93-3-3-WMR Audio on Demand presents the Preston and Steve show podcast.

And now, Preston and Steve's news update with Kathy Romano.

Today is Friday, September 30th. Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning in the news this morning. President Biden declared an emergency in South Carolina hours ahead of Ian's expected landfall as a category one hurricane near Charleston around midday Friday, the Washington Post reported.

The White House will dispatch federal assistance to supplement local response efforts and the hurricane, the National Hurricane Center warned of life-threatening flooding, storm surge, and strong winds in the Carolinas. Ian sustained maximum winds of about 85 miles per hour going into Friday as it veered

north of Florida. State officials there were assessing the extent of the damage that Ian left behind

with several areas still reeling from its destructive storm surges. Rubble was thrown across Florida's western coast and more than 2.1 million customers were still without power.

I just was watching some video on 6 ABC this morning and like towns are still completely flooded.

Like the water is still up and there's just debris floating.

There was a video I saw.

I told you guys about it yesterday.

These guys in Fort Myers that were by this pier and they were going down into the water, which was just insane. Right. So I saw the follow-up photos today of that pier. It is just completely destroyed. Gone. It would have just ripped away. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, there's loads of other footage.

I mean, that's the thing now.

You're able to see all these videos that people are posting of just the trailers and houses being ripped apart and trees, you know, coming right up out of the ground.

It's astonishing because what happens is you have the storm raged through and you're getting all that coverage. And then invariably the next morning is sunny. Yeah. And so, you know, it's like, and everything's leveled, you know? Yeah. I think it was that same pier. Press, there was another video of like a family and they had their kids out there. The kids were like jumping around playing in the water, like in the waves. Like it was the ocean.

By the way, just the water in general when you're dealing with stuff like that.

You're dealing with raw sewage backing up and you're dealing with all the stuff that lives in the regular...

We saw the footage of the shark swimming down a side street.

That's crazy.

Search efforts continue with more than 700 confirmed rescues so far.

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said Thursday afternoon that he was not ordering any evacuations of coastal communities, but he urged residents to prepare as Ian heads for the region.

Major to record flooding is expected to continue through next week across parts of Central Florida.

...