♪

hello, everyone. i'm chris jansing back with you at this hour on msnbc world headquarters in new york where we are tracking hurricane irma. this is a very dangerous, category 4 storm now just 35, 40 miles southwest of the key west florida. the destructive eye wall will hit that area in an hour, sometime between 7 and 8:00 a.m. eastern time. we're expecting thunderstorms, violent wind busts. tornados have been lashing the state. more than 280,000 people are out of power and that is down from a high of half million, but again, talking to power officials in the last hour, millions of people could lose power in florida. now, that number only expected to increase. officials are on high alert and residents are bracing for impact. >> you are running out of time to make a decision.

evacuations are in place across the area. >> we don't know where to go. >> the fear for a lot of people on evacuating is suppose you're on the road and run out of gas, what do you do then? suppose you go to the shelters and they keep moving and moving you and saying they're full? that's what we saw late yesterday, this morning. we have seen the situation change dramatically. we were telling you the top of every hour we're getting these interim updates from the national hurricane center. our meteorology is standing by. we are waiting for that to come in. the minute it does we'll come to you steve to get you the very latest information. in the minute i want to bring in the mayor of key biscayne. i know we spoke late in the afternoon, early evening yesterday. obviously you were bracing for a hit. what are you hearing about the situation on the ground now that it's an hour away? >> caller: well, we are

receiving a lot of weather since about 3:00 a.m. in the our concern are the storm, the weather and the storm surge. and it's -- we need a little daylight to see exactly what's going on. but we are, you know concerned and hoping for the best. >> what do you know about the people who decided to stay behind? do you have good numbers on that? >> caller: we do. we have about less than 10% of our people stayed, so we are thinking we have over 90% evacuation. we're thinking we have maybe about 120 people, 130 people that stayed. >> for those people, what's the best advice you have for them?

>> caller: find the safest place in your house in your room, in our apartment. stay there. we did have everyone who stayed we requested they register with our police department so as soon as we could enter, as soon as it was safe to enter back and to key biscayne into the island, our first responders will check with everyone to make sure, one, they are okay. two, they need anything they get immediate attention. it's again with storm surge and with what's going on, things can get ugly very quickly. so i am concerned for their safety. >> where are you right now? where are you riding out the storm? >> caller: i am actually in the highest ridge in miami proper. i'm here in a hotel with our manager, our police chief, our fire chief and first responders and our council members.

so we are all together as an emergency team ready to deploy for as soon as the storm is over to check on key biscayne and decide our course of action for rebuilding or whatever we need to do. >> how concerned are you about getting access? >> caller: well, i'm very concerned because we have a series of bridges that gets us too biscayne. it's our only entrance. and the bridges -- the causeway yesterday was already under water. and the bridges, especially one bear cut bridge, is structurally deficient. it's design is it's very, very low profile bridge. it's an old bridge. it has been rehabbed, but it's engineering design is not -- makes it very susceptible to storm surge and storm impact. so we are concerned that it may be compromised. >> mayor, i know you had a long

night and have long days ahead of you. thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and our thoughts and prayers are with all the folks down south in florida. we appreciate it. we want to go to thomas roberts in tampa, florida. storm surge warning has been in effect. what are conditions like where you are, thomas? >> reporter: chris, we are starting to see the rain pick up here and we expect the sun to be up just after 7:00. we've seen rain and high wind gusts ever since we got into tampa late last night. we drove over from miami after we got done in the afternoon leaving about 5:00, came over ahead of the storm. by the time we got to ft. myers it was a beautiful sunset coming north. when we got into the city there were su veer wind gusts giving people the ominous feeling that something was coming. local news and the rest of the local officials here have been warning people about where to go, how to get away from what

