have better protections in place and learned a lot from that, but there s no real preparation for a storm of this magnitude, one that we have not seen the likes of since the 1800s. this message has been repeated. thankfully to your network and many others we ve been able to get that message out to people and hopeful they have heeded those warnings. the governor says louisiana today is not the same louisiana as 16 years ago. will the levy system hold up. my prayer is that it will. we don t know that. my prayer is that it will. we certainly know that we re better than we were before. this is a storm that is stronger than before. this is a good test for us and i m prayerful that we all pass, prayerful that we make it through this, and we ll know in a few hours if people are secure. congressman troy carter, thank you for your time this morning and please stay safe. we appreciate it. thank you. we re going to keep an eye
possible catastrophic damage and where we find tom llamas. what can you tell us and what are you seeing? hey, guys, good morning. it s pretty quiet in new orleans which is even strange this early in the morning. the town is usually moving by this time. behind me is the famous st. louis cathedral in jackson square. we had a sted rain. you will see wind gusts if you look at the american flag, you can see the wind a little bit. right now it s still very, very early. we re not really feeling the full force or some of the effects of the storm just yet. as we whip around here we are by the mississippi river. all eyes will be on any type of body of water in new orleans because of the flooding issues. the riverboat, one of the famous scenes. it s things like this right here, there was no evacuation order, they didn t have a lot of time in new orleans to prepare for this. you can see all this loose debris here, if these winds come even at 100 miles per hour, it s going to lift a lot of this s
reports on this busy morning. you can catch me at 3:00 p.m. and alex witt and velshi starts right now. a very good morning to all of you. it is sunday august 29. i m alex witt in for velshi. we re following the breaking news on ida as the gulf coast prepares for a devastating storm. ida is expected to make landfall a few hours from now and rapidly gaining strength over the open, warm waters of the gulf of mexico. this time yesterday, ida was a category one hurricane. but overnight, the storm jumped from a category 3 to a dangerous category 4 storm with the intensifying sustained winds now of 150 miles per hour. with a mix of voluntary and mandatory evacuations across the region, officials are urging residents to either get out right now or hunker down.
we gave people enough warning to try get out and make the point this was going to be a serious storm, it was going to intensify into a category 4 yesterday afternoon and you saw the mandatory evacuations and the curfews. we have 50,000 people still there who haven t evac kuwaited. archie chassen, good luck to you today and to all of those people as well. thank you for joining us. thank you so much, guys. still head, an air strike waiting game. president biden warns of another attack against a group who killed 13 of our service members. on u.s. soil we wait for had their remains to return home. we re learning about some of the service members, one of nicolle gee s final pictures holding a baby in her military uniform, the caption read, i love my job. she was one of two women to die on the front lines. sergeant gee was just 23 years old.
storm for signs of strengthening before it hits. we ll be alerting you as that happens. new this morning, more than a dozen portable morgues are en route to help overburdened hospitals in central florida according to our report. hospitals there are dealing with an overflow of covid deaths. stephanie staton is in tampa, florida, and funeral homes are feeling the brunt of this. yes. this funeral home behind me in the tampa area says it has 11 funerals scheduled this weekend alone all of this coming as covid cases here in florida continue to surge. last week the state reported more than 151,000 cases of covid, with 389 deaths. as you mentioned, as you both mentioned, hospitals and morgues are filling up. in fact, one hospital system in orlando says that it had to have