people are now in 257 shelters like this woman right here. florida says it needs 5.5 million meals to feed them all. and 6.6 million liters of clean water. 2 million people still do not have power. water isn t running in five counties. 19 counties have boil water notices. and more than 200 health care facilities are evacuating, or considering doing so. 10 airports are closed. along with 24 ports. 31 transit systems. and nine railways. and then there is the death toll. the official number is now 14. though those same officials say that number is very likely to rise. and they are warning, just because it has a weaker wind speed, making it a category one storm, hurricane ian, that does not mean that the danger has passed. as we have learned over and over again, it is the water, the rain, the storm surge, and the flooding that is often the most dangerous. that right there is where we begin, looking at what the storm is doing now, joining me from charleston, south carolina, is nbc
suarez live in tampa. chad myers is tracking the storm. chad, we re talking about all of the computer models, the various paths. what are they telling us right now? they re getting more organized even though there are five or so different models that we look at. the ones that the american model was really way out in the middle of the gulf of mexico. that was last week. the european model was in the atlantic ocean, 700 miles away. now all of that has calmed down and narrowed down to about a 100 wide strip where not that much air, what a pretty picture as long as you doan have to deal with this. this is the hurricane. the visible picture from the sky. this is what it looks like when you talk about the hot towers. the big thunderstorms around what could be and likely later today an eye. the storm is now breathing. it is sucking air into it from the surface and it is blowing it up to those towers and out of the top and that is what we call a breathing, living, growing hurricane
and what will probably be a bumpy ride all the way to november 8th. president biden is talking about the normalization of political violence, the spread of big lies, and one ever-growing donald trump who is calling for lawlessness and promises, even promising pardons to those convicted of violent insurrection and crimes. trump took the stage last night for the first time since the fbi searched his home. he claimed that they searched the room of his wife and teenaged son, and again ramped up the dangerous rhetoric against president biden, and against law enforcement. because we should not forget the good news, the cdc recommending a new booster to fight the highly contagious omicron subvariant, and the economy guesting a boost with another solid month of job creation, and there may be some hope ahead for the residents of jackson, mississippi, who are now in their seventh door without clean water. in a moment, i will ask the head of fema about the progress made to end that cris
taking those simple measures today could make a big difference in the first few days after the storm passes. deann, thank you. we wish you the best of luck. thanks, jim. coming up next, cnn has uncovered new details about a call from the white house to one of the rioters on january 6 right in the middle of it. that took place while the capitol was under attack. what we know about who exactly was on the line. plus, italy has elected the first female prime minister. note this, she is set to lead the most far right government in that country since mussolini. what is the consequences of that. later we speak to small business owners in florida who are frustrated by the governor sending asylum-seekers to other states when the businesses are short of workers. should be your style! plop plop fizz fizz, winter warriors with alka-seltltzer plus cold & flu relief.
from the worst to not so good. carlos suarez, thank you so much. so how is the federal government prepared as hurricane ian barrels towards florida. i m joined by fema administrator deann chriswell who is in miami. thank you so much. thank you for taking the time to have me on today. so you know better than me. hurricane prediction is science but it is not an exact science, right. there are a lot of models and it is hard to predict where it will end up and how big it will be. in your experience, where do you place ian in terms of the threat to the coast, particularly to the west coast of florida? yeah, i think you re exactly right, jim. there is an art to this science. and as it gets closer and closer to landfall, it gets more refined. what i would say right now is that this is going to have some impacts to florida. we re going to see significant impacts along the western coast and parts of the panhandle. but the people inland should also take this very seriously. things that w