electricity. if a lot of stop signs are smashed from those 140 mile-per-hour winds. there's a lot of debris in the streets as well. sometimes it's trees or downed power lines. for day two you are moving through a very dark world. almost all of the 200,000 residents of the county are without power for a day two and across the state of florida now more than 6 million people still without electric power. many of them going online i'm wondering from hotel rooms were distant relatives house is one that power will be turned back on. keep in mind the temperature index in miami will be about 10. with no air conditioner it will be a very tough place for these people to live. as far as the damage goes that we are seeing around here it's mainly been downed trees and power lines. mostly not native trees, some of the giant trees just pulled up by those powerful winds that came in the other day. there has been some flooding, especially in some mobile home parks in the northern part of naples. 3-4 feet of water and some of those areas. if we have some good drone footage of some of those flooded areas. the promised storm surge, the thing people were most afraid of fear that could cause even more definite than the wind, that simply never materialized. the predictions of possibly 10-15 feet of storm surge but in part because the back end of the storm was weaker than expected after the i passed pretty much right over naples, that storm surge did not materialize. we have a situation out in the city of 20,000 in this area where you have a lot of people with downed trees in their yards, with damage to their roots, no electric power, no cell phones, no air conditioning, no wi-fi, no nothing. but for the most part most of their homes are intact and there has not been any loss of life from the storm in the naples area. john, back to you. >> jon: we are walking watching some of these residents walk around. you mentioned downed power lines, some of those are live and some of those can claim lives. if people aren't careful. >> reporter: there have been already attributed to the storm deaths from downed power lines and there have been a lot of cautions too people who have been in shelters, at least 20,000 people from this area took refuge in shelters not to try to go back home too early before the power is out, not to go out and check on your property. just driving around even in the daytime hours when you can see is dangerous in these conditions, especially with no stoplights. people aren't sure whose turn it is to go. it's risky business moving around with the downed power lines, downed trees, standing water and with no electricity. there are often a lot of accidents, injuries and even deaths in the run-up to the storm and also following the storm. a lot of power saw accidents, chainsaw accidents often occur. emergency rooms get a number of cases after a storm like this. you can hear the chainsaws going now. people are trying to get the trees off the roofs and out of their yards. >> jon: that the natural human inspiration. you think okay i can leave the shelter and go back home now and again, as you say, this is a pretty dangerous time to head out even though the storm has long passed. >> reporter: it is. this was a quick one for the people of florida but they had a lot of headaches and heartaches really before it actually had. i think we learned again that without being critical of this still an exact science as to where and when it's going to hit and how powerful and damaging it's going to be. there were absolutely catastrophic predictions about what was going to happen in naples that did not come true and people fled on the east coast florida to the west coast and north and for some unfortunate families they were stepping right into it each time. to find refuge, especially here when it looked like the storm was going to hit here, got tougher and tougher. there were 20 shelters open at one point and eighteen of them were full and the others were filling up fast. you had people going from shelter to shelter and you realize it's not your ordinary trip when you're leaving your home to go to a shelter. often you have pets, multi-generation families waiting in line outside a stadium hours at a time. i think the entire state, people talk about dodging a bullet or things like that and certainly with loss of life it has not been as bad as expected but i think the entire state has been traumatized by this, by the fear, by flaying it and now just beginning to try to get home. >> jon: the keys are in very bad shape we understand. it later we will be talking to a reporter who has been to the bottom of the keys. steve harrigan, thank you. despite expectations, tampa, florida, was lucky to avoid the worst-case scenario from hurricane irma. let's get the fox's mike tobin, standing by in tampa right now. >> reporter: with that stroke of luck, if you will, the fight here for the people and business owners in the tampa area to get back to normal. we saw that today with the boards coming down. businesses opening up. if the biggest obstacle is power. some 54% of the power customers with tampa electric are out of business in terms of turning on the lights right now. tampa electric did state screws ahead of the storm but they had to stage them out of harm's way so that means these repair crews had to spend the day driving, the work starts tomorrow. tampa electric says it's can have the lights turned on in a matter of days while other communities are saying it will be a matter of weeks. the primary damage we see in this area is the trees that have fallen over. the ground got so saturated and soft and if those trees didn't have extensive root structures when the wind came up against the tree itself it just blew right over and we saw sometimes it blew over in houses and power lines and that the primary culprit with all of these power outages. some damages to structures. we saw the new salem primary baptist church, a historic facility, the steeple came right off of it. the pastor benjamin curry says he thinks god no one was hurt and he setting about the business of rebuilding it. looks like schools in the area are trying to open as early as thursday and the saint pete's, clearwater international airport says flights will resume tomorrow. jon. >> jon: mike joining us live tonight from tampa, a city that took quite a battering. thanks, mike. tropical depression irma still a serious threat for millions of people across the south as the storm continues to head north. for more wiggle to adam klotz, he is in the fox weather center for us now. >> hey there. still a big system, no longer a hurricane but there is your center of low pressure there, what once was irma continuing to spend, looking through portions of georgia. it's really become a rainmaker as it will doubtless direction. everything you're saying here, the darker colors, that was getting up to 8-10, in some cases 12 inches of total precipitation. you add that on the east side and that's where we've seen a little bit more of this high water. the storm surge and the flooding from the rain has moved in. the east coast of florida are running up the east coast to georgia, carolina. all areas where we've seen some fairly high water as a result of both that rain and also the storm surge. take a look at this. this is our height, right line, we have a record-breaking height there in the st. john's river. main street, that is in the jacksonville area. high water has been an issue at least for some folks, otherwise we've been concerned about wind winds. they've knocked out a whole lot of these in the last several hours but we've seen costs getting up to 55, 60 miles per hour. we still have some, even as system continues to spread they are very consistent in the 30s and hour after hour of that and then you begin to see some damage. i'm sure that's the case for folks in portions of north georgia stretching over into alabama and the carolinas. here's the radar, pay attention to the time-stamp. all you will see is a very slow move up to the north and then just a spreading out. by tomorrow i'm thinking we're going to be seeing heavy showers moving through charlotte. all the way back across the mississippi. this just becomes a more widespread, a little bit weaker storm system as its just reaching absolutely everywhere. a lot of folks are going to be seen rain from this one before it's all said and done. outside of that i know a lot of folks are wondering about hurricane jose. still a category one storm. it's going to make a move where it does a loop and then heads back to the united states. no current models are bringing it to the united states shores but the fact that it's turning this way, it's got all of our attention. this is one we are going to be paying attention to. >> jon: is it expected to get a lot stronger? i see the ones on those locations. >> it's going to stay in one and we are also expecting winds to capture it right here and send it out to sea. the fact that it's moving that direction as we've seen, sometimes the traction can change. it makes us a little nervous. >> jon: as for the remnants of irma, it's basically heading on the western -- northwestern trajectory. >> jon: memphis, st. louis, areas like that but it's becoming so widespread if you will see it hundreds and hundreds of miles away. >> jon: hurricane in st. louis, but i guess it's not a hurricane anymore. how much rain are the people and some of those more northern states expecting? >> we can get this on areas where you are only getting four, five, 6 inches. there will be isolated areas where there will be big thunderstorms but it becomes less of a real rainmaker at this point. >> jon: only 6 inches. >> isolated areas, there's other spots where you won't see as much. >> jon: that sounds good. adam, thank you. up next, the mayor of miami beach joins us on his city's efforts to try to recover from hurricane irma. ♪ when you brush or floss you may have gum problems and could be on the journey to much worse. help stop the journey of gum disease. try parodontax toothpaste. ♪ a heart attack doesn't or how healthy you look. no matter who you are, a heart attack can happen without warning. a bayer aspirin regimen can help prevent another heart attack. