The news. Thank you so, much good evening everyone, im laura coates and this is cnn tonight. Our Breaking News, a brandnew forecast for Hurricane Idalia, the storm rapidly intensifying as its lashing florida ahead of what is feared to be a catastrophic landfall on the states west coast in just a matter of hours. Potentially deadly storm surge and Hurricane Conditions expected not only tonight, but also tomorrow. Officials say that the surge could be a Once In A Lifetime event. Idalia is now a category two, with maximum winds of 110 miles per hour. It is now forecast to become a powerful category four, before landfall tomorrow morning. We have got to 49 florida counties that are under states of emergency as we speak and as they are waiting to see what the next few hours will bring. Well be covering everything as only cnn can tonight. We have got to teams out across the entire storm zone, weve got chad myers in the cnn winter center, Carlos Flores is in tampa, brian todd is in st. Marks
Heavily populated areas. because it is so much harder to get out there, even if you try to flee. if everyone tries to flee at the last minute, and now we are past the last-minute, we are at the point where you have to do the best that you can t right now to do what is safe. even if you try to flee then, the roads can become completely clocked, even before the storm gets there. that is why they warn people. your mayor said a little while ago, new arrivals? every single year in new orleans on the gulf coast, they were saying to people, if you are not from here, please listen. you don t know what this thing is like until you have been through some of them. and sunshine distance mean that it is over. oh no, oh no. and honestly, this was the day, right? this was the day. the day that katrina actually hit your hometown. it changed so many things, down there. i always say, don t forget the gulf coast because we re towns up there that, honestly the gulf side part of those towns c
Ago would not have been that expensive now is terribly expensive. there were plenty, plenty, way too many lives lost in these two hurricanes, running up into the hundreds. but then we come into the monster that came into my old home tone alone of new orleans, and along the gulf coast. don t forget the gulf coast communities, which were hammered by this 25 to 28 foot storm surge and the new orleans area. we had the levees collapse, which many people call the man made disaster of it all, but the result was 75 billion dollars worth of damage, close to 1400 people killed. storms surge is what this is all about. the big heavy winds, they are frightening, and yes i can do damage, they can kill people, they can do a lot of bad things, particularly the tornadoes that spin off. but the big damage, the big loss of businesses, homes, and lives, will come from the storm surge. that is why these people in these communities are saying, you have got to get out now, particularly, again, in the
Catastrophic. more than what they are talking about, even. at least to my knowledge. let me ask you, what kind of supplies do you have? you are hearing from some officials who are saying, at least have 2 to 3 or even more days of provisions in case there is help needed and they can t get to one right away. do you have supplies where you are? yes, we do. what kind? i was based in the hills of ohio, and so i have always stocked up 2 to 3 works weeks worth of food. we have paper towels, toilet paper, extra water, a water filtration system. so, we are i feel as well prepared as we can before the situation we are in. have you had to weather a storm in this area before? i know you have your poured concrete building and don t have the concern about perhaps the integrity of that building, but is this from lessons learned where you had not had the preparation before? is that by now you feel more
Don t have high populations, but they are very hard to get to. usually, you are talking about it to link road coming on the u.s. 27, u.s. 19. you are having to go 20, 30, 40 miles to get through these little committees, and all of that will be covered and debris, flooded. so, for the response it is really about if people haven t evacuated, they are prepared to go in and get to the survivors. but, it is going to be very difficult, and unlike other places this will not be a concentrated population. it will be very spread out. as you saw, basically north of tampa, especially when you get past north of guilford county, there are some good size populations, then it diminishes. search and rescue will be the first part, the second will be, we are going to have a lot of power outages. and this is a part of the state that has not have hurricane-force winds and a long time. you know, the idea of the preparation and what it will take to not only prepare for the storm itself but the aftermath, a