women earn less than men in new mexico every single industry. thanks for joining us this morning. >> "new day" starts >> i have never seen a hurricane like this. >> i started crying because i didn't realize how bad this was. >> fema estimates well over half the homes in the keys had major damage. and one in four destroyed. >> i want to go home. i want to see that we have a home. >> the biggest challenge we have right now is just the lack of power, the lack of water. >> a humanitarian crisis quickly growing in the caribbean. >> this is not anything that we could have been prepared for. >> the goal is to get people back as soon as possible. we're just not prepared to do that at this hour. >> while we may be down, we're not out right now.

>> we want to welcome our viewers around the united states and around the world. this is new day. it is is wednesday, september 13th, 6:00. folks who evacuated are returning this morning but seeing nothing but devastation. the people are beginning the heart-wrenching traffic, though, of cleaning up there. here's what we know at this hour. the death toll from irma is 55 people. 24 killed in the u.s. that includes puerto rico and the u.s. virgin islands. nearly 5 million people are still without power in the southeast at this hour. the vast majority are in florida, including the hardest hit lower keys. fema estimates 90% of homes in the keys are damaged or destroyed. all 113 miles of the overseas highway to the keys is open. but officials do not want people

coming back in en masse. florida is doing its best to get fuel back to areas with shortages. the florida highway patrol is providing full elscorts to the hardest hit areas. where is chris? chris is in florida. he is in big pine key. but all communications there are down. chris has a satellite phone which at the moment is not cooperating. however, he already filed this piece for us as he and the search and rescue group he's with in the fartherest remote island on key west >> reporter: the destruction you haven't seen. the first key, key west, disabled by irma. no power, water, gas.

no hope for better any time soon. and yet these scenes backed up by the fact that so few lost their lives, a better than expected outcome. but each step close to cudjoe key where irma made landfall, devastation. more severe than anywhere else in florida. first responders of task force two in florida doing search and rescue have never seen anything like this. how do you make sense of all of these houses are gone and this house is stand something. >> luck of the draw, i guess. >> reporter: big pine key. not a big pine to be seen here. houses split ntered, gone. streets were rivers for hours. grouped littered with personal effects. one tape, a surreal suggestion.

yes, that says gone with the wind. >> it looks like you had a crew with sledgehammers in here angry at somebody. >> mother nature does what she wants when she wants to. we're focusing our primary search efforts here. >> reporter: another house blown off its slab and collapsed. a search dog gets excited. the saws and anxious looks come out. thankfully, nothing worse than spoiled meat this time. each block can take hours to clear, shouting, sawing, searching, sweaty, sleep deprived saviors. everywhere you walk, horror of the unknown. people remain. they come to us shellshocked and with the same request, to use our satellite phone, to call and tell loved ones their alive. this young family lost their

home. solace in survive. a beautiful son who will have a future. >> i can't get to the house yet. >> reporter: more come to tell their kids they're okay. >> hey, jess, i'm alive. >> reporter: to tell siblings they made it. >> incredibly awesome brother. me and mom are okay. we'll get in touch whenever we can. >> reporter: this mother and son with a sense of humor. you're the best i have seen all day. they'll need both to make it through the next few weeks and months. even speaking french, the message is clear. i made it, and i will never stay for a hurricane again.

>> the main thing i said i don't care if we don't have a house. we can rebuild but as long as we were safe, you know? >> reporter: here and what was once paradise, so many say they don't know when they will look at the sky the same way again. all right. hey, alyson, i'm not sure. it's not unusual to have communications problems. we're not using the normal sophisticated equipment that we do. that's nothing to be concerned with. power, water, gasoline. they are all in such spare supply right now that this is about time and management of temper. the place looks, as you have seen, post apocalyptic. we thought we understood it from what we saw on the mainland. then we thought we understood from key west. but it is so much worse when you

get closer to the eye. whether cudjoe key or big pine. i have never seen anything like this from a hurricane. when fema says 90% of the homes may be damaged or destroyed in the florida keys, two things. one, that assessment is largely coming, alyson, from the first responders that we're with and their associated organizations. they can't know what the situation is yet. they can't know whether sevevere is accounted for yet. people have come up to us to use the sat phone. they haven't heard from anyone. they haven't spoken to anyone. this is a tenuous situation in the keys. >> everyone knows it is is spotty. but your piece is so telling. you see the desperation in

people's eyes. they're sad for having lost their belongings, but they mostly want to tell their loved ones they're alive and okay. they just run up to you desperate to be able to use the satellite phone. we are connecting families. there are still so many families today at this hour who don't know if their loved ones made it out okay. so, chris, obviously we will be showing everything that you're seeing and everything that you have uncovered in the past 24 hours to us. but right now we want to go to bill weir in big pine key. he's on a boat. tell us everything you have seen over the past 12 hours. >> reporter: good morning, alyson. we are off little porch key further west of chris than a couple of miles. but we harbored here in between