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. bayer aspirin. i mwell, what are youe to take care odoing tomorrow -10am? staff meeting. noon? eating. 3:45? uh, compliance training. 6:30? sam's baseball practice. 8:30? tai chi. yeah, so sounds relaxing. alright, 9:53? i usually make their lunches then, and i have a little vegan so wow, you are busy. wouldn't it be great if you had investments that worked as hard as you do? yeah. introducing essential portfolios. the automated investing solution that lets you focus on your life. and made it liberating. we took safe, and made it daring. we took intelligent, and made it utterly irresistible. we took the most advanced e-class ever, and made the most exciting e-class ever. the all-new e-class coupe from mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. tempur-pedic helps there ayou get the most day... out of every one of them. only proprietary tempur material precisely conforms to your body. you get up to twice as much pressure relieving power, so you won't toss and turn. and tempur-pedic is the best at minimizing motion transfer from your partner. you'll sleep deeply... and wake up, feeling powerful. savings end soon! through september 17th, save up to $500 on select adjustable sets. find your exclusive retailer at tempurpedic.com >> jon: after getting pounded by hurricane irma miami beach residents are struggling to head home as city recovery efforts get underway. joining us now on the phone the mayor of miami beach philip levine. mayor levine, were you on the beach for the storm itself or were you on the mainland? >> i was right on the beach. i was right there. matter of fact i actually slept in city hall right in my office that night and went through the entire evening. we had our emergency operations control center at one of our major hospitals and i would go there for the entire day but ended up hunkering down in my city hall office. >> jon: miami took quite a pounding even though the eye of the storm was more than 100 miles away. how did you do on miami beach? with the greatest challenge now? >> i tell you, we did very well. we are very, very thankful. we didn't dodge a bullet, we kind of dodged a cannon. we are very happy about that. of course my heart goes out to some of the other communities around florida that didn't do as well. this was something where we were very prepared. we are a barrier island, low-lying, we know what blood level is about because we are experience rising. those efforts seem to have helped during the brunt of the hurricane what we really didn't get the type of flooding that other areas did. we were able to pump a lot of the water out pretty quickly. the big challenge, of course, as you can imagine was getting people to evacuate. everyone becomes a little bit of a disbeliever even though you see this nuclear hurricane coming in your direction you have to kind of bleed with the people and convince them they have to leave. we were successful. we did it way before the mandatory evacuation happened and before you knew it miami beach became a ghost town and for the first time ever i was happy to see miami beach as a ghost town. no one was there. >> jon: you are a tourist destination, one of those tourists get to come back? >> they will come back real soo soon. matter of fact we are opening miami beach tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. and folks can come back to the beach. we spent the entire day, the last 24 hours, with so many different crews, it was a military operation. clearing the roads, so many trees across the road, power lines down, gas leaks around the city. we were able to go out there because we were prepared for the recovery to clean up the city and tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. people are allowed to come back in the city. we had a curfew tonight of 8:00 p.m. on miami beach. after that we are gung ho ready to go. our hotels are getting organized. i know by tomorrow night there will be restaurants open. you can't stop all the great things about miami beach. it's a fun place, it's exciting in the world wants to come. >> jon: one about the power situation? to have 100% of the power back on? >> we don't. that's the unfortunate thing. our power provider around the state of florida is desperately trying to reconnect everybody but as you know there's millions of people across the state of florida that are out of power. they are doing everything they can to connect power. it's body in certain places, certain sections don't, they are doing everything to restore power as fast as possible and we hope that happens. a lot of the commercial businesses now have power and some of the hotels. little by little miami beach will be right back on its feet. >> jon: i imagine you will be filling up some of your hotels with local residents who might be from the mainland and might not have power at home, want to come and get some air conditioning. >> that's a very good point. we will be promoting staycations around south florida. if that's going to be one of the big promotions. a whole marketing campaign called the beach his back. it's going to be a strong campaign to come on back to the beach. i have to tell you, it won't take that much because people really do love coming to miami beach. this was quite a trauma, a trauma for the entire state of florida. it leads to a bigger issue of comment these storms that we are seeing, very unusual but now they are becoming the new norm. how you make your city resilient so you can handle these types of events in the future? >> jon: you can get a storm surge that overwatch to the entire barrier island, anything like that? >> we did, we got a storm surge. we were literally 2 feet above what we call can king tide, the highest tide of the year. we saw water coming over our actual sea walls. our pump system worked. they started pumping out water, we have generators connecting to our pumps the minute we lost electricity. it's something we've been working on for a while, we are only 15% through covering our entire city but we are going to spend up to about a half a billion dollars on this program. now that we know it works even that much better we are going to continue it. i think other cities that are coastal cities are going to want to do the same thing. >> jon: philip levine, the mayor of miami beach where, as i recall, nobody can live more than about three blocks from the ocean when you are on miami beach. mr. mayor, it sounds like things turned out as well as can be expected given the situation. thanks very much for spending some time with us tonight. >> thank you for the opportunity. >> jon: you bet. miami beach open tomorrow morning. coming up a storm tracer gives us his inside story of battling hurricane irma and how it compared to previous storms, he's next. ♪ it helps block 6 key inflammatory substances that cause symptoms. pills block one and 6 is greater than 1. flonase changes everything. introducing walit's a great days. for a great deal! tender, center-cut sirloin or chicken on the barbie, fries, a draft beer or a coke, all for just $9.99. only for a limited time. so don't walk, run to outback. ♪ tech: when you schedule with safelite autoglass, you get time for more life. this family wanted to keep the game going. son: hey mom, one more game? tech: with safelite, you get a text when we're on our way. you can see exactly when we'll arrive. mom: sure. bring it! tech: i'm micah with safelite. mom: thanks for coming, it's right over here. tech: giving you a few more minutes for what matters most. take care! family: bye! kids singing: safelite® repair, safelite® replace. listen up, heart disease. you too, 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own frequent heartburn. and all day, all night protection. when it comes to heartburn, trust nexium 24hr. >> jon: most people understandably flee the incredible danger that is brought by a hurricane storm chasers to the opposite. taking a calculated risk with their lives to record and document the incredible power of mother nature. zach sharp is one of the storm chasers who went after hurricane irma over the weekend. he joins us now on the phone from tampa, florida, . where were you during the storm? >> we were located down near sarasota. the hurricane came abruptly 20 miles of us and wind it was near 100 120 miles per hour. >> jon: how does it compare with other storms you have been in? >> most of the time i'm chasing tornadoes and it is very comparable to tornado chasing except it's a very long duration tornado if you want