we would be hunkered down somewhere. these are barely category 1 winds that we are experiencing right now. you couldn t stand up in a stronger hurricane. we re not get getting any debris at this point and we are watching that very carefully. i m glad you brought that up, steve. we do get that. the twitter verse sometimes can be unkind and wonder about our sanity but we like what we do. steve: if you were to right now you are in the shadow of that building, but if you walked out 15 feet, that s where the hurricane force winds are right now and that s why you only do it every once in a while. just to show how strong the winds are. ainsley: jeff, how does this hurricane compare to the ones you have covered in the past? it s funny i was in hurricane bertha in 1996 which i used to say was my best hurricane experience because, when you get a category 1 storm, you can stand out here. it s reasonably safe. the water event is something totally different. but the wind event is reasonably saf
smaller rivers in the area back there and a lot of homes facing the rivers. so that is a big concern. there s supposed to be a curfew this evening in myrtle beach as of 7:00 p.m. businesses were asked to close shop at 5:00 p.m. eastern time yesterday. you can see not everybody is boarded up. there s a few that we ll pass shortly that have put up the wood planks. what you re seeing in the city right now is people on pickup trucks. you re seeing everybody talk to each other. i never experienced anything like this. shep, i have to admit. it s my first hurricane experience. everybody is talking to each other, asking where they re staying. i ve been invited to a chicken at a neighbor s house just in case we don t have food. overall, there s a lot of optimism but it s going to be bad this weekend with the rain and flooding. back to you. shepard: lots of rain is on the way. enjoy the chicken dinner, winner winner. see you soon, kristina partsinevelos along the carolina coast. here s where w
starter kits. gas and diesel. we have highly trained paramedi paramedics. some palettes of food, water, and other humanitarian supplies. from the national guard, do you have hurricane experience in the past or is this a first? well, to be honest with you, about a week ago i was in houston for harvey. what s the biggest difference? i think the biggest difference is with this one there is a lot more debris and damage that we are helping to take care of. last week was a volume of water that was coming on the mainland. and you mentioned the two helicopters up this morning. they are available for search and rescue. is that the idea or for whatever you get the incoming request for need? right now they are working
hadn t evacuated under those mandatory evacuations. in hillsborough, they only did a partial they canceled emergency rescues to the east first and then to the west later on. they suspended them in full until the storm fully passes by. but, alex, what a difference several hours makes. irma is quite an historic storm for many, many reasons. the predictions and a lot of the worries for the catastrophic things that could have done for tampa and st. pete because they haven t had any hurricane experience in nearly 100 years, it seems to have been avoided with the major problems with this storm happening in the keys. and south of that when we consider cuba, st. thomas, tortola, the small island nations, far more devastating. when we consider what s going to show itself in the sunshine tomorrow with southwest florida
through, as you put it, the entire peninsula is under a hurricane warning. it s really staggering. you know, you imagine these things. i ve studied florida, hurricanes here for decades. you could imagine how that could happen. but it never has happened in the record book, that we ve had one come directly up the state. they ve always kind of gone across the state. hurricane donna in 1960 was sort of like this but it crossed the state, went all the way up the east coast and hit every state in the east coast. this one is bottled up in the south. it s not going to move terribly fast. it s going to affect these cities that have not had a lot of hurricane experience and have had zero hurricane experience in their development period here. tampa, sarasota, ft. myers, all the islands, down to captiva island, marco island, you know, these have exploded over the last several decades and they have not had hurricanes and