into sharper focus. this picture shows fort meyers beach one of the hardest-hit areas before the hurricane and here it is after. homes wiped out. sea of debris and rubble stretching to the horizon. there is this marina during normal times in fort myers. and then after. a scene of utter destruction. the damage throughout florida. 2 million still without power. it will continue for some time. ten people are confirmed dead thus far. the number may change as search and rescue teams work their way through the flooded neighborhoods. we re moments away as dana mentioned and get an update from the florida governor ron desantis back in tallahassee. team fox coverage. city manager marty lawing is standing by. robert ray is back with us today. we begin with track of ian. adam klotz is in our studio watching that. we still have a hurricane as we remember this storm left the coast of florida as a tropical storm but we ve spent a good chunk of time over the atlantic ocean. winds curren
we appreciate that. reopened 800 bridges across the state. this includes 67 high priority bridges inspected and reopened in lee, charlotte, sarasota and manatee counties. pine island, sanibel, those are going to be rebuild efforts. the sanibel bridge had breaks in multiple parts of it. it was not where the water and pylons were. it was where you had it on some of the sandbar and that basically got washed out from underneath. in the meantime kevin can talk about this, he is they will be running barges to bring more heavy equipment onto the island to be able to help with the response. the first responders that have been there by and large coming into the air have some equipment but they are traveling lighter just to be able to go and get to people as quickly as possible. there have been six healthcare facilities evacuated in
nothing but a concrete slab on fort meyers beach you pray to god no one was in that. some of these things the people on sanibel that have the real big houses could hunker down and pass and their homes are raised and the surge tear ing probably protected from. some of these others, particularly some of the older construction didn t stand a chance in that. so you just hope those were folks that had left or that those structures were not occupied. i think it was just about, you know, the concern for what they were facing and the fact that you did have people that, as the storm was in process, there were people that were really concerned with what they were seeing with the water rising and what not. i am, i think i think kevin would agree as the search and rescue folks have gone to a lot of these areas, fortunately you are not finding desperate people waving saying it s usually there are some people brought off the island and thankful.
crosshairs. again, populated area there on the coast. they are more experienced, i would say. it hasn t been 100 years since they had a hurricane. they ve had a lot more. hilton head in the area as well. bill: so hurricane ian has cut off sanibel from the rest of florida. a big section of that causeway that connects the island to land is wiped out. how do you fix this? how long does it take? we ve seen some hurricanes in the gulf of mexico that have cut off major routes like interstate 15 that runs east/west there. it is several months before you are able to get the army corp of engineers and reestablish that connection. dana: holly smith is the mayor of sanibel. we are sorry for what you are going through. we hope you are doing all right. give us an assessment from your standpoint of what sanibel is dealing with. well, we are dealing with an