to get hold of them but, yeah, we rejust hoping it s not going to rain too much because we re not we re not really secure. so, what is the situation there? you re kind of exposed to the elements at the moment? yeah, we did get some sort of boarding up, but it s not really. because the stack is still there and, i mean, there s two tonnes of bricks sitting up there, so we re just not quite sure. we are here, we re just wanting to keep. we don t want to leave, just to try and empty all the buckets, but it s coming through the roof. and, of course, the storm was being forecast, but i guess you didn t expect anything like this. whatever preparations you had made, you couldn t really plan for something like this, a chimney coming down through your house. no, couldn t have planned at all. but i guess insurance companies could have planned, maybe had more staff on to help kind of deal, you know, with the deluge. they knew it was coming, so that s been a bit frustrating. so we re just sort of t
we re back on bourbon street just about 10 minutes down the road from where we were the last time we spoke. people are starting to come out and take a look at the damage that was done here. a lot of the shop owners who call bourbon street home are able to come out and take a look and see, did their sandbags work? did the boarding up of the windows work? we saw some shops where they decided not to board up. their windows were busted out. that is what we re seeing this morning as people come out and assess the damage here on bourbon street. we spoke with one woman who lived in new orleans her entire life in the same home she grew up in. she s 75 years old. her name is angel. people say she s the angel of the neighborhood. listen to her describe the storm last night. i ve never, ever, they say it was 185 miles per hour winds. i believe it. and the tree, you know, that was something hitting my glass. i feel like 1,000 instead of 75.
vaccinate? some have relatives they want to look over. oftentimes people don t have the resources to do it. but others say, we are inland, how bad could it be? the eye of the storm is going the come through exactly where i am stands right now. one business here is boarded up. i was driving through downtown baton rouge. i was text to a building on the national registry of historic places. no boarding up of windows on that. stores, none of them with wood on the windows. they weren t boarded up. not many sandbags either. this does not look like at the moment that is bracing for the eye of a hurricane to spread through. however, the mayor says people need to be heeding the messages of their local officials. if that means getting inside and saying inside for days. do not try to get out on the roads right now.
destination. we ve seen a lot of people with luggage getting kicked out of their hotels trying to make their way to the airport or on the roads so they can get out back home or to higher ground. take a look at businesses here in the french corner. they have just boarded up their shops, just like this. they re used to doing this every storm that rose through from rita to katrina to now ida, boarding up, trying to make sure that debris doesn t break through that glass. but listen to one man i spoke with named jesse. he s lived in this area for a long time. we saw him out boarding up businesses. he says he has some 20 businesses that have hired him to put up plywood over the windows. here s why he says this storm has him worried. katrina obviously was the worst. but what does concern me isn t the winds. it s the rain and the storm surge because our levee system still isn t 100%. i mean, it could top that s my biggest concern.
business owners are boarding up, working on this all morning, boarding up. this gentleman working on this shop himself, seen crews, half dozen people outboarding up buildings, getting ready for the storm. we know it is not just water but high wind speeds, up to 140 miles per hour that could impact this area. this is an iconic part of new orleans, right? you mark it on your calendar and come here. we ran into so many tourists that spent hard earned money to be in new orleans, now they re told they need to go home. some of them are hanging about. some have redirected travel plans by getting on flights, trying to get out of the area. people that live here, some are under mandatory evacuation orders. there are four parishes under mandatory evacuation orders. others told to leave voluntarily. others like hotels are saying you don t have to go home but you can t stay here, and warning