to look at it that way. these wind speeds are very comparable to tornadoes. we had a wind system of over 13. that is easily a category three tornado. i very long-duration of high wind speed event. >> jon: what are the folks there where you are saying about it in comparison to other florida hurricanes? >> fortunately compared to hurricane charley in 2004, resonance are breathing a sigh of relief this evening as it came nowhere near hurricane charlie. it did cause some damage, mainly to the palm trees. boat docks were damaged due to the high tide. compared to other past hurricanes, some residents think this was a walk in the park. >> jon: for you, as a professional storm tracer, you've chased blizzards, tornadoes, now you're chasing hurricanes. was it satisfying to be that close? >> as a weather lover, anytime you can get near the power of the storms, the power to withstand, wend for 130 miles per hour for multiple hours. it's unbelievable that mother nature has this power. >> jon: an incredible amount of energy in those storms. so what you do now? what you do with the information that you've gathered? >> basically as we've seen from past hurricanes residents who have withstand the hurricane damage now know how to build better to withstand future hurricanes. we heard them say that from hurricane charlie in 2004 when their town was completely wiped off the map they were able to rebuild better and stronger as they were able to see how that hurricane impacted those structures. that way around this time they saw that hurricane actor was much damage as previous hurricanes because they were able to take that information and learn from their mistakes. >> jon: i'm sure is this thing was coming to shore you're trying to get as close to the eye as possible, right? >> the highest wind speeds of the wind speed, barometric pressure within the hurricanes. always trying to forecast where it will make landfall. it's been kind of a stiff back and forth. that's the thing we got from the residence in the area. at one time it was supposed to eastern fargo, western florida, now it's central florida. a lot of people stressed out throughout the whole week. after it finally made landfall residents were able to make a sigh of relief because it was finally over. >> jon: and what do you say to people who, maybe they evacuated, then they go back home and find out that got some tree branches in their yard but nothing else has really happened and they say next time i get a hurricane evacuation i'm not going to do it. i'm going to stay put. what do you say to those folks? >> you have to take every hurricane -- just like every tornado, you have to take everything -- you just don't know when the weather will change and the unexpected will happen. you always just have to prepare for the unexpected. >> jon: zach sharpe, who makes a living chasing storms like this one, blizzards, tornadoes and hurricanes. thank you. >> thank you. >> jon: up ahead, how widespread power outages are impacting the long road to recovery for the people of florida. stay with us. ♪ to keep their global campus connected. and why a pro football team chose us to 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(vo) go national. go like a pro. >> jon: irma's floodwaters inundating parts of miami-dade county with major thing up efforts underway. for more on that let's go to brian yunus, in florida city florida, up against the everglades, southern tip of the state. brian. >> reporter: good evening, jon. some 6.5 million floridians, 62% of the state without power at this hour. we are at the entrance here. it really the only entrance way into the florida keys. 110-mile island stretch southwest of miami. right now people can't get into the keys right now because it was badly hit by hurricane irma, particularly a 50-mile stretch between marathon, that key and key west. according to the governor there is just a ton of debris on this streets, boats were flown in onto the road, people can't get past it, power lines are down, gas and cell phone service is unavailable. we are standing, like i said, at the entrance, get you to the overseas highway at which rights through all of the keys. right now about a dozen vehicles are here on the side of the road getting ready to go into the keys because people are allowed, finally, to get back home if you live there. the upper keys beginning at 7:00 a.m. people are anxious to get in, they are sleeping here on the side of the road in their vehicles so that they can survey the damage. people like jon devol, who is sleeping in his car tonight. we should have -- okay. meanwhile, cleanup continues all the rest of south florida. residents at miami beach lined up to try and get home. after evacuating they were lined up today and they are now able to get to miami beach beginning at i would say at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. look, we've got calories of utility trucks, 30,000 utility workers are working around the clock to put up the downed power lines that people can get their power. more than 200,000 floridians, by the way, continue to be in shelters. lots of cleanup also, but schools are closed indefinitely until further notice because many of these floridians were forced to evacuate their homes are now staying at the schools. we will give you an update as soon as we can. >> jon: we just had some video, i don't know if you've seen it, i don't know if you can explain it. it was obviously traffic on u.s. one, the overseas highway. the only highway in and out of the florida keys but it looks like there were a bunch of cars just kind of sideways in the road. do you happen to know what that's all about, are they trying to turn around or is that an accident? what is that? >> i have to think that it had to be people that were being turned around. we already saw a couple of vehicles that just completely went past the police because people want to get home. they feel like they would rather be at their home than being at a hotel without any power just an hour north. there's no power anywhere so they would rather get back to their home and be there. we've also seen a ton of fema vehicles come in there. people are just -- patience is the key word out there. if people just really want to get to their home. >> jon: one of the miseries that can erupt after a storm like this is the mosquito population. i was it tonight? >> not too bad, i'm from south florida, they are okay. we definitely had to use the spray but i think maybe a couple more days might be a different story. >> jon: they will be hatching with all that standing water, that's for sure. bryan llenas, thank you. hurricane irma delivered a surprisingly large punch to daytona beach, florida, on the east coast and quite a ways north where we join rick rick leventhal. >> there were a lot of streets and low-lying areas underwater because of that 8-12 inches of rain that fell in a very short period of time. when irma lashed daytona beach with sustained winds and hurricane force gusts there were a lot of trees knocked down in this area today. a lot of power lines came down. a lot of minor damage to homes and businesses around here, windows blown in, that sort of thing. the worst damage we saw was actually few miles of here in ormond beach where the volusia county sheriff and the local say it was a tornado that caused the damage. it touched down there and shredded groups and dropped big chunks of roof into other people yards and into the street. there were trees that were ripped down and power lines and utility poles that came down as well. we talked to some folks that had hunkered down inside the ormond beach masonic lodge, they thought they would be safe inside that structure but the winds whipped the brand-new roof right off of it and some of the folks there thought they might be looking at the end. >> sitting there playing cards and the lights flickered three times. it went dead silent and all of a sudden it sounded like a bomb going off. he did two tours in vietnam -- >> three. >> three. i asked him how close that was to vietnam and he said ain't going to get no closer than tha that. >> there still a countywide curfew in effect that runs from 10:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. in part because of all the debris on the roads and all the cleanup left to be done and because there's 150 street lights that are still out in volusia county. a lot of intersections are pretty dangerous. you have to stop at those -- there's no sign, so you have to stop at the stop lights and a lot of people are doing it. they're trying to keep order, there's a lot of cleanup left to be done. >> jon: and two-thirds of the state without power as we are. i imagine that the case they're entitled to beach too. >> it's about that number. maybe even a little bit more. hundreds of thousands of customers were knocked out. there were a lot of utility trucks staged here in the area, hundreds of them at the speedway, we are now seeing those trucks heading out to try and repair these lines. at the winds have died down, the rain has stopped. there was a lot of work to be done. >> jon: what about the people in shelters? i imagine they are chomping at the bit to try and get out and get some work done. >> there were 4,000 people in the shelter here in this county and as far as we know most of them were full. at this point those people can start heading home. but