and find ourselves a place where we ll still experience heavy rain, winds and surge over there but nothing like this. we have to get out of here. it is just not safe for us. we ll lose vehicles and potentially other items unspeakable things. i hope most people here have evacuated and we are about to do the same as you see the water coming in right now, bill. bill: we ll be in contact with you and your crew. thank you for that in fort myers. more now with dana. dana: people in orlando are bracing to make their final preparations before the hurricane strikes. that s where we find fox weather correspondent brandi campbell. tell us what s going on there. good morning, dana. it s an interesting situation here. a lot of people have been retreating to orlando to get safe as ian will move across florida. this area will also see the impact from this hurricane. right now take a look behind me, it doesn t look like much is
you can see on screen right as the hurricane swirls and it is just devastated cuba. all 11 million people there without power. some of the video from over the top of the hurricane. i was surprised at how much lightning was. bill: look at the rotation of the storm. the eye is easy to spot. the very little breakdown in the wall of that eye and that s not what you want to see this close to land. dana: joining is now is tampa fire rescue chief. how do you assess the situation as we re at 9:45 today? the current conditions in tampa is a little rain. overcast. we re experiencing a little wind. probably 15, 20 miles per hour. we know it will pick up later. we are prepared. with the shift of the hurricane, we are are still keeping our
governor desantis will give an update on the hurricane. bearing down on the southwest coast of florida. really monster hurricane. this is a hurricane that has strengthened. it is category 4 plus. may be a category 5 by the time it hits the florida coast. we ve been in contact all morning with a lot of the local officials in places like charlotte andly county and they understand this will be a major, major impact. we re asked about some of the evacuations and basically what they report to me is that, you know, we were talking to folks in charlotte. most of the people in those vulnerable areas did leave. not everybody did. and that was provided the mandatory, some did not do that. so they are keeping tabs on kind of where you still have people in very vulnerable locations. but you have a category 5 storm
to 18 feet. so i m urging everyone to follow the instructions and be careful. after the fact. so that s all i have. i appreciate the partnership. that s the very latest from fema headquarters in washington, d.c. i want to go to john morales for nbc 6 in south florida. john, thank you for being with us this morning. give us the broad picture of what is happening right now and what we can expect in the state of florida. ian is a monster hurricane. it has 35-mile wide eye. that has spread those hurricane winds, those damaging winds over a larger area. the eye wall is approaching the
is tracking the storm s path. how does this one measure up? his for i can. the southwest coastline of florida will be changed forever. we talk about the fact it is a strong category 4 potentially category 5. even if we don t reach category 5 status it doesn t matter. the storm surge has been up to 18 feet in the fort myers area. that s new information from the national hurricane center we are getting updates every hour. a few hours before landfall and you can see the storm is still strengthening. it is really incredible how it has gotten its act together over the last several hours going from not much of a hurricane to almost a category 5. so that s a big deal. the fact that we have a strengthening storm as it approaches landfall is very dangerous. we re 75 miles away from the potential landfall. we think somewhere between sarasota, florida, and fort myers. and the heaviest rain bands are