hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remain without power in Florida and the Carolinas as those States reel from the impact of hurricane Ian more than 80 storm-related deaths have been confirmed since it first crossed the U.S Coast on Wednesday as a category 4 hurricane well let's go to CBS correspondent Christian Benavides who's in Fort Myers Beach in Florida one of the worst affected areas by Hurricane Ian uh just tell us about the situation first of all where you are good morning well let me just sort of break down that number of about 80 confirmed
fatalities we really don't have a true scope of how major this could actually be remember the access to these Barrier Islands remains limited so we are just now seeing a number of throughout the morning we've been seeing dozens and dozens of rescue vehicles that search and rescue teams that have started to go into the Barrier island of Fort Myers Beach we are just oh we're just across from the bridge and as you can see I mean this is a boat that was washed ashore by the storm surge but this is a road that's just littered
with debris and actual structures I mean you see actual homes and businesses that have just been washed away from their Foundation blocks and blocks from where they were originally at really pushed by the storm surge really this as officials have mentioned has been a huge water event the wind damage just doesn't compare to the amount of water damage that they really had here and another thing that they're currently assessing just sort of looking at is if you'll recall the path of this storm initially wasn't that it was going to hit Fort Myers it was it
was going to hit the panhandle of Florida or even the Tampa area that's about a hundred miles away but there was that last minute switch in the forecast and there's really some concern is that people have enough time to get out after the storm made that last minute switch and Christian we've been looking at pictures from the air as well as what we can see behind you while you've been talking I mean it really is absolutely catastrophic and as you say that the scale of this isn't even clear yet just tell us about the help
that's been on hand and what is still needed there well really just talking to people on the ground the biggest need really starts with housing a lot of people have lost their place to live so they're relying on shelters or hotels or family members or moving away to other family members so you can only imagine how how that is because the process of getting your your insurance money for your home is going to be a long and complicated one certainly because of because the flood is what essentially has cost all of this and the percentage
of homes with flood insurance is below 20 so you have to think about you know taking all of that into account and looking at the damage and looking at the desperation among people I mean the lines at gas stations just go on and on and on there were people that were really waiting before the pumps were open one woman told us that she had waited for two hours before even being able to get gas for a generator for her home and for her car so there's a lot of desperation in the southwest Florida area and
these communities really are going to have to get rebuilt from the ground up so it's unclear when people that live in those communities are finally going to be able to go back Christian thank you very much they're giving us a real sense of what is going on in that part of Florida Fort Myers Beach Christian Benavides
