we re following two breaking stories out of florida right now. tropical storm elsa reported to become a hurricane in the hours ahead. this as the confirmed death toll from the condo collapse has now climbed to 36. so 109 still unaccounted for. 109 people still unaccounted. laila is on the scene for us. we got an update from local officials a while ago. tell our officials what we learned. well, miami-dade mayor confirming four additional bodies have been recovered from the rubble. so as you said, that makes the death toll now stand at 36. i can tell you, we are starting to feel the wind pick up, the rain is coming back down. and this comes after lightening and wind gusts actually forced rescue crews to pause for two hours today here in surf side. tonight the search and rescue effort growing more urgent as
for, 22 now confirmed dead, fred. all right, natasha chen, thank you so much. let s talk more about all of this. florida governor ron desantis spoke about the need to demolish the building. the remains of the building to ensure the safety of searchers. here is what he had to say. if you have the building down and you start to see wind pick up, you know that may not even necessitate them stopping at all at that point. it depends. if they are out there, though, and you start to get some of these gusts with that structure there, that would be a real, real, hazard. i would imagine it would likely cause work stoppage. taking the building down, given the fact the storm is coming and given you are going to have to do this anyways is the brunt thing to do. and i think it will he had lead to the most the course of action that most minimally disrupts the rescue efforts. the collapse of that condo in surfside has made other nearby cities question the safety of
in the last hour or so conditions have really picked up in charleston. we are feeling the force of these wind gusts. despite that being downgraded to a category 2, that difference of 5 miles an hour, you don t really feel that difference when you re here on the ground. i want to go to the cnn weather center. meteorologist allison chinchar is standing by. allison, as we are feeling this wind pick up, i would imagine that the eye wall is getting closer to us because that is where the strongest winds are. it also seems these gusts have been more consistent and they seem to be sticking around for a little bit at this point. yeah, that has to do with the fact that the storm is getting closer to you, and that s what s going to happen not just where you are but for north and south carolina. as the storm edges closer to you, those wind gusts, those strong wind gusts are going to get more frequent. you re not going to have quite as many gaps in between them. the rain will get heavier, things
definitely seeing the wind pick up, chris. we haven t seen the rain yet. we re expecting to see that later today. there are some folks, some residents here on the island, that are going to stay put. they re going to try to weather this storm. as for the tourists, the visitors, they made their way out of town yesterday. and it is pretty much a ghost town on the outer banks right now. there are no hotels or restaurants open. very few people on the roads right now. and as you can see, these conditions aren t so bad right now, but as the evening progresses and dorian makes her way here, we are going to start to see significant rain. as you said, the storm surge is what people are most concerned about here, the flooding. and 4 to 7 feet is significant for this area. they do prepare. they have been through storms before. there are a lot of homes that are risen and on stilts in this area, but that is not to say that flooding in the streets can not be a major concern when it comes to power out
county where we re standing, some of the area s under mandatory evacuation order. some of the area under a hurricane warning as well. here with me now, the mayor of palm beach county, florida, his name is mack bernard. mayor, thanks so much for your time, first of all. we ve seen the wind pick up, seen the rain over the past few hours also increase. right now what s the chief concern for you? well, the chief concern, craig, thanks for inconstitutional righting me. you know, first of all our thoughts and prayers were our brothers and sisters from the bahamas because we have such a huge bahamian population in south florida and palm beach county. so what we want to do is after of this storm passes to see how we can help rebuild the bahamas. our chief concern right now, which is storm surge because we re subject to high tide. yeah. we re looking at the storm surge could be over 4 to 7 feet in palm beach county. so that s our beach concern. it would seem as if this is an area where