there. >> this is "new day" with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. >> good morning everyone. chris is off. david gregory joins us. >> a lot of concerns for folks along the texas coast. >> hurricane harvey is intensifying rapidly as it bears down on the texas coast. this is a monster storm and expected to strengthen to a category three hurricane before making landfall tonight. more than 17 million people are under hurricane and tropical storm warnings at this hour. >> the biggest concern for this storm, catastrophic flooding. we can't say it enough this morning. harvey is expected to stall over texas for days and dump two to three feet of rain. major flooding concerns here. tens of thousands of people in low lying areas are being warned to leave their homes. president trump is facing his first natural disaster of his

presidency. nick valencia has the latest on what's happening in texas. >> we are on the bank of the bayfront in the city of corpus christi. this is a bad sign for residents that have not evacuated there. that water is spilling over the bank. it is eerily quiet here. it's early morning hours, but a lot of it has to do with the city basically being shut down. if you want to walk with me, i'll show you the empty streets. a while agoi spoke to lieutenant henry supulveda. officers starting at 6:00 a.m. local will be all hands on deck in 12-hour shifts. i mentioned evacuations. voluntary evacuations were ordered by the city mayor yesterday, many residents, because they have experience in these types of storms, got out well before that. a lot of lines in the grocery store. i spoke to one local resident who said he waited in line about an hour yesterday. basic services have been

depleted and city officials are warning local residents, they could be without those basic services and food for four or five days. >> nick, thanks so much for the reporting. the outer bands of hurricane harvey are beginning to pummel texas. this storm's biggest threat is extreme flooding. that will affect cities like houston, austin and san antonio. cnn's polo sandoval is live in san antonio. that city is already under a local disaster declaration. what are you seeing at this hour, polo? >> reporter: alisyn, many of the evacuees are headed here to san anton antonio. once they arrive in some of the inland cities, the threat is far from over. catastrophic flooding is the major concern in austin, houston, here in san antonio as well. this storm is predicted to just wander around the lone star state, particularly there along the coastal communities and cities like san antonio which

will receive flooding and torrential rain. many people here will not be going to school or work today in order to prepare. in the meantime, what we are seeing here, david, is the calm before the storm. officials are recommending that everybody use today what is the last of the favorable conditions to prepare before the weather conditions take a turn. >> polo, i think that's one of the big questions, which is how in this calm before the storm, whether people are thinking of this as a big rain events that they can ride out as opposed to a major flooding event where there would be a cutoff point where they can get out safely. >> right. that's why officials have been doing this for 24 to 48 hours, recommending people in those coastal communities simply head to higher ground. as we heard from our colleague, nick valencia, many of those essential services to those coastal communities will be cut off once the eye of the storm hones in on the coastal community. as we begin to see more

evacuations on the coastline, expect more shelters in some of the inland cities to corporate to get full. >> polo, san antonio -- it's very hard to know before it hits how catastrophic something will be. we try not to heighten anybody's fears. we've seen that before. some people have hurricane fatigue, where they don't take it seriously, they don't believe it's going to be as bad as meteorologists predict. what's your sense of how people are feeling there? >> reporter: it's a great question. at this point people are going about their lives. yes, people are preparing, stocking up. they simply don't want to be out in the raen. that's expected to begin later this afternoon into tonight. so, yes, people are taking the warnings seriously, but they are also being very cautious about overpreparing. the main focus is in the coastal community, growing up in texas, i can tell you many of these low

lying areas flood quickly, particularly in and around south texas. part of the what makes it so beautiful are the rolling hills that also contribute to the flooding threat as well. that's why people in those communities are being advised z to keep a close eye on hurricane harvey. >> polo, thank you very much. we'll check back with you. >> obviously monitoring the white house as well. president trump did talk to the governors of those affected or in those storm's path last night. federal responsibilities and role here very important. we want to go to michael brennan, the chief hurricane specialist at the national hurricane center to get the latest on the track of the storm. michael, it's good to have you. what are you seeing at this point? >> right now we're seeing that harvey is continuing to strengthen. we've had reports from the hurricane hunter that max murm winds increased to 110 miles per hour. central pressure has continued to fall. you can see the eye clearly on the radar from brownsville

texas. harvey is about 145 miles southeast of corpus christi moving to the northwest at about ten. we expect the storm to approach the coast from port mansfield up to sergeant, texas. that's going to occur late tonight into early tomorrow morning. conditions will deteriorate along the coast within the warning area. already starting to see rain bands affecting the coast. we'll see the tropical storm force winds begin to arrive later this morning and early this afternoon. >> michael, what worries you the most about harvey? >> there are three things that worry me, all very important life-threatening hazards. hurricane-force winds, potentially major hurricane-force winds. we're forecasting harvey to strengthen. those winds will be in the core as it makes landfall. as we go into tonight and early tomorrow morning. the second concern is the storm surge.

