I'm aware that most of the stories I receive are composed on a keyboard (although younger folks seem to be able to communicate via iPhone with just two thumbs).
bill, you have been keeping us updated throughout the course of the morning. what are you seeing right now on the ground? >> reporter: well, phil, we are really watching the rapid rise of the steinhatchee river. give you perspective, those buildings down there, that's the marina, this is a little harbor area here along the river, we were doing our morning live shot standing on the banks of the river down there. it is now completely overcome the road here, and we are watching -- we have another camera up high that we can show you, a zoom shot of the debris now floating up river, including huge floating marinas. these are on floats and they slip their moorings and we have watched entire docks wash by with sailboats still attached. and the folks who run the place here, we are the river inn motel, they are really or eid about friends much theirs who stayed.
of water from the streets. this is downtown gulfport right now especially in the low lying areas. in sev some places several blocf downtown gulfport have been absolutely flooded out. some of locals tell me that's kind of typically when they have a big rainstorm that coincides with a major high tide. what is not typically is seeing damage like this that we are seeing out here in the bay. we see plenty of sailboats pushed up against the shore. this one that we are looking at here this whited and red one tipped over on its side. quite a bit of damage seeing here. very reminiscent what happened with hurricane ada. you can see one of these peers just rocking and rolling in those waves. the wind is still pushing up plenty of water over the shoreline for the bay over the sea wall plenty of the boats still hanging in there just
this is why people move to florida. it's heavenly right now. we're on the steinhatchee river. the coast is behind you as we go west that way. you can see a lot of the sailboats tied up here. we actually learned that somebody's going to ride out the storm in one of these sailboats. when you consider that this will be maybe 110-mile-an-hour winds in about eight hours, really questioning the wisdom of that decision. but there's always folks who decide to stay in these places, including captain mike baker, longtime resident of this place, native of the keys. you're from marathon originally. so you've been through a lot of hurricanes. >> started with hurricane donna back in the day. >> reporter: talk about the decision to stay when something like this seems so obviously -- >> it started with back with hurricane donna as a kid, my parents took us to the mainland. and we came back, and our home had been rummaged from other people, the looters, they took everything. not to mention the amount of time you're away from your home, you have no idea what it's going to look like or if you have a
including all the damage and destruction -- there are other docks. they're meeting up with other sailboats, and also trying to -- [inaudible] >> veronica miracle, in maui, stay safe. we'll check back in with you. thank you for being there. joining me now is daniel sullivan who lives on maui and is experiencing, essentially, -- over the past 24 hours. i can't imagine -- i know you've got your kids, family, and pets there. can you walk me through what the last 24 hours have been like for you and your family? >> yeah, it's been a sleepless 24 hours. it started with the winds from dora and all the trees were knocked down around our neighborhood. so the first thing, we dealt with roads being blocked. the winds were crazy, a lot stronger than we thought. then the fire started about midday and started spreading really fast. we started with a fire, kind of,
we've seen people, volunteers, distributors bringing palts of supplies, water, food, dog food, anything you can imagine, even bedding to some of these boats. some of these boats normally are expedition boats. they're taking people out to go whale watching. right now i spoke to a captain of one of those boats and she said they've been authorized by the county to go out and go all the way around. i'm going to show you in the distance there, i think it already went off. but this is the path they take all the way around the island, the main artery to the island is closed. because these flames are so big, they can't even land in the area they need to pass off the supplies, so they will be needing sailboats. one of the captains of the expedition ships told me, there's so many unknowns, i have to figure it out as i go. they're hoping to bring some people back to safety here. but because all the cell communications have been down,