especially in the panhandle. we have 54 soldiers open with people in them, governor scott immediately activated 54 soldiers with special needs with pat so everybody could get there. he did his best to get everybody out of the panhandle, but so many didn t heed his warning. now the governor is ready to go and we have 3500 national guard national guard s ready to be deployed. they are helping search and rescue, but it s getting dark and people need to stay put to stay safe. martha: they will have to hunker down at least one more night in order to be as safe as possible and wait until morning. the water is starting to recede in the areas by the beaches, so in terms of what there s always a little bit of hurricane fatigue. we just had florence and this one comes barreling in and it s much bigger, much stronger than florence was and even in that
hurricane nate. that will be something to watch out for here in the coming hours as well. ana? the director of the emergency imagi management department in mississippi put out a message saying this is going to be the worst hurricane since katrina. those are some powerful words clearly maept eant to make sure people don t take this storm lightly. reporter: i think that s a concern. we ve driven from new orleans all the way to mobile throughout the day today. to say the least this has been a very relaxed approach by most people that we ve seen, we drove through mississippi, waterfront homes there, just a small number of people who had boarded up windows or seemed to be evacuating those areas. i think it s safe to say throughout much of this region, there s a very relaxed approach. whether that s hurricane fatigue from these storms making news over the last month and a half
alex? thank you so much for that. let s go to mobile, alabama, from kristen dahlgren is standing by for us. kristen, good afternoon to you. it looks a little windy, i can tell from your shirt. reporter: yeah, just a little bit, nothing compared to what we will be seeing. really there are two big questions as we go into this afternoon and evening, and that is whether or not people heeded the warnings. they may have hurricane fatigue. there s some worry among officials that they may have that. and then the other question is if they have been sort of lulled into thinking this isn t going to be that big a deal because we are talking about a category 1, potentially category 2 storm when we have this season seen cat 4s and cat 5s. so officials really worry that people aren t maybe taking the preparations. that said, the officials are taking their preparations. you can see the bankhead tunnel already closed. they have it sandbagged on the other side. they actually have a flood gate
puerto rico? the governor saying it s a humanitarian disaster. growing fears of a mass exodus from puerto rico as president trump defense his administration s response. a cry for help from puerto rico. we need help now. not tomorrow. now. the president says he s on it. howie: joining me from miami is antonio mora. why was there such meager or modest coverage in the first few days and what do you make now that this more coverage in the way those evening news stories were framed? antonio: i don t understand why there wasn t more coverage to begin with. you can give excuses, there was hurricane fatigue, the mexico earthquake wassed the day before the puerto rico earthquake. but to say we have to cover this
evacuate. 500 shelters are set up. we expect the worst of it in the next several hours. we hope you guys are in a safe structure as landfall is measured in hours away. bill was my on air partner for the andfall of irma. i ve been watching you all day today talk about the category 5. we have hurricane fatigue and we don t want to hear about another monster one. there s no reason this one won t produce as much or more damage than harvey and irma. here s the storm well defined wi not really weakening much. we re hoping a little bit before a landfall but that would be lucky, still 175 miles per hour winds, just to the south of st. croix. the wind gusts, it s only 40 where gabe is, they re expecting