we have a storm surge warning in effect for much of the coastline. within this area, from south of corpus christi to west of the houston area, we can see storm surge areas six to 12 feet above ground level. six feet tall is as tall as i am. we're talking double that height. so life-threatening storm surge inundation that will occur near and to the right of where the center of harvey crosses the coast. that's a hazard that folks are going to want to pay attention to any evacuation orders they've been given. finally, very heavy rainfall. harvey is going to essentially stall out along the texas coast for the next five days. we could see exception rainfall totals of 15 to 25 inches, isolated amounts as high as 35 inches. it's going to cause life-threatening rainfall flooding that's going to extend into the middle parts of next week for southern and eastern texas and extending into eastern louisiana. >> michael brennan from the hurricane center, thank you very much. we'll check back with you all

morning long. hurricane harvey will be president trump's first test in handling a natural disaster. president trump called the governors of texas and louisiana last night to offer the support of the federal government. joining us is fema director brock long. thank you for taking time out of this busy morning to share with us what the federal response is going to be with this. what concerns you most at this hour? >> good morning. first of all, i would like to set expectations. texas is about to have a very significant disaster. what concerns me the most is whether or not people heeded the warning that local county judges put forward. if they have not, their window to evacuate is rapidly coming to a close. specifically i'm very worried about the storm surge, coastal flood inundation aspect. storm surge has the highest potential to kill the most amount of people and cause the most of damage. on top of that, we or looking at a significant inland flood event over many counties, which is going to be a sizable event.

>> can the federal government issue a mandatory evacuation, or is that just local level? >> no. each state is different. in texas local county officials are responsible for issuing evacuations. i do not have the authority to issue any evacuationtion whatsoever. >> you were the head of alabama's emergency management agency. what is it about harvey that is causing you such great concerns? >> the storm is getting stronger, the pressure is dropping, all indicationless from the hurricane center that this is going to be the first major hurricane the nation has dealt with since 2005. right now fema is already in the state of texas. we have pre positioned incident management teams, lifesaving, life sustaining commodities. we have search and rescue teams in the state and we're ready to go to support our state partners. >> what can the president do to help today? >> today i think we'll be looking at the potential request

for presidential disaster decorations coming up from governor abbott. as soon as those come up, we're able to -- the president has the ability, has the authority to sign off on those to mobilize our support to the state governments. >> we've not seen a tweet yet from president trump about this yet this morning. do you think it would help for the president to make a statement and tweet out his concerns about this? >> i think the president is allowing me to do my job. we peeve been in constant contact with the white house. the bottom line is we're focused on the life safety message we're putting forward and the president is fully engaged and will be so throughout this event. >> as you have now tried to telegraph to all of us, the flooding there is expected to be life-threatening. what proactively are you asking our listeners to do? >> well, there's two different aspects to the flooding. the first is the coastal flood

inundation which refer to as storm surge. this is wind-driven water that's going to encroach on the coastal barrier islands and go up the back bay inland areas, which is the most dangerous, very quick aspect of the flooding and what is the primary driver of the evacuation calls that local county judges make. over the next five days, we're going to see copious amounts of rainfall, up to 25 inches possibly in some areas with isolated higher amounts. this is going to be a slow developing major disaster event for the state of texas. >> we've all seen the videos time and again of people trapped in their cars. they waited too long. they were trying to get out and they got in their cars at the 11 lkt hour and tried to make their way out. we saw all types of emergency responders having to rescue them. already you can see traffic lining up. what's the plan? texas is so huge.

