but those critical protective actions are really important right now. now, with fema, we have been positioning in support of the states of louisiana and mississippi for days, moving specialized teams like search and rescue into the management assistance teams, power restoration assessment teams and supplies like meals, water, jen righters, tarps, cots to be able to support the louisiana and mississippi teams as soon as it s safe to do so. okay. about when do you think that will be, david? i mean, when you say safe to do so, of course you don t want to add any sort of issues that would have to be as a result of fema trying to get into someplace too soon. but certainly there will be folks that will be desperately hoping to see signs of fema and a presence there. what kind of time frame are you looking at? with the passage of tropical storm-form force winds generally that s when it is considered safe to go out and conduct operations. we of course will be working closely with louisiana
from you, david, from people achlt thank you for being with us, best of luck as you navigate the next few days for people along the gulf coast. appreciate it. let s go to nbc s sam brock who is in baton rouge. there have been hours of heavy rainfall there. what are you seeing and feeling, sam. i think we are probably three or four hours behind what morgan is seeing at the moment in houma, custom of course is one those areas that is bearing such a brunt of the orderly strength of this storm. 150-mile-an-hour winds making its way, bulldozing right now through southeast louisiana. the reason i am standing here, there have already been 150,000 customers without power so far. that is before it real gets, ida, into the heart of the state. these right here will be deployed eventually, once it is safe to do so. there is a small army of utility vehicles. i would say in ballpark of 50 to 100 just right here. there are more supplies coming. as we mentioned already from fema, the concerns go b
it is incredibly tough to believe the eye may be still an hour or two away when you look at how powerful this storm is. right now, we know that there is still a lot of people who were unable to evacuate from this community here. so the big concern going forward is, how much of a storm surge issue is it going to be here? because we are already seeing how powerful the wind is from ida, just about a half hour after it made landfall. right now bear with me. it s only getting more powerful. it s incredibly concerning. we will sends it back to you for now because at this point it is starting to feel we are a bit too exposed to some of these bands that are really moving in. alex. okay, morgan sheskey, thank you so much for that. i know you are trying to catch your breath. we will get back to you as soon as we can. we now have fema acting associate administrator david beebo joining us. as we ask you and welcome you on
your thinking, david? right now, louisiana and mississippi have shelter capacity in place to shelter thousands of folks who may be seeking refuge. we are not seeing those levels of shelter populations just yesterday. gratefully, we saw people heed those mandatory and voluntary evacuation warnings yesterday. you can see traffic on the roads that folks were listening to knows warnings, which is good. we are hopeful that people did not stay behind because this is a pretty ferocious storm. and it s not again, it s not just again about coastal populations. i want to be clear that the effects from hurricane ida are going to be felt well inland, and for days. if you look at the national hurricane center forecast track, states throughout the southeast, the mid atlantic, and even in the northeast need to pay attention to this system as it traverses the nation in the days ahead throughout the course of this week. okay, wise advice and updates