St. Thomas. Theyre going to be arriving here and going to the Convention Center. Theyre coming actually on a cruise ship which was in the region when Hurricane Irma came through. Theyve picked up 2,000. Theyve going to be processed through the Convention Center and move on hopefully to hotels or other destinations. Then on saturday, another 2,000 will be coming in as well via the same cruise ship. Now, those who remain in the Virgin Islands are pleading for help. The storm hit three of the largest islands in the group, st. Croix, st. John, and st. Thomas especially hard. Four people, in fact, were killed. Widespread damage as weve seen from the videos. Cnns sara sidner now with the latest. Reporter on st. John, the smallest of the three major islands and arguably most ruggedly beautiful, Hurricane Irma swept away life as we knew it. Theres nothing left. Reporter nearly 30 square miles of island wiped out. I was in our sheltered hurricane called hurricane hole. There were 200 boats out
there is no end to the destruction. right now in much of the caribbean, life is anything but paradise. sara sidner, cnn, st. john, u.s. virgin islands. adam is a man who is involved in that rebuilding. he is the founder of the global disaster immediate response team. adam mollet, thanks for being with us. first of all, tell us what your team has been doing today, for example. yes, michael. so currently we have three ongoing operations. so the biggest thing that we re doing now is there s still ongoing house to house searches with the rescue teams here as well as virginia task force one. the secondary mission that we have is beginning the resupply for the island of critical items, specifically fuel, water, and food. the military has been incredibly helpful in that regard, and we re starting to get aircraft in now that we weren t getting
territory management agency. some of the things they ve already identified is in the future, trying to see if they can put power lines and key communication infrastructure underground to avoid the catastrophic loss that we ve had here because virtually all power lines will have to be replaced because they re currently not usable. the other thing is having some sort of satellite system. for the first three days we were here, our ngo was the only way to communicate via the satellite terminal we had, which made it very difficult for them to get out details of what was happening on the ground. you re doing great work, adam. difficult situation for you, and of course the people on st. john s and indeed on the islands throughout this region. appreciate it. thanks so much, adam marlatt. isha, let s send it back to you for the moment. michael, many thanks for that. more than 3 million customers across florida are still without power, and
could come on and begin distributing the standard mres and other items. so the community here is really strong. i m confident that they ll be able to bounce back. but right now they re still nervous because there s still people that are missing. you know, adam, i ve got to ask you too, you know, it s almost a clean slate in some ways. going forward, what sort of things what sort of lessons can be learned to rebuild in a different way perhaps? i mean have you seen anything that would make you say, well, we could do this? we could build that differently. we could have shelters. we need a better communications infrastructure. what sort of things can be done to make the next hurricane less of an impact? certainly. there are a few things that are already being looked at, primarily through fema and also by tema, which is the lead here. that s the virgin island