islands of st. thomas and st. john, a local hospital devastated by irma and then maria. i found its staff responding with incredible grace under pressure putting the needs of their community above their own. take a look. it was like a tornado inside of this area, and the staff everyone took the patient, put them on a mattress, four person to each end and we slide them down the stairs. reporter: you had to slide them down the stairs on mattress? on a mattress, quickly, because we did not know the rest of the unit would be compromised, and they slide the patients down on to the labor and delivery unit, on to one side of the unit, at the same time we had patients actively in labor and were delivering babies, at the same time. reporter: and we see all the these wires. take a look. is this telephone wire? what is this? just about everything. a yeoman s job of cleaning up,
coming together under the most trying of circumstances. i visited the only medical center serving the islands of st. thomas and st. john. i found its staff responding with incredible grace under pressure, putting the needs of their community above their own. take a look. it was like a tornado indiana side this area and the staff everyone took a patient, put them on a mattress, a person to each end and we slide them down the stairs on a mattress, quickly, because we did know know if the rest of the unit was going to be compromised. they slide the patients down to the delivery unit. at the same time we have patients that were actively in labor and we were delivering babies at the same time. wow. we see all these wires here. is this telephone wire? what is this? this is just about
time. i m sure your mom was very happy that you went down and rode this out. thank you for joining us. we re happy you re all safe. ye is. we hope even on the virgin islands and our sister islands going through this too. i hope even weathers the storm as we move forward. we do too. thank you so much, jodie. thank you. a lot of families kphebgted to the commonwealths and territories. puerto rio a commonwealth of the u.s. congresswoman stacy plaskett. what do people know about what this combined toll has done to the islands? thanks so much. we just finished cleanup. are beginning the cleanup from irma on the islands of st. thomas and st. john, which were heavily damaged.
wake, irma left south florida with hot and dismal conditions, to date, 21,000 individuals are in shelter, roughly 30,000 national guard have been deployed to help after irma. more than three million liters of water have been transferred to states. and the islands of st. johns and st. martin have been brought food and water. roughly 4 million americans in the continental united states remain in the dark because of irma, and many in puerto rico without power. today, nbc news confirmed at least 65 deaths related to hurricane irma. this includes eight patients who died at a nursing home in hollywood, florida, because of the heat. the next few months will remain a challenge for those battered by hurricane irma.
going door to door to account for the 7 to 10,000 people who did not evacuate. everyone has not been accounted for. today the white house announced president trump will travel to florida thursday to survey the damage. it s possible the president might also visit the u.s. virgin islands within the next week. hurricane survivors in the u.s. virgin islands described the devastation there as apocalyptic. fema officials toured the islands of st. thomas and st. john today. officials will be on the islands for a long time. we are joined now from st. croix in the u.s. virgin islands by stacey plaskett. she is the u.s. virgin islands delegate to the house of representatives. congresswoman plaskett, thank you very much for join iing us this difficult night. i just want to lay out the geography of the area for people. it s we re talking about three islands st. thomas, st. john and you re on st. croix