strongest atlantic hurricane in a decade churning toward the u.s. right now irma a category 5 hurricane packing 185-mile-per-hour winds. still too early to tell if the monster storm will make landfall on the u.s. mainland, but florida could be in harm s way this weekend. president trump declaring emergencies for florida, puerto rico and the u.s. virgin islands to help with storm preparations. we ll have the full hurricane forecast for you in a moment. the most immediate concern is for people in the north eastern caribbean. irma hitting barbuda this morning. a curfew issued for the entire territory of the virgin islands. they are under hurricane warnings including other islands of puerto rico. that s where we find george howell. are you finding that people are evacuating? often what happens with so many of these places, people become very complacent.
the nation s oil heartland is slowly getting back up and running. had a congressman talking about this, how refineries, pipelines and shipping channels are restarting operations after being shut down by the monster storm. seems though it could take another couple weeks for the price decreases to come back in. we have new information on looters. some storm victims are responding to reports of people burglarizing homes and stores in disaster areas. they re taking up arms in a bid to stop them. you can see the signs out there. hands off is one of the nicer signs, this is a new rallying effort happening across areas. looters are impersonating rescue workers. we had a guy on earlier who he and a bunch of his neighbors said they would take up military patrols throughout their neighborhood. they would arm themselves, have
brought to bear. the president often says we are one american family and when one hurts we all heard. the vice president in rockport where the i came ashore, 15 or 20 minutes from corpus christi where he landed yesterday. the president will return to the houston area as the water continues to reseed but they are going to search through all the homes that were flooded and see what they discover when they go through. in katrina that was one of the hardest parts of the storm too. todd: a new storm threat is gaining strength over the atlantic, hurricane irma upgraded to a category 3 with winds up to 100 miles an hour. heather: the storm several days from impacting the us but it could be extremely dangerous. janice dean is live tracking its
looking through homes that have been flooded out and the real cost of the storm including how many lives were lost will be revealed as searches continue. we are at a death toll of 39 from the storm, that continues to climb and that is the sad news. positive news is the weather has turned warm and sunny for the next few days, houston is getting back to business. the president will be returning to texas tomorrow. he was briefed, he will be briefed today on the harvey situation and will return to the houston area where mike pence was in corpus christi offering his support. listen to the vice president. i want to pay debt of gratitude, step forward and shown their work in this dark hour. the full resources are being
the water. house for so many reasons texas needs our prayers, governor greg abbott joined by vice president mike pence announcing september 3rd will be a statewide day of prayer in the wake of harvey. this is the day we will pray for all those affected regardless of what faith or church or background you may have. we will pray as one united people for the future of the state and the country. heather: pope francis praying for texas expressing sympathy to those suffering in the aftermath of the storm sending a message to cardinal daniel dinardo, archbishop of galveston, houston. heather: us troops on their way to afghanistan, james madison lining the order as part of the new war strategy, officials say 39 other troops could be sent bringing the total to 15,000.