reporter: oh, they sure are, tom. this is a very busy store right now. and take a look at these shelves behind me. because some of them have just emptied up, because so many people are buying this plywood to board up their homes. the manager here says he hasn t seen it this busy in years. tom? the rush is on. all right, gio, thank you. and of course, hurricane dorian is arriving just ahead of labor day, disrupting a busy travel weekend. a record 17.5 million passengers were set to fly over the next few days. with millions more planning to drive. tonight, their plans could be changing. abc s kaylee hartung is at the airport in jacksonville, florida, tonight. kaylee? reporter: tom, all the major airlines are issuing travel waivers starting tomorrow for flights into florida s big airports like the one here in jacksonville. but the impacts of dorian as it approaches will be felt far beyond this state. throughout florida, airports are securing equipment. the military safeguarding pl
him. turns out he had a change of heart as irma got bigger and more pointed towards the keys so his family is now in a motel in okeechobee. they got about 150 miles north of here. but there are still some die hards, still some old salts, about five different families here in this marina who are bunking down not on their boats. we have a pretty sturdy strong structure behind us here with metal hurricane shutters. they feel good about that. and then nearbitis a dive shop that s three stories tall, all stone structures. that s their plans b and c. but these people are real outliers. in the last 48 hours we ve seen a marked shift in attitude down in the keys. these people are notorious for not leaving, for ignoring evacuation orders, riding thins out, being fiercely independent. that shifted last night about 6:00. emergency managers got together and when they came out of that meeting some we had met were
get to evacuation centers. there s several thousand people according to our drew griffin outside one nearby center who are being processed in order to get in. and the 211 number that the city has set up is being inundated with calls. i want you to meet ross webb with the edison saline center. you ve been worried obviously about a lot of the boats in the marina. for the last four days we ve had 25 kids show up to help us take down masts, tie down boats. we moved about 25 boats to north ft. myers in a better location. and we have a bunch of them tied, 150 of them tied down there. still a few in the water, but they re just too big to move and too bothersome. so do you try to tie them over? sometimes you turn them over, sometimes you fill them with water and sink them so you don t have to worry about them moving too much. you were born here in ft. myers, lived here your whole life. what does this storm from what
barreling this way, you could never tell that anything was wrong. look at this day we of got here. bright blue skies, pristine beaches. the only real indication that something is wrong is how few people there are out here. there are a handful, there s a gentleman out there right now in the water. that is a handful too many for the local authorities here. they don t want anyone here. this is a mandatory evacuation zone. once this storm hits tomorrow, they re expecting the storm surge to come ashore around 3 to 5 feet. now, we drove across from ft. lauderdale across the florida peninsula this morning and as we got closer to sarasota, we saw the vast majority of homes and businesses closed and boarded up. but there were still parking lots full of boats, parks full of mobile homes. you can imagine the staggering amount of damage that mare is going to do once it comes ashore. but i do want to show you where we are right now. there are a lot of homes that we ve soon that still have open glas
you ve seen of it coming compared to what you ve lived through. well, like charlie like this almost at this point. we didn t expect much then but i think we re going to have more from this storm than we did charlie. did you ever evacuate? no, there s too many things i can do to help people once the storm is over with and i have another business i need to help with. there s a lot of things we can do to help here. your home is it on ground level? is it raised up? my home s a ground level, but it s a real high spot. but i m going down to my daughters six blocks away with a two-story house. so it starts getting too bad we ll have boats out rescue. i was going to ask if you have any boats but you have a sailing center, so if you don t have boats, nobody would. yeah, we do, ready to go and full of gas help other people get rescued. that s your plan you want to help other people as soon as this is done. yeah, that s what we try to do. this community always pulls together.