of the florida coast of that this is sanibel island, an island decimated by hurricane ian. right now there s no way to get help in to sanibel. the only bridge that connected the island to the mainland, it s a long causeway, it s caved in. so there s no way to get on or off the island unless you travel by boat. and that s been incredibly difficult for anyone to do. and that loss right now spans the florida coast. i ll show you cape coral. our bill weir was here today. this is a picture he took. you can see home after home totally destroyed and flooded. the ones that are still standing, you can see siding ripped off. at one point ian s winds were 155 miles an hour. we re going to have much more from bill weir in a moment. not far from where he took those images, ft. myers beach, striking images of what is left. not much. the beach community 48 hours ago looked like that. now, take a look at this. estero boulevard, 24 hours later. a restaurant called the whale surrounded by debr
wow. you got the video? i got it. here it is. oh, man. that s our pool. that s our deck. that was my house. my house is gone. jesse: a fox news alert, one of the largest search and rescue missions in american history is underway after hurricane ian decimated moving up the east coast. governor ron desantis says the situation is really bad. the amount of water that s been rising, will likely continue to rise today, even as the storm is passing, is basically a 500-year flood event. jesse: first responders are working around the clock. hundreds have been rescued since the storm hit. here s nassau county deputies saving two people stranded on a sailboat in the storm. hold on, hold on! hold! jesse: on the other side of the state, naples firefighters rescued a woman trapped in floodwaters. watch. jesse: it s all hands on deck. we re seeing the best side of people come out in the face of tragedy. a good samaritan used his jet ski to help firefighters with rescue
i was on the police department for almost 25 years. saw a lot of storms here. this is by far the worst storm i have ever witnessed. i promise you i m never going to stay for another storm ever again here. however, i am one of the lucky ones. recovery efforts begin after utter devastation in parts of florida. while millions more people are now at risk as ian moves north. also tonight, he isn t tossing paper towels but governor ron desantis is handling this hurricane in a weirdly trumpy way. what we re learning about ginni thomas meeting with the january 6th committee when she wasn t texting the white house in the days leading up to the insurrection, she was encouraging states to reverse trump s embarrassing defeat. ian is one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the u.s. now, the state begins the colossal task of picking up the pieces. we get a first glimpse at the destruction. from what we have seen so far, it is staggering. this is ft. myers, homes completely des
this is don lemon tonight, you re watching our coverage of in, making its way up the florida peninsula. we have all the news coverage this evening, it is dumping rain on this entire area. lots of water. but also the wind, pushing the wind all across the state of florida. our crews are out in the field, we re covering it all for you. we ve got bill weir, bill is joining us from punta gorda florida, also brian todd is in is in derek van damme is in breaking tin for us. i want to other meteorologist, our expert, mr. tom seders in the weather center. tom, i am getting so much rain, lots of rain that have been dumped on me for the last hour. and it seemed to come in on cue, we re watching the radar, the rain came right in. it s just sitting on top of us, not going anywhere. in fact that northern periphery of the storm system in the last couple of model runs in the last couple of days really has been showing that that northern periphery is where we re gonna have that heavy rain
have our fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth with us. rick this has been rough so far. really has. three things, the storm surge that broke records in fort myers and naples as well by a lot by the way, three feet higher than we had ever seen from any kind of storm surge in the past. that obviously causing all that flooding right along the immediate coast. then we have the winds, actual verified winds of 140 miles an hour in cape corral. a lot of this wind was really prolonged because it s such a slow-moving storm and then you have the rainfall. because it s so slow we get rainfall that just continues to batter the state and we ll see big time inland flooding concerns. this made land fall in the exact same space that hurricane charlie came on shore in 2004 which is amazing to have two massive hurricanes or two strong hurricanes like this come on shore in the exact same spot, hard to imagine, because it came on so strong, it s still a category 2 hurricane after having