>> so the bottom line message is right now, if people have not heeded the warning, again, their window to do so is closing. if they refuse to heed the warning, that's on them. the bottom line is they need to elevate and get into a structure that can withstand potentially category 3 winds from a hurricane. this storm is strengthening right now. >> we appreciate the warnings from you, brock long, fema direct tore. thank you very much for joining us on "new day." >> thank you. >> david? >> when we come back, we'll switch gears and talk about another story which is the efforts to tame the wild west wing. john kelly, new chief of staff trying to impose some order. new comments by the president's inner circle. maggie haberman of "the new york times" will join us to tell us more. forms the #1 non-drowsy allergy pill. when we breathe in allergens, our bodies react by overproducing 6 key inflammatory substances

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or a little internet machine? it makes you wonder: shouldn't we get our phones and internet from the same company? that's why xfinity mobile comes with your internet. you get up to 5 lines of talk and text at no extra cost, so all you pay for is data. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. call, visit, or go to xfinitymobile.com. president trump apparently responding to "the new york times" report this morning about his chief of staff general john kelly vetting the information that gets passed to the president's oval office. the president tweeting general

kelly is doing a terrific job of as chief of staff. maggie haberman is the white house correspondent for "the new york times," has extensive knowledge on how general kelly is changing the way the west wing is won. >> kelly made pretty clear when he took this job he was not attempting to rein in donald trump. he is attempting to deal with the staff. he is managing down, not up. he put out two memos on monday that had been pretty anticipated. they were followups on themes he talked about in a conference call with staff a week earlier. it was really about getting control of the west wing. similar in themes, the memos that reince priebus, his predecessor put out. frankly people didn't take priebus seriously, including

jared kushner and ivanka trump who had run their own parallel line to the president. they are said to be embracing this new process and going along with it. >> you don't have just instant open door access to the oval office. >> not only is it not open door access. it used to be that people would wander by the ante area of the office and catch people's eyes and he would say come on in. that door is closed. there isn't this free flow you saw before. this is about also about paper flow to and from the president. this is about news articles he gets, memos about policy, making sure stakeholders have been heard. the same is true for legally implicated paperwork like executive orders. >> what's striking to me about this is the president both listens and doesn't listen in the course of one conversation. so kelly can have influence over

him and say, look, you need to issue a different statement in response to charlottesville. the next day he goes off half cocked and then gets the rally in phoenix. if you make a decision to say let's control information flow but have no control over a president who will take to social media in ways we have not seen before. >> i think he's attempting not no control over the president. what he's attempting is not to telegraph what he dwus. the president has a long history when somebody reports, they're trying to rein him in, of showing just how not reigned in he is. >> part of him does want to be reined in. he reacts under pressure to conform until he doesnd. that's the part of trump's mind as president. >> i don't totally agree with why it is. certain situations have become untenable or because staff is

upset or because just he himself is obsessing about something. the bannon situation was complicated. to say he was fired is not really accurate. it was a very strange evolution that went over a period of time. but he gets in these situations where he will eventually solve something, but it's only once the situation has reached something of a crisis point -- >> it's the idea he gets pushed out -- >> i guess what i'm saying is it's not him saying, i just want to be done with this. he doesn't like confrontation at all. we know this from many, many, many en stances. >> maggie, i'm very interested in your reporting about the articles, news articles that will now be placed on the president's desk. the president as we know peddles bogus news stories. they're not news stories, they're truly fake news. >> conspiracy theories. >> conspiracy theories, fiction,

made up. he has put them out and peddled those. how is john kelly controlling that? >> anything that's an actual news story he is looking at is going to go through the process of going to the staff secretary, a man named rob porter for review, vetting, then to kelly for approval and then gets to the president's desk. what john kelly can't control is his remote control and his personal cell phone. he can get onto that cell phone when he goes to the residence and call whomever and have something read to him. he has a way, as we know, there have been jokes about how it's like watching somebody doing an e-mail forward. he will pick up filaments of information and put them back out and they're not always entirely clear. this is not going to be a completely perfect system, but it is going to be, i think, as good a system as one can get. if you were john kelly and frankly reince priebus or any of these people, you have to accept who you're dealing with. you're not going to change him. all you can do is control things

to the extent you can. >> family access to the president is a big deal, but so is -- additional comments that come out like this morning in the "financial times." tops commission adviser gary cohn who has had a lot of things to say to people about how unhappy he's been in the trump white house talked about the pressure as a jew he has felt to resign after charlottesville and the president's equivocations. i have come under enormous pressure to resign and i'm reluctant to leave my post because i feel a duty to fulfill my commitment to work on behalf of the american people. but i also feel compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks. i will not allow neo-nazi ranting, jews will not replace it, to cause me to leave this job. we must all unite together against him. he makes a strong point, but