irma could bring to the area. the shelters to go to. we're right by one of the main arteries that connects old tampa, over old tampa bay with one of the sky walk way, sky walk -- >> sky walk bridge. sorry. chris, i pulled this up just so everybody can get an idea and sorry for the rain, but this gives you an idea where we are, we're the blue dot. here is the bridge with connecting tampa all the way over here to st. pete. but if you look at this because of tampa bay, this bridge loops all the way down, goes through the body property of st. petersburg and back down here you see the sky way bridge connect again to loop in on the southwest going east to get you back in to this big hook. so when you think about the bay

and the water, the storm surge that could come in and push up what looks like two feet right here that are set for tampa bay, that's what folks are most concerned about. they have dealt with flooding in this city before, but this is the storm surge that we're talking about here and especially since they're on the outer side of irma, the way that that storm churn is going to go and pushing water in and pushing more water in, that's the biggest concern. people haven't seen anything like this here in over 100 years. so this is one of the things people are trying to get ready for. the best capacity they know how but really not knowing what irma is going to bring. but we're going to stay on it for you. we'll bring you the very latest from here. we've seen some cars coming across. we remain on the furthest side east. this bridge is closed now. we expect more of these bridges to be closing because people are still trying to get out. they're still trying to go north.

back to you, chris. >> thank you so much, thomas roberts. take care out there. i want to go to miguel almaguer, give us the geography. let's not assume people know where this is. you're what, south of miami where you are and obviously the winds are pretty rough there. >> yeah, chris. we're not that far from the florida keys. highway 1 the bridge that leads in here is two miles away from there. that may be a better geographical point for you. yes, we're the southern end of the state of florida. we're probably about a 20 minute drive from the florida keys. over the last 12 hours here, wind speeds here have certainly increased. they're pretty dramatic now. they have been more tough than this over the last couple of hours. the rain here has also been an issue. it didn't feel as though --

[ inaudible ]. it was devastated in hurricane andrew. it was rebuilt to much better building codes. i can tell you all across this region, homes here are -- the big concern is of course these wind bands continue to blow across here from north to south in many areas. that's a major concern. first responders will not go out anymore today. they don't want to put their first responders' lives at risk. the rain has also been an issue. it's hammering sideways since about 8:00 p.m. late last night. it's been picking up over night. the wind is the major concern. for the most part, we haven't seen anybody out in the streets. there were some first responders patrolling this area last night. they have taken those cruisers

off the strip. many of these homes, many of these businesses all around here are completely bordered up. they told everyone who has not evacuated to please hunker down overnight. we expect the next several hours to be the most dangerous time for first responders out on the street, chris. >> i hope you have shelter nearby. that sign that's been moving behind you is making me nervous. you take care out there, okay? >> will do. thank you, chris. >> let's go to phillip mena in ft. lauderdale. it was raining very heavily from the very early morning, overnight hours when i saw you. how has it shifted over the course of the last couple of hours, phillip? >> reporter: well, it's still very windy and the rain is still coming down. we are -- every time that we check it seems these numbers of power outages have been spiking, over 100,000 additional outages we have seen just in broward

county, where we're at, 130,000 outages reported in just miami dade 250,000 outages. so we have 380,000 outages just in this miami metro area. that's increasingly a problem. several agencies said the live wires are such a concern right now. i want you to look -- that used to be a parking lot. that parking lot is now turning into a pool of water with cars in it. that's something that just happened in the last hour or two that we've seen. we took a quick tour around and noticed that there's a parking lot on the other side that looks very much liket one. we're also seeing a lot of downed trees. ke i mentioned, those downed power lines cannot stress enough those are deadly and reminders coming from several agencies saying stay away, stay in your home. that can kill you if you're outside. these outages are just going up and up and up everywhere we check. >> phillip, thank you so much for that. anybody can see throughout the

course of the morning, how much the wind is picking up, the rain is coming down. now we have the update from the top of the hour. what's the latest? has there been any significant change? >> the 6:00 a.m. update is out. the hurricane center says, quote, eye of category 4 irma very near the lower florida keys. the eye wall is about 30 miles now south, southeast. so they're getting into the really rough conditions right now. you can see that on the radar behind me. check this out. the eye wall is approaching areas like key west up towards marathon. south of marathon is where the seven mile bridge is. conditions there right now i can only imagine are just impossible. so you should be sheltering in place. if you're in the keys right now, landfall expected during the 7:00 a.m. hour. another look at that radar. can't get over that. there's the eye wall approaching the lower keys there. so let's take you to the graphics. we have a category 4 storm on our hands this morning.