when they get home they will find some hazards there and that's another reason why the county is pretty concerned and telling people try and stay off the road, at least tonight. >> jon: rick leventhal in daytona beach, thank you. after horrific damage brought on by hurricane irma, officials across the florida keys are struggling to reach stranded residents amid a path of devastation. for more on that we go to "miami herald" reporter david, he joins us on the phone from miami. he has traveled the length of the keys since the storm. you were all the way down in key west, right? >> yes. thank you. we were in key west before the storm. we rode out the storm there. pretty much every other news organization picked up and left before the storm because the forecasts were too dangerous so we ended up being one of the few organizations in town covering it. and we rode out the storm and then as the storm is still going on it was safe enough to start surveying some of the damage and then again today we made it out to pretty much the entire length of the keys and all the way back up to miami. we had to come back to miami after filming footage and doing interviews and surveying everything because we couldn't file our stories and a video from the road because all the cell service had been knocked out. it was a logistical challenge. a stop sign that had been upturned, burst at our tired so we had to go on a spare for a while, running low, on fumes, the engine started giving out on us but we finally made it back to our office and were able to file a bunch of really good stories and video and images. >> jon: i read a couple of them and they are spectacular. you were the only person that i talked to who's been down to key west and back. but one of the things that you allude to is that authorities don't know how many of the people who decided to whether it out in the keys actually made it through the storm. there were a lot of people, 10,000 or so, who decided to stay, right? >> yes. where the storm hit the hardest is in the middle keys, which can ask true actually be pretty is. the outlying neighborhoods are small houses, kind of out in the wild. if the roads have been flooded out or there's just too much to break a little bit hard to get past them. it took us a little bit of work to get into certain areas. have to to go door-to-door. the problem is there so there's so many empty houses as well. they want to make sure that there's no one in there. it is a logistical challenge. remember, the keys is 110 miles long so it's a lot of real estate to cover. blackhawk helicopters doing scouting today and fire rescue and everybody starting to inspect the damage and make sure it was safe for people to go and look for anyone that might be left. >> jon: you cite, or you wrote, for those who did weather the storm out there in the keys, now they face the reality that they can't travel the road, right? the u.s. one is the only road in and out of there and authorities are not letting them travel. they don't have power, they don't have gas unless the folder tanks before the storm hit, and they don't have communication. it's a pretty miserable existence right now for those who decided to stay. >> yes, you are absolutely right. the frustrating thing, for the people who are there already, they can get around best they can because you can travel within the keys. if you are in dade county trying to get back out and you left your home you can. there's a huge mob of people waiting at the start of dade county to try to get back. there's not really a lot of things they can do for them. the roads are getting a little bit more passable. there were crews out pretty early getting rid of all the crazy debris that was everywher everywhere. there was. we rolled up on a certain street that had five votes on it that had been washed or flung onto the streets. there's coconut and thick layers of sea grass and just every sort of appliance and coconut and debris that you can imagine. it doesn't look like an absolute war zone. but a lot of the structures really held up well and i think that's partly because the keys planned for this. they built home for this in mind because it's such a low line and hurricane-prone area. >> jon: your 16th hurricane, i'm told. congratulations! you made it through this one and wrote some great stuff. david ovalle from the "miami herald." >> thank you very much. >> jon: straight ahead, howard billings of florida residents dealing with widespread power outages? two-thirds of the state, no power. we will talk to just one of them right after this. ♪ ♪ hungry eyes ♪ one look at you and i can't disguise ♪ ♪ i've got hungry eyes ♪ applebee's 2 for $20. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. applebee's 2 for $20. 83% try to eat healthy, yet up to 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would turn back on and so our luck, it did turn back on eventually. once it turned back on there was a lot of people trying to get in and they couldn't get in and we just got the luck of the draw. >> jon: we talk to you before the storm. nobody knew exactly where this thing was going and where the eye would come ashore. describe what it was like to weather the storm there in hollywood and broward county a little bit north of miami. >> fortunately we are all doing very well, nobody got hurt. as the storm hit my family and i stayed together, we work as a team, we got a good workout protecting the apartment for almost 24 hours straight from the wrath of the hurricane. we lost power almost immediately, we lost running water. the powerful winds forced water through my sliding glass doors and windows but with help of my family we were able to continuously drain the water with towels and buckets. as it came rushing in, we plug the holes when we saw it was coming from. we stop the flooding and also prevented serious damage that otherwise would have wrecked my place and made it uninhabitable. >> jon: would you do it again? >> absolutely. it would have caused a good 20- 20-$30,000 in water damage if we had not stayed. there's also over 100 units in my condo but only five him tell my family stay behind. they were shocked to see that the place is not flooded. just about all of them said, the ones i spoke to today said they wished they would stay behind and done more to protect our property. ironically they were the same people who told me i was crazy for not leaving. when the next hurricane hits expect me to stay once again and defend my castle. >> jon: as i recall, you are about ten floors of? danny villalobos, who wrote out the storm in hollywood, florida, thank you. >> thank you. >> jon: meantime, animal rescue groups have done an extraordinary job of evacuating countless animals from danger zones ahead of hurricane irma. what's next for them now that the worst of the storm is over? joining us on the phone, emily schneider of the american society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. i know we have some video, emily, of one of your vans delivering pets to some kind of a shelter property. where is this and how many pets are you handling? >> we currently have roughly 50 responders on the ground throughout florida and south carolina. we have a 40,000 square-foot emergency shelter and caring for nearly 300 unowned shelter animals who were displaced by hurricane irma. this is in south carolina where our shelter is based. we want you say on owned, what does that mean? pets that were abandoned or pets that were homeless before the storm or pets that were already in some kind of shelter? >> these are shelter animals that were relocated from areas at risk so that shelters could make room for lost pets following the storm. a lot of shelters were being proactive, taking action ahead of time before the storm to make room for lost pets that may follow following the catastrophic storm. eventually our goals is to place these animals with rescue groups and shelters to be made available for adoption. >> jon: we seen some heartbreaking images and i'm sure there will be some out of irma. we've seen some out of texas in the aftermath of hurricane harvey, pets that were just flat-out abandoned. some of them left tied to trees and that kind of thing. are you saying that kind of thing in florida? >> we are not currently assisting with search and rescue efforts but the good thing is many pet owners in miami county took their pets with them. if one of the key things that we say is to never leave your pets behind. if you have to evacuate and it's not safe for you it's not safe for your pet. and in florida specifically the aspca is working closely with miami-dade services to assist them in providing care for their shelter animals. we are also in the process of establishing a distribution center to send out critical pet supplies to pet owners in the community, things like crates and pet food and water bowls, the essentials that any pet owner would need to care for their animal. >> jon: it's got to be terrifying for those animals to go through a storm like this and especially if they are separated from the families they love. >> we are doing our best assist local agencies throughout florida. we actually just got a request not too long ago where they need assistance in sheltering efforts. if one of the things we are also keeping an eye on is the florida keys because we know that there are many people who had to evacuate in the good news is that most of the shelter cuts were evacuated but the unknown is how many family pets were left behind and what that may look like in the coming days. >> jon: emily schneider from the aspca. thank you. >> thank you, jon. >> jon: much more of our lives special coverage. irma and its aftermath, right after this. ♪ ♪ what started as a passion to make something original... ...has grown into an 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streets. a powerful storm also with flooding. 