water. we all recognize how unpredictable these waters can be. but this situation very far from over. it s also kind of a slap in the face to residents who thought when that storm started going to the west, what, two days oog and everyone thought it s going to be tampa, it s going to be naples, its going to be fort myers, i think probably some folks in jacksonville, they ve been told to evacuate any way, but probably breathe a sigh of relief, it s not going to really affect us. but obviously now we are here talking jacksonville one day after the storm made landfall. yeah. and downtown today, i met so many people staying at downtown hotels, who had come here from other parts of florida, from as far south as boca raton or hollywood, others coming from amelia island, but they thought it was a safe place to be. and then they come out from their hotel to mrng to see
manager jim shoel. jim, how are things on the island? how are residents doing? we re doing reasonably well considering that we had a cat 4 make landfall just 20 miles up the road. it was a lot of devastation, but mostly as the mayor told you, vegetation and the complications of trees falling on utilities, either falling on power lines or the roots tearing up some of the water distribution system. those times of impacts. the storm surge in key west was not as bad as it was in some of the areas of the keys. we were fortunate that we were on the weaker side of the storm and that eye wall area, i think, could have been stronger, but it seemed to not batter us as bad as we expected.
may. good to see all of you. billy, you re here as well. i was seeing the shock, stays dwri, on your face as you came and saw what your old neighborhood looked like. it s just devastating. we feel for our friends and family that became part of our family when we lived here. we were here for about three years. we came to take pictures for people that are concerned about their homes and they re not just snowbirds. these are their homes, families that lived here. and we re just so, so sorry and we just pray that everybody is safe and everybody will be okay. right. you see i don t know if you can see behind stacy the x on the door there they did sign, the date and time, that means no bodies were found. thankfully no lives lost. you rode out the storm nearby here. your family has been here since donna blew ashore in 1960.
irma is blamed more the worst storm surge flooding ever recorded in jacksonville. earlier i spoke with the mayor and he said it s not good at all and it s certainly not over yet. mayor curry, just in terms of the latest in the flooding in jacksonville? what are you seeing now? how bad is it. this is a serious event, and we ve been telling the people of jacksonville this is going to be a serious event for days. on wednesday we started voluntary evacuations and we told people those were going to be mandatory in just a couple of days. and we started them early because of the traffic coming from south florida. and now her worry, we have category 3 storm surgery and a tropical storm. and so we are in rescue mode right now. that s exactly what s been happening all day and will continue to happen. do you have a sense of the scope of those operations? i mean, any sense of how many
they can call people, but they re older and, you know, the elderly couple who are the care tears of that nand, they had no way to get to these people. they were telling us how worried they are about them. so we just trujd up on foot through the waist deep water to find them ourselves. again, resources in that neighborhood, they may not be so great right now. yeah. brian todd, appreciate you being there. thanks for checking on them. this storm certainly caught a lot of people by surprise. no matter where you were in florida, there were a lot of different reports. up, the tracking was pretty good, but then this storm surprised a lot of people over the course of 24 hours. tom sater is in the weather center. let s check in with him h. tom, i mean, you know, it moved to the west coast. that surprised a lot of people who were on the west coast who had gone there from the east coast and then it started moving hooes. and certainly a lot of people in jacksonville are certainly surprised to se