these keys. and it's just been unbelievable journey to get down here. we left key largo yesterday morning, as you know, and motored our way down and stopped along the way. we stopped at matacombe key. we went ashore at marathon, the second largest, most populus key. and it was -- we weren't 50 paces in and our jaws were on the sand. we stopped at a place called sea point condominiums. from a distance it looked like all the windows had been blown out and the curtains were fluttering in the wind. turning out it was drying laundry. we thought, there's proof of life. fantastic. we went up to this place and realized that the entire pool, which is in the post beautiful spot on this point, the pool had

buckled almost like there had been an earthquake. the deck collapsed into itself, collapsed there. all the sand had been shoved up into the lobby of this place. the sand came up to the midwaypoint on an elevator in the lobby and the bellman's cart was buried in sand. upstairs you could hear the generator running. a found a guy by the name of william "bub" richardson who road it out. the first thing he asked is could you please tell my family i'm alive. here you go, dub. here's our exchange yesterday. talk a listen. >> i felt the whole building moving a couple of times. >> reporter: here's what i want to show. what was the first thing you did after the storm blew over.

>> put that flag out. let people know we were still here and alive. >> reporter: is this the kind of storm that might make you move inland? >> i don't want to go through another one, but i won't move out of the keys. that's part of living down here in the beautiful florida keys. >> i don't know if bill can still hear us. well, look, i think that that captures exactly what we have seen chris where you are too. this is their lifestyle. they love the keys. so many people have affection for south florida and the keys. they vacation there. they have honeymooned there. and to see everything destroyed is heartbreaking to them and to all of us.

do you hear us, chris? >> reporter: i got you, alyson. you're making the exact right point. just take a look at the house behind us if you can see us. i've never seen anything done by a hurricane like this. it is completely hollowed out. where bill is in marathon, it's bad. but it ain't big pine key. this isn't a competition for catastrophe. it is just to understand the scale of what we're dealing with here. we're talking about years of rebuilding, months of restoring power and water, essentials for life. that's the big concern, how do you keep people's heads level? how do you keep people okay? how do you allow them to live? when we were talking to people yesterday, they would come up with a big smile on their face. ptsd.

a little bit of lie play about this was something. but when they talk to their family, they break down. look at what they lived through here. it's unlike anything i saw. here in naples, that was all for show almost, the wind. it is really about this destruction of lifestyle. i don't mean that in a frivolous way. can you work? can you take care of your kids? can you get to where you need to go? you don't have sewage. very basic things. the first responders have not slept. my crew has not slept since we got here. you can't. there's so much need. they're asking first responders for so many information. they're blind down here. imagine in today's world where our kids seem to be able to operate the space shuttle from their iphone.

they are working on two-way devices, word of mouth. you can't overstate the complexity and the urgency. it is here in the keys. it's not a world away. but literally you go just 150 miles and you're in a different reality. miguel marquez is in miami. they got hit. they flooded. but the difference in infrastructure and the ability to turn life around is night and day. miguel, what are you dealing with in miami? >> reporter: yeah. it's very much like that, chris. look, as tough as it is where you are now, miami, for all the wind and for all the damage they had here, it is in recovery mode. but it's not there yet. this is an intersection on u.s. 1. no lights at the intersection. some lights started to come on just as we were getting to go live here in the immediate area. but still they have to have police cars in certain

intersections around town just to make sure people are stopping and treating it like a four-way stop essentially. florida power & light says on the east coast they hope to have lights by the end of this weekend. on the west coast, next friday. except for those areas hardest hit. severe flooding, tornados, that kind of thing. gasoline a big issue here. this station closed, wrapped up the pumps. you can't get gas here. even if the electricity comes on. they may have gas but they don't have electricity to run the pumps. after electricity comes on, it takes time to reset the pumps. we stopped in punta gorda yesterday. it took two hours to get gas because you had to go inside and gas. the gas comes out very slow. everything is slow. everything takes a lot more patience here in recovery mode.

but it is going to take time. >> miguel, thank you very much. obviously all up and down florida they're in dire straits. whether or not they're on the mainlands or the islands. chris was talking about this feeling of paradise lost there. the islands in the space of 24 hours have been thrust back 50 years. there is no technology, no water, no power, they can't communicate with each other. we are seeing that all throughout the caribbean as well. there is some looting that is going on. people are desperate on some of the islands in the caribbean. we good to the island of guadalupe. clarissa, what have you been seeing? >> reporter: alyson, this is really the staging ground for rescue and aid, specifically the island of st. martins.

