nos longer openly carry guns into their stores or sam s club. the ceo s statement also reads wal-mart encourages the nation s leaders the move forward and strengthen background checks and to remove weapons from those who have, quote, been determined to post an imminent danger. wal-mart previously stopped selling ar-15 s and raised the limit to purchase firearm or ammunition to 21. dana? dana: thank you. hurricane dorian inching closer to the u.s. mainland with its outer bands hitting florida. the storm has been downgraded to a category 2. however, emergency officials warning danger is far from over. joining me is the mayor of vero beach. great to have you here. i know that you re very busy. what is your concern about people feeling complacent since this storm is moving so slowly? yes. we were prepared very early on and then what happened, and this is because we ve been through these storms many time befores.
you see family playing with the ball. folks digging sand castles. lot of this goes back to the storm moving so slowly. it s been inching now just a little bit more north, getting closer to this area. you have businesses boarded up. many of them boarded up days ago. people are getting stir crazy. some say they just want to get this over with. so annoying. i m really upset because my husband s out of work. so everything settles down. the entire county is shut off. that s very frustrating. reporter: now, what is uncertain is how the hurricane could impact cocoa beach and other coastal communities in central florida. that s why we are seeing a lot of utility trucks throughout the area getting in place in case some of these strong gusts of winds that we re expecting knock out any power, they can restore power as quickly as possible. the biggest impact we re expecting tonight will be later
we have thousands of responders, federal responders, our state responders, through florida all the way to north carolina. plus all the supplies, resources that we need to do whatever dorian decides to do. dana: it s been impressive to look at all the different agencies that come together to work with you at fema. you have department of homeland security, of course, department of defense, department of energy, health and human services and the u.s. national guard. as you look at this and you re getting this update, in vero beach, they are lifting the evacuation order. people are allowed to come in even though they said you are allowed to stay in the shelters. are you worried people may get complacent even though the storm has a long way to go? the first thing i would say is make sure you are dialled in to your local public safety officials. they know best, whether to evacuate, shelter in place, or give the all clear. you re going to get tuned into
jupiter beach, florida. ellison? maybe ellison can t hear us. can you hear us? looks like she cannot hear us. we will try to get back to her in jupiter beach. she s not able to hear us? okay. thousands of national guard and active duty forces stand at the ready to assist in hurricane dorian relief ef forts. for more on fema s preparations, i m joined by the deputy administrator of fema. peter, can you hear me? i can, dana. can you hear me? dana: i can. we had hard time with ellison barber s audio. glad to have you on the phone with us. the storm is covering such a wide area of possible need for fema. how do you feel about the preparation as it stands right now? we re in very good shape. even though this has been a long grinding storm, the extra time has given us the ability to be that much more prepared.
bahamas, who are finally getting relief as the storm pulls away. for the folks, millions in the southeast part of the u.s. will finally start to get some direction as to when dorian makes her decision. forecasters can give us an idea about what to expect. dana, i know you love the ocean, so do i. where we are, in atlantic beach, five miles east of jacksonville, florida, this is just a spectacular day to be on the surf if, if you are not waiting for what was coming after ward. the white caps go as far as the eye can see. the surf is up. high tide hitting here about 90 minutes ago. it was beautiful. it s a great time to walk on the beach. but you don t want to go out in that water. we just saw two surfers. hard to catch a wave, it is so choppy. for those who love to see mother nature in this form, and i m one of them and i know you are as well. it s a beautiful day, for the moment. but, dana, all this is going to