you may be thinking, category 4? well, last night it was a 3. that's right. it intensified last night as it moved over the florida straits. very warm water, hot water if you will, 90 to 92 degrees in some sections. that was fuel for this hurricane to strengthen. honestly i don't think it's going to intensify too much more. it will probably stay as a low end 4, or hig end 3 but since the storm is so large ando expansive, that push of water and destructive wind will certainly be devastating up the western florida shoreline. the latest projected path, this is as of 5:00 a.m. this morning, another update around 11:00 a.m. this morning, 130 mile-per-hour winds off of the southwestern coast of florida as it's nearing marco island 2:00 p.m. this afternoon. by tomorrow morning at 2:00 a.m., still a category 3 storm

off of tampa/st. petersburg. this is where the forecast gets really tricky. notice the cone. we've been talking about this the last couple of days. the storm could be on the right or left side of the cone. that's going to drastically change the impacts whether this storm is closer to the coast, that's going to bring in the inundation of water. further offshore, you'll still see severe impacts but not quite as devastating. this is an hour by hour situation. we have to watch this storm as it wobbles. either way, it will trend towards the north and bring that wall of water with it right into the big bend of florida where they're under a storm surge warning this morning because of this approaching hurricane. looks like it will be a cat 1. the good news about this area of the coast, it's not very populated. the storm moves across areas of georgia where tropical storm watches are out for the atlanta area. atlanta, georgia, under a tropical storm watch at that hour. so we have the hurricane that's moving off towards the north and west. again, the destructive eye wall

moving into the keys. we'll watch these heavy rain bands and destructive winds. wind gusts over 70 miles per hour. chris? >> that is nothing to be triefled with. steve, thank you for that. landfall for hurricane irma expected within about the next hour or so. let's go to marianna in miami beach right now. what's going on where you are? >> reporter: as you can see here in miami beach, the wind has turned very violent. the storm is about an hour and a half from florida, as you mentioned. but this storm that is 400 miles wide. you'll feel it everywhere. this is a street that's usually bustling with tourists, people. it's a ghost town right now. we're seeing trees, wobbly power lines. again the wind gusts and the rain has you can see, this is just kicking up, turning very violent. when you have a storm with registered winds of 130 miles

per hour, you're going to feel it everywhere. and here in this barrier island, they issued a mandatory evacuation order. people are not walking around. we spoke to police officers yesterday and they said that when winds reach -- that is clearly the case right here, they can't be out patrolling the streets. hopefully here everybody is hunkered down and everybody is in their homes or in shelters where they're going to spend the storm because the next couple of hours will just be crucial here for miami. as you've been mentioning throughout the hour, tornado warnings have been issued overnight, especially in ft. lauderdale but also towards miami beach. clearly here in the southern point of the beach you'll feel it and see it here. chris? >> i can see exactly what you're going through and i want you be able to get to somewhere where you're sheltered if you need to. leave if you have to, but give us a sense of what it feels like to be in the middle of this right now. >> reporter: it's just

incredibly powerful. i covered hurricane matthew for msnbc last year. it was nothing like this. i was actually in miami for hurricane andrew. i was very young, but this is just something that's sheer power of mother nature that you're feeling right now. again, when you're exposed, the ocean is just a mile in front of me right now, you can see why they're talking about that deadly storm surge and this area is expected to be completely flooded when you get 10 to 15 feet above that storm surge. this flood is a heavy rainfall, chris. i probably won't be able to stay out here in a couple of hours from now. >> if not a couple of minutes. go where it's safe. thank you for that report. you can see just how dramatically of the course of the last half hour things have changed. i want to bring people up to date with a couple of things that we learned over the course of the last hour. we are expecting is that huge

storm surge. it's going to hatch maybe in less than an hour hitting the keys. we heard from power officials, millions of people could lose power over the course of the day today. and as we heard from one emergency management official in key biscayne or in the keys, i am terrified for all the people who are still there right now. that is the quote. we have you covered here on msnbc. we will be here throughout the day with our team of correspondents. keep it right here on msnbc.

