through pitch dark southeast florida. many power outages are reported throughout the state, and already there about 2000 flight cancellations for today, many of them for orlando, tampa and jacksonville airports. it has been it has been downgraded to category one hurricane, but it s still very dangerous. the winds are slowing, but catastrophic with life-threatening flooding. we get life updates on its path and destruction. in orlando, there were estimates that as much as 20 inches of rain could have fallen, and it s been hammering the area for hours. let s go right to jesse coach who was there. i hope you re someone save, you were talking about having to go to higher ground earlier, especially the location being too dangerous. yes and at this point we are dealing with pretty consistent rainfall here. there were bands of it earlier, we continue to see gusts of intense wind. but the rain is been falling for hours. and you can see we talk to a short while ago with the wat
the devastation in very direct terms. the impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that was done has been historic and this is just off initial assessments. take a look at fort myers, close to where ian made landfall. you see the downed trees and the boats tossed around like toys. storm surges as high as 7 to 10 feet swept through surrounding areas making streets look more like oceans. ian has left more than 2.5 million floridians without power. folks who were in shelters are leaving to see if they even have a home to return to. the focus is now on the people who did not evacuate. finding a lot of the roads are impassable. we have a lot of power lines down, a lot of flooding going on. i don t want to speculate on fatalities, but we have had some reports being called into us in reference to potential bodies being found. right now the storm is moving eastward through florida with the carolinas and georgia in its sights with flash flooding a major concern. you c
coast of florida. 155-mile-per-hour wind speeds. that s just two miles short of a category 5 hurricane. it s expected to make landfall about 100 miles south of here in the port charlotte area. rain 12 to 24 inches across much of the florida peninsula, challenge create freshwater flooding. the impact of this will be felt by millions in florida. already 200,000 people without power. that s before the storm even makes landfall. this will uproot people s lives. its a life-threatening storm. this is the sunshine skyway bridge that we have pictures of. you can see the winds kicking up. it will have an enormous impact. let s go to chad myers first at the weather center. the 11:00 a.m. advisory out now. what do you see? still see the 155-mile-per-hour eyewall winds. inside the eye it could be down to 5 or 10 in the middle, but we re working our way onshore. the eye is not onshore. the eyewall is coming onshore. this is what it looks like from space, this is called the visible image
roads have been impassable. you see the devastation. you see how difficult that is to be anywhere near. carrie sanders was actually in the storm as the eye was making landfall. there is the wind speed as i m standing next to building. i can just take a knee here. okay, you guys got it. i m going back up. this is really hard. you get the idea. that s power that s mother nature that s the power of mother nature and that s what citizens have been urged to evacuate for. the journalist you see have safety techniques as well as back up to try to deal with covering the safely. but appreciate their service. it is going to push to florida. it s just gonna come in here for a second. it is a slow-moving aspect, eight miles per hour they re bracing for two months worth of rain according to estimates that will come down in a matter of days. we it is live in naples, ali, what are you seeing in your report? outer bands, it is a dirty end of the storm. obviously, this part hit us. a
millions of floridians in this storm s path. those who have not evacuated are urged to shelter in place immediately. almost 800,000 people are already without power. that s according to florida utilities. the director of fema has warned that recovery from hurricane ian will be a very long road. that agency has already begun to pour resources into the state. in an event earlier today, president joe biden said he spoke with florida governor ron desantis and added he already requested aid saying, quote, the federal government is ready to help in every single way possible. ali velshi who has been doing the heroic job of bringing the story to all of us from naples, florida, is our first guest. ali, tell me what you re seeing. i ve been watching all day long. please tell me how you re staying safe. reporter: we always appreciate that. what did we just lose there, peter? something has come off the building that we re in. in fact, we re seeing a lot of that. moments ago we saw a fr