is or just to the east over ocracoke island. that doesn't slow it down very much because there's not much land. then it runs up towards virginia beach with a pounding day and pushing water in the chesapeake bay with the potential for some storm surge there. then running right along the jersey shore, pounding and also eroding some of the shore there and then possibly this flooding we've talked about oh, so much now in new york city if i want goes to the east, those connecticut, rhode island and also massachusetts and eastern long island, definitely in the worst part of this storm. >> we'll be watching it very closely. of course we'll be following it all weekend long from here in new york city and all points in between. we have our correspondents fanned out throughout the entire region. that does it for this edition of 360. thanks for watching. piers morgan starts right now. >> tonight is this the worse case scenario. hurricane irene so big you can see it from space. >> irene is passing over the

horizon from us now. she's definitely a big storm and people in her way better banted down the hatches. >> slamming down into the east coast. >> i can't stress this highly enough. if you're in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now. >> 65 million people in danger. >> to all the people in eastern north carolina, good luck and our prayers are with you. >> mandatory evacuations, time to get out right now. >> you have to get out. >> we've never done a mandatory evacuation before and we wouldn't be doing it now if we didn't think this storm had the potential to be very serious. >> we're tracking this monster minute by minute and going live into the storm zone. this is piers morgan tonight. good evening, we're covering every angle of hurricane irene tonight from north carolina, with landfalls expected in a matter of hours to new york city where unprecedented mandatory

evacuations are under way. thousands of flights are cancelled on the east coast. jfk is closing to international arrivals tomorrow at noon. major highways are closing down as i speak. there are unprecedented shutdowns, transit system in new york and philadelphia. atlantic casinos and hotels are shuttered. broadway is going dark for the weekend. will this storm be the big one that millions of people now fear? i want to begin in north carolina where brian todd is in the thick of it. looks pretty rough. we seem to have lost brian there. it is rough down there. communication is hard. brian, you're back, i think. >> reporter: can you hear me, piers? can you hear okay? >> you just keep talking. >> reporter: okay. we're going to show you the storm surge here.

[ inaudible ] rain, wind. [ inaudible ] pushing up against the pier. [ inaudible ] [ wind blowing ] impacted by the storm. if you're not out of here by now you can't get out. [ inaudible ] people don't stay out here for long, piers. >> brian, we can't hear you well but what we can see is most extraordinary scenes behind you. we'll try to make that connection a bit better. we'll go chad myers. we can see there from brian todd the power of this hurricane and

it is clearly heading as you've been predicting now for a while right down the east coast. tell me exactly what we are looking at as we speak now. >> we're looking at a hurricane that's actually getting a little bit stronger tonight. it's getting its act together. there's the eye of the storm. brian todd right here wrightsville beach, wilmington. this is the closest pass he'll get. the storm will move on up towards cape hatteras region which is northeast of him. but he's really now -- look at all these waves, wave after wave of significant rainfall moving into brian's location. that's why it was so difficult much he's right there at that point. so difficult to get that communication. wilmington now has picked up over five inches of rainfall and literally hasn't even started. we still have 12 or 15 more hours, piers of more heavy rainfall. there cube foot of rain right where brian todd is. you have the water coming in from the ocean and another foot of rain trying to wash down the

rivers, significant flash flooding is going to occur right there. >> chad, to try comprehend the scale of this. i heard you earlier and it startled me to say this hurricane, this storm is bigger than the size of europe. is that right? >> that is absolutely correct. let me show you a satellite right here. i measured it myself last night. i went on to google. plotted it on google. if you go from the northern edge where the cloud cover is all the way back to charleston and down south and circle that you gate square mile, mileage bigger than france, spain, all of northern europe, all of germany, all the way over to where my parents are from, from hungary and czechoslavkia area, all the way down and including italy. you could cover up the entire main continent of europe with that storm right there. >> incredible scenes. the focus is on new york city. not to belittle other places.

