i lived there. people ride it out, and you think i can handle because you re thinking wind. i think too few people think water. water is so damaging. just give us what you think the damage is going to look like when that water recedes in your city. well, joy, good to be with you. as you know having lived in florida, you run from the water, you hide from the wind yeah. ian has stayed on its projected track and hit st. pete head on, we would have been looking at 10 feet of surge on top of 10 to 15 inches of rain, and no infrastructure in the world can handle that. and so we were blessed that it didn t hit us, but our prayers go out to our neighbors to the south, sarasota, ft. myers area. we still have six hours with the outer bands of the storm and we ll experience
it s starting to get dark. when this storm finally passes through and the rain quits around midnight, then we ll wait for the sunlight to really see how bad it is. my god, go inside, kerry. go inside. this is one of the most powerful storms we ve seen and hurricane ian is tong batter florida at this hour. we bring in nbc meteorologist bill karins. kerry sanders, i m afraid for him. i want to rerack this again. hurricanes are two things. they are wind that is terrifying and the sound of it blowing around and what it s doing to you, and then there s the water you can drown in, that if you try to drive in it, your car could skid into the ocean if you re in florida. they re both. is this primarily a windstorm or it seems like it s more of a water storm and it hasn t slowed down? it all depends on where you are. some areas like ft. myers, it was both. i mean, it was historic storm surge plus winds that were
can you show me how far the water is up? can anyone get up on the furniture too as well? so you re already up, you have everything up high. do you have a way to get into the roof. go to the roof. don t go in the attic. don t go in the attic. do you have a way to go on the roof? yeah, we re going to have to find out a way soon. hopefully somebody is seeing this. back now with more breaking coverage of hurricane ian taking a devastating toll in florida right now. joining me now is a reporter for the miami herald. you just saw that, nick. a lot of people rode it out. is there any sense, you know, even if talking with city officials of how many people in the affected areas might be in