forecasting earlier. but right now, we think this the sustained winds for kennedy space center are going to be about 104 with gusts to 130. and what does that mean, george? if you if you have gusts of 130 at the kennedy space center, what s in danger there? well, the main thing is going to be our facilities and, of course, the ones closest to the ocean are most likely to take damage, but some of the major buildings like the vehicle assembly building has had a tendency to take some damage in the past, but we think most of our flight hardware such as weather satellite, we ve got way for launches in a secure building, as is the orion spacecraft that we ll be launching into deep space next year, that s a very secure facility, so we think from the standpoint of really valuable flight hardware that we re probably safe. right now the main effect has been the loss of power around
force. when you say that in the past your vehicle assembly building has taken some damage, give us some context, what have you seen there in terms of hurricanes and winds before? well, it s kind of varied depending on the storm, but, you know, we ve had winds above 100 miles an hour before. i think the worst one we had was hurricane gene, hurricane francis right ahead of that, that s probably the ones where we ve had the two most significant storms that have given us damage, but i think, you know, in this case we re also watching the possibility of storm surge, which we haven t had before. yeah. george, take care. we hope that you are safe during these next few hours and we will check back in with you. thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us. sure, you bet. appreciate it. back to jacksonville and chris. all right. alison, actually, let s go down to alison kosick, she is by the
the space center but we re just on the edge of this thing, so it s probably going to be a couple hours more before we know how much more significant damage we might sustain. absolutely. george, as you re talking we re looking at the satellite on the lower left side of our screen and we can see the yellow which is the outer eyewall and it is headed straight towards you. i know that you say that the forecast has changed so you don t think you re going to be getting a direct hit but it looks at least as though it s just about five miles off of cape canaveral, so you don t think you think that you have dodged or are dodging a direct bullet? well, sort of. the eyewall, the edge of the eyewall is approaching cape canaveral, but the center of the eye, which is the most dangerous part, is going to skirt us a little bit to the east which is what we re grateful for. but the edge of the eyewall, that s exactly true, that is going to be skirting us here very shortly and our winds will escala
doing an excellent job getting supplies down there early, getting people down there early, and equipment down there early. but again this is a big storm, it s going to be stretched out and it s going to really stress the first responders and also the ability to get our supplies up and running because of the size of the devastation. david paulson, former fema director, we appreciate it. thank you, don. you re quite welcome. i want to go to hurricane matthew and talk about the kennedy space center. it s forcing the kennedy space center to shut down, as this monster storm approaches. joining me from nasa is mr. george diller. what is the situation there at the space center? we just got one encouraging development and that s associated with the close approach of the hurricaine because the forecast all day has essentially been a direct hit right over cape canaveral, so that put it as a category four, even a category five storm with winds 115 to 145.
the latest forecast we got indicates enough of a wobble in the storm that it could pass us 20 miles off the coast. when you re dealing with that kind of a hurricaine, well, it might seem like 20 nautical miles is not much different, i mean, how much difference can it make? well, with a category four or five, it could possibly mean that could bring our winds down so that if it s now a category three, then we could be at 100-miles-an-hour or slightly less. that s encouraging because that means we ll have less wind damage to our facilities possibly less storm surge, so we re cautiously optimistic that latest slight shift to the right will spare us the worst damage because we ve been expecting the worst all day. we heard from one of the storm chasers, mr. diller, that you had moved some very instrumental and very expensive