they re great people, beautiful state. you know about their football team? bill: a little bit. dana: governor desantis will give a update any moment now and bring it live. florida is bracing for what could be a once in a century storm. bill: the current storm track shows landfall sometime on thursday, maybe in tampa. if that were a direct hit, it would be the first major storm to hit tampa in more than 100 years. dana: forecasters are predicting storm sturge. people are boarding up homes and businesses. the amount of water may simply be too much to overcome. bill: here is what we know. governor desantis declared a state of emergency. tampa s international airport will shut down at 5:00 east coast time. dana: evacuation orders affecting hundreds of thousands of people. folks there say supplies are running low. shelves are totally empty. people are starting to panic. it is crazy now. people are crazy, all the flights are insane. there is no flights. i would ho
what we re learning about that call. and the intensifying war of words between the u.s. and russia. top u.s. officials warning vladimir putin of catastrophic consequences just days after the russian leader issued a thinly veiled nuclear threat. all that playing out as outrage builds forcing hundreds of thousands of reservists into combat. the growing desperation leading to violence at an enlistment center. we begin with the threat from hurricane ian. we just got an update on its track and intensity. sam brock is in tampa, florida, and metrologist bill karins has a look at what we can expect. first to you, sam. i understand a mandatory evacuation is being called for the county where you are. what can you tell us? reporter: the threat is starting to feel a whole lot more real. right now for residents of this county in tampa, we re in tampa, hillsboro county is 1.5 million people. we found out that mandatory evacuations have been issued for portions of the county, zones a
the most recent information that i have, 15 hospitals evacuated, and that amounts to about roughly 350 patients. it s interesting. i, of course, you guys have been following the track, you know, it was going to be maybe north florida and then tampa, one of the worst case scenario, it has gone down. my view on that, if you are in the community it s worse case for you so you don t use those. tampa, i spoke with the ceo of tampa general and they have a system they can stand 10, 15 feet of storm surge. so they can keep the patients there. a number of the hospital systems have done that in the low-lying airs. i think particularly in tampa area, we had a lot of special needs evacuations i don t
0 from the shoreline to the back bays and also to rivers inland. so, know your high tides. we are looking at the images, increasingly dire. stay inside as the storm approaches and wreaks havoc, pray for the charlotte county community and the rest of florida as we toss it over to america reports. john: any moment now we are expecting an update from florida governor ron desantis as the eyewall of hurricane ian begins to move on shore bringing with it the potential for catastrophic damage. hello, john roberts in washington. sandra, welcome back. sandra: good to be with you, sandra smith in new york. america reports, a quickly developing situation, ian expected to make landfall between 2 and 4:00 p.m. right now packing top winds of 155 miles an hour. that is just a couple miles shy of a category 5 hurricane. john: when you get that high it does not make much of a difference. forecasters warning of the storm surge could be as high as 18 feet as the eyewall comes on shore. sand
counties who worked very hard to execute their plans. kevin will talk a little bit more from the de mperspective but we have had 500 requests for assistance from our counties. the state has fulfilled 466. some others are on the way and some will be fulfilled. they just can t be fulfilled until the storm actually hits. we mentioned sending medical professionals to hillsborough county special needs shelters and another 120 to surrounding counties. we do have our logistical staging area in polk county and we ll have additional staging later today. 300 ambulances supporting special needs evacuations have been deployed. hundreds of generators and pumps staged in the tampa area and pre-landfall food and water has been stageed for tampa bay region. now as the track has moved a little bit more to where you have potentially greater