our thoughts remain with those impacted by hurricane ian. for those who need help, please ask for it. and if you can give help, please, give it. on that note, i wish you all a very good and safe night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late with us. i will see you at the end of tomorrow. when hurricane ian came ashore yesterday afternoon and what was one of the stronger storms to ever hit the united states, period, and after a terrifying night in southwest florida daylight today brought harrowing evidence of the destruction of a storm like that brings. this is fort myers beach, one of the barrier ion islands that in slammed into as a near category five storm. for the hurricane it was a popular beach destination full of resorts and restaurants. as you can, see much of it has been leveled. when local resident told his local tape paper, quote, fort myers beach is gone. this is the causeway leading to sandoval island, just west of
in the 50ish range that was confirmed. i m sure other people did stay as well. would you say that florida or tallahassee has dodged a bullet? i think if you look if we were sitting here last night, we had a track that was bringing the eye maybe into leon county. they shifted that this morning. i would say leon this was from where we were when it was going there, this is the shift. you go out i ve been out. there s been rain and wind. there s some debris. nothing, i think, like if that wall would have impacted tallahassee. i think you would have seen significantly more damage. that helped tallahassee. is there any bridge damage like we saw during ian, sandoval island? i m going to let jarrett come up. i don t think we identified that. there are in the tampa bay area,
myers beach is gone. this is the causeway leading to sandoval island, just west of fort myers beach, the only road that the island of 6000 people, and as you can see it s impassable, all the bridges to pine island, just north of there has also failed, this evening lester holt spoke with the mayor of sandoval about her concern for the people who did not evacuate before the storm and maybe trapped there. we have had significant numbers of people contact us with people that they knew were on the island, so we have been logging those meticulously and getting those out to our first responders we have had about 200 households the didn t evacuate on the island that we know of. the search and rescue teams are on the island going to those areas so they can get to right now trying to have those individuals and make sure that they are sick there have been some people that have come off the island. as you hear the mayor of sanibel describing there, a
little more obvious there. that s a live picture of fort myers and where you see the palm trees moving around. there is some wind. but remember, in addition to the storm surge, that rain, when you get that storm surge and the degree of rain, you have drainage issues. that can contribute to normal flooding and the sea level rises as we get closer to the storm. think about those vulnerable places, sandoval island, those small, narrow islands, how vulnerable they are at a time like this. the winds are only starting to pick up. what it s going to look like over the next 24 hours. joining us now wbbh reporter, trent kelly. he s in fort myers. seems like in the last five or ten minutes the wind s really picking up. after. that s right. in fact, we ve been out here, we re not in fort myers tonight.