what he alludes to in the piece is he's upset with his boss, the fact that he didn't speak out against the jew hating, neo-nazis. >> there's chants of jews will not replace us. that's not why people were pressuring him to leave the white house. by people we're talking about his family and friends in the business community. gary cohn is a career businessman, said to be interested in the fed chair job as we know. there have been suggestions that this is really what he is waiting for. there are understandable reasons why people are remaining. it is difficult i think for people from the outside who are not in the white house to say a, what is going on and, b, what we don't know. i think people's reasons for staying are complicated. that's very fair, but i do think that statement was a bit of

redirect examination or misdirecti misdirection. he said we can do more to call this out. there appears to have been not much followup based on the transcripts. i'm not sure who he's blaming when he says the administration. the focus has been on one person. >> it's fascinating how the president's family even has to go through john kelly. his son baron and wife open door access, obviously. >> yes. >> but ivanka and jared there is a new protocol. >> they can go speak to them. the way it was said in the meeting on the first day john kelly was there, you can go in the you're a wife, an 11-year-old son. i think ivanka was sitting near him in the meeting, or ivanka, if she's going in as a daughter. i don't know how you take off your staff member, assistant to the president cap and sort of talk just as a family member.

but by all accounts, this is the first week they're there together in full. we'll have to see how this plays out. >> here is my big question, trying to understand president trump and his thinking. what he considers success. i take his attacks on republicans, the insistence on building the wall as fundamental to how he campaigned. whether it was cynical, principled, whatever it was, the point is he has a theory which is that he is outside of the political system, that republicans and democrats have let people down and he's achieved a measure of success by continuing to fight. until and unless he achieves some things, he's going to have little to take back the voters starting as the head of the republican party in the midterms. >> that's why you're seeing questions right now about whether he's going to in essence splinter off and have some form

of the trul party, for lack of a better way to put it. it is going to be hard to keep explaining why it is everybody else that's denied you success, especially since he tends to be all over the place. that worked for him in the campaign. he threw so many things out on a given day that almost nothing really stuck. people are going to vote based on what their lives are like and what they're seeing in their lives. tax reform, if it gets done, i think it's an issue, looking for a benchmark. >> i think -- the big thing is where republicans are. that support has not fall loan out. >> not at all. i don't know that it ever will in this part of the environment. what has fallen out is the support of independents. it's hard to win a national election without independents. number two, the environment of the midterms is pretty toxic right now for republicans, which

every republican strategist will tell you it doesn't mean they'll lose the house. i really don't see them losing the senate, but it does mean this is an atmosphere that they can't believe they're in. >> talking about the breaking news this morning, hurricane harvey. this will be the first test in terms of a natural disaster for the president. we just heard from his fema director. what do we expect from president trump? >> it remains to be seen. this is the first domestic crisis test that is not, external event since charlottesville, this is the first natural crisis test. they have handled things in ways that have surprised me in the last few weeks. we haven't seen them discussed -- the president in his rally didn't mention it, the tragedy involving the u.s.s. mccain. >> he has president tweeted about this? >> i think he tweeted -- the storm? >> yes, the storm. >> he tweeted about the storm last night. a very formal sort of, we're on

this, message. he i assume will be watching television and getting updates from the administration. a, we don't know what the storm will look like. b, if there is serious devastation, does the president visit the area? we have not seen him visit charlottesville. i don't think the white house even sent anybody to the service for heather heyer who was murdered. how he handles this will be crucial and reluctant to predict because it's been so hard to say what he will actually do. what he's tended to do so far, anything outside the white house's control, a lot less. >> unpredictable is certainly the way to describe it. >> probably better to just hold your tongue and see what happens. >> maggie, thank you very much for sharing your reporting with us. hurricane harvey barreling towards the texas coast. are residents now heeding these warnings to evacuate? we have a live report from texas next.

