massive storage surge of 10 to 15 feet. that did not materialize. we were actually here in downtown naples. this is where the eye of the storm blew through. you see toppled trees and knocked down power lines. this area is without power. you mentioned so many people in shelters at germaine arena. many people went up there and have been there for several days and said yes, the power went out at the arena. several thousand people were inside and the roof began to leak at one point, but again, a local emergency management official said the building was safe and the situation was controlled. we spoke with one evacuee overnight and said the situation was improving there. as i m walking over here, talking about the storm surge. if you look, this is not far from the beach, this street. there is some water down there. and there was some overnight flooding in the naples area, but for the most part, that storm surge just did not materialize. if it had, this entire street
conditions are like on the atlantic. hour by hour, hundreds of thousands of customers without power. big cleanups, big messes, no doubt. send is it back to you. we ve been watching that ship called perseverance push its way up the river. yeah, i m looking at the headlines in the local paper. it says the sun is rising, it s clear irma walloped jacksonville and more coming. more from our affiliate wtlv in downtown, just south of jacksonville. alex are what are you seeing there? reporter: hey willie, right now, the wind conditions picking up. we measured over 46 miles an hour. downtown st. augustine. the water is up on the main road here, ebony and menendez. we ve seen it start to recede over the last couple hours, while the winds and storms pick up, however. so, this is what we re watching.
that doesn t mean there s not a lot of damage. but what are you feeling this morning? we re feeling good. we shelters which is great which means he heed the warnings of local officials. we do have about 5 million customers without power. but we re hoping that some of those customers will have power quickly. we do expect power outages to continue over the next few days if not weeks. so, it s just keeping calm. and knowing that it will take time to get to all of the people throughout the state. with all of the downs power lines, with the flooding that we re seeing in downtown jacksonville that they re expecting, what are your active concerns for safety? our active concerns are that people are going to think this is over. this is not over. the storm continues. even a hurricane category 1 is a threat. flooding. rains and winds. so, we ask people to please be
this morning. st. croix will be the staging area for all relief and evacuati evacuation. you can see that. look at those boats piled up on the shore. st. john and st. thomas took, quote, major damage. no cell power, no water, no power at all. catastrophic damage. they had to evacuate patients in the middle of the night. they took them to puerto rico. two cruise ships, norwegian cruise liner and royal caribbean cruise liner are headed in to try to get u.s. citizens out of the u.s. virgin islands. that looks nuts, right? like a stephen king novel. this is the information we re getting now. in talking to bill karins, we ll talk about this later in this hour or next hour. cuba s detriment may have actually been florida s advantage. this storm was weakened in a huge way. this cat 5 storm when it hit cuba, the first storm of its kind to hit since 1932, causing the damage you re looking at
a storm like this in 25 years. this area got slammed hard by hurricane andrew 25 years ago last month. they knew things would be bad. most of the people who live here haven t even seen yet. it was more of a wind story. winds knocking down big, heavy trees here. this is an entire leafy mess that most people had to stay sheltered in places like this hotel you see here was not opened to the public but they did shelter employees and their families, who live here, giving them a place to escape the storm here. a lot of people just hunkered down. others, of course, left town. look how dark it is. gives you an idea of these widespread power outages. very few places in this neighborhood have any power at all. we ve only seen one mobile home park with some power. there s also a curfew in effect this morning across miami-dade county until 7:00 this morning, local time. and that s because of some of