new york has not been hit of anything of this magnitude for a long time. looking at all the charts and we talk to you about this. you're the guy who knows this stuff. what's the probability right now, chad, if these charts are accurate of this doing a direct hit on new york city? >> it's not a doomsday scenario. it's not the worst that possibly could ever happen. but what we have, part of this size, part of the size of the storm. this is 250 miles around. just in a radius from middle from here to here. the wind will be blowing for hours in the same direction here. that will pile water up. think about taking a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and trying to cool it off with your breath. you just blow on it to get the top cooled off. you're blowing little ripples of that coffee or tea to the other side. now take it to be 100 mile-per-hour brett and keep blowing on it for the next 12

hours you have a lot of water going in all in one direction. there's the direction here. spinning by atlantic beach. you do have landfall by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning and all the way -- this is 7:00 on saturday night. the wind are now in new york city blowing 39 miles per hour into the harbor and also now into the long island sound. all of that is going to funnel and puddle, basically, right over the east river and into new york harbor. get rid of that, put it together. remember that is 7:00 p.m. saturday. ocean city, 2:00 a.m. is your landfall. the storm doesn't even get to new york until 10:00 a.m. the next day. i can add that up. that's 15 hours of the wind blowing the same direction, pushing that wave of water into new york harbor and literally flooding parts of manhattan. >> absolutely extraordinary. chad, as always, superb analysis. we'll come back to you later in the show. for now poppy harlow is in lower

manhattan. unprecedented mand evacuation. poppy, we've never had a mandatory evacuation in new york city. you live in the area that's being evacuated. what's going on? are people leaving? are new yorkers who are known for their resilience if i may dare suggest stubbornness. are they taking this advice? are they leaving? >> reporter: we are stubborn and resilient but we know when we have to go. as mayor bloomberg said this storm is the stronger than all of us. we're leaving immediately after your show packing up my apartment a few blocks from here and i'm going to go more inland in manhattan. they are leaving, heeding the warning. you got a hotel right over here to me on the southern tip of battery park. ritz-carlton moving their hundreds of guests out to other hotels. some are going to schools that are turning into shelters. 91 shelters in new york city. mayor bloomberg has called in

900 soldiers, the national guard, 100 army vehicles to try to help, police officers will be down here. where i'm standing, piers, to give you a sense will be covered with water. no question about it starting early sunday morning. the mayor's office told me the storm surge, get this from just a few feet behind me that water will come up six to 12 feet and that is if we stay category 2. if this storm intensifies, can you believe it six to 12 feet. you know new york well. ground zero well. ground zero is five blocks from where i am. it's in the eye of this storm. it's shaped like a bathtub. you have the memorial there and you have much of ground zero which is not built up yet. i was on the 70th floor of tower one a week ago. it's not enclosed with glass. it is literally open with ne netting around it. can you imagine it being on the water with this storm. >> people are not panicking but

certainly even the cold new yorkers are beginning to think what is going on here, what will happen to us. how would you describe the mood of people on the streets in new york right now? >> i think it's let's get down to business. let's get out of dodge, if you will. let's get out of this neighborhood. it's not just new york city, it was staten island where i was earlier today. i was at a hospital one of the biggest in all of new york city. they were evacuating each and every patient. to give you some perspective, in 150 years of that hospital being open since 1861 they have never evacuated. so, the city has never experienced anything like this. it's getting more urgent by the hour. tomorrow at noon, all mta is shutting down. new yorkers don't generally have cars. people get around on buses and on the trains. those are all shutting down completely. i asked the mayor's office will you have any emergency vehicles to help people if they don't get out by noon and they said no. >> poppy, i would suggest you

get the hell out of there. thank you very much. >> got it. >> the army corps of engineers has a huge role in disaster response. they put together a street by street prediction of what a storm surge would do to new york and it won't make anyone in the city breathe easier. joining me now is the commander of the army corps of engineers. thank you for joining me. a lot of people now making some pretty forbidding comments from the president down warpeds. what is your view? what is the sense you're getting about the reality of this hurricane and in particular a direct hit on new york city? >> well, obviously it's a very serious storm. thank you very much for having me on tonight, piers. we are contributing to the team effort and i want to highlight the corps of engineers is one component of a federal, state and local team that's work took prepared for the storm and then to respond immediately in mitigation and recovery. fema is in the lead for the federal government and state and