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hurricane harvey is intensifying and headed towards

the texas coast. this is what the massive storm looks like from space. the international space station capturing these images. cnn's nick valencia is back on eshlgt, live in corpus christi and can tell us how it's looking there. hi, nick. >> reporter: good morning, alisyn. this city, corpus christi, for all intents and purposes is shut down at this hour. schools are closed, businesses boarded um. even flights into and out of the airport as of 6:30 have stopped until monday. take a look at how fast this water is starting to rise here. we're on the bank of the bay, just outside of our hotel room here. when we arrived from san antonio yesterday, we were driving down on the stare state. in residents took the orders seriously. dallas, austin, forth. the evacuations also affected local hospitals. we understand at least ten babies from a neonatal unit were

evacuated to neighboring ft. worth. the city mayor and leadership warning the residents this is going to be a very serious storm. i was speaking to the police department earlier. they say they were all hands on deck starting their 12-hour shifts. thooe they believe this will be a very big event. david? >> nick, thanks so much in corpus christi. we'll be checking back with you. one city that could see more than a foot of rain is houston, one of america's most flood-prone cities. let's talk with chief rick flanagan, he heads up the mayor's office of emergency management. thanks for joining us. >> good morning. how are you? >> i know in your discussion with our control room you talked about flooding over memorial day weekend with heavy rain activity. what are you expecting? >> the forecast is we could get up to 20 inches of o rain. that impacts us a great deal. impacts the roadways, access,

and sometimes we have a high saturation of trees, loss of power, a whole gamut of things. >> how do you approach this in terms of evacuations or preparations for a big city that's used to a lot of rain, used to flooding and may think, okay, we'll have to deal with this as weave dealt with other storms, maybe not appreciating that this is a hurricane event that's not only a storm with major wind, but with a stalled system that brings so much rain and flooding. >> well, in the houston area such a flatter rain itself, we try to make sure we put out a high capacity of information for the general public. we want them to understand what the potential rainfall will be to consider what they need to do to provide for their family and plan for their family. keep documents at hand so in case your home is impacted, that you have your insurance papers and all those things ready. have a kit, make a plan, stay

informed. just information is so important. >> what about daily activities? i've been on houston highways during normal rain events where you have so much rain on the highw highways. >> well, when we look at the high water impact where we live, we know there's a high probability that we have our mission statement that we put out to the general public, if you see high water, turn around, don't drown. it only takes six or eight inches of water for you to lose control of your car when you're operating on the roadways. we monitor the roadways and make sure we maintain a high capacity of information from the emergency center. we put that information out where people should not drive. we look at our high water areas that often flood. we put our barricades there to make sure we keep the public out of harm's way. >> it's important i think for

accountability when it comes to how local authorities are in conversation. state authorities and with federal authorities. how is that going so far as that storm bears down? >> we look at the front line group we have inside our center or those persons providing front line service, police fire and rescue, public works, engineering, health department and also the american red cross. we have high areas of flooding in residential areas. we have to get those people out and get them inside a shelter. we network not only with just the cities, the county and the state so we can talk about assets, asset utilization and what our needs are to continue to provide the general service to the public. >> rick flanagan, good luck to you and with all your preparations dealing with the storm. we appreciate you taking time this morning. >> thank you. good day. two recent deadly navy collisions raising serious questions. what's going wrong? we'll ask the chief of naval operations next.

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entertaining us, getting us back on track, and finding us dates. phones really have changed. so why hasn't the way we pay for them? introducing xfinity mobile. you only pay for data and can easily switch between pay per gig and unlimited. no one else lets you do that. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. call, visit or go to xfinitymobile.com. the deadly collision of the "u.s.s. john mccain" this week, the fourth major accident this year sparking a new round of questions about the navy's readiness. the house armed services committee is demanding answers now. they will hold hearings after the labor day holiday. cnn's diane gallagher has more.

>> it's not supposed to happen. you just don't -- you don't think it's going to happen to your child. >> reporter: her son, john hoagland, one of the ten presumed dead in the collision. si cynthia is yet another grieving mother. in five of the major accidents since may, more than 40 servicemen and women have died. >> i think it's probably approaching a readiness crisis. >> reporter: stemming from a variety of issues, including the 16-year war on terror, increasing conflicts and tensions around the globe, and budget caps tied to s sequestrati sequestration. >> i think our competitive advantage has eroded right now. we would be challenged in projecting power today. >> the unrelenting pace, inadequate resources and small size have taken their toll. >> reporter: while still under investigation, a series of incidents involving navy

