have made a difference? plus how is russia going to respond now that ukraine is taking back land that putin wants to say is his. and what kind of roller coaster ride are we in for as the supreme court kicks off its new term today. this is what we re watching at this hour. thank you for being here. i m kate bolduan. the dem toll from hurricane ian is rising still in florida. as rescuers are now working through some of the hardest hit areas. at least 76 people have died in the state from this monster storm. governor ron desantis said more than 1600 rescues have been conducted in parts of southwest and central florida. more than half of those people killed are in one county. lee county. and now county officials are facing questions about how long they waited to order a mandatory evacuation, despite repeated forecasts of the life-threatening storm projections from the national hurricane center. i m going to speak with a top fo official in just a moment. still over 600,000 are w
have made a difference? plus how is russia going to respond now that ukraine is taking back land that putin wants to say is his. and what kind of roller coaster ride are we in for as the supreme court kicks off its new term today. this is what we re watching at this hour. thank you for being here. i m kate bolduan. the dem toll from hurricane ian is rising still in florida. as rescuers are now working through some of the hardest hit areas. at least 76 people have died in the state from this monster storm. governor ron desantis said more than 1600 rescues have been conducted in parts of southwest and central florida. more than half of those people killed are in one county. lee county. and now county officials are facing questions about how long they waited to order a mandatory evacuation, despite repeated forecasts of the life-threatening storm projections from the national
worst. so, you know, i think the answer to that everybody did the best that they could with the information they have and once we knew what was happening there was still plenty of opportunity for people to make the decision. shelters were open immediately with coordination with lee school district. so people could get off the island. with their pets, with their belongings that they could get in their car. so there was that opportunity. and i think complacency just because we haven t had something, i don t think the world has seen something like this for a while. this is catastrophic. so i think we did the best that we could, everybody did. and we re really in communication with the county, again with the state, and right now we re working together to get it done to get us all put back together. we couldn t go back but we are going to go forward. that is four sure. the need of coordination and working together is so great and not only helping to get people off the island in the immedi
unthinkable decision of saving themselves or potentially getting swept away while trying to save their friend. one of them telling the washington post, quote, we tried to get him but we couldn t. i feel awful about it. but i think if we kept trying we three would have all been washed away. just one of so many tragedies here in south florida, kate. and we ll likely here more stories similar to this one. 76 fatalities in the state of florida. that number likely to climb as we just heard from the county commissioner that officials are now accessing areas that were previously cut off because of the storm. the devastation here very difficult to put into words, kate. absolutely. and the fear is that under all of that massive heartbreaking debris, that we ve seen and the devastated areas that they ll find more people who do not make it through. thank you for being there. and president biden is on his way to hurricane ravaged
sating wait a minute, we don t know this was coming. this was 4 to 7 until 11:00 on tuesday and then all of a sudden it went to 8 to 12 and got worse and worse and we know what happened. that is true. it is a lot to be learned. every time we sigh one of the storms, that is for sure. thank you so much. joining me now on the phone is cecil pendergrass, the chairman of the lee county board of county commissioners. you could hear me, mr. chairman? yes, kate. thank you. thank you so much for spending time with me. first off you could describe for me the progress that has made in getting help to people. how is it going into lee county right now? it is begun here all my life and worked many hurricanes throughout my career and law enforcement now with this county commissioner, it is unbelievable the amount of resources between the state and federal and local agencies. day five today is, we started rebuilding a bridge today with f dot here on one of our barrier islands that was cut of