local elected officials are the leaders and the managers of this effort and the federal team works in support of them. there's bean lot of great risk communication and planning for tworts while everybody here including us hopes for the best. this storm itself, our contributions to the hurricane modelling with noaa have allowed us to develop the tracks and follow them. this storm is following tracks like bill, edna and gloria has followed in the past. we're watching it very closely with noaa and keeping track and adjusting that track model the whole time. behind me is a graphic from our core map viewers that shows the current track as it is and infrared shot of the storm itself. right now, the centerline impact shows that it's going happen right around the nassau county suffolk county line on long island. yesterday that line was through, right at the direct hit of new york. if this storm moves west, it

could be. moves east it will make people certainly in new york and long island breathe easier. but it leaves boston, rhode island, massachusetts that could bear the brunt. we're tracking it closely. our models contributed to something called the hurricane evacuation models that have helped inform state and local leaders and federal agencies as they made recommendations and then course those state leaders made decisions. >> poppy harlow, my colleague was saying earlier she's in lower manhattan, people are suggesting it cube surge of water between six and 12 feet high in parts of manhattan. including ground zero. is that a likely prospect, do you think from everything you're now looking at? >> in a worse case scenario, 12 feet is possible. right now given the track the storm is oranges given the wind speeds we're measuring, the speed of the storm itself, what we see in our projections are sadly there's a timing issue. timing is everything. there's a high tide, a moon tide

if you will that will be occurring in new york at the time that the hurricane is about to make landfall. so, there's about a one-foot increase over a normal high tide at the battery, and right now it looks to us like there's a four to five-foot surge that will accompany this storm at the battery. a five to six-foot surge at that level. that's not 12 feet. but of course that's based on the current track of the storm and current intensity. something that changes from hour to hour as your weather -- >> there are serious concerns that the reason everyone in authority is getting so publicly, not panicky but certainly very concerned about new york is that it's not really geared up to take this kind of surge. what is your view from a military point of view? >> well, as a partner with new york city, office of emergency

management, of course in the state of new york, the fema regions, three fema regions in the area, region one in new england, region two here in new york and puerto rico in the servir going islands. region three which is the mid-atlantic states. virginia through maryland, pennsylvania and new jersey. the preparations here are good. the capacity is actually very good. new york city as an emergency management planning organization and a city that has the capacity to act on its own is an amazing resource. i mean this is an incredible workforce in terms much police, fire, emergency responders. you have tremendously talented team here, commissioner bruno and mayor bloomberg. this is a city that can take a lot of actions on its own and they are already doing so. you can see the steps they have taken in advance of the storm, sort of i think are more aggressive, more well informed than we've seen in the past. >> i'll have to leave threw. thank you very much indeed. >> thank you for having me.

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i cannot stress this highly enough. if you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now. don't wait. don't delay. we all hope for the best but we have to be prepared for the worst. >> president obama warning the east coast to prepare for the worst for hurricane irene. 65 million people at risk, the government possibly picking up the pieces after this massive storm. that's the question for craig fugate the head of fema. president obama seemed pretty serious there. have you been personally briefing him on irene? >> yes, we have. actually the day of the earthquake we briefed him and briefing him each day after.

>> and is there a good reason for him to sound so serious? your going to feel now that it's almost inevitable that new york city will take a direct hit? >> there's going to impacts and, again, the hurricane center has said that this forecast track is pretty much not going to change. we expect to it make landfall in carolina and go up the east coast. so we're going to see impacts. that's a given. just how bad and where still needs to be determined, but we're preparing as state and local officials are preparing based upon this forecast. >> i mean, are your being overly cautious, post-katrina? not that anybody would possibly blame you for doing that, but some people are suggesting as a slight overreaction this time to make sure that that kind of thing couldn't possibly happen again? >> well, i don't know about that. this is how i've always been operating. this is how we did it when i was in florida. this is what we do in the present administration as we bring the team together.

we get the team ready. prepare for the worst and hope for the best. we don't wait to find how bad it is before we get ready. >> what's the biggest concern for new york city? is it structural damage or potential flooding? >> really the concern in new york city is going to be how much storm surge we get. i think that's the factor that for the mayor and his team been looking at why they are ordering evacuations. we could get wind damages and power outages. in the borough areas those areas susceptible to flooding is of concern. >> mayor bloomberg ordered some evacuations and the governor as well. clearly there are sections of that area which are being evacuated. for people not in those secretary shoints sensible now to be thinking about getting out of there if you can? >> i think that's a decision that's case by case. really what you want to do is make sure if you're not in the elevation zone you got supplies in case the power goes out or there's disruptions in the