warships based in japan, including the two deadly collisions this summer could be evidence of strain. >> we have the smallest navy we've had in a very long time, but we still have the same size ocean. now you have actually more issues popping up all over the globe. you're going to have to deploy navy assets. >> reporter: the navy ordered a rare pause in operations and in an unprecedented move, dismissed the seventh fleet commander, joseph aucoin. >> we can continue disciplining these bad officers, but in at the end of the day we need a military that's fed, trained and ready to go. >> reporter: more than half navy aircrafts can't fly right now, twice the historic norm. in the army, just 3 of 58 brigade combat teams are considered fully ready and able to fight tonight. the air force is short more than 1,500 pilots and 3500 aircraft maintainers. the average rage of the

aircrafts, 37 years old. the marines issued a one-day ground stop of all aircrafts this month following two deadly crashes. >> if you want the modern military, you have to spend the money to do it. the days of trying to do this on the cheap are gone, even if we get rid of sequestration it's going to take probably ten years to catch up. >> reporter: house republicans did pass a proposal for the 2010 budget, that includes more than the president's did. now with talk of a looming shutdown here in washington, military officials are focusing on what they can, adjustments to leadership and training and waiting to find out what washington will do. the house armed services committee has scheduled a hearing for its first week back in washington. the topic, navy readiness and those two deadly collisions from this summer. diane gallagher, cnn,

washington. >> the navy confirming the death of two sailors aboard the u.s.s. mccain. the search suspended for eight other sailors and have now shifted to a recovery operation. the crash of the u.s.s. mccain comes after another crash on the "u.s.s. fitzgerald" that killed seven sailors in june. for more on the cause of these crashes we're joined by admiral john richardson, chief of naval operations for the u.s. navy. admiral, thank you so much for being here. i don't know if you can see our screens there. we were putting up the pictures, the photographs of these young men lost in these two collisions. of course, their families want answers. so what do you think caused these collisions? >> alisyn, before i get started, let me make clear our top priority is to recover our

fallen sailors and ship mates. our thoughts and prayers are with fair families. of course they have a lot of questions about why this happened. everybody in the navy has those questions. that's why we've commissioned a series of investigations to get to the bottom of this. >> we had a u.s. navy official tell cnn that the mccain suffered a steering casualty, meaning a loss of steering right before the commission. what can you tell us about that? >> i think that and every other question, every possible factor will be investigated thoroughly. when we see the entire investigation come toeg, we'll be in a position to talk about that. >> you tweeted oilt just a clarification about whether or not it was possible there was some sort of cyber hack or intrusion or some sort of sabotage. what's the update on that? >> alisyn, we have no evidence to date that there's been any

cyber intrusion or cyber attack. i do want to make clear in this digital world that we live in right now, this will be a more routine part of investigations going forward. we're going to have to, as a matter of course investigate the digital and the cyber aspects of these problems. so you can probably see this becoming a more routine part of all future investigations. >> but it sounds as if what happened on the mccain might not be something new fangled. it might be as old as shoddy maintenan maintenance. "the navy times" had this article recently. under the former secretary the navy made a policy of directing money away from operations and maintenance in order to keep funding ship building. an effort to arrest the precipitous decline of the fleet's size which dropped from more than 500 ships at the end of the cold bar to today's 274.

the navy's leadership is lining up behind a unified message, fix our fleet, focus on war fighting, then grow our navy. had the maintenance on these ships fallen behind? >> you can see there's a lot of concern around the nation and the navy, a lot of people with knowledge hoff how the navy operates. they're concerned and they want to get to the bottom of it. but it would be just too early to speculate on those types of factors until we see the full body of evidence. >> i'm not asking you today to give us definitively what happened. i'm asking you to say do you think the maintenance of these ships, as "the navy times" reports, has fallen behind? >> we continue to maintain ships to standards. that is what we expect our commanders to do. we hold them accountable to do that. we'll take a look at the specifics of that standard as it applies to these accidents. >> the president tweeted about

the loss of the tragedy on board the mccain twice. i believe he's not spoken about it publicly. do you think it would help americans and these families to hear from the president? >> well, the president has been very clear about how he feels about the loss of these shipmates and he, as well, supports their family, and we need to do everything we can to support them, consistent with the president's thoughts there. >> admiral john richardson, thank you very much for taking time to be on "new day." >> thanks, alisyn. we're still watching our big story this morning. hurricane harvey barreling towards texas. what's irt like inside the storm? we'll talk to a hurricane hunter who has pretty amazing video to show us. that's coming up next. non-drowsy allergy pill. when we breathe in allergens, our bodies react by overproducing 6 key inflammatory substances that cause our symptoms.

