irma will get hit now. and it could go grow even stronger before it slams into the british virgin islands and puerto rico. meteorologist rob marciano on the desperate race to prepare there. reporter: tonight, hurricane maria rapidly intensifying. residents bracing across the caribbean. puerto rico boarding up, the second major hurricane bearing down on the island in less than two weeks. flights to san juan usually packed with tourists, today mostly residents scrambling to get back home. maria now poised to make a direct hit. people are nervous, scared? oh, definitely. reporter: yeah? you know, it s been awhile since we ve got such a strong hurricane hit us directly, so, yeah. reporter: the eye of the deadly category 5 hurricane irma passing just north of here. winds on the island reaching 70 miles per hour. irma devastating the virgin islands and the island of st. martin, destroying some 90% of the buildings on the island of barbuda. we cannot afford to be complacent. we ne
this is not somebody coming to this fresh. he s not learning on the job. that s for sure. he, himself, will be the first to tell you that. chuck schumer, no spring chicken himself, watching this decades old situation play out in front of us. and then it was like a bomb went off, and it s one week after irma. 200 miles east of st. john, a decimated island of barbuda, and if you can believe it, not a single person is living on barbuda after the storm, and this man, a hollywood legend wants to change that. he sits down with us exclusively and our interview is ahead. how do you get people continue to care? you have to have the people who are you have to keep it s not easy. i don t even know with myself what i m going to be asked to do and do to help, but i will be
an it no gender at all. jose was not a boy, irma not a girl. they re its out there. thank you. 70 miles per hour, not a major hurricane. this is not developing the way that irma did. irma was down here in very warm water. this is slightly cooler water, with a little bit more sheer. so now we re still tropical storm jose. but this thing has been in the water since irma was in the water. and it s still spinning around in the atlantic, hasn t made any landfall truly yet. did a little bit more wind damage to barbuda, like they need that, but it did miss at least the eye of the storm did miss when it was a bigger storm. now, the forecast is still for all the models to take it up the east coast to the east of north carolina. but we know how these models can go left and right and over the past couple of days, the european model has been here and then here and then here and now something like that.
this is 55 miles per hour stronger than landfall with harvey in texas. 55 miles per hour. that, alone, will snap some power lines and down some trees. good news is, we re looking at the eye to stay north of san juan, but the wake it has left and the destruction, we are now watching, we talked about it, that the eye would swallow barbuda, which it did. st. martin, france s foreign minister said the tallest building had been completely destroyed. most of the buildings have been destroyed or partially. we haven t heard anything from anguilla. moved across the british virgin islands. minor flooding really in some of the harbor around st. croix. now that it made landfall in the islands, it s going to take another day before they can get flights, airplanes up to give us aerial coverage and assess the damage. the good news is with puerto rico, the system seems to be lifting just a little bit away from them. so as we talked about a little while ago, you see that there s an eye wall then an out
caribbean islands overnight. the storm sustaining winds over 185 miles per hour for days. the roof is about to come. reporter: gusting up to 220 miles per hour. leaving widespread damage throughout the region. in puerto rico more than 1 million people are without power. the eye of the hurricane nearly knocked out all buildings in barbuda. roughly 90% of buildings damaged. i have never seen any such destruction. . reporter: late today irma s core moved over the dominican republic and haiti leaving behind flash flooding and mudslid mudslides. across florida tonight residents bracing for a direct hit. the storm on track to make landfall early sunday morning as a category 4 hurricane. the florida keys already under