top of the hour, we will take you back to the fema directors that are going on right now. this news conference and we will listen to the very latest from winter park, florida, and get an update on recovery and rescue operations there. fema back to flood insurance. what kind of turnaround or how long until you expect people to be able to receive to face what s needed in their homes? how long do the inspections and claims take? yeah, one of the very first things that everybody should do is contact their insurance company to see what is going to be eligible. this includes flood insurance, which is by fema and also some of the other insurances they have for wind damage, et cetera. they are going to have to file that claim. one of the first thing that s going to have to happen is an inspection of that home, so they can determine the extent of damages. that will depend on the availability to access the homes. we know that there are still many homes that might be underwa
rolling with the punches and, i mean, it was fun. is there a sense that if you can get through this, you can get there anything that? i think so. yeah, definitely. whether the storm. i wanted to and on that positive tone there because that s the spirit here, hearing from so many people in charleston. all throughout the day, we ve been going around and people have been clearing out. they ve been going up, getting rid of the debris that has been left behind. but you ve been seeing smiles on peoples faces. they understand that when you see the images coming out of florida, when you see the devastation and the full communities that were leveled in that area, you have many of them here saying they are breathing somewhat a sigh of relief knowing that what they have here and the damage that they see, they can recover from, alex. well, i have to tell you, i thank you for the first time putting a smile on my face relative to coverage of this hurricane. i m going to put money on that
i got is wet. just heartbreaking there. also a hospital in fort myers has been water since [inaudible] bathroom facilities have been affected by this. now for some on the ground reporting, we have nbc s jessi crist joining us from sarasota county, florida. and shaquille brewster is in charleston, south carolina. guys, welcome. we are going to start with the breaking news from you, jessie, where people have been warned about a possible levee breach, i understand. what can you tell us about this and the kind of danger to the area? that s right, alex. actually, we have a new aerial image. i don t know if it s into the control unit room yet, so i will see if they can tell me if we have it. but i m just so the side of the community, you can see there s some flooding in the background here. so, it sounds like we do have this image, so if they can pull up this photo that we received from, oh, this looks like, okay, that s chopper video.
pump gas at a rather large gas station. so, there are certainly still infrastructure issues out here, and it s slow going on the roads. but yeah, to underscore what you just brought up there, alex, you are not looking at a heavy residential area. so, thankfully it does not appear that there are as many homes that would be impacted here as it would have been in some of the more populated areas that have been hit by these storms. all of that said, we are looking at farmland that is currently underwater and surely, there s damage to plenty of peoples property out here. just adding to the headaches that are ongoing out here. and at minimum, it s not going to make it easier for people here to clean up. i can imagine it s going to make it harder for people to bring in help. just for context, we were saying in orlando as the storm made landfall. and we know that there were workers there who were waiting to be directed, presumably, where to go to help with cleanup. the recruits staged their.
how are the folks handling things? alex, one of the first and also one of the hardest hit areas here in southwestern florida. you look at those images you were mentioning, it s just incredible to see how much of it is now gone after the storm passed. so, for the people here, there s a lot of help coming this way for all of those affected. i was in miami this morning and as i made my way into the western part of the state, the caravan of vehicles, vehicles coming in from miami, trucks, pickup trucks, larger trucks. just bringing in the help, coordinating efforts. a lot of traffic, so that s all coming to help the people that keep telling us, as we speak to them, that many of them have lost everything. you know, there s food distribution happening, salvation army workers are right over here trying to coordinate the effort to help the people in need. it s very interesting how that effort has been organized. i have never received so many public safety alerts or those alerts you get on yo