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ongoing kufrmg of hur i vain harvey this morning. 17 people under hurricane watches and warnings.

so how do meteorologists get the information. hurricane hunters provide vital information. commander justin kib by is a pil pilot. he joinsous now. commander, joirm. thanks taming the time. >> good morning. >> you went out just yesterday to observe the storm you flew into it and it was only a tropical storm. what did you observe? and what made that -- in fact then influenced the change in the forecast? >> sure. it was a relatively strong tropical storm that we flew into, and as we recalled it was getting its act together. it was becoming more concentric. as we were in the storm making the first pass, it was classified as a category one

hurricane while we were in the storm. it was a very strong tropical storm that was in the process of becoming stronger. >> we're looking at the images provided from your plane. what made it a category one for you? what is it that you observed? and how are you making measure ms on the storm, on the air, on precipitation to change the classification? >> so we're working at specifically the wind speed of the storm and when these speeds start to increase and meet certain wickets they'll go through the storm from category one to two and soen on. we have an instrument called a drops on which is launched out and provides feedback to us of temperature pressure, wind speed and humid. we drop those all through the storm. that goes to the max hurricane

center. >> how does your mission change today, given what we know about the storm? >> well, today we know it's a category 2. we know it's forecast to strengthen to gat goer 3. we have procedures and policies in place to fly these things safely and nothing changes beyond the fact that we know it could pack a little bit more of a punch, have some deeper convection, and as always, can be challenging to fly. >> i mean i was just going to ask. as a nervous flier i look at that and think not exactly my first choice as recreational activity. but there have to be safety concerns as you fly into an intensifying storm in h what is it a very loud slow prop plane. >> absolutely. it's a well constructed plane. we feel very safe in it. it's a definitely a crew

intensive environment. we're all working together to first and foremost keep us safe but to ensure the plane is put in the right position to get the data out to the public. so we definitely are trained well and we work together as a team in order to keep us safe and get that information out there. >> so, again, today, as you've got local officials and national officials gathering information, trying to relay that to local residents, also local forecasters, what's most important about what you're gathering today. >> i think it's going to be one of the final flights for hurricane hunters going in before it makes landfall. that's the critical information before it actually reaches land. so i think that the data that we provide today is -- will be obviously ingested into models and intensity forecast and track

forecast. with the hope that it goes out to the public and says live. krr we're at the critical moments before land fall. it's the last peek before it comes ashore. >> thanks so much for your time this morning. best of luck with your flight this morning. 10:00 a.m. eastern time to get the very latest information and gather as much data as you can on hurricane harvey. we appreciate it very much. >> absolutely. you guys take care. we are following a great deal of news as we approach the top of the hour. >> the storm has a potential to be a weather event that we talked about. there is no need to panic. get a plan to better protect your personal property.

>> for our friends in the senate, oh boy. >> any time you threaten a government shutdown is dumb. >> he's not the first president. try to push the country in a particular direction. >> the president has not yet been able to demonstrate the ability, nor some of the chens -- >> this is new day with chris cuomo and alice sin cam a rat ta. >> good morning. 8:00 here in the east. chris is off. david gregory joins me. this storm is changing by the moment. >> it is. we're learning a lot, so important to convey that to people. really got to make preparations now. >> let's do that because we have breaking news. hurricane harvey has gained strength now packing sustained winds of 110 miles per hour. the storm is rorring towards the texas coast and the storms outer bands as you can see are

starting to drench the coastal cities. it is on track to become marriage hurricane. 17 million people are under hurricane warnings. >> it's catastrophic flooding that's the concern here. forecasters expect this storm to stall, stay put over texas for a matter of days, dumping two to three feet of rain, even more than that in some areas, tens of thousands of people order toad evacuate. president trump facing first event of the -- >> texas, where he has been all morning. nick, what do you see? >> david, hour by hour we've been standing out here at the bay of the -- bank of the bay here. it's just getting worse and worth. this water slowly