who just refused to leave. it s in their dna not to retreat. but we re all watching as irma comes ashore. things are really starting to howl now. you ve been telling us and story telling for us brilliantly about the rugged individualism that predominates that really special culture down there, but you can go either way on whether or not it s something to respect in time like this. now that you re getting a feel for what s coming that way with these outer bands of irma and you know what the situation is on the key, what s your biggest concern about what irma is going to impact? i think the biggest concern in this part of the world is the bridge going down and cutting them off from the mainland. it s their lifeline. there was a guy named flagler
it s been interesting, chris. the sound track of irma through the window overnight. there s the howl of the wind, of course, through the palm trees. there s the car alarms that go off, set off by these winds. sometime in the middle of the night, i was woke up by slamming hurricane shutters, pieces of metal coming together as these gusts started to pick up. we re on the biscayne bay side of key largo, the biggest key, the northern most key. we re tucked into this hurricane hidey hole as best we can. we re next to a little harbor here. when we get first lying, we re going to see things blowing around, see how the boats are faring. but the national weather service in key west, which has been doing working around the clock, sent out this tweet, all caps. florida keys, this is it.
wherewithal to lift their boas s up out of the water. high tide isn t until this evening. and that s going to make things even worse on this, on the dirty side, the biscayne bay side. folks down in the keys, i m really kind of howling into the wind when it comes to talking to them. unless they re on generator power most of the keys are out of power. we checked moechlts a eed momen people have power, i don t know how that s possible right now. but heading towards you up the west coast, this is serious. this is really serious. this is time to get inside. it s time to fill your tub with water. put a little bleach in there. don t drink it. that s for everything but drinking. it s time to charge your cell phones. have your shoes ready, chris. it s getting real.
now on the biscayne bay side. higher ground and we have a caution, crocodiles in area sign as another reminder we re in one of the most biodiverse in all the world. the one place to see gators and crocs together. we care about the human life facing this storm. we heard about devil-may-care, old time punk, never levers down here on thursday night who were sort of partying in advance of the storm. that tone definitely changed last night. that s when they evacuated those 500 prisoners, moved the emergency operations center from marathon key about 40 miles north of key west to key largo here to be a little bit more out of harm s way. we get word power outages hit about kudjo key. but the keys energy service saying we re not going to shut the power proactively.