first confirmed hurricane related death in osceola count. 14 million people right now under a flood advisory. the scale of destruction is hard to comprehend. we are learning more by the minute. any minute from now, president biden gets a briefing on the scope and devastation of this storm. millions of floridians right now without electricity. lee and charlotte counties in southwestern florida knocked entirely off the power grid, that according to florida s governor. emergency responders working through a backlog of calls for help. for some, that help won t get there in time. in naples, scenes of desperation, first responders wading through shoulder-high water to carry, drag people to safety. in orlando, regret for not following orders to get out. i heard the evacuation going off on my phone, but i was, like, we re going to be all right. i kept saying, we re going to be all right, you know what i m saying? but, boy, was i wrong. i was wrong. if i would have known it was goin
coast guard deployed 16 rescue helicopters, six fixed wing aircraft and 18 rescue boats and crews. that s just one element of the many federal search and rescue teams staged in florida and the governor talked about how impressed he was with what the coast guard is going this morning. these are dangerous missions and i m grateful for the brave women and men, federal, state and local governments working as one team, risking their lives to save others. and we re going to learn a lot more in the coming hours. but we know many families are hurting, many are hurting today, and our entire country hurts with them, because all over the country we ve seen so many crises, but in florida today is the epicenter. we re continuing to see deadly rainfall, catastrophic storm surges, roads and homes flooded. we re seeing millions of people without power and thousands hunkered down in schools and commune centers. they re wondering what s going to be left when they get to go home, quote, unquote
looks like something fell hard on your carport. careful. i don t know if i can open it. is it unlocked? i ll help you. let me try. does it work from the inside? can you reach around? right over here. i think it s wedged against the frame. but you can careful. i got you. yeah. hold on to my arm. i got you. there you go. wow . wow. amazing. it s absolutely amazing what that water did. reporter: my goodness . this is disgusting. what do you think? done. reporter: i think so. i hate to say. i know you were so hopeful. as i said, there s people worse off than us. all those people out there on sanibel. all those people that don t have a second home to go to. wow. it s amazing too. reporter: isn t it? describe what you re stepping in here. it s just like muck. our thanks to bill weir for that report. i want to go live to orlando, florida now and cnn s ryan young. ryan, tell us what you re seeing there. reporter: yeah, jake, so much pain in this area. pe
climb along with the flood waters. we re learning at this hour that sheriff offices across the coast getting a number of calls from people trapped in their homes they didn t evacuate but as the lead county sheriff s office said winds need to drop to 45 miles per hour for them to safely attempt these rescues. we re going to have every corner of this disaster covered from reporters on the ground to residents in its path. but we begin in an area where residents have been advised to shelter in place, the tampa saint pete region and that s where we find fax weather s max gordon who is standing by. max what are folks bracing for there tonight? p pfrjts hey there, laura. well, this is an area where folks here were expecting the storm to make a direct hit and although it moved further to the south we aren t necessarily out of the woods just yet. some areas here are expecting around 20 inches of rain, and we are experiencing some of those heavy bands of rain right now as well as those
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