that could spell trouble. back to you. indeed. sam brock thank you so much. in baton rouge. you have spoken with the mayor. aye we are going to do that as well. i am joined on the phone by the mayor of bruin sharon westin broom. mayor, we spoke earlier today. yes. how have things unfolded since you and i spoke around 9:00 a.m. or so eastern time? has this storm played out the way you expected it to? right now we are seeing increased winds. we have told all of our residents to shelter in place because we are expecting an impact between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. with the heavier impact taking place around 6:p.m. as i drive the streets of baton rouge, it does appear that our citizens are adhering to the shelter in place message. okay. that s good news. talk about what you are seeing on the roads as you drive. it has been noted that people should, if they see water, not
we have got thunder going right now. so it is a very active part of the storm, alex. 100%. lightning certainly can strike and start a fire that way as well. it could be a transformer, lightning. whatever you noted those fire trucks down the street are standing to. i am going to let you take cover as need be, to the best self described bahamian i know, al roker, nice to have you with us and giving us a sense of things on the grounds in new orleans. let s go to sam brock, in downtown baton rouge. how are things there? to put pieces of your last two reports together, good afternoon, alec. bill said once you get to 50 miles per hour or stronger you are seeing power lines going down, people losing electricity. al mentions it is going to be potentially 100-mile-an-hour winds in nornls. that s a lot of power outages. the last time i talked to you,
from you, david, from people achlt thank you for being with us, best of luck as you navigate the next few days for people along the gulf coast. appreciate it. let s go to nbc s sam brock who is in baton rouge. there have been hours of heavy rainfall there. what are you seeing and feeling, sam. i think we are probably three or four hours behind what morgan is seeing at the moment in houma, custom of course is one those areas that is bearing such a brunt of the orderly strength of this storm. 150-mile-an-hour winds making its way, bulldozing right now through southeast louisiana. the reason i am standing here, there have already been 150,000 customers without power so far. that is before it real gets, ida, into the heart of the state. these right here will be deployed eventually, once it is safe to do so. there is a small army of utility vehicles. i would say in ballpark of 50 to 100 just right here. there are more supplies coming. as we mentioned already from fema, the concerns go b
we have seen congestion for miles on interstate 10 getting through this part of louisiana. you kinds of are where you are at this point. yeah. be safe, be careful, and understand it is going to be get dicey here in the coming hours. let s hope the business owners and residences don t regret not further boarding up. i find that to be surprising. appreciate the reporting from you sam brock, there in baton rouge, louis lus. bill carans, we go back to you. hurricane center, a national update a few moments ago. the 2:00 didn t change anything. some of the stats over the last couple of years. a report of a 15 mile-an-hour wind gust at landfall at port fourchon. 15 to 16% of all of the u.s. oil goes through there. let s hope that everything is structurally sound and good to go once the storm is over with. you can imagine what impacts that would have. almost 20% of u.s. oil goes