to people from emergency management, the last patrol car that we ve seen out here in miami beach. the conditions continue to worsen as this storm is barrelling towards florida right now. they told me that first responders are hunkered down. th absolutely cannot be out on the streets right now trying to save people who are still out here there aresome people walking around and that absolutely everyone should hunker down and be safe for the next couple of hours. this is when the hurricane is about an hour and a half away from the keys. i am in at the southernmost point of miami beach. you re already starting to feel these hurricane-strength winds. as experts were telling you before, miami is expected to get winds up to 100 miles per hour. you can see here by the minute, chris, it is very hard to stand on the street. a street that is usually crowded with people that looks like
daphne a reporter with the palm beach post. thank you for that. we want to go south to phillip mena remains in ft. lauderdale with us. how is it shifting now with all the rain and wind? reporter: it s still pretty intense. it s coming in waves but they are re frequent and they are more intense. one thing i noticed, some of these palm trees behind me as the morning as gone on they re getting thinner and thinner. they re losing branchs left and right here. we know we re seeing a lot of tree debris. we notice that pool, that parking lot that s kind of looking like a pool now, the outages we mentioned they are now in the six figures for both broward county and miami dade. we have a quarter of a million people in miami dade without power and ft. lauderdale is in broward county and they have 130,000 outages reported.
mike seidel who not surprisingly when you see exactly what he is dealing with there and what the folks in miami is dealing with is not able to hear us. fortunately he s getting up as you can see to a sheltered area where he is not at least in danger, i think, of flying debris and can actually stand up right. we ll keep checking in with all the folks there as we see this storm starting to move into florida with rain and wind battering the south right now. hundreds of thousands are in its path. already hundreds of thousands of people in the dark. we re tracking hurricane irma as it draws closer to florida s west coast, residents anxiously watching and waiting. take a listen. i m worried. why? because i probably won t have a home come sunday night, monday morning. i have a good feeling. it s going to get tore up.
county, where we re at, 130,000 outages reported in just miami dade 250,000 outages. so we have 380,000 outages just in this miami metro area. that s increasingly a problem. several agencies said the live wires are such a concern right now. i want you to look that used to be a parking lot. that parking lot is now turning into a pool of water with cars in it. that s something that just happened in the last hour or two that we ve seen. we took a quick tour around and noticed that there s a parking lot on the other side that looks very much liket one. we re also seeing a lot of downed trees. ke i mentioned, those downed power lines cannot stress enough those are deadly and reminders coming from several agencies saying stay away, stay in your home. that can kill you if you re outside. these outages are just going up and up and up everywhere we check. phillip, thank you so much for that. anybody can see throughout the
fort myers to cape coral to naples and to venice. john? chad, those who wait. some people like to wait to the very end. part of it stubborn, part pride in her home, whatever. now a day and a half, two days from irma. at what point are you certain this isn t going to take event? eich watching the brand new model coming in in about 30 minutes. european takes six hours to run. why has the european been better. rung it six hours, not four. more data, dimension, more layers, so it can be better, kbroi don t think. now that american and european mold are completely agreeing, we won t get any bend whatsoever. i hope so. nots much can go wrong. left, more of this side, but spare florida. spare miami. go farther to the right, truly going to hit miami with 145 mile-per-hour wind. in other words, folks should