officer reminded me of the danger of flooding and mentioned things have been relatively calm at the shelter and throughout the state, we haven t seen a lot of traffic. that s one of the things he is thinking about tonight. thank you in west palm beach, florida. i want to go to katie beck in savannah, georgia. when i was there yesterday, people had gone to savannah from southern florida to outrun the storm. and then they were confused by where is the storm actually going. reporter: yes. they might have come here to escape and then they had to escape again after the governor s order to evacuate earlier today. savannah looks different than it did yesterday. hotels have shut down, restaurants have shut down. we are right in the historic district. this is an area that is normally packed with people. it s actually closed to traffic most of the time because there are so many people wandering in the streets going to bars, restaurants, hotels. right now everything has sand
shifted. there is not any likelihood of this storm making landfall in florida, but there are going to be heavy winds and the storm surge quite possibly. reporter: that s right. i don t know if you can hear the rain as it s rr picking up. we are currently under one of the rain bands that are stretching out from hurricane dorian. we are currently about a mile from the beach. all eyes are on that tide right now. i m so glad that you and bill were just discussing that because this area has been experiencing higher than normal tides. we are about to approach high tide in just about an hour and a half. and some areas we are hearing reports that some areas nearby have already been experiencing flooding as a result of that. those high tides in combination with this additional water these storm surges of about four to seven feet that we could be seeing over the next 24 hours, that is cause for concern for residents and officials here in this area even though the wind and the rain might not be
along with fema, fema had moved hundreds of ambulances, search and rescue teams that were initially focussed in that southern mid florida area around the space center, now those assets will just wait there to see where they are needed next. but it s a function of maneuvering ambulances, power teams, the active duty helicopters that have been deployed in the area. where do they go? that s the flexibility that the military has. and the longer the storm drags out, the more planning and preparation we can do, but it s certainly going to stretch the nerves of the people along the coast of those who have been thinking about whether they should evacuate. and with all current progress nose s, those who have been told that they need to be evacuated for surge need to evacuate otherwise they can wind up being a casualty of the storm. look at what happened in the
bahamas. a little bit of water can be catastrophic for an area particularly because of access to power, inability to drive. and really you were the nation s eyes and ears on this in katrina where you realized what the aftermath can look like and sometimes it s worse than the hurricane itself. we have come a long way since those days, since the day that you had to be called in to organize the relief effort past katrina. i think we are in a much better place, thankfully. i think a lot of people said never again another katrina. and then we could have done better on maria. i think everybody is saying we are going to do this different this time. and the activities i see by the chief of the national guard bureau working hand in hand with u.s. northern command on colorado and their commands to preposition helicopters, preposition task force truck and
saying the odds of any direct landfall in florida are pretty much over. they have been saying we kind of knew that throughout the last two days. now the cone is completely off the coast. none of our computer models are taking it towards the florida areas. you will get the indirect effects, the tropical storm forced winds, power outages here and there. we re not going to have the devastation from the wind. rain is not going to be an issue. we have to watch out for the storm surge. even a storm this powerful this far off the coast can produce a storm surge four to seven feet. you can get damage like we saw with matthew. further up the coast. this didn t change too much. all of georgia is out of the cone of uncertainty. that s a sigh of relief for our friends. we have charleston, myrtle beach, georgetown and all of eastern north carolina and virginia beach area is in the