22 minutes past the hour. we now know there are more than 400 shelters up and running, many at or over capacity. across florida, the people who went there, who weren't able to leave the state, very smart because we're seeing the power of the storm as it's coming in now maybe just about 40 minutes from hitting in the keys. gabe gutierrez joins us from the collier county emergency center operation in naples. this is one of the areas where a lot of people have gone to seek shelter. what's going on there, gabe? >> reporter: good morning. we've been seeing steady rain throughout the night. it's picking up at times. a little bit of a lull here. but authorities tell us that they expect the tropical storm force winds to really pick up in the next hour or so. in the next couple of hours. so they're getting ready actually to pull emergency responders from the streets when

that happens. t chris, as you mentioned, n more than 400 shelters are open throughout the state of florida. yesterday we saw massive lines at one of the shelters in particular outside of ft. myers not far from here. and overnight we have been told that collier county is actually down to one shelter and at last check it had a few seats available because people have been flooding these emergency shelters because think had decided not to evacuate and then this storm shifted to the west. they realized they had few options to get out of this state because of the gas shortages and the clogged roadways. then they decided yesterday to go to a shelter and basically all showed up at once especially at this one shelter in particular. luckily they were able to get inside, but this is something we

saw play out throughout the state as people really come to realize how powerful this storm could be. here in naples, as expected the conditions are expected to deteriorate, chris, over the next coming hours. thankfully we're at a bit of a lull. back to you. i should mention by the way the city of naples the emergency workers in the city had to be spread out and evacuated. no government building can with stand a category 4 or 5 hurricane, chris. >> boy, that is terrifying. naples, florida. thank you so much, gabe. also in naples is kerry sanders. i know you're at the naples pier yesterday. oh, yeah. a very different view than what we saw yesterday where it looked pretty nice actually where you are, that's a beautiful part of florida, as you and i were talking about yesterday, a lot of mansions line the shore there. but i can see that the conditions are a lot different than when we spoke maybe 12 hours ago.

>> reporter: exactly. we're looking at the beginnings of the arrival of the hurricane. couple gusts clocked at 65 miles per hour. for the moment it comes an goes. i'm on a pier which for those who have good memories back in 1960 hurricane donna took a similar track and took this pier out. i would hear those stories growing up because hi grandmother lived up the way here in ft. myers beach. one of the big concerns is storm surge. it's kind of hard. some people don't quite understand it when we talk about this wall of water that comes. but this wall of water that will come driven by the wind of the hurricane will drive up along the west coast and the deepest predicted areas will be naples to the south down to everglades city. those are the populated areas. everglade city is completely evacwaited. here most of the people along the coast have evacuated. as we heard gabe say they've gone into shelters.

one of the problems to collier and league county and charlotte county is that people waited until the last minute. understand why earlier in the week when people were looking at the prediction, it looked like the eye wall was going to go up the east coast, so people over here got lulled into a sense of kind of like, okay, we're going to be all right. then when the eye wall and prediction took a different track, people here were a little bit stuck in their way, not sure what to do. there was a little bit of paralysis. i should note, you talk about the mansions that are here. there are a lot of people's lives at stake and also the investments that they made in their homes and the homes that here include, well, many different people including the governor of the state who has his home not far from here. so everybody is equal during a hurricane. there is nothing special about any person and there's nothing that protects you over anybody