many who we have spoken to have down right fright epping stories, alyson. in addition to the horrors they witnessed of surviving the storm, not having power, not having water, rationing food, there is a pretty desperate security situation. several people described gang of young guys marauding around town, looters, burglaries. they said all the stores have been smashed apart. all the food, all the things from the drugstore, for example, have been taken. so that has compounded a different situation. they are french territory. mack reason spent the night trying to show support saying we are going to rebuild this place. make no mistake, this is going

to be a hugely complicated effort. 200,000 people across the caribbean in need of aid. 91% of the buildings on st. maarten alone wiped out. it is a desperate situation. it will take a lot of coordination between different countries. while the french are in charge of french st. martin and guadalu guadalupe. for now, alyson, the real focus is trying to get people out who still want to get out. there are still thousands of people on st. martin. it is still pretty desperate indeed. >> clarissa, thank you for that update. let's talk about how to get aid to the people who most desperate lu need it. we have officials from the

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i'm so happy. ♪ whatever they went through, they went through together. welcome guys. life well planned. see what a raymond james financial advisor can do for you. i know you understand the full extent of hurricane irma and the numbers with power outages. until you have seen what is going on here in the florida keys, and not key west because they got lucky by pair son.

huge problems with power and sewage. until you see what's going on, you can't understand how great the need is, emergency need for the people who are here and the people who want to return. this is not the worst of it. virgin islands, cuba, terrible. we have representative stays tkwr from saint kroy on the line. can you hear us? >> i can hear you. >> good. just tell us what's going on. >> great. thanks so much for having me. good morning, everyone. i'm here on the island of st. croix, south of st. thomas and st. john. saint kroy was not in the manner they were.

hurricane irma came from the north, hit st. john and then st. thomas. really we got practically the eye of the storm the while it was awe category 5. although we have most of our infrastructure passing to code, we lost essential buildings. our hospital is now -- the roof came off the hospital. the airport terminals appears it has been blown out from the inside. government facilities. it goes on and on in terms of the devastation. we however, up like some of the other islands of the caribbean, we are part of the united states. we are all american citizens. fema has been working with our governor and emergency management system before the storm even to prepare for the

storm to have provisions. people were imbedded here, department of defense. three naval ships. one parked away and staged ready to come in once the hurricane had passed. but the destruction looks -- it looks like annihilation here. going to st. thomas, st. john feels as if it's the end of the battle when you're walking through. virgin islanders are pulling to go in this respect. all of our utility has been lost on st. john. st. tom the as had 70% utility loss. we are trying to recover. last night we lost one of our linemen for our power company working on the lines, trying to restore power in some of the downtown areas. and so the recovery continues. while our local government is working with the federal government in terms of managing, bringing in the resources from

the federal government, maintaining rule of law, helping with security, setting up distribution centers. virgin islanders themselves from pulled together. st. croix is a staging area. i've been on the ground in st. thomas, spent several days there. the other day was able to go to st. thomas and st. john on a fast boat 40 miles away from st. croix, going over to st. thomas. it looks like a flotilla on the water with individuals who are packing up ferries, boats, bringing provisions over, taking generators, batteries. when they are there and taking everything off, bringing individuals back onto st. croix from st. thomas and st. john, people are also very well organized. before we got comminutions, people were confusing what was happening on st. maarten with st. john. always people will take advantage, the people of st.

john are collecting debris themselves, barging things out, setting up evacuation of those needing to leave the island. it's been incredible to watch. it will talk a tremendously long time. we will probably be without power for many months here in the u.s. virgin islands. and there's the issue of schools. where are the young people going to school? many will go to family in the states, going to the island of st. croix. we have a huge logistical issue. we really have the support of the federal ghoovernment. >> if you can still hear me, stacey, what is your biggest set of concerns in the near term, in the next few weeks, next few months? >> in the near time, short-term, our concerns are of course going

to be making sure that people have what they need, the basic necessities. you know, we live on an island surrounded by water but it is not water we can drink. st. thomas and st. john, they are completely browned from the salt blast that burnt off the island. shelter, food, water, as you talked about earlier on other islands, gasoline, petroleum. those are the concerns we have on the short-term. medium term is the building that needs to be done. how do we prepare as an island. we're still in the rainy season. there's other hurricanes comingment and bringing things back up. but in the long term, ensuring we are not forgotten as houston and florida begin working on tax relief for hurricane efforts. transportation and infrastructure committee.

talk with the chairman about ensuring that the virgin islands is included in that. spoke with paul ryan and nancy pelosi. we're going into our tourist season. because we have had economic crises here, we have been relying heavily on tourism. for st. thomas and st. john, it appears as if they are going to be losing a tourist season. we are trying to route things to st. croix. we need to think about long term how to sustain ourselves equally and financially as well. >> all right. stacey ploskett, thank you very much. that was a very helpful report on what is going on there. we will stay in touch. you know how to get us to tell us the information that needs to get out. we appreciate you being on.

so that's what's going on in the virgin islands. you have a similar situation here in the florida keys to what you were just hearing described in the caribbean. except there is a material difference. people here have a great expectation of things getting back on quickly. they are not used to having no water, no sewage. most of all, no be ability to communicate. to see how people respond just to tell others, their loved ones that they're okay. they haven't spoken to them in days. there are families all over the country, all over the world wait to go hear if their loved ones are okay. we have that message for you this morning.

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