3-4 feet underwater from the flooding. rescue crews really moving throughout the area. it's been tough getting the roads clear for them to do that. any downed trees and power lines blocking the roads. the palm trees did pretty well even at the height of the storm but it's those nonnative trees, some giant ones that came crashing down all around naples. it is an eerie situation right now around the city, almost completely in darkness. the entire county about 200,000 people, power clients, electric lines, about 190,000 of them without power at this time. some very tough going end eerie to ride through the streets at night. it's weird to be in a developed, good, big city like this, very nicely and to be in complete darkness and real quiet as well. there's more than 50,000 our workers coming to florida to try and restore power. it's not just naples, it's really the entire state, more than 6 million people without power across florida so it's going to be a real challenge. 50,000 electrical workers from around the country, even from canada are coming trying to help. in some places it might take days, in some places it might take weeks. it's going to be really tough times for a lot of floridians, tens of thousands left their homes to get out of the storm. it's been a tremendous jam up at airports an end highways. a lot of suffering and leaving homes and a lot of agony and trying to get back. people are eager to get back to their homes, they might come back to homes without electric power, without air-conditioning, a lot of schools too have been damaged either structurally or with floodwater. that's going to be tough as well. families with no ac at home, no tv, no wi-fi, no phones and no school. a lot of family time, which could be tough. despite the suffering, leading and coming home, one good thing did not happen. if there were many expert predictions that we could see a storm surge in the naples area of anywhere from 10-15 feet. that did not happen. after the eye of the storm passed through naples on sunday afternoon the back end of the storm was weaker than expected so we didn't push that water a short that people were afraid of. we didn't see the sudden rise of 10-15 feet. people were afraid that would be life-threatening, it did not come to pass. overall while there is a lot of physical destruction, a lot of downed trees, no loss of lives storm related in the naples area. >> jon: what about getting people back to their homes? you say they all want to go check things out, is there a curfew in effect tonight or are people being allowed to go back and look at what they may have lost? >> reporter: just moving around, i know it's tough to imagine, a dangerous and difficult thing. downed power lines, downed trees. you have complete darkness on the road, even stoplights without electricity and you have stop signs that have been knocked over. moving around, especially at night, is dangerous. it's even dangerous driving the day, not everyone knows what to do when stop signs are out. it's tough to move around. if a lot of people here were so afraid of the potential catastrophic effects of the storm they did leave their homes to go into shelters. at one point up to 20 shelters that were initially opened, a team are filled and the other two were filling quickly. if a lot of people left their homes with their grandparents, their children, their pets, their medications and everything and got on the road. those people are very eager to get back home but officials were telling them throughout yesterday and even today stay put, it's too early, there's no electricity, no infrastructure. you are creating danger by going home, especially yesterday even into the late afternoon, the floodwater was still rising and there were still concerns for people safety. even now, several neighborhoods are too difficult to get into. so 3-4 feet of floodwater and some mobile home parks very severely damaged as well. >> jon: we are seeing a lot of the video in your crew shot and there is a lot of standing water on the ground. in that rainwater runoff from the inches of rain that the hurricane dumped or is there some saltwater storm surge in there as well? >> reporter: there was some storm surge, it did not reach the 10-15-foot, not even the 8-10-foot mark, but in the run-up in the first wall began to hit naples with those powerful winds you could actually see water sucked out of the gordon river and other rivers around and there was a real fear that it would come back. that, along with 12 inches of rain, was enough to really damage some parts, especially along the coast. people do have 3-4 feet in some parts of naples of water in their homes. >> jon: it's going to take a while to clean that up. steve harrigan, naples, florida. thank you. tampa, florida, dodged the worst of hurricane irma but the city is still faced with a huge laundry list of issues in the storm's wake. mike tobin joins us now from tampa. mike. >> reporter: jon, the way one police officer reported to me in the early morning hours as the storm had evaded this town, at this time got lucky. now they're trying to get back to normal. we watched as the boards came down from the windows in the stores opened up. the damage out here not as expensive as was. but the damage really came into forms, or exist in two forms i should say. there was flooding. to the west of here is lakeland, florida, there we saw that there are some mobile homes flooded there, mobile home parks that should say that are flooded. if neighborhoods in which people are kayaking through their neighborhoods. a lot of standing water out in that area, primarily the result of rain. the other form that the damage took was wind damage and that's when we are talking about all of these trees that were knocked down by the force of the wind, especially with the moist, saturated soil underneath them. that has resulted in all of the power lines getting knocked out. hundreds of thousands of people without power, more specifically from 54% of the population according to tampa electric is without power. crews have been brought in from literally all across the nation but they had to be stationed out of harm's way and when you have a big peninsula like is that pretty much means out of the state. they had to spend the day driving, the work of restoring power really get started tomorrow. tampa electric says it will take just a matter of days for people here but there are communities who say it will be a matter of weeks before the power is restored. one other note, saint pete's clearwater airport says flights will resume tomorrow. >> jon: i know they were very concerned about the storm surge. they had done and exercise a couple of years ago with a mythical hurricane phoenix and found that a huge hurricane taking a direct hit on tampa would be catastrophic. hundreds of thousands of people displaced and billions of dollars in damage. this did not rise to that level. >> reporter: it really didn't. the fearful thing about that is just the way that tampa bay has formed and all the connecting bodies of water, once that water rushed into there, it just doesn't have anywhere to go but to flood the low-lying areas and pushed into the tributaries and canals. what was especially terrifying, if you will, a harbinger, a very interesting harbinger, that moment -- that time, the period of time when all of the water left tampa bay and you had the seabed exposed for hundreds and hundreds of yards, it went out on facebook, people came walking out of the seabed to satisfy their curiosity. the police had to get on the loudspeaker telling people to get back in. i talked to some of the people out there looking around, they seem to think they weren't sticking their necks out too far and they all did seem to have a plan of where to retreat once the storm got really bad. >> jon: where watching video that your crew shot, some of these people walking around in shorts and this water that is up to their thighs. i have one word for them, snakes. there are a lot of them in florida. i don't know. >> reporter: there are a lot of them, when he fled their homes they come out of their homes. snakes are a very real issue when you get into the everglades and this was the first time i've hovered her hurricane that snakes were an issue. it's just one more thing to be concerned about. he fled their homes and they get on the move and there probably more cranky than regular snakes. >> jon: you are happy tonight, that's a good thing. we appreciate it, thanks. irma's assault is not over. the storm now wreaking havoc across large swaths of the sout south. adam joins us from the fox weather center on what we can expect. >> here's where we sit at this hour. if you are looking at the center of circulation spinning. you can see it right there areas of central georgia running right along the georgia alabama line. from areas along the mississippi all the