lots still to come. of course, the developing story that we have been watching closely all day and that we will be tracking all night tonight is hurricane dorian. holding steady as a category 2 hurricane, hugging the coast of the carolinas, crawling north. for most of the day, the eye of the storm was just inching its way north off the coast of myrtle beach, south carolina, where they declared a state of emergency. as we are heading into the overnight tonight, north carolina is in the cross hairs. the eyewall will hit in wilmington, north carolina. toef toward morning, it will be towards the outer banks where there s an evacuation order in place right now. storm surge, of course, is a big concern across the carolinas tonight. they are looking at surges of up to six feet. flash floods and high winds are snapping trees and downing power lines. duke energy is predicting more than 700,000 homes without power
welcome back. i m stephanie ruhle. hurricane dorian continues its crawl toward the eastern seaboard ahead of landfall, what can thousands of americans in the path of this storm expect? for more i m joined by rafael, former director of public affairs at fema. rafael, people on the eastern seaboard, they are anxious, they are scared. they don t know what to expect. and this storm is crawling north. what is the most important thing they can do right now before it hits? well, the only thing that s certain about this storm so far is how uncertain it has been. i think the good news here is that if you look at fema, we have a group of public servants, career public servants who have been through a couple of really tough hurricane seasons and have proceed deployed supplies, food and water, urban search and rescue teams.
zones. and this morning the lights are back on in new york city after a massive blackout. large part of manhattan was in darkness. and i.c.e. agents are set to go door to door today to arrest and deport as many as 2,000 undocumented migrant families. right now, there are life-threatening flooding concerns as heavy rainfall is just downpouring onto louisiana. tropical storm barry slowly crawling north, leaving more than 11 million people under flash flood watches this morning. the national hurricane center is warning that tornadoes could pop up across louisiana, mississippi and eastern arkansas. last night hundreds of people slept at local shelters, we know and there are more than 154,000 people who do not have power at the moment. erica hill is in baton rouge
it is crawling north, slowly going over the warm waters of that area as it heads towards the bahamas. and that is where it is right now and that is how we start this brand new hour of america s newsroom. good morning, everybody i m martha maccallum. gregg: i m gregg jarrett in for bill hemmer. evacuations already well underway along the outer ban of north carolina. but the whole east coast could be in the crosshairs this weekend. martha: that s right. right now irene is on track to graze florida, on friday. north carolina, by saturday. and, she could plow through the northeast, by sunday. this is a big storm even if we don t get a direct hit the tropical storm force winds will be on us an extended period of time and i expect we ll have infrastructure damage and considerable power outages and expect the worst. it could happen. martha: you have to expect the worst because it can happen and you just never know how this thing and where it will hit and what the damage will be. john robe