water. you know where a safe place to be in the building. again, we're not looking at the type of wind damage that causes the type of devastation we've seen in other storms. the principle threat for life safety will be storm surge and flooding. >> i mean, as always you're fema headquarters seems remarkably calm there. correct. are you feeling calm about this? do you feel like you're on top of it? >> well, again, i look at this and what the team here has worked for to get ready. again, right now the primary activity has been elevation. other than puerto rico and the virgin islands the mainland has not been hit and that will change tomorrow. i think you'll see we've been working and prepared to get ready. as it starts the damages we'll see the operations increase here as well as at the state and local level. >> who funds this kind of thing? because obviously we've been hit by a series of natural disasters that have been very costly recently. is there enough money in the

kitty for this? how much of it is federal. how much of it is state? how does this work? >> well, when we talk about disasters and we'll just talk about what government is doing when you do have disasters that are declared by the president, it is paid for by the u.s. taxpayers. but a shared expense with state and local taxpayers. federal government cost shares about 75%. state and local is 25% of that. that's something again as taxpayers we do pay for. that's part of our responsibilities to each other as citizens when times hit. but we got to remember we have a lot of volunteer organizations that count on donations of folks to do the services they provide. so disasters are expensive but part of our shared responsibility to come to each other's needs when disaster strikes. >> are you confident the people of new york in particular are listening in a tentative enough way. i heard someone make a joke, half a joke that new yorkers do tend to be quite obstinate when

people tell them what to do. your getting encouraging signs that evacuation is being taken up by new yorkers? >> yes. if mayor and his team has been pre-matter of fact why they are doing it. people are listening to that. there's people second guess or delay but i think overall people under this is a situation they need to get ready for. at least paying attention to it. hopefully they will do the things that pill minutize the loss of life and hopefully gotten ready before we get the storm in the area. >> i know that fema is in good hand. good luck. we'll be watching as it transpires hour by hour. >> thanks piers. >> my next guest does indeed think the biggest risk in the hurricane will come from the new yorkers. they survive terror attacks and blackouts you may underestimate the hurricane. the professor from school of earth and sciences.

professor koch, you think maybe new yorkers having been through so much may not be that keen to evacuating? >> well, i don't think that they take things seriously. they feel that they've been through so much and they also feel that hurricanes are something that happen on coasts with palm trees. and that's where they are wrong. the historical record of new york shows that it was directly hit by hurricanes in 1821, and in 1893. and we felt that the great 1938 hurricane, even though it was 70 miles away out on long island, caused considerable damage in the city. so here we have a track that we're not quite sure exactly where it's going to hit. the right side of the hurricane will be the most dangerous side and right now it looks like that might be on long island. however, i think that we under

estimate the wind damage. remember when you have wind and you speed up the wind like if you have a hose and you squeeze the hose, the water goes faster. the same thing happens between sky scrapers. that sucks the windows out. we've seen that in the hurricanes in houston. streets are littered with glass. the strength of those hurricanes in houston was about the level that we're expecting to come in. now this is a very wide storm with a big radius of maximum in winds. it's also moving relatively slowly and could considerably die out as it hits the colder waters because generally the only way to really hit the south shore of long island is to have a hurricane that's moving at least 35 miles per hour forward. so, we will have maximum surge because new york is in the right angle and thing right an simple a killer in terms of surge because as the hurricane moves in, the winds at the front of

the hurricane push the coastal waters westward, and into that right angle and you can't push water intoing a right angle without it going up. so we're going experience much higher than predicted by our computer water levels. and now if the winds stay 80 miles per hour or even if they decrease to 80 miles per hour, we're going to see significant wind damage. we've had an awful lot of rain and we have a heck of a lot of more rain to come. that will soften the soils and the trees will go over and the power lines will go over. so we're going to have a three ring circus no matter what happens in the level of the storm. >> professor, obviously a lot of people will be on the east coast, listen towing, pretty gloomy picture you're painting here. you studied a lot of hurricanes in your time. will it be as bad as many people prophecy here? >> my gut feeling it won't be as

bad because i think the storm will start as it starts to shear. the older hurricanes were category 1 and category 2. people make a big mistake when they use this scheme. if a hurricane comes in at high tide, comes in with a lot of rain, will have a very different thing than one that comes in at low tide and the ground is dry. in other words we rely far too much on the saffir-simpson scale. are on the right side or left side of the storm? how fast is the storm moving, the faster it moves the faster the wind are on the right side. so we do not have a realistic picture of expectative hurricane damage and that is a dangerous thing. >> finally, if you would give me a one word answer, if you're in new york now, should you leave?