way over to the atlanti atlantic. this is really spread out. if we getting a little bit as it drifts to the north and it has gotten very wide. i was actually trying to get a measure of this. stretching all the way over to norfolk, nearly 800 miles. just a massive, massive storm. at this point the heaviest showers, the heaviest thunderstorms, all of that activity embedded. that's all happening in the south carolina area into the north carolina area. it continues to be that front right quadrant. that's where we seen all the activity and that's where have been some standard storm watches and warnings. currently there aren't any but we are still looking at areas where all of these thunderstorms are very powerful, continuing to kind of wraparound and even even running onshore at times. that's where we'd seen the most severe weather with the system as we speak and actually that's where we will continue to see the most severe weather. overnight tonight, even though the wind damage has been widespread across the southeast that's where these individual cells have been the strongest. that low-pressure system just to the south of atlanta right along the state line, the movement of this is going to continue to be to the north and the west. let's put a track on this and keep it moving. winds right now at 45 miles per hour. those will continue to slow down a little bit falling eventually to 35 miles per hour. just off to the east of memphis, working way up towards the st. louis area. this thing slows down. this is the center of circulation. it stays a very massive 800-mile wide or more storm. people across the midwest stretching back to the mid atlantic are going to continue to see at least some effect of the storm. their future radar as it make that move and you do see even though our center of circulation is looking up to the north and west we are talking about rain in arkansas running up into ohio, virginia, west virginia. just a very, very large area. >> jon: it looks like washington, d.c., is going to start feeling the effects of this. >> this will spread out across the entire eastern half of the country running up into eventually the dakotas, minnesota. that will see at least some impact. >> jon: adam klotz in the fox weather center. thank you. up next, the florida keys coping with extraordinary damage left by hurricane irma. we will speak with one of the area's top local officials on the help they are going to need to recover. keep it here. ♪ i'm ryan and i quit smoking with chantix. everything i did circled around that cigarette when i started taking the chantix that urge just slowly diminished and it was a great and empowering feeling. along with support, chantix (varenicline) is proven to help people quit smoking. chantix reduced my urge to smoke. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. some people had changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood or 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wheels. smart. with liberty mutual new car replacement™, we'll replace the full value of your car. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. >> jon: officials are just beginning to grasp the astounding damage left by hurricane irma in the florida keys. scrambling to find stranded and trapped residents. joining us now on the phone, administrative roman. york county, the place where this hurricane first made landfall on basically cool -- e you been up and down the length, how would you describe the damage? >> you would think in my position i have been. interesting that i have not. i have been kind of hold up on the upper keys. if there's one little cell in the upper keys that is still working, a cell tower so i can do these interviews and get information out and vice versa. i've stayed here and then the caravan went down to reposition the emergency operations center that we had evacuated and moved up here. i've been up here trying to get information and push information out to you all. it's been quite the challenge because the cell service throughout the keys is out. good old-fashioned land lines are being repopulated and being utilized and that's where i'm getting my best reports right now. >> jon: last hours we spoke with david, who works for the "miami herald," a reporter down basically near key largo for the storm. so the problem now is there maybe an estimated 10,000 kitties' residence, hardy folks, decided to whether other hurricane there on the islands but now they are trapped. you really can't get in or out. u.s. 1 is closed, they have no power, no air conditioning obviously. no way to really get around. are you concerned that there could be injuries or fatalities you have to be discovered there in your community? >> i'm sure there will be but i think they will be very minor. i really do. i don't know where that 10,000 number came from but i can tell you that i've been here and i've been going up and down the keys for the last five, six days. we've been telling people to leave, we had a pretty good mass exodus of folks leave and then at the last minute, friday night i believe when it was evident that we were going to get a direct hit somewhere in the keys, we had a nice flow of last-minute folks leave. is it 10,000, 5,000, 2,000, i don't know but i can tell you that whoever stayed behind, most folks were ready and they had a reason to stay behind. like you said, i will use your word, hearty. if they are very hardy people and i'm sure they got a good spook but they probably made it through and will be fine. >> jon: what is job number one for your county? >> we just want to clean up and make our community better and welcome the tourists as soon as possible and get this economy up and running again. when you live down here, this is something that you always know the back of your mind it could happen someday and this is the big one. there's no doubt that this was a good one. not only did it come and give us a good shot but it kept going up the state and it still wreaking havoc up in carolina. this is definitely the big one. this is the one that we prepare for. people know it and folks have plans and i think a good percentage of the majority of the people implemented a plan and folks left that normally don't -- they actually left and they did the right thing. now they're going to go back in their energized and they rusted and they are alive and now they can have the energy to rebuild our beautiful paradise down here. >> jon: the "miami herald" reporter wrote about bulldozers being called in to shovel the sand and seaweed off of the highway. it is that deep. it's going to take some time to get the highway cleared off and until that happens you don't really have an artery to the outside world, do you? >> i think tomorrow morning you will be surprised. i will give you a little preview that you will find that that highway, we just talked about the highway all the way down to the keys, 120-mile highway will be, if not clear and perfect, it will be passable. you can get down there. just announced that folks in the upper keys, plus divided into thirds. if the offer, the middle and the lower. the upper keys, starting tomorrow morning folks can come down and visit the upper keys and go to their homes, their boats in this kind of thing. the middle keys in the lower keys we need a little bit more time, still clearing the streets. progressively we are getting our way down there. that might take us some more but certainly the upper keys, that didn't take the brunt of the storm, will be possible and folks will be allowed down. your new screws and anyone that has a reason to be in the keys can come down. >> jon: what about the airport in marathon, is it going to be open? >> open is a relative term. it will be open to as far as the resources coming down from the military and the coast guard and the assets they are bringing down. i don't think we will open that one just yet as far as commercial. same thing with key west, we're still kind of getting it together. if it's open right now, they will be landing c130, they already landed one or two today, a lot more coming up in the next few days. we have a lot of help coming, we can coordinate it have a plan. it's time to implement that plan. >> jon: roman gastesi, the county administrator from monroe county, basically the florida keys. a lot of cleanup to do, we wish you well. thank you. >> will get this done. we will be better off afterwards. >> jon: sounds good, thanks. directly ahead, a storm chaser who was right in the heart of hurricane irma, his story i had ♪ endless shrimp is back at red lobster. and we went all out to bring you even more incredible shrimp and new flavors. like new nashville hot shrimp, drizzled with sweet amber honey, and new grilled mediterranean shrimp finished with a savory blend of green onions, tomatoes, and herbs. feeling hungry yet? good, 'cause there's plenty more where these came from. like garlic shrimp scampi, 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flocked in to experience hurricane irma despite the incredible risks to their lives. storm chaser reed timmer is one of them. he experienced irma during his florida keys visit. he joins us now via skype on daytona beach. we were there when the i came ashore, what is your most vivid memory of the storm? >> my most vivid memory was probably when the search first came in and key west and inundated most of the island. you