hello i m brianna keilar alongside john berman. good morning to viewers here in the united states and around the world. it s wednesday, july 7th. happening now, tropical storm lerks sa bearing down on the gulf coast of florida, expected to make landfall here in the next few hours. the storm is weakening slightly, but it s still capable of causing a lot of destruction. elsa is packaging damaging winds and life threatening rain. residents urged to stay indoors and off streets until the threat passes. this morning, the coast guard is searching for nine people missing off the coast of key west. 15 others were rescued. right to randi kaye with a sense of how things are going this morning in clear water beach. windy. reporter: certainly. good morning to both of you. it s been windy and rainy throughout the night. we re at the edge of clear water harbor. last night before we went to sleep, there were a couple boats still anchored out there. we ll see what daylight brings. bu
up past testampa. most of florida s west coast now under a tornado watch until 8:00 a.m. governor desantis placing 33 counties under a state of emergency. the tampa and sarasota airports are shut down right now and officials are urging residents stay indoors. duke energy has pre-staged 3,000 employees from other states in north florida ready to go and restore power after elsa passes. derek van dam is live in tampa. tell us what you are seeing there. reporter: good morning. we ve scoured the area of tampa, we went to south tampa and bay shore boulevard, the areas that normally blood. and it looks as if they have been spared the worst from what was hurricane elsa last night when we arrived and the storm notably collapsed on its in many regards. but still a lot of concerns especially in some of these bands, these feeder bands we ve talked about. these are bands of rain that get fed in from the gulf of mexico and they basically move over the same location. so flood concerns s
microphone. having the president of united states states there is needed and we look forward to seeing him there. it s interesting because what it s the five of us we are discussing president putin at the summit president biden! we talked about the contrast. we talked about how in combination, just the position there, how president biden seem to falter. i wonder how it s going to look alongside governor desantis was bent such a show of strength, of really someone everyone s been looking up to showing that day after day. i wonder if we will see that, him going there is to throw his weight around, but i m wondering if it might backfire. one of the things that has come up, apparently off guard, i don t know. you just heard the mayor saying, she s going to be the one who will meet with engineers, soil experts, to make sure nothing like this happens again. we covered this live yesterday and it was a hot mess sandwich when they got to that question about, what are you going t
tonight, questions about how this could have happened are increasing and we have just lerped that owners were facing $15 million in assessments for building repairs. we re watchi ing all of this unfold. let s go straight to cnn bryan todd. you re in the sunny isles beach not far away from here. you had an opportunity for the exclusive look at the urgent building inspections that have been prompted by this disaster. reporter: right. we re just north of surfside. this comes as we re getting new information on the rescue effort in surfside. tonight rescuers here say they are shifting from by hand, bucket brigade style from using huge machinery. the process is called delayering but it s not all large pieces. we re digging through rubbles of concrete, the size of basketballs, baseballs. reporter: family members were allowed to visit the site, see tunnel and the constant threat to rescue workers. they witnessed a rescuer tumble 25 feet down the mound. reporter: the cause
live in surfside with the latest, good evening, phil. good evening, bret. we are now in day 5 of what is an enormous and massive search and rescue operation. the state of florida has 8 urban search and rescue teams. they are all here in surfside hunting for survivors in the piles of rubble. one more body recovered today adding to four bodies found sunday. bringing the confirmed death toll to 10. with 151 people still unaccounted for. this remains a search and rescue situation, not yet a recovery situation. but everybody well aware that the window of survivability is shrinking by the hour. over the weekend, crews on the scene dug a 40 french trench in the pancaked pile hoping to find voids and gaps where somebody might be able to breathe and survive. but the results are so far not as hoped. cavities have been found but no survivors have been discovered since shortly after the collapse thursday morning. the county mayor today acknowledging that for the families of these still