estimates of this tornado were that it stretched six miles through the community of joplin. but we drove from one end of where the devastation started to the other today. and it actually was three miles west of here and nine miles east and 12 miles swath of devastation. about twice what the original estimates were, drew. incredible. thanks for that. tonight at 8:00 right here on cnn, a one hour special on this tornado in joplin. in tuscaloosa, alabama, an important part of that story. why? because exactly one month ago an f-5 tornado mowed down a giant section of that city.
on it. we believe there was a fire. we re trying to get details. passengers had to be evacuated. scary moments obviously but apparently there are no injuries. just a few minutes ago we did watch a bus transport passengers from that plane to the delta terminals here in atlanta. we want to bring in on the phone, you were in a hotel that overlooks the runway as i m told. can you tell us exactly what you saw? caller: we were just out on the balcony of our hotel that overlooks the runway and we were just watching planes come in and then after one landed there was a big boom and just a line of smoke and then it looks like it turned off the runway and then the fire got a lot bigger. and then fire trucks went over and they started evacuating everybody. did you see any need for any ambulance or anything like that? caller: a bunch of ambulances and fire trucks went to it. i don t know if they needed them or just because of the fire. okay. thank you so much for that eyewitness a