could just see the ocean coming over that monument, the southernmost monument, about 90 miles to the southwest of hurricane irma. as we went to the east we saw the damage and the devastation, and it was absolutely devastating. if we saw the impact of that storm surge right away. the boats uplifted and stuff and the roads. >> jon: looks like we have at least temporarily lost our skype connection with reed timmer. it's my understanding he's in south carolina now. as he continues to chase the storm. he was there when the drywall came a store. not too far to the east of key west and that is where the eye wall first made landfall in the united states. obviously this is a huge storm, it covered really florida, the length and breadth of it, and is still continuing to pound away at the carolinas and up into alabama and tennessee right now. pretty soon, pretty much the eastern half of the united states is going to fill some of the effects of what was the most powerful hurricane ever on record. obviously hurricane irma is going to go down in the record books. we don't know exactly how much damage it has caused yet, that will take some time to determine. floodwaters consumed many parts of miami-dade county during hurricane irma with the damage assessments still underway. bryan llenas is with us tonight with an update. >> it is now dark and really the only light that you are seeing is coming from our cameras. also from police vehicles, which are all canvassing protecting those that are out there. so many hundreds of thousands had to evacuate leaving their properties vacant. you take a look, a beautiful moon out here. it's a little eerie in the city but when you're out here in florida city this is where among the only entrance you can get into key west. it is the only entrance on u.s. 1. the florida keys got battered. the hardest hit in terms of south florida here. it keys 110-mile stretch and really between marathon and key west was when it was really -- that's when they really got hit the hardest. between that 50-mile stretch. out here we have just about a dozen vehicles of people that are trying to get back home. they just so desperately want to get back home and they will be able to do so at 7:00 a.m. we spoke to two individuals, one guy named john who said he lost probably most of his house, and another man named david was a little frustrated everything going down. i'm sorry, we don't have sound on that. we spoke to both of them and jon said initially he knows he lost everything but that's what comes with the florida keys. we also spoke to david, frustrated with the sense that he just wants to get home, he spent time being put in a shelter and he knows that other people stay. he doesn't understand what he has to wait now in a line and sleep in his car overnight in order to get to one of the three keys that they are reopening to the public at 7:00 a.m. key largo. also we've got miami beach, by the way. miami beach is opening up at 7:00 a.m. -- at 8:00 a.m., i apologize, for the first time after they cleaned up all of that debris. a cavalry of utility trucks are now all canvassing the entire state. 30,000 utility workers are out there trying to turn on the lights for 6.5 million floridians without power. 62% of the state, just a staggering number. crews worked to put on power. could go maybe a couple weeks or more without power throughout the state. people are trying -- it's unsafe out there. some of these highways are unlit, this debris in the street, a lot of downed trees, power lines, damage on the structures. >> jon: people understandably get impatient. it's my understanding that they have checked the bridges that link the keys. you need an awful lot of bridges. they have checked the bridges and they determined that they are all sound, is that your understanding? >> from my understanding, i wasn't sure that they've actually checked all about 42 bridges that connect them all. i think they are the process of it. i would imagine in the sense that they are only allowing people in the upper keys to go back home, i think i can probably tell you a little bit about maybe the structure of how the rest of the keys are doing. there's no gas and no cell phone service for much of the keys right now. they will allow people to go back home to at least start picking up what's left. even without all of those amenities, people like i said, they would rather be home then in the shelter. some 200,000 floridians and shelters right now. the reason why some of the schools, they don't know when they can reopen, they've got people sleeping in their gyms, in the cafeterias. >> jon: bryan llenas joining us from florida city, thank you. much more of our special live coverage of irma's aftermath after a quick break. ♪ i mean wish i had time to take care of my portfolio, but... well, what are you doing tomorrow -10am? staff meeting. 3:45? tai chi. 6:30? sam's baseball practice. you are busy. wouldn't it be great if you had investments that worked as hard as you do? yeah. introducing essential portfolios the automated investing solution. put under a microscope, we could see all the bacteria that still exists. polident's unique micro clean formula works in just 3 minutes, killing 99.99% of odor causing bacteria. for a cleaner, fresher, brighter denture every day. for a cleaner, fresher, you push yourself every day... tempur-pedic helps you recover every night. tempur material provides up to twice as much pressure relieving power... so you won't toss and turn. savings end soon! through september 17th, 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(laughs) (vo) you can never have too many faithful companions. introducing the all-new crosstrek. love is out there. find it in a subaru crosstrek. >> jon: daytona beach, florida, is a long way from where the eye of hurricane irma made landfall, but it has taken a pretty good beating. right now they're taking stock of what it did. it let's get to fox's rick leventhal in daytona beach, florida, . >> reporter: as i was standing here it struck me just what a difference 24 hours makes. last night at this time we were in the middle of about ten straight hours of tropical storm force winds with hurricane force gusts. it was pounding rain, it was howling out here and there were a lot of damages, transformers phone, it's a beautiful night right now. it is cool and clear and not a drop of rain in the sky. you can see some lights on behind us on daytona beach but there are hundreds of thousands of people in volusia county alone or still without power and could be without power for weeks. the damages that were done by the storm. in daytona beach and the surrounding area obviously nowhere near as bad as they were on the west coast. a lot of property damage. a lot of signs down, a lot of roofs damage. a water slide, a nearby park that came down. windows that were blown out of the store. a lot of roof damage and traffic lights knocked out. a lot of dangerous intersections around her and a lot of water on the street. many, many flooded streets, a lot of cones put up and signs put up to stop people from driving through some of the worst of the flooded neighborhoods. that water is not receiving but the problems with the power will continue for quite some time. we saw the worst of it in a neighbor a few miles from here, the residence in the volusia county sheriff told us he believes a tornado actually touched on in this neighborhood. if the damage would support that. if there was a line carved through this neighborhood were trees were shredded. there were power poles down and a lot of lines down and then roofs that were ripped off of homes. a lot of damages in that neighborhood, a lot of accounting to be done here. a lot of people still in the dark and a lot of cleanup left to do. still a curfew in place here from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. so people are being encouraged to stay off the crease until the cleanup can be completed. >> jon: at one of the things daytona beach is known for his driving on the beach. have you been able to see the beach itself cannot how much sand is left? >> as far as we could tell there wasn't a lot of erosion. the water was coming up to the seawall this morning and yesterday as well. yesterday we saw water up to the wall. the beach itself seems to be in pretty good shape. the biggest concern is probably getting the power back on because the wind and the heavy rains took down a lot of poles. the ground was saturated, they've been getting rain for days here. there's a lot of work left to be done in comparing the infrastructure, not just here in volusia but across the state where millions of people are without power. >> jon: we are seeing some of the footage that your crew shot of the flooding in the streets. as most of that receded now or is that still a problem? >> the floodwaters certainly have receded in this area were we are standing now. the parking lot was full, at least ankle deep and knee-deep in many places in the neighborhood. it seems to have receded considerably, which is obviously great news for the people here. but beyond that the damage, they are a long way from cleaning up. >> jon: they will be talking about this one for a long time. rick leventhal and daytona beach, thank you. we have reestablished contact with storm chasers read timmer, who joins us now on the phone. we told folks you were there in the