Recall back in 2004 that is when hurricane charlie came racing across charlotte harbor, and that brought a lot of wind and storm surge but not a lot of wind. this hurricane ian is a completely different animal. we were taking cover earlier expecting the storm surge is going to be here in downtown punta gorda. we also took our cars up to a high floor of a parking garage here, but still we do see some water, and we are expecting still they re still forecasting this 8 to 12 foot storm surge here in punta gorda and charlotte county. but, anderson, we ve not seen that yet but we are now on the backside of the storm supposed to sit on top of us here still for several hours to go as we continue to watch and wait and see what happens. we know that there are high-water vehicles on standby here, 1,300 of them in the state. also the search and rescue teams will bow out. but in terms of what we re seeing and feeling here is just very, very strong winds and a
Storm. so, we don t know what s really coming at us, but we did light up a little bit across the way for you. but of course the power is out here in downtown punta gorda where we are. and the winds are quite strong. so, we re keeping one eye on some flying debris that could be coming our way while also trying to show out what s going on here. but we re just at the edge of this parking garage where we have some safety we can run to just in case. if you take a look, you can see the rain probably and some of the light as it s coming down, still very, very heavy. the streets are not flooding. that is the good news. we re expecting a pretty massive storm surge here, anything up to 18 feet, because we re pretty close to charlotte harbor. and that is where the storm would have pushed the ocean water into the harbor and it would have overflowed into downtown punta gorda. so far that hasn t happened although they haven t ruled it out. i have to tell you i m concerned for people who either chose
First of all, randy, give us a sense what is going on right now. reporter: anderson, we re here in downtown punta gorda, and it s quite a situation. we ve had now for hours these pounding winds, pounding rains here. earlier we had the eye of the storm, anderson, came right over as it was so calm. the birds came out, and that s what happens as you experience the eye, and now we re on the backside of this storm for hours. we ve clocked 125 mile an hour winds here in downtown punta gorda, and i can show you just some of the debris out there that s been coming down. we ve had trees that have come down. we had a stop sign that came flying down the street. we ve seen pieces of metal. as you know this is what happens in a storm of this magnitude. there s certainly been a fair amount of debris and palm trees. what we haven t seen, anderson, is any real storm surge to speak of. we are only a few blocks from charlotte harper, and as you
Lot of rain, anderson. but still not a lot of water in the streets, which is good news for the business owners here in downtown punta gorda, anderson. randy, you clearly have gotten yourself some protection wisely to be out of the brunt of this. if you can have your team, your camera person just kind of show us the wind as it whips behind you because that scene in the white light, it really gives you a sense just how fast this wind is moving and that rain is just pummeling. reporter: sure. jerry, if you could just step out a little bit, we just want to show the viewers here what they can see in term of just the wind whipping. you can see it in the light, anderson. it is painful painful standing there. as you know.
There s a little bit of a lull and then it picks up again. so, you just never know what to expect, as you know. earlier we were seeing there was a piece of a building that came off. there was a stop sign. there s been some debris as well. you can see across the way there s some twisted metal just in the yard. but those are the only lights that are on right now because we put them there in downtown punta gorda, where we are, because there are major power outages all around here. so, certainly that s expected with hurricane we saw the transformers earlier. we re not far from charlotte harbor, as you know, and that s where we re expecting the storm surge to come from and pour right into downtown here. so far that hasn t happened. we are on the back side of the storm. they still are expecting some type of surge but hopefully not the 12 to 18 feet that they were expecting or predicting earlier, ishl say. we had the eye com e that only w