else. so the respect that people may not have learned to have yet, they will learn during this hurricane, chris. if the pier survives it will be interesting. just below the pier, the geological survey have set up a storm surge monitor. >> we thank you for that. we appreciate you. i want to go to mike seidel, meteorologist who is across this -- oh my goodness, across the state in miami. this is by far the toughest winds we've seen. what is going on? where are you exactly? >> reporter: i can't hear you on the other end in new york. my apologies. dealing with the tropical storm force winds 45 to 50 miles an hour and they're gusting now 60 to 70. what you see in front of me is rainwater that's been backed up in the drainage system. the surge has not come up much. we're expecting a five foot surge here which is better than what we were expecting two days

ago with the track of the storm right over south florida. now that the track is farther west, we're in a little bit better shape surge wise. but wind wise, we'll still have wind gusts up and over hurricane force and the threat of tornadoes exist through this evening. we have a tornado warning now north of here for part of palm beach county. we had waterspouts and couple touchdowns saturday evening causing minor damage, but this is the kind of day you need to shelter in place. we talked to one of the residents of the condo behind me. 30% of the residents are staying put. the windows here were upgraded for hurricane standards since hurricane andrews pummelled this area 25 years ago. as far as power outages, about 125,000 customers. that's 125% of the customer base from florida light. it will be a long day of wind

and rain and the destructive winds, the worst of the wind, will be on the west coast. here again we're going to have gusts that may push 100 miles an hour. they'll switch around and blow offshore in that direction as we get through the middle of the afternoon. that will take care of the surge issues. by tomorrow, as irma movers north and weakens rapidly, it will be a much different day here. some palm frawns, leaves, trash. so far so good but it's early. and we've got a lot of this wind and even worse as those bands continue to rotate in off the atlantic. chris, we'll send it back to you in new york. >> if we're looking at potentially -- you're having trouble standing right now, if you're hitting 100 mile-per-hour winds, what's that scene going to look like?

>> mike seidel who not surprisingly when you see exactly what he is dealing with there and what the folks in miami is dealing with is not able to hear us. fortunately he's getting up as you can see to a sheltered area where he is not at least in danger, i think, of flying debris and can actually stand up right. we'll keep checking in with all the folks there as we see this storm starting to move into florida with rain and wind battering the south right now. hundreds of thousands are in its path. already hundreds of thousands of people in the dark. we're tracking hurricane irma as it draws closer to florida's west coast, residents anxiously watching and waiting. take a listen. >> i'm worried. >> why? >> because i probably won't have a home come sunday night, monday morning. i have a good feeling. it's going to get tore up.

went through it 12 years ago and said never again. here i am.

♪ good sunday morning once again. i'm chris jansing live from new york at msnbc world headquarters. we are continuing to keep a close eye for you on hurricane irma. now a dangerous category 4 storm and it is not expected to lessen in strength as it closes in on

the lower portion of the florida keys. irma now churning just 30 miles southeast of key west. the storm's eye wall expected to hit the lower portion of that area within the next hour, maybe sooner. the national weather service says storm surge has already began to impact that area. the tampa bay area could see between 5 and 8 feet of flooding. forecasters expect other parts of florida's coastline to see storm surges reaching up to 15 feet. 280,000 plus people don't have power right now. that number expected to rise dramatically. perhaps into the millions. back with me wnbc meteorologist steve salsna. i keep going back to what the emergency management officials said on the phone, i'm terrified for all the people who are still there right now. what are we looking at over the next hour? >> first off, the weather service folks are doing a heroic

job right now. >> unbelievable. >> they stayed because they have to issue warnings and so they decided to ride out the storm in their office and are issuing urgent warnings like the one i'm about to show right now. like in hurricane harvey, we started to see these special types of warnings called emergencies issued. flash flood in the houston area when inundation of flood waters started to occur. similar to that, we have an extreme wind warning in effect. again, these brave folks at national weather service in key west that are enduring these terrible conditions right now are warning the lower keys that over the next couple of hours through 9:15 a.m. this morning to expect wind gusts around 115 miles per hour. so this is for the next couple of hours only around 6:35 in the morning now. 9:15, you can read off the keys, key west down towards areas like sugar loaf key.

