Floodwaters overtake Gulfport ahead of Hurricane Helene

Storm surge sent floodwaters far into Gulfport, Florida, in the hours before the arrival of Hurricane Helene on Sept. 26.

Transcript

00:00Continuing with our team coverage right now is AccuWeather correspondent, Leslie Hudson.

00:04She joins us live now from Goldport, Florida with the absolute latest.

00:07Leslie, it's pretty intense out there.

00:11Yeah, you know, we decided to come out of those floodwaters because there were some live

00:16lights that were down and actually you can probably see the reflection off of me there.

00:19The awesome fire rescue crew here is making sure that we're safe

00:23and they asked us to come out of those waters, so we did.

00:26And it's really probably not the best decision to be down there,

00:29but I was trying to show you guys just how intense it's been,

00:32but you can clearly see that it is pushing inland.

00:35We've had to move our truck about six times because the water, again,

00:39a steady stream that's coming down this road.

00:41They anticipate this entire road to be flooded with standing water anywhere from four, five,

00:46six feet.

00:47The fire department here says that they think the worst,

00:51where we are right here in Goldport, eight o'clock to ten o'clock tonight,

00:55they're anticipating this completely flooded out.

00:58There's a lot of cars that are way down there.

01:00This is a little historic district of Goldport.

01:03It's actually a very quaint old Florida city,

01:06but they are going to be underwater if they don't move their cars because I'm telling you,

01:10it is absolutely impassable down there.

01:13And we showed you the video earlier today of those boats.

01:16There was at least five that were unmoored that were just crashing up on the seawall.

01:21They lost over two dozen boats with Debbie in this particular bay

01:25and they're anticipating that or more.

01:27I saw at least 30 sailboats out there and they were not doing good

01:30and that was like five, six hours ago.

01:32So I can't get down there to see what they're doing now,

01:34but anticipating a fair amount of sailboat damage down here.

01:38Power's already out.

01:39There are folks that are staying,

01:40but most folks hopefully that are in this immediate area have left.

01:43For now, we're reporting live in Goldport.

01:45We'll send it back to you guys.

01:46All right. Thank you so much.

01:47That's AccuWeather correspondent Leslie Hudson.

01:49Thank you for that update.

01:50Be safe, Leslie.

01:51And now we want to head over to Bernie.