partners, and looking at the list from fema that the white house sent me with over 100 helicopters, 6 million meals, 4 million liters of water, 30,000 blankets, it is phenomenal. two pre-position this, and with state and local officials. we are still seeing this ongoing and water still coming. there s so much we can go but for planning i think they did an excellent job. arthel: if you can wrapping up give me 30 seconds. what are your biggest concerns moving forward?the next 24 to 48 hours? we want to think about those who are in the low-lying areas. we are worried about the elderly, people who are in retirement homes that need to be moved out. people that cannot move on their own. they may not have close family and friends. those are the ones we are concerned about right now. but again, we are doing a great job in the state. it is just the challenge that we ve seen before but i think we are doing a great job.
the president could tip his hat saying fema was handing out thousands of meals a day when they needed millions. there are no facts supporting what the president is saying. so who is watching him here and saying right on, brother? no one. there s a resignation inside of this west wing. the top echelons of the republican party. that no one can push president trump towards the reality of what s happening on the ground and he only sees things through the prison of himself. advisers have mostly given up in trying to pull him back from these kinds of outbursts. the president s base might say who cares about puerto rico, they re our neighbor. i think santorum calling puerto rico a country when it s humiliating for him to say it s a country when we know it s a u.s. territory. from a popularity perspective, besides his core base who s saying, well, it doesn t help me
sorry florida, key swing state. the thing about puerto rico, too many people constantly make the mistake that puerto rico is somehow an island off there and is not part of the united states. ed it is part of the united states. these are americans. beyond that, these are people. and the way they re kind of talked about as units or as things that are separate is just very odd and disturbing frankly to be honest. they re not your neighbor down the lane. they re our family and they re our responsibility. extraordinary. i cannot fathom why the president would say that this morning. up next, how a restaurant, a restaurant, became a barometer for storm recovery is called the waffle house index. and we re waiting for the latest storm information from fema officials. they re set to begin speaking in just a few minutes. we ll bring it to you live when it happens. please if you know anyone in the region of the storm, get them to
inland winds as this storm starts to come in and push into the coast. coupled with that is copious amounts of rainfall. as the system s pulling a lot of moisture out of the ocean. you re already seeing rain bands come along the carolina shoreline. and unfortunately, these rain bands are going to be with us for several days. we re going to, you know, the forecasters are basically indicating feet of rain, not inches, in portions of the carolinas and into virginia. so this is a very dangerous storm. inland flooding kills a lot of people unfortunately. that s what we re about to see. so please keep that in mind. the other thing is, i want everybody to know that fema and our federal partners have fully prepositioned in support of our state and local partners. here again, we are here to help our governors achieve their response and recovery goals. emergency management is a team sport. it is a whole community effort. you know, as this system pushes through right now, we re focused
because when you re the only act in town, you tend to go through a lot of food pretty quickly. there is a pretty big logistical challenge. probably the bigger challenge for us is the people logistical challenges. is getting them all in here, finding them places to stay. rental cars. deploying them to the couple hundred restaurants we have in this affected area. there is a lot of work that goes into place. i m not going to tell you we re really good at it. we try to get better every time. every one of these things is a little bit different. we appreciate it. you re living up to the term comfort food. really creating a safe haven. help us understand, how high is the bar for you to close a restaurant in terms of weather danger? well, you know, certainly we work closely with the local authorities. when they come by and tell us that we are in a dangerous place, we will close down. so we have developed really good relationships with the fema folks and all the local and state agencies t