As people patiently wait for onramps and downtown bridges to reopen its caused a lot of impatience on i380. Weve been dealing with serious backups and bumpertobumper traffic on the interstate. Until today, it was the only way to get across the river in cedar rapids. Right . Now on i 380. Fortunately, all the congesti interstate this week wont congestion weve seen on the interstate this week wont be lasting much longer. Cbs2 News Reporter joe huisinga is live with some promising news on the downtown bridges. Joe . Reporter yeah guys for days interstate 380 has been the only one in town to cross the cedar river. But right now crews are working to clear hesco barriers from downtown bridges to get them ready for traffic tomorrow. All downtown bridges except for noon just for residence and businesses starting to move back in. And as scott mentioned in the last hour weve learned that the edgewood bridge is now open for all traffic and thats going to take a lot of stress off 380. The downtown
Sunshine going to coming back coming up. Thank you. The wet weather made a mess of bay area roads. Some spots are still flooded. Cbs 5 reporter da lin shows us that includes a stretch of the great highway tonight. Reporter they had to shut down the great highway because of standing water from lincoln to slope. This traffic signal is buried in 7 feet of sand. The high winds blew the beach sand on the road. A combination of heavy downpours and high winds flooded streets and knocked out power around the bay area this morning. It was pouring down rain. Reporter high winds brought down this large tree limb in saratoga. Pg e Officials Say this 28foot section shut down traffic on thelma avenue and knocked out power to about 200 homes in the neighborhood. Pg e crews hope to have electricity here restored by 7 00. Same problem in pacifica. Pg e crews say 7 outages in the coastal city darkened about 1200 homes and business. We are the first guys to get wind right off the ocean. So its more gusty
Powerful category 5 storm. Now it has sustained winds of 168 miles an hour or 270 kilometers an hour. No recorded storm has ever maintained that intensity for such a long time. And irma is so large and powerful that even glancing a glancing blow can be de stating. Now to the southeast of florida, irma right now is hammering the turks and Caicos Islands. The governor there says escape is impossible. Take a listen. Yes, it is. Its hunker down. Stay where you are. Because you cant good out because the winds are just far, far too strong. Nobody can get to you either. So people for a little while on their own or with their families or in the shelters. Well, by sunday, irma will likely be here on miamis doorstep. Whatever happens from that point, it is certain to be bad, unfortunately. And wehile riding out the hurricane is strongly discouraged. Its already a killer. At least ten deaths have been confirmed so far from the ravaged islands of the caribbean, including four deaths in the u. S. V
take them to the bus stops. mr. mayor, of course the focus right now is to get the human beings, to get the human beings, get them all out of miami beach. but once that is done, hopefully fully completely everyone goes, what are the other areas of focus right now for you when it comes to preparedness for irma? well, we ve been doing a lot in the last five, six days. everything from bringing in portable pumps, portable generators, clearing out construction sites. we have a sandbag program for residents of miami beach. we ve given out thousands and thousands of sandbags for them to bring back to their houses. so we ve done a lot of preemptive measures. as you can imagine, when you re dealing with a hurricane, let alone a historically strong hurricane like irma, the key here is just evacuating your people for safety. back to the issue of evacuation. where do things stand with fuel? there have been some confirms of people getting to stations, they had run out. i know there was talk a