00:00Ali, good morning to you. And we know Fort Myers saw a lot of destruction before landfall.
00:08Right. Ari Burney. And I wanted to go from the neighborhood where we saw that tornado damage
00:14even before Hurricane Milton made landfall to now the downtown area of Fort Myers. The big thing
00:19here, they saw a ton of flooding. We're talking five to six feet of storm surge just in this area
00:25alone. This was one of the locations, by the way, that we were looking at as Hurricane Milton
00:29was making landfall. And boy, this is a very different scenario this morning from what we saw
00:35almost two days ago at this point. So many businesses are now rebuilding, and it really
00:41is a breath of fresh air to see them all back, getting back to a sense of normal, right? I want
00:46to point something out for you guys. Look at this. This business here, Bruno's of
00:502024. This business was supposed to open in a matter of days. Unfortunately, looking inside
00:58of their business now, they do have a little bit of flood day from looking through the window here.
01:03Not anything. And I think a lot of people in this area are breathing a sigh of relief,
01:08because if you saw what it looked like back when Hurricane Milton was making its way through
01:13that town, I'd think you'd be thinking a little bit differently here. Let's take to this video
01:17on your screen. This is what we were able to shoot during as Milton making landfall perspective
01:25of what it looked like. Wow. Impressive. Six-foot storm surge. And nearly every block here, Fort
01:34Myers downtown, by the way, it's not a big downtown area, but it certainly is big enough
01:38where if you were to see how much flooding there actually was, it'd take you back a little. It
01:42definitely was shocking. But pretty much every single street here in the downtown area was
01:47completely flooded out. But I will say, and a lot of people have been saying the same thing,
01:51as quickly as it came is as quickly as it went, which was a very positive thing here for this
01:57neighborhood, especially because of the amount of restaurants, shops and businesses here. This
02:02could have been detrimental for an area like this. Thankfully, that's not the case this morning.
02:07Again, let's bring you back live. The best thing I can hear. Oh, we love the sound of the generators
02:13of people working. That is the noise that we are hearing all around the Fort Myers downtown area
02:18today. Again, pointing your direction to the workers down the street here, trying to get back
02:23to a sense. Of course, we want a sense of normal in this area. They want to be reopened. They want
02:31to be making money for their business. And that is what they're going to be doing today. Again,
02:36a lot of people already trying to get back to that sense of normal.
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