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.
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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.