welcome back, official sounding the alarm is hurricane dorian inches close to the florida coast. the category 3 storm threatening millions of americans after claiming 5 lives in the bahamas, many are following the evacuation orders. we have wind but no rain. i ve seen forecasts that put this 100 miles off the florida coast, tropical storm force windss extent 150 miles from the storm center. if that holds florida s barrier islands like cocoa beach will still experience damaging wind and dangerous storm surge, pouring rain from west palm beach to charleston, south
it is fantastic but pretty slow, one inspector going one home at a time thinking about the technology standpoint, flyover technology, big data analytics, satellite imagery to assess claims the same way insurance companies do. heather: we heard this before. a lot of charities pop up, some not legitimate charities with incidents like this to rethink charitable giving. not only the relief and response to find the charitable organizations with values, take nothing from the work which is vital and critically important in those first days and weeks after the storm. the long-term recovery is more expensive and less visible and
evacuation, okay? reporter: one of the frustrations is oftentimes residents even in mandatory evacuation zones residents want to stay and that it is really hard if not impossible to get help once the storm hits. listen to what a police officer had to say yesterday about a particular area that always gets flooded in these storms. usually a big flood zone. every storm but as far as a hurricane it is catastrophic. where we are standing now is there a likelihood? yes. definitely a likelihood this will be underwater. they have done everything they can but we have seen transformers blowing so part of the barrier island already without power and this is just beginning. terrible for sure. we appreciate your coverage.
the storm has a window of time to strengthen a little bit over warm waters and stationary, not moving, we expect that northward turn to happen today but you see outer bands in melbourne and st. lucie, not only tropical storm force windss but 4 to 7 foot storm surge and weak tornadoes. we haven t talked about that with landfalling hurricanes moving close to shore. we have a chance of thunderstorms and tornadoes. the closest approach to landfall is going to be across north and south carolina and this is thursday still as a cat 3 or cat 2 storm. all eyes are on these vulnerable beach areas in the next couple days. that is when we have the greatest impact.
carolina could experience storm surge 4 to 7 feet above ground, florida is under a storm surge warning. despite mandatory evacuations there were still surfers in the water riding waves. governor kemp gave a dire warning to people who would not listen to evacuation orders. given the risk of strong winds and potential flooding, folks who decide not to evacuate, i want to be clear, they will be on their own if first responders are unable to reach them. reporter: state troopers in south carolina facilitated evacuations by reversing traffic on our 26 so everyone could drive west away from the coast. governor mcmasters said no one could be certain where the storm would go, better to be safe than sorry. if you are in one of the evacuation zones the time to