got clobbered with all of the furniture and stuff that was floating. that is how i got this. i got shoved into a wall. when i got the front door open and there was a surge, it took me to the middle of the yard and i fought to get back on the porch. the shear force of the monster storm. we are standing in the middle of some of the destruction. i am john berman in fort myers, florida. in hurricane ian, it is a hurricane again. it has intensified to a category 1 storm and after tearing a destructive path through florida it is headed at south carolina with 85 miles per hour winds and it is expected to make landfall around midday near myrtle beach and could bring life threatening flooding there after what it did here. parts of the state just decimated. south carolina s governor says that we know what is coming. thursday was the first chance to assess some of the damage. cnn is reporting at least 19 storm related deaths. that number will almost certainly rise. here in fort myer
years ago, hurricane herman. some people were out of their homes over a year and this storm was bigger than that. reporter: in cape coral, you could see the woman when she returned to her living room, she was making footprints in the sand and the silt that had washed into her living room. it is hard to imagine you can salvage that. if it is a wood home, sure. i am a big believer in concrete block homes. even block homes flooded. you are going to have to do demolition. we are going to be able to help with that. the mission for us today is to get our eyes on the damage and offer a helping hand. it broke my heart when i heard
this neighborhood, so that is full of stuff that could get lifted up, projectiles. you see in the yard all of the sticks that are down. you know, people have done what they can, but look over here. if you just look on this person s front porch, they still have furniture out. they have got a television out there. here s a bag of trash. there is a lot of stuff. and then any of these porches, those are going to go in the wind. so you re going to have that all flying around. so the people that are staying, they say we re in concrete block homes, we re okay. but think about the storm surge coming through. and if it s projected to be 6, 8 feet here, that will fill up these first floor homes. many of them aren t elevated and so you really just have a disaster in the making. so, kristen, these folks are in ft. myers and they thought when the storm originally was projected to track up the east coast, they figured, all right, we re going to get some heavy winds and maybe a little bit of heavy