people who need travel assistance. there are special needs shelters and medically dependent shelters. but people need to heed evacuations. again, you don t need to drive hundreds of miles. the big thing is to get out of the storm surge areas and go tens of miles as shelters are being opened up across the evacuated communities. and when we think of people going to these shelters, is there any way to predict how many days people will be in these shelters? we don t know if it will stall, of course. but given the current path, when it might be possible if the landfall is sunday morning around 8:00 a.m. for people to resume their lives or try to assess the damage? monday, tuesday? no. people need to plan for days to a week or more. this storm, if it makes landfall as forecasted, will do so much damage that many people are not going to be able to get back home for days. if they do, they re probably not going to have power. and what s going to happen is people are going to stay where
they are saying irma could be the strongest storm ever to hit south florida. irma continues to be a threat that is going to devastate the united states. in either florida or some of the southeastern states. direct impacts of the storm have yet to be determined because it s a very powerful storm, but the nature of the curve and that forecast after 72 hours is going to be the key to the key to seeing who has the worst impacts. get out of storm surge areas. flooding watters world come up on shore. that s the most devastating hazard associated with hurricanes appears to be live in miami beach, phil, it looks like you ve already gotten some wins there. we do have some breezes which is pretty typical on the beach itself but all day long today as we move forward toward the weekend, the winds are supposed to strengthen. 650,000 residents of
the storm approaches? well, so the goal is to get people out of the storm surge areas. you don t want to be in an area that s going to experience storm surge. you have to, so that s the goal. we re not at a refuge. i need to see what happens in the next 24 hours. fema resources have already been focused in on southeast texas, the recovery from hurricane harvey. are we stretched too thin to deal with irma? we re not stretched too thin. we established recovery command in texas, so we have a good footprint to make sure we do everything in texas, start the
buy it from the government. that s the way it typically happens. you re out of luck at this point if you think you re going to get a new insurance policy. standard operating procedure within insurers, they write it today but doesn t go into effect for 30 days. they do that so you don t game the system. in florida, when typically happens i have this from my sources in florida they stop writing when there s a hurricane warning or hurricane watch. the pens go down. you don t get anything. so you need to have it already. there s one small exception. shepard: what s that? if you just bought a house, guess what? they ll honor that. by law you have to have coverage. especially if you re in some of these storm surge areas. there s two different things, homeowner policies that will covered wind damage, the hurricane policies from the federal government. they re flood policies. shepard: they cover water. i want our viewers to know, get
going to be and, emphasis of getting people out of harm s way and after the storm hits, very precise, single-track runs give people an idea of where you might have to go in for high-water rescue. [inaudible] works in my office building and she talked about how she s getting prepared and one thing she said, with regards to the uncertainty of the storm, you know, the comment she made is that, everybody is getting prepared for this like it is hurricane katrina and i don t think it will be that bad. could it be the east coast hurricane katrina? or are we kind of overhyping this? i think when people think of katrina they think of the homes destroyed with the flooding. and, that may be something we see in the storm surge areas along the coast. but, i think here in the district and again, for all you guys that live here, here s what you need to be prepared for. power outages, that could be days or longer. and the further away you are