>> if you're living under an altitude of 30 feet, yes. >> professor koch thank you very much indeed. coming up next two all-star storm chaser and another man who heads into storms as others leave, sam champion. discover customersl are getting five percent cashback bonus at the pump... and at many of the places their summer plans take them. it pays to switch, it pays to discover.

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breaking news of hurricane irene. straight back to brian todd who is in north carolina. the heart of this storm. brian, can you hear me and what is going on now? >> reporter: i can hear you, piers. we still have a mild storm surge. really concerned about the

entire eastern half of the state of north carolina. you can see what they are talking about. just this is not even the heart of the storm. that's coming on for several hours in this region. you can see how violent the surf is getting. officials are worried about this storm surge kind of over washing these beaches, these dunes here in this part of north carolina on the beaches and then heading in to town. souts going to get a lot worse in the next few hours, piers. >> brian, tell me what it actually feels like. i've never been near a hurricane. what does it feel like four standing in the middle of this thing? >> reporter: well, you know it's frighten and exhil ira ting at the same time. it's fun to be out here at least for me. it really is a great experience of nature. you really do expect power of nature when you're out here. but it is disorienting. you got winds whipping all around. you have to keep your eye out for flying debris, parts of

roofs flying at you. that's been an issue, not here. but i've covered hurricanes in the past. you got to keep an eye around you for flying debris and some of it is fairly large. you have sand whipping up in your face. the water is very warm. the rain is very warm. pelting your face. sand pelting your face. it can be disorienting but, you know, you tend to take your bearings and get used to it. >> you're right on the coast there, right by the sea. can you imagine the power that you're feeling and the surging of the water if that is now transported into new york city, what would you imagine would happen there? >> reporter: i think they are going have a lot of problems. if this kind of force and, again, just what we're seeing, just milder kind of outer band of this hurricane, if some of the full force of this hurricane or at least some of it, stronger remnant in new york city, i think they are going have a problem. they are going have a problem

with flash flooding. they will have a problem with just a lot of, you know, debris flying around p.m. and i think the difference between here and there is they are not used to handling hurricanes in new york as they are here. people here kind of know what they are doing, they know when to get out of the way of this thing. most people here have evacuated. they got mandatory evacuation orders for a lot of counties around here. do you worry about people in new york and whether they are going to be ready for this. >> brian, stay safe there. we'll come back to you before the end of the show. thank you very much. now i want to bring in three guys who head into monster storms. everybody else goes running. sam champion, discovery channel storm chasers. let me start with you sam. obviously building up momentum. it's looking pretty much ominous now for new york city. you've been through a lot of these things.

what's your take on it with everything you knowing right now? >> with everything i know right now, again this is a storm because we haven't had anything like this in new york city, new york city needs to take seriously and indeed it does and it's my impression. this is a storm that will carry water up against the coastline. we'll have those winds. i think it will be tropical storm if not category 1 storm surge, if it weakens it will be less. it strengths it will admonish. the big point of this and what i want to say is based on the track, track is responsible for the prep regulates. the track is responsible for the evacuations and the track is responsible for the coverage. our job is to make people aware of what the outside possibility is with a storm like this and get them ready to survive it. if this storm were to turn or dissipate or fall apart, fine everybody is okay. that's what matters. it's getting their attention and getting them ready for this storm. i think this storm will hold

together in a very powerful form for this area. not something they see and deal with and roll and flood and take a lot of power with it. it will be a real problem over the weekend. >> the key question i guess, lots of people on twitter very worried, unnerved by what they are hearing on this show from very expert people, unnerved what they are hearing from the president and others, what should they be doing, sam. if you were in new york right now would you leave the city? >> no. i would do exactly what -- people are watching this very carefully and they are making plans on where the water will go and what the wind will do and basically they are giving you the information and telling you what to do. if you're paying attention it you're prepared and you know. i would not and will not leave the city. i'll be here throughout the weekend working and covering the storm. even if i were here i would probably stay. you need to get out of the flood plains. any place where the water that may get in here that's five, six, seven feet high. if it floods your neighborhood