keys when this thing hit, you've been in a lot of storms, but out of this one compare? >> covering the storms, we started off -- [indistinct] the whole entire island was inundated by a storm surge. we went east, where the exact i passed over. [indistinct] right there and just absolute devastation. you saw the damage that the storm surge had done. the power of that water. rolled out the storm by itself and he said that the eye came through -- [indistinct] vi came down the backside of the scorn stomach storm. the sailboat lifted off of his home and they had to write out the storm -- >> jon: reed timmer. you can tell that cell phone service is not great where he is. that's one of the after effects of hurricane irma, knocked down a lot of cell towers as well, thanks very much. next up the mayor of broward county florida in relation to the emergency efforts in her area. ♪ it's looking up, not down. it's being in motion. in body, in spirit, in the now. boost® high protein it's intelligent nutrition with 15 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for when you need a little extra. boost® the number one high protein complete nutritional drink. be up for it hi..and i know that we have phonaccident forgiveness.gent, so the incredibly minor accident that i had tonight- four weeks without the car. okay, yup. good night. with accident forgiveness your rates won't go up just because of an accident. switching to allstate is worth it. >> jon: broward county florida is on the eastern side of south florida, just north of miami-dade county and it was not spared from hurricane irma either. flooding, downed power lines and trees, still posing serious dangers to residents there. barbara is the mayor of broward county florida and joins us now on the phone. what is the biggest issue, the biggest problem for your county right now, ma'am? >> avoiding and a death from electrocution. if we have of standing water and downed power lines currently broward county has over 600,000 people without power and that's a significant amount of lines in this flooding situation. >> jon: pets really an astounding number considering how far away the eye wall of the storm made landfall. if broward county is quite a ways. >> the problem with the storm is that it was so wide and so expensive that none of us were spared. it was going to cause damage direct hit or not. we got hit pretty hard. >> jon: obviously want to get your power back on so you can open a hotels and bring the tourists back to broward county. any estimates as to how long it's going to take? >> today when we started working they said there were some people that would get power back in a day in others it would take up to two weeks. what we have some governmental buildings and some schools that we want to get back on monday for thursday or friday so those kids can go back to school. i think they are working hard to make that happen. >> jon: schools will be open maybe later this week? >> we are trying for thursday but some of the schools have no power and they are waiting for them to repair it. they're hoping for thursday. >> jon: what about physical damage aside from the power lines, have you seen a lot of physical damage to structures in your county? >> it's a lot of what i expected, roof damage based on the wind. i don't see a lot of buildings but are really damaged on the outside. maybe i need to get to the side of the intracoastal before i say that but we've been driving inside the neighborhoods. i drove all the major roadways to make sure they were clear today and i didn't see lots of structural damage, i just saw, like i said, a lot of roof damage. >> jon: and so as broward county kind of limps back into action, probably starting tomorrow, the mayor of miami beach told us that his community is basically open for business starting at 8:00 in the morning. he will be heading very much that same direction. >> absolutely. we are open for business tomorrow. we can make sure our facilities are and running. there's nothing really that's different about what we are doing other than the fact that they've had more casualties right now than we have from the storm. we're just trying to keep people safe. >> jon: late at night here on this monday morning -- actually tuesday morning i should say. barbara sharief, mayor of broward county florida, thanks very much for spending some time with us tonight. >> thank you. >> jon: when we come back what options for financial relief and to aid to the victims of hurricane irma half, a top expert joins us next. ♪ you know, geico can help you save money on your homeowners insurance too? 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yeah. introducing essential portfolios the automated investing solution. ♪ ♪ >> jon: millions of florida residents now have to pick up pieces after hurricane irma with many facing incredible damage to their property and belongings, so where do they start to get financial relief and aid if it's available? for more we go to disaster-relief attorney august mateas who joins us from washington. say you live in south florida, maybe the keys, maybe the tampa area. you come back to your house and it is a wreck. what is the first thing you should do? >> thank you, jon. first, i would like to say, before i even talk about relief, that brock long, the new head of fema and the white house have done a spectacular job with their immediate emergency response for both harvey and irma, and i say that not as someone who is a republican or even anything close to it. the last few weeks, in watching television coverage of these storms, it's really been tremendous. i don't think anybody has been thinking about politics at all, but rather watching mr. long on television speaking about fema and speaking with such a confident, calm demeanor, i really believe that he's not being viewed -- i don't see him as a republican or a democrat but really someone who just really cares about getting out and helping people, and that's sort of the first step, and i have to say so far he gets an a-plus, and now after the storm now is the test. what's the relief? what options are available to people? lives have been saved. things have been coordinated. federal money is now flowing. fema did a great job coordinating with state agencies. they did a great job coordinating even with private citizens like the cajun navy. but now what aid is there? that's what's critical. the first things people have to do is ask themselves do they have flood insurance. if the answer is no, they still may have options -- there is still federal assistance, there is state assistance and if they don't have insurance of any sort they may be able to tap those systems for relief. if they do have insurance, pull out their policies, read them cover to cover and figure out what kind of coverage do they have. do they have homeowners policies? those generally cover damage from wind. do they have a federal flood insurance policy or some other type of flood insurance policy? those generally cover obviously damage from flooding. what they need to do is give all of their insurers notice of a loss. if their house was damaged, if they believe that any damage occurred from whatever cause by the hurricane, put the insurers on notice. and then what they need to do is figure out their damage. assess damage. they need to do that -- view that as your responsibility to assess what was actually damaged from the storm. if you're suffering basic property damage, get a contractor out there. get an estimator. ask them to tell you what it would really cost to replace and rebuild your home. >> jon: you mentioned fema at the start of this. if i'm an ordinary homeowner is there federal money available to me? or is that only available to businesses, for instance? >> no, there could certainly be federal assistance money, and i'm trying to separate out noninsurance system from insurance. it's very important to distinguish between homeowners and federal flood insurance. most insurance that covers flood damage -- most, not all, but most -- is underwritten by the federal government, specifically by a branch of femaa called the national flood insurance program, and the nfip, the national flood insurance program is the biggest flood insurance carrier in the country. the they've issued something like five million policies to homeowners. it's absolutely huge. >> jon: let's hope that a lot of people in florida had that insurance. august, we're going to have to say goodbye. thank you for being with us tonight and that does it for us. i'm jon scott in new york. be sure to watch fox's continuing coverage of irma and its aftermath beginning with "fox & friends first" 5:00 a.m. eastern later this morning. goodnight from new york. ♪ ♪ >> sean: thanks to all our friends on "the five." an important opening monologue tonight about how the country could come together during difficult times as we now remember today the 16th anniversary of 9/11. that's coming up in a few minutes. first, tonight, the city of jacksonville, florida is seeing record flooding. millions in that state are still without power and now tropical storm irma is bringing its devastation to the state of georgia. on the ground tonight in columbus, georgia, our friend geraldo rivera. what's going on? >> we landed in charlotte, north carolina, believe it or not. that was the chosest

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