Dangerous storm surge spilling into Florida ahead of Milton landfall

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Ali Reid reports storm surge and flooding already spilling into Fort Myers Beach, Florida, ahead of Hurricane Milton's landfall. Locals still in the area rush to find shelter.

Transcript

00:00Accuweather's Allie Reed is live there tonight. Allie, that city is very vulnerable to storm surge. Tell us what you're seeing.

00:10Right guys, there is no doubt that Milton has already started to make its wrath right here in Fort Myers Beach.

00:16The wind certainly starting to pick up here. The biggest thing that we're going to focus on though

00:21is that storm surge that we are talking about. I want to point something out to you.

00:25This is really important to see here, okay?

00:28This is San Parlo's Boulevard Bridge, miles down this road. We cannot get there in any capacity, okay?

00:38It's just that flooding has already become here in this area.

00:44We're talking for Andy and I's safety. Right after this hit, we are going to be leaving this area.

00:51Unfortunately, this is the last place that we want to be getting stuck at,

00:55especially because we want to continue to bring you guys live over the next couple of hours.

00:59And it is...

01:01Look at this...

01:03...tornado...

01:05...entirely...

01:07...leading into people's...

01:11...we've been talking about in this area. We might not be in the direct path or that cone that we're showing for Milton,

01:18but this is the big issue. Many, many homes here dealing with flooding surge.

01:23Now, I want to...

01:25...you on your...

01:27...we were roving about the area earlier and the biggest problem then was that we were talking...

01:31...popping all up across this area. We came across an area, we were right here in the...

01:37...when...

01:39...came...

01:41...picking up people's homes, roofs coming off...

01:43...people were asking, why didn't those people evacuate?

01:47Well, that area, that zone was not under mandatory evacuation.

01:51A lot of those families decided to stay around and now they're scratching their heads saying, what do we do?

01:55We don't have a roof over our home. We need to leave.

01:59So a lot of them making last minute calls, grabbing their things and getting to a nearby shelter,

02:03working with local departments because they can no longer stay in their homes.

02:07And it's really hard to imagine, right?

02:09Just think about all of the social media tweets that we've been getting, asking, you know, saying...

02:13...it's almost hard to believe we see a tornado and then followed by a hurricane.

02:17It's like we're in some sort of movie here.

02:19All right, we're going to send it back. Here's the thing again.

02:21It is not safe for us to be here, guys.

02:23We are going to be leaving. We're going to head to Fort Myers proper.

02:25We're going to check in with you in an hour.

02:27We'll let you know how it is over there.

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