governor ron desantis leading a briefing in tallahassee, florida, a briefing that illustrated the power of this storm when the power dipped out briefly while the governor was speaking before the generators kicked in just a few seconds later. that s a live picture at 6:54 of perry, florida, just since we came on the air a little under an hour ago. that picture has changed pretty dramatically. that s gabe gutierrez, our reporter. the winds have picked up. the rains have picked up. what we learned is keaton beach, florida, according to fema, will be the place of landfill there on the big bend. that s about 180, 200 miles north of tampa. 75 miles southeast of tallahassee, keaton beach, florida. making landfill just over an hour from now. governor desantis saying:00 eastern time is when they re looking for this storm to hit land. at this point they say if you decided to ride out the storm, you got to stay inside, hunker down and hope you survive it. they gave warnings for days to
quite some time before they can reach you. fortunately in this case, there is a happy ending. i want to go now to keaton beach, florida, and nbc s gabe gutierrez. he and his crew, the first to reach the town where the hurricane made landfall. gabe, what are you seeing? reporter: hi there, chris. well, yes, this is keaton beach. we rode out the storm in perry. several hours ago we were being hit by those incredibly powerful winds. that was 20 miles inland. imagine how strong the winds were here in keaton beach. we ve just been seeing fish and wildlife boats trying to do some rescues being launched right here. if you walk over here, you can see how many first responders are now here. the florida national guard is on the move. they just arrived and let us into this area, which had been previously blocked off. they re just trying to get a handle right now on just how significant this damage was. and chris, this is the gulf of