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punta gorda. trees whipping, winds topping 130 miles an hour. across florida there are people trapped in their homes. entire homes being flooded out, people swimming inside. one city hit hard is bonita springs. part of that city are now completely underwater. the storm surge has knocked homes completely off their foundations as well. and to the south of there, the city of naples cat 4 winds there have completely demolished buildings. look at how high up that obviously you never know what s in these waters now. you ve got chemicals and everything in the middle of these towns. according to forecasters, the storm surge reached more than 6 feet, flooding cars and homes, even leaving rescue crews stranded. the water was so high that officials had to wade through it to rescue people who did not evacuate. and let us show you one astonishing image from just before ian came ashore. look at that. it s almost like a tsunami was coming. the winds and the storm actually sucked all ....
Breaking news, the mayor of tampa warning that the worst of hurricane ian is yet to come, asking everyone to shelter in place. the city bracing for the massive storm. they haven t gotten a storm surge yet. john berman saying that water all but retreating and going to come in with a vengeance with a massive storm surge even as already the winds and water have done such damage. i want to go to brian todd in nearby st. petersburg. brian, what type of damage are you seeing where you are? even just look at your shot i can see devastation. reporter: it really is devastation, erin. we ve just been able to fan out into some of these areas as the brunt of the storm has passed. we know some more of the storm is coming, so we re not out of danger yet by any means, still getting pounded by wind and rain. this is the largo area just north of st. petersburg. we came across this house completely burned out. check this out. ....
But look at the brighter colors. these are the colder and the higher cloud tops. this bright purple here on the northwestern flank west and even coming back around is still developing tremendous thunderstorms, which means its engine is still purring. it might not be on all eight cylinders, but it is purring along. we still continue to see some dangerous surge. in fact, in naples, the surge got up to 7 feet today, and then the gauge broke. so we may never know just how high it was there. bonita springs got hammered. i really think tomorrow when we get aerial pictures from around fort myers region, even the harbor down southward, it s going to look like hurricane michael. i m not kidding you. that s how deadly this system is, and we re just going to start to see pictures by tomorrow. even in fort myers even right now their surge is at 7 feet. earlier they had a surge of 7 feet in just six hours. but now here is another problem. when you look at the wind gauges, venice, it s broken. ....
It s because it won t stay on my head. really, officials don t want people out on the streets here anymore, for obvious reasons. we ve seen a lot of police cars, not much else besides that. the reason, you can see a kind of twisted big piece of metal siding that ripped off something on the streets here as the wind just tears through this entire area. and, again, it s the duration here because, erin, as you can imagine, the storm moving up the peninsula. tampa will be in this for many, many hours. again, not like punta gorda, but the concern here is the sustained winds and the driving rain could knock out power, could affect services. you re talking about hundreds of thousands of people in a city like this that could be affected over the next 24 hours. those images we saw of the bay, that it had gone out. it s usually many feet deep at that point. it s like a tsunami, it pulls all that water out, and then it s going to come back in with full force. ....
Punta gorda. trees whipping, winds topping 130 miles an hour. across florida there are people trapped in their homes. entire homes being flooded out, people swimming inside. one city hit hard is bonita springs. part of that city are now completely underwater. the storm surge has knocked homes completely off their foundations as well. and to the south of there, the city of naples cat 4 winds there have completely demolished buildings. look at how high up that obviously you never know what s in these waters now. you ve got chemicals and everything in the middle of these towns. according to forecasters, the storm surge reached more than 6 feet, flooding cars and homes, even leaving rescue crews stranded. the water was so high that officials had to wade through it to rescue people who did not evacuate. and let us show you one astonishing image from just before ian came ashore. look at that. it s almost like a tsunami was coming. the winds and the storm actually sucked all the water out o ....