thank you for your reporting. glenn, congratulations on the book deal with my fellow scorpio, maggie. i didn t know your sign, but now i do. well, we have the same birthday, actually. thank you very much. good luck on the book. now, back to florida. as the state of florida works to recover from irma, president trump is set to survey the damage tomorrow in naples, a city that experienced significant flooding. in a twitter announcement the president said he ll be meeting with members of the coast guard, fema and first responders. joining me by phone is the fema administrator, brock long. thank you for being with us, administrator long. i know you were in st. thomas and puerto rico yesterday. you ve just arrived in florida. what are you looking to find out there on the ground before you re with the president tomorrow? obviously, the most important thing is to collect ground troop to make sure fema is meeting the mark to meet governor scott s
the decision to evacuate the areas along the coastline is very important because as you ve been discussing with the experts before i came on, the storm surge could be immense. which puts all of those areas and the people who live there at great risk. so those people need to evacuate from their homes along the coast, there are people who are leaving the state, but the other piece of this is the shelters that are now open in south florida, the people who need those shelters who can evacuate from their homes to the shelters for protection, that s another way for them to stay safe. the people of florida certainly are counting on fema, the federal emergency management agency to help with the recovery process, but the agency as you well know, congressman, is on the brink of running out of cash. is congress going to make sure fema is funded to deal with not only the crisis, the hurricane disaster we isn t that true texas and louisiana, but now about to unfold in florida and maybe in south c
american history, with some 40,000 people out of their homes, 1 million cars destroyed, the size and scope of this disaster is still being calculated. this will be just the beginning of our efforts to make sure that the people i represent in the state of texas are taken care of, as the president has committed and as all of us are working to accomplish. there will also be, as part of the continuing resolution, additional funds that the budget director has talked about to make sure fema is adequately funded. especially with hurricane irma bearing down on the east coast. secondly, on the president s decision on the deferred action matter. this harris: we are listening for any details about the discussions that may have happened with republicans after the president met with democratic leaders today and reached deals on the debt
continues but i m going to make sure fema and other agencies are doing everything in their power to help people on the ground. shepard: between all the floods, the downstreams and damaged siding, they are estimating the storm caused somewhere, get this, between $3 billion and $7 billion. and that s just in insured claims. as one crisis expert told the fox business network today, it will be a while before we know for sure how much this storm cost us all. as we see the days and weeks ahead of us and we start doing these damage assessments, the adjustors get out and start taking a look at these houses as quickly as they can, it s going to be time consuming because there s so many of them, we re going to start getting better and better numbers. all the numbers out there today, there s one guarantee it won t be that number. it might be a little higher or a little lower. it s definitely not what they re putting out there right now. shepard: as with those with no flood insurance, they m
that s right, two weeks, before their power is turned back on. veronica? we know they are having quite an issue trying to get the power back on with all the fallen trees and down power lines. nbc state and local officials are being critiqued along with president obama. he discussed the latest earlier in the hour. it is going to take time to recover from a storm of this magnitude. the effects are still being felt across much of the country. our response continues. i am going to make sure fema and other agencies are doing everything in their power to help people on the ground. joining me now, crystal ball, democratic strategist and joe watkins, republican strategist and msnbc political analyst. crystal, let s talk about the president. he received constant updates on the storm from martha s