you don't need to be there. if you're in a tall building, winds are stronger. you don't need to be in the highest levels. you have an all glass apartment or home or condo, you don't need to be in the windows. find an interior room. riding out wind no matter what the storm is it's going same. riding out a tornado or hurricane. find a protected room inside as low as you can get without any windows and you ride it out. the water is a big concern so you want to get high enough to get away from the flood. evacuate those flood areas. get off the shore line. let this storm go by. we'll repair the damage and everybody will get back to life. it really is about being prepared, piers. >> good advice, sam. turn to discovery channel storm chasers who are in north carolina. guys, you are two of the craziest people in america because everybody else runs from these things you head into them. what is your reading of what we're witnessing here with hurricane irene? >> well, i think what makes this

storm really scary is just the population that's here on the east coast and just like katrina, just like the april 27th tornado outbreak you get that sick feeling in your stomach before it happens when you know there's going be damage and you know there's going to be people not listening to warnings and at these low elevations near sea level where you just can't survive that storm surge. i'll drive into tornadoes with our armored vehicle all day long but i'm scared to death of water and that's why you won't find us anywhere near that storm surge tomorrow. >> the key question, i guess is -- continue. >> i'm saying we got here a couple of hours ago and half the beach, half the sand is washed off the beach already. it's pretty serious stuff. it's coming in and you got to take heed of the warning. >> clearly from what we're hearing from the experts, a lot of areas, currently experiencing the hurricane are used to it.

and the people that live in that area are used to it and deal with it accordingly. the problem for somebody like new york city is not used to it. not happening in my lifetime. a lot of them are very unnerved by what they are watching, what they are hearing. you guys have been in the eye of these storms many times. if you were in new york right now and i keep repeating this because i think it's the most important question. if you were in the city now, would you leave? >> i would probably get out a topographic map and draw a line of 25 to 30 feet and stay higher than that. you hear about these doomsday scenarios with hurricanes. you hear about new orleans, new york city. it's because of the way their coast lines irshaped. with this hurricane, if it's moving due north towards new york city the winds will be such that all that water will be jammed up a very small river and the thing that scares me about this storm and remind me of

hurricane ike is that circulation is really large and it seems to have expanded throughout the day. you're piling up all that water over such a larger area and as the storm moves north even if it is winds decreasing, it will take longer for that water to settle down. so as this is moving north, the storm surge could be more significant than how the winds are with the hurricane. >> reed, chris, thank you very much indeed. what man who helped with recovery in katrina, what he expects from this storm.

joining me now is martin o'malley. what can you tell me what's is going on right now in your state? >> right now, piers, what's happening the window for preparation time is coming to a close as we anticipate the arrival of irene. we've done a lot of good work in the last 24, 48 hours. that's the key. our local leaders like the mayor of ocean city having the courage to order an evacuation and working together with state police and local police, it's gone very smoothly. people are listening, people are

watching, people are heeding our warnings to get out of the coastal areas and out of ocean city and so far it's actually been going very well. but this is a deadly killer storm, and we have a lot of rough hours ahead of us. >> governor, lots and lots of people now coming up to say this could be the big one, the one everyone has been fearing, a direct hit along the east coast. put it in perspective for me. you've been through a few of these things before. are people right to be as concerned as they are sounding? >> people are absolutely right to be concerned about this. look, piers, in modern times in maryland we've never ordered a. mandatory evacuation of ocean city. what we have now going on through many parts of our states is mandatory evacuations of low-lying areas where more susceptible than most states to coastal flooding.

this is a very serious and deadly storm. this is the real thing. and people are very right to take it seriously. i mean for the first 72 hours that this monster hit, families are on their own. so the first 72 are on you. and moms and dads need to make provisions for their families if they can get out of the way of this storm. that's ideal. if they can't have provision to hunker down for the first 72 hours. critical lew important. there will be power outages. there will be fallen trees. there will be a lot of debris. this is a deadly and giant storm. >> governor, thank you very much indeed. good luck there. >> thank you, piers. >> now i want to turn to general russel honore. thank you for joining me. are you fearing a similar kind of catastrophe that we saw in katrina, if this hits new york? >> well it could happen, piers.

