anything happens. a decision many came to regret. virtually all the beach-front businesses and homes suffered water or structural damage. bob left massive destruction. we have sent a written request to the federal authorities and the head of fema will be in the state this afternoon. 17 were killed. $1.5 billion in property damage suffered. in 1999, hurricane floyd forced 2.6 million people in five states from their homes. triggering the third largest evacuation in u.s. history. but it was north carolina that bore the brunt of the storm. just water. nothing but water. i saw even the roofs were under the water in the last safe refuge was standing on the chimney. torrential rainfall hit north carolina, an area already saturated by hurricane dennis, just two weeks before, bricking what was called a 500-year flood. a lot of people still
has saturated the ground. so this is something where power outages are going to happen, trees are going to be knocking down. it s a tough time to get to people. transportation, communication definitely going to be compromised. all right. thanks, valerie. also, we are bracing for winds that are moving through the area. we have the latest on the storm and what it means to you when we come right back, here on fox newschannel. don t go away. you know that comes with a private island. really? no. it comes with a hat. you see, airline credit cards promise flights for 25,00miles, but. [ man ] there s never any seats for ,000 miles. frustrating, isn t it? but that won t happen with the capital one venture card. you can book any airline anytime. hey, i just said that. after all, isn t traveling hard enough? ow. [ male announcer ] to get the flights you want, sign up for a venture card at capitalone.com. what s in your wallet? uh, it s okay. i ve played a pilot before. would in your wallet?
first, move away as far as possible from glass windows. there is a risk that flying debris could break and shatter windows in your home. the risk increases if you live in a high rise, particularly on the 10th floor or higher. don t stay in the first floor of your building lobby and stand and congregated area and glass imposed lobby. make sure windows and doors leading to the outside are closed. if you have a fireplace in your home, close the damper. turn off any propane tanks and move to a room with as few windows as possible and ride out the storm there. advice per people in the new york city and metropolitan area. we know a lot of you are in other parts of the country, asking about maryland, washington, d.c., connecticut, up into new england, new jersey and philly as l. we have it all covered for you. we will try to answer as many questions as we can. we are live all night long and we will be back with the latest on irene s path and how the government is responding to this
here in coastal areas. up to 55 miles per hour. and when people wake up this morning, authorities are worried that maybe they will feel bold because it s going to be beautiful and we will experience sunshine and nice weather. but the fact of the matter is that we did experience an extreme storm surge here. when the eye of the hurricane came in early evening last night, the high the tide was high. so we saw about 8 feet of storm surge on top of that. about preliminary reports of 6 to 8 inches of rain, which is why there is more than 100 road closures in the area. so authority its don t want people getting up and getting in their cars and they don t want people in the water because at one point, these waves were up to 24 feet high. so there is still a very heavy current out there, very, very strong. we did experience, unfortunately, three deaths here in virginia. one of them in sand bridge, 5 miles south of here. that s a low-lying area with
beautiful homes, a popular tourism destination area. unfortunately, they will probably see a lot of damage from the storm surge. they were the first to be evacuated. so as the sun starts to come up this morning, we will certainly have a better gauge of the damage here in virginia beach and along the coast of virginia. right now, we are hearing reports of a lot of superficial damage. i have a piece of stucco here. signs are down. but we haven t had a lot of reports of broken windows and things of that nature. everyone boarded up as the storm started to get closer. hopefully, we will be fairing better rather than worse. three deaths here in the state of virginia. but it looks like we may have survived hurricane irene. a lot of power outages still in virginia. more than a million people out of power and officials are working as hard as they can to get people power back. you are on the other end of the storm. up here in new york, we haven t