reporter: it made landfall near navar beach, causing widespread flooding throughout the area. this is highway 98 that goes along the coast in the florida panhandle. and what s going on here is that the ocean, the gulf of mexico is breaching the road. reporter: three people died in the aftermath of the storm. this is very, very similar now. i was telling you to hurricane opal in 95. opal made it up to 155 mile an hour winds. reporter: hurricane opal hit the panhandle ten years before dennis, making landfall just east of pensacola. the deadly storm hit land as a category 3 with 144 mile per hour winds. more than 100 miles of florida s gulf coast virtually destroyed from the winds and rain. there were at least nine fatalities blamed on the storm. in 2004, the year before dennis, four major storms struck
along the coast in the florida panhandle. and what s going on here is that the ocean, the gulf of mexico, is breaching the roads. reporter: three people died in the aftermath of the storm. this is very similar to hurricane opal in 95. opal made it up to 150-mile-an-hour winds. reporter: hurricane opal hit the panhandle ten years before dennis making landfall just east of pensacola. the deadly storm hit land as a category 3. more than 100 miles of florida s gulf coast virtually destroyed from the winds and rain. there were at least nine fatalities blamed on the storm. in 2004, four major storms struck the state of florida within the span of six weeks. hurricane charlie, frances, ivan
right now it looks like we have just a couple of small issues for damage, roofs here and there, small wall that has collapsed. but other than that, most of it is minor debris, trees and things like that. not very much flooding. we don t have too much in the way of power lines or phone lines in the road but we are completely out of power on the island. so that s about 6,000 residents. bill: you are about on the underbelly of the storm, is that right, michael, the southern end of it? yes, that s correct. bill: do you think there might have been a note of optimism being at that angle when the storm hit land? most definitely. we really haven t to date faced a whole lot of major rain or
it it gets to the hands of the people of puerto rico. all right. the department of defense now has more than 6400 personnel on the ground helping with the relief efforts. 14,000 fema officials as well. millions set to be soaked by the remnants of nate as it treks norths this morning. but parts of the southeast are a dark, soggy mess after the storm hit land as a hurricane on sunday. thousands of people left without power still across the gulf. mississippi, alabama, florida, all taking the brunt of nate. what a big difference, though, a little bit of time makes. we re looking at two different images on your screen. on the left what mobile looked like 24 hours ago, on the right what the area looked like a little bit later. ryan young live near the coast in alabama with more. so, you got thousands of people left without power. what are they saying this morning? well you know about 10,000 people are still without power but they dodged a hit on this one. we talk about the storm surge th
now. we are expecting 5-10 feet of storm surge. not just that. on top of that, you are going to have very tall and destructive waves. it s not clear it s a survival situation for anyone still there in the keys. thank you very much, acting director and rappaport. we are going to have a lot more on this. where it s heading, impacts when we get back. shepard: that s our south florida new station, wvsn 7. they ve never seen a hurricane like this. hurricane andrew was scheduled at one point, the mayor of palm beach county, predicted coming into palm beaches. the most recent forecast before the storm hit land was for it to come somewhere from the miami-dade-broward county line and hit the causeway where the station is located. it went maybe 20 miles south. went to homestead and just wiped out the southern tip of florida.