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Alicia. alicia: alex hogan, thank you. ben. benjamin: thank you. knew new york state is sending hundreds of national guard troops to the hardest hit parts of long island, mostly out east in suffolk county. power outages could last for a week or more. steven malone joins me now, the suffolk county executive many thank you for joining us. i wonder if you could explain what the situation is on the ground right now. we were preparing for a category 1 hurricane to make a direct strike. that would have been the first time in decades. there is a sense of relief that it did move east slightly overnight and that it won t have that direct impact and it s a tropical storm now. these storms are should be taken very seriously. we had 650,000 power outages at the same time last year from a tropical storm. so we re ready for anything. not only those national guard ....
Rain, particularly the western side of the state. governor ned lamont spoke an hour and-a-half ago. this is what he said about his biggest concern moving forward. i m concerned about that. i think that s the biggest risk that we have right now. as you know, we had a lot of rain over the last week. the topsoil is thin. you have rock underneath. that means the topsoil is filling up like a sponge fills with water. that water is pouring off right now. reporter: so yeah, heavy rain is the big concern for connecticut and for much of those that are getting affected by the rest of this storm. the issue is obviously with the rain the big oak trees can fall on power lines. this is just one of many photos we re starting to see of trees falling over homes and cars and on shower lines. so far, 78,000 customers in rhode island, the most in the nation, are now without power. in connecticut, that number is 32,000 and in new jersey it s ....
We have fox team coverage. steve bender is live on long island, new york. first, to brian llenas the in connecticut. reporter: look, we are in old saybrook, the southeastern portion of connecticut. the tropical storm henri made landfall 36 miles west of here. the sun is out and the worst is by us and the deck hands here have done a good job of tying up the boats. you can see well, take a look at the boats, they re still there. take a look at this video, you ll see it was windy, it was there was rain, about 45, 60-mile-an-hour gusts in the southeastern portion of connecticut. the tropical storm henri did essentially jog a little bit to the east and that was good news for connecticut in terms of wind. dodged a bullet on the wind end of things. when it comes to the rain, while we were on the wet side of this tropical storm in connecticut, continues to get pounded by ....
About 6,000, 10,000 people without power in massachusetts. they were expecting up to 69% of all homeowners and customers in connect cut would be without power. that does not look like it will be that severe, they don t expect people to be without power for weeks at a time so that is good news on that front. we know ultimately we will continue to follow this storm, the big concern now is flooding inland, rivers and small streams, that could then flood into people s homes or especially flash flooding in some urban areas as the rest of the tropical storm makes its way west past hartford and central connecticut. we ll continue to monitor the story. for now things are looking better and the damage thus far looking like downed trees and some power lines. downgraded but still dangerous so watch out there. brian llenas, thank you very mitch. tropical storm henri continues to weaken after making landfall in rhode island earlier today. but the high winds and heavy ....
Urge people this is a sunday, it s a family day, stay home. this is a good day to spend time with the pamly family and allow the national gander first respond national guard and first responders to respond as needed. benjamin: do you feel suffolk county is better suited to handle this kind of a storm than it used to be? the thing that happens when you go through storms like this and you never want to, you never want to experience them, but what they do bring is the kind of experience that prepares you for future events that you can t get anywhere else and we have those relationships, those experiences that people have gone through and every storm is different. super storm sandy was one of those. a lot of these storms are less than predicted. that s one of those that as it got closer right before it hit, it got even worse. ....