been evacuated with their grandmother. and i m so thankful that my kids didn t have to experience that because i know a lot of children had to experience that kind of evacuati evacuation. it was shr very scary. was there is a time that you felt you might not make it? every time you come through a clearing, you go through more fire. i wasn t sure we were going to make it the whole time. obviously my prayer is very heartfelt and i kept thinking am i really ready to die? but i know that there was power in prayer and there was what really comforted us. and i was thankful for my husband and him being so brave and just going and plowing through it. yes, he was. you can tell from the video. that is just amazing. and i m told that you are safe, your family is safe. you have three children age 12, 8 and 3, i believe one had a birthday on friday. today. oh, that is really wonderful.
going to open up, we spoke to one man who built his house from the ground up. he s a carpenter by trade, he bought his land, built liz house, no mortgage, said it was just four doors down when one of these fissures opened. take a listen to what he said. life has completely turned upside down. yesterday, everybody looked looked like the beverly hillbillies, they had everything in their trucks and on the run. this is the first morning after evacuati evacuation. and now trying to figure out what the future brings. now you re starting to feel it? yes. am i going to have to move to somewhere else on the island?
this morning. st. croix will be the staging area for all relief and evacuati evacuation. you can see that. look at those boats piled up on the shore. st. john and st. thomas took, quote, major damage. no cell power, no water, no power at all. catastrophic damage. they had to evacuate patients in the middle of the night. they took them to puerto rico. two cruise ships, norwegian cruise liner and royal caribbean cruise liner are headed in to try to get u.s. citizens out of the u.s. virgin islands. that looks nuts, right? like a stephen king novel. this is the information we re getting now. in talking to bill karins, we ll talk about this later in this hour or next hour. cuba s detriment may have actually been florida s advantage. this storm was weakened in a huge way. this cat 5 storm when it hit cuba, the first storm of its kind to hit since 1932, causing the damage you re looking at
there s little they can do but wait for the chemicals to explode and the chemical to burn off. this is the plant this evening a couple of hours ago. the fire is out for now but again we re waiting for eight more of the container to go. we re also waiting for some clarity on exactly what kind of danger is posed by the smoke from last night s chemical fire and the additional fires we re still expecting. this morning the head of the federal emergency management agency appeared to suggest that the moej was so dangerous that it was the reason for the entire evacuati evacuation. and the arkem officials sent mixed signals. we do what s called plume modelling and that s what we base the evacuations on. by all mean, yes, the plume is incredibly dang lows. you don t want to stand in smoke, do you? so the sheriff says it s like a campfire. it s hydrocarbons burning.
evacuati evacuation. millions lost power. he s worried that some folks near palm beach, north of palm beach, martin county is not taking the storm seriously. this is a storm that could be historic for the base coast of florida. it is bearing towards florida s east coast at this hour. we are tracking it live. the massive category four storm right now. governor rick scott is telling people in evacuation zones to get out now. earlier, he had stronger language saying this storm will kill you. devastating to catastrophic winds that called cause severe damage. matthew killed one, at least to 114 people. our team is up and down the