welcome back to the newsroom where the news unfold live this saturday, august 27th. i m fredricka whitfield. we continue to watch hurricane irene and all that it is doing and wreaking havoc along the east coast. right now, live coverage from our affiliate out of norfolk, virginia, wavy, wayv vy as it i referred to. sure talking about a child that might be trapped. let s listen in. two people and their cat rescued after their boat was anchored and they got caught in some vicious water trying to escape hurricane irene. we understand they are okay. we also have many road closings. the hrbt is closed with the midtown tunnel and the chesapeake bay bridge tunnel. you look at the pictures and you can see why. this is a view from our vdot traffic cam, traffic jam cam, it shows virtually nobody on the road because conditions are getting progressively worse. we talked to melody woodrow a few minutes ago in hampton. melody had to move because the james she was stand on the james r
especially for the commercial vessels and they had cargo and fuel and everything. making sure that it s safe for them to come in and make sure they don t hit anything and it s safe. one thing we witnessed is we saw them lined up. i will grab my cameraman and turn him a little bit. the green dot, explain how they use that. for those of you familiar with the water, that s a buoy. how mariners make sure they know which side of the channel to be on and steer between certain buoys. those are vital as far as the commercial boats coming in. as you can imagine, the power of the hurricane coming through here definitely disrupted some of this. they have seen damage, but the good news is it looked like the shipping channel may be back open soon. we still have one more step before it s over. we have one more step to make sure we open it back up and get normalcy going back here in the
we are going to get back to bill shortly. i quickly want to bring in ryan young who is with the coast guard as they try to bring desperately needed fuel into the state near tampa. what are you seeing? tell the viewers what s going on? we are in tampa bay near the skyway bridge. you can see the coast guard. we are definitely with the response team as they go through the shipping channels to give the all clear. this is a critical last step to make sure the channels are back open. i will walk you back outside to give you a view here. if you look outside, that is the skyway bridge. this is tampa bay. what they are doing is going to make sure the roadway is back open. the critical ships can bring the fuel in. you work with the coast guard. explain why this last accept is so important to get the ships back in. we are doing everything we can to make sure that tampa bay is safe to pass.
shortages it appears and we are seeing, in the stores, commodities like dairy products, like children s diapers, those kinds of things now appear to be in short supply in some stores because people are getting worried. they re hearing about the potential for shortages. of course, we all know that leads to panic buying and people are buying up things they think will disappear. perhaps there are some shortages but perhaps it s not at a critical stage yet in terms of food. but think about it this way. as i was thinking, when we were driving through all these little towns and villages, all these farmers with their little trucks they take to market with their supplies, they were all lined up at the gas station. where will they be tomorrow and the day after when they should be taking goods to market? they won t be able to get there because they don t have fuel. you can see how this ripple effect, even if it s only fuel shortages, will affect the general population in a bigger way. let me f