rains, strong winds, a lot of damage out of this thing. al roker, thank you very much. we will have another update in a half hour or so. 5:00. we will keep you up to date on that. bill karins is picking it up. very g thank you very much. and on the radio now from hot 97, thank you for joining us. tell us what you re hearing around there. hello? hi, it s ali from msnbc. i think just disconnected from you. what are you hearing where you are? thank you. we will reconnect with him in a moment. this storm is stalled over the bahamas. it is moving, stalled and almost no movement, 1 mile an hour movement and that s the issue here, we don t know where it s going to go but there s been a lot of damage already in the bahamas.
his secretaries. listen, i think they have a plan, they re ready. but this is being so slow, people going through the damage so long, people are willing to go but we have to wait until the hurricane go as way and get close to the islands. as authorities tell us, winds have to be very low until you can even start with the most basic of rescue. one of the things you focus on is in the after-effect of the hurricane it s not the littbig things that affect people but little things like power and water and food. what do people need to do to get the food, do they come to a central place? do you take it to them? what happens? these are the central questions we re asking ourselves. some of the shelters have been overrun by water so we still
what is our best-case scenario for this storm? i think it will weaken for category 3 later today or category 2 mostly as it passes along the coast of florida heading up to south carolina. that s still strong enough to generate a large storm surge and expect a multibillion dollar damage event from storm surge. let s talk about being a hurricane hunter, a lot of people think that s the stupid job in the entire world but it s helped us understand these storms better and helped us in our prediction abilities and preparation abilities. if you want to find out what the storm is doing you have to go into it and take the measurements. the trick is do it at the lowest safe altitudes and as hurricane hunters, we ve had wild rides. what does that involve? i see pictures of one of planes up there. but normally we think when there s bad weather we don t want to fly. what does it involve, flying into a hurricane? you go in about 10,000 feet when you fly through the eye wall. you can t pene
of our main objectives becomes search and rescue. we search for anyone who needs assistance. you use the term partnership. it truly is a partnership. i like to say the super preparedness in response is a team sport. folks work extremely well together, federal government, states, tribes, and everyone involved in this. and aside from search and rescue, we re very much focused in on the ports. so much of our commodities, things we use every day including fuel for your car, come into ports. we re focused on getting those ports restored and open as soon as possible. how do you do that? you re dealing by definition the hurricane comes in off the water so everything you re dealing with is a place where things come in. i was in savannah yesterday, which was one of the biggest ports coming in, for things coming in to the united states. what do you do to prepare ports for the least amount of damage