so any of these lower keys south of the seven mile bridge up to the seven mile bridge, this is where we will see some extreme damage, some of it almost like swaths of tornadoes coming on through here. again, so that's new at this hour. winds gusting 69 miles per hour right now in key west. if we go up to the north, you'll be able to see some of the live shots that we had. mike seidel being battered by wind. there's little bee bees of rain coming in at him, 66 mile-per-hour winds there at the miami international airport. so again we'll be looking for the storm surge to really kick in here over the next couple of hours in the keys as high tide is at 2:15 this afternoon. the east coast we're looking at high tide around 12:26 and then this all important southwestern coast of florida high tide around 7:00 p.m. this eveng with a category 4 storm offshore that means that water will be piling up so that's something we'll watch as we head throughout the afternoon and

evening hours, chris. this situation only going to get worse. from the images we're seeing already, it's a terrible situation. >> when i was looking at mike seidel who is our weather channel meteorology igs and he could barely stand up and talking about the potential just -- there's those pictures from miami. this is not where they'll see the worst of it, but he was saying potentially 100 mile-per-hour winds. what does that look like? >> yeah. it absolutely hurts to be out in that conditions. then you have to watch out for flying debris coming at you. basically every day objects become projectiles. it's very dangerous. we're showing that so we can show you the force of this, but the everyday tom and joe should be inside their house bunkered down for this. >> i've been out in storms much, much less significant than this and i saw bar gaj cans flying, signs flying. >> you definitely don't want to

be out. that water can come in like a wall with little or no warning. >> steve, thank you so much. you'll be with us throughout the morning. i want to bring in a reporter with the palm beach post. daphne, where are you? what are you seeing right now? >> reporter: well, i am just north of west palm beach where we had a curfew in effect since yesterday in anticipation of the storm. as you know just several days ago before the storm shifted west, we expected to get the brunt of the storm. obviously that's not the case anymore. but there are still a lot of people concerned about the effects of the storm here. there have been tornado warnings in effect for parts of palm beach county, west of me in wellington some tornado warnings are still in effect. and north of us in ft. peters in

st. lucy county, just two counties north of palm beach county, we're already seeing record rainfall. they reported 10 inches of rainfall up there, so certainly not the direct hit that we thought that we were going to get but officials, county officials here certainly in palm beach county and others in parts of palm beach county and martin and st. lucy counties are urging people not to be complacent and not to assume we won't get some damage here. >> yeah. i have family in port st. lucy and ft. pierce. stay safe, people. listen to the local officials. i wonder when the shift happened your sense is that more people stayed behind and are hunkering down right now. have you been talking to them? how worried are they? >> reporter: well, what we've seen is that they are a lot of

people again because we were concerned that we were going to get the brunt of the storm, at some point we thought that the storm would make landfall in the boca raton area. we had a lot of people concerned. there were people going to shelters, about half of the shelters that we have in the county are still at capacity. but what we also saw were that people who were evacuating north to tampa or to jacksonville and other parts of the state, yesterday many of them came back and decided to brave the storm here rather than go to the other places that might be critically affected. so that's what we're seeing here. we're seeing some of the evacue section s come back.

>> daphne a reporter with the palm beach post. thank you for that. >> we want to go south to phillip mena remains in ft. lauderdale with us. how is it shifting now with all the rain and wind? >> reporter: it's still pretty intense. it's coming in waves but they are re frequent and they are more intense. one thing i noticed, some of these palm trees behind me as the morning as gone on they're getting thinner and thinner. they're losing branchs left and right here. we know we're seeing a lot of tree debris. we notice that pool, that parking lot that's kind of looking like a pool now, the outages we mentioned they are now in the six figures for both broward county and miami dade. we have a quarter of a million people in miami dade without power and ft. lauderdale is in broward county and they have 130,000 outages reported.

that is a major concern. it's not something that was unexpected. that's why you saw the huge run on batteries and supