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rear. i'll be honest with you. >> we always appreciate the honesty james. you live in new orleans seen oboe covering after hurricanes. >> i i've dealt with them all, i know the toilets that work and i know you need immigrants and a lot of them to rebuild and i know the fact of hot water on hurricanes. i promise you. >> we believe you but tell me what you think, florida needs to be doing at this moment in its recovery efforts? >> first of all, they got something more than a photo op. dennis desantis interferes with rescue operations, the first thing you gotta do -- it yet to find the people that are have not been found. the second thing they have to do is bring a lot of construction workers, most of them are gonna be immigrants, i'm sorry that's just a fact. the third thing you need to do is change their building codes. i'm here in the bay of st. louis in mississippi right now. i got 64 pilings i'm sitting on,
you live in new orleans and have seen many hurricanes. >> i've dealt with them all, i know the toilets that work and i know you need immigrants and a lot of them to rebuild and i know the fact of hot water on hurricanes. i promise you. >> we believe you but tell me what you think, florida needs to be doing at this moment in its recovery efforts? >> first of all, they got something more than a photo op. the sentence goes down, gets an airboat, and interferes with rescue operations. the first thing you've got to do is iran down public safety, find, you know, probably still have people at the wrecking. point you've got to find these people. the second thing that need to do is bring a lot of construction workers, and most of them are going to be immigrants, i'm sorry, that's just a fact. the third thing you need to do is change the building codes. i look at these -- i'm here in bay st. louis of the mississippi right now, i've got 64 pilings i'm sitting on. i'm 26 feet above sea level.
when you look at all this? >> the first thing is, we're alive. we're alive. we don't know our future because we don't know can we rebuild? what -- a lot of people don't have insurance because -- they have insurance but they don't have flood insurance. this is everything that i have. >> this is your life? >> this is the only home i have. i don't have an up north home or, you know -- i've -- where do you go from here? >> that's a concrete floating dock which is on the other side of the house. came up off the pilings and made its way around the condo complex there. you can see, that's sitting up pretty high, and it weighs about 4,000 pounds. so you can see how high the
looking down on you now, what do you think he would say? >> i'm proud of you. i prepared for at least a ten-foot storm surge, and i tied the boat up to lots of different pilings. i want to say over 16 dock lines way away from the boat. i did a video for insurance to show everything was being done right. i tied everything down so it wouldn't blow away. and it worked. >> so this is the dock. how far away are we from the marina right now? >> i would say 600 feet from where the boat was initially tied up. and it came of the power lines, because they're all still standing. it had to float over top of them. so these high water. >> so overall, this is one of the best possible outkocomes. >> right.
dock which is on the other side of our house. came up off of its pilings and made its way around through the condo complex there and ended up up there. so you can see, that's sitting up pretty high. so you can see. and it weighs about 4,000 pounds. you can see how high the water had to be just to be able to get it there. the ocean is an extremely powerful, powerful thing. and this doesn't surprise me at all. >> reporter: you know, in talking to the neighbors, i've also been kind of struck by the sense of gratitude given how bad this hurricane was, many of them just feeling lucky to not have been injured, still be alive. i actually had a conversation with the city manager, asked him about the death toll, did he think that that would change, and he specifically said, you know, they're worried about that. this was bad and they're still
shock but also reality kind of starting to set in. i will turn the cam areera overe this is a dock that came off a house with hurricane ian and it really speaks to the force of this storm and how it moved this. we're only about 100 feet or so from the coast here in naples. take note of this dock and where it is. it is in the driveway of this home, but it actually comes from this home over here. behind this home is where this dock used to be. i spoke to the homeowner, and i want you to hear how he explains what happened. >> that's a floating dock which is on the other side of our house, came up off its pilings and apparently made its way around through the condo complex there and ended up there. you can see that's setting up pretty high so you can see, and it weighs about 4,000 pounds.
transport this larger location to a distribution site for food and water and to put in perspective we are in the mainland area of fort myers where destruction is widespread. we did a survey yesterday where we put out boats into homes, homes taken off their pilings, cars obliterated, gone, getting to this location is difficult but this mainland does pale in comparison to what we see on fort myers beach, you see from overhead the destruction, almost all of that wiped out by ian's wrath and we are told the initial more sporadic search for survivors in the rubble, they become more methodical and will continue today. further in the gulf, sanibel island still remains inaccessible so the causeway leading there was wiped away, we watched military helicopters, rescue helicopters fly in and out of that area, the mayor of the beloved community made this comparison. >> one of our public works people, one of the first
fort meyers beach and fort meyers beach almost completely washed away and recovery efforts are more methodical and will continue throughout the day. the hope is more people not in contact with family will be found alive and officials fear the death toll is likely to grow. a bit further in the gulf, sanibel island completely inaccessible by road and governor desantis said yesterday the pilings holding up the causeway, that single route in and out remained in tact but what was built on the sand bar washed aid way. military helicopters were flying in and out of the area and boats and the mayor of the community noted a grim comparison. >> i can tell you one of our
higher pilings, just higher period and even to art arteries to these islands, maybe like the one by you here. that they have to be built higher. to you agree with that? -- do you agree with that? is that being considered? i know it's early. >> yeah, that's a very good point. the causeways to access pawley's island are at a certain level. they could be made higher. but the roadways on pawley's island itself are even at a lower elevation than those causeways themselves, and that's a challenge that we have that we're trying to work through. it costs a lot of money, there's a lot of priorities, but we as a town, we know that's an issue, and it's always more evident and reveals itself when we have storm surge like we had yesterday. so, yeah, i agree with you. i will say that we do have, fema does require homes to be built to at least 14-foot level on the
so, mexico beach was scraped off the map, okay? just like someone took a shovel to the sidewalk. fort myers beach is very similar. just much bigger. but the devastation is still just incredible. the structures that were built with a new building codes, they survived, okay? the structures that were built, say, from 65 to 85, those were obliterated. if you were made out of wood, you are gone. you are just left with pilings. so, what you will see happen, just like what's happened in mexico beach right now, is the construction code will be increased. and it will just be, you will have to be with the fema flood maps. your structure will have to be somewhere probably from 7 to 10 feet off the ground if you want to live there. and that will be a cost of business if you want to live in that place, in order to ensure that storm surge, which can be so deadly, it's not going to kill you, hurt you, or destroyed your assets. >> yeah jimmy, how confident are you that those who suffered