we had about an 80% evacuation of mississippi and louisiana before katrina hit. and what i've seen this afternoon in tracing my sources, we're having a good evacuation in the coastal areas and the barrier islands in the carolinas. i'm not quite sure what that evacuation percentage would be when we get into the highly populated areas and from results of previous storms the majority of people that die are the elderly, the disabled and the poor. what i'm looking for government officials to start accounting for is how many people from that vulnerable population are still in those cities. >> do you believe that post-katrina enough lessons were learned by fema, by the government and remember else involved in trying to control these situations, do you think lessons have been learned enough to prevent anything like katrina happening again? >> i think government certainly

has changed. fema is a lean forward organization. they get there before the storm happens and immediately prepare to start helping local governments. that was a big change that was directed by congress and i think we have a cultural change. what i think that hasn't changed is dealing with the enormous disaster and when people become isolated without power or water for several days. in this particular area we're looking at the projected area of this storm is going to hit and the population, i hope people have taken serious the evacuation warnings as given by local people and get out of the low-lying areas. >> you know, lots of people are watching this show, and tweeting me and they are concerned and anxious and they are saying, you know, you guys are whipping this up too much. there's hyperbole here. i don't think it is. if it does veer off course at

the last moments that's great and everybody will have been warned and prepared. if there's a direct hit on somewhere like new york city, this is going very serious isn't it? >> absolutely. i think we have had a cultural shift one government because working with hurricanes for about the last ten or 12 years while i was in uniform, local governments and governors were reluctant to make that decision to evacuate because of the impact if the evacuated people and the storm didn't come. so i think that's been one big change we're seeing now. but, the options of not change we're seeing now. the options of not evacuating people with the warnings that we have now and the accuracy of the prediction need to be done. >> general honore, thank you very much indeed. a question that many people are asking tonight is will their cell phone work in the event of a hurricane. the answer when we come back. ♪ priceis it true thata-tor. name your own price.... >>...got even easier? affirmative. we'll show you other people's winning hotel bids.

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it's been six years since the united states has faced a hurricane threat like the one that is now facing america with irene. in that time we've become more and more dependent on our cell phones which don't always work in this weather. anthony malone is chief technology officer for who horizon. cell phones have become such a useful tool in any kind of crisis or disaster. a lot of people are asking tonight, will their phones work if this hurricane strikes. what is the simple answer? >> the simple answer, piers, is yes. if history is any indication, the vast majority of our cell service will be working throughout the hurricane. we've had tremendous amount of opportunity and experience throughout the past ten years at verizon wireless. and we've performed extremely

well. >> obviously we're trying to be as useful as possible here. if the hurricane hits somewhere like new york and there is substantial damage and lots of flooding and so on, if you're safe is it better to stay off the cell phone network so that you can allow people who need help to get it? >> well, i would say this, piers. in times of hurricanes, et cetera, if you can make a phone call, generally the network is not congested. with evacuations, with folks taking care of other responsibilities, the cell phone network is generally not congested in those areas. but with that said, i think it's prudent for folks to use the phone as needed and make the phone calls short. use text messaging. use e-mail, et cetera. and just leave the airwaves as free as possible. it's just prudent for everyone to take precautions. >> what happens if the storm is so strong that it starts

smashing down your infrastructure in terms of towers and so on? >> well, generally, again, the best thing we can do for -- in preparation for a hurricane is to build a foundational network which we do at verizon that's built on reliability and redundancy. so we have that as a starting point. and then on top of that we build a robust plan to be ready to react. and none of us can predict what will happen in the event of a hurricane. but in the event some things do happen, we have people in place staged to respond. we have towers in place, portable towers. we have portable generators. we have extra capacity. and we have what we call cells on wheels, which are portable cell sites that we can deploy. and again, provide service back in an area that has been impacted by storm damage. >> mr. melone, thank you very much indeed. >> thank you. and we'll be right back after this break.

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going to go straight back to chad myers in the cnn hurricane center. chad, just a few moments left of the show. bring me up to speed exactly where we are right now with irene. >> we are at an eye of irene about 180 miles from making landfall first thing tomorrow morning. if you want to get out of coastal carolina it's almost too late at this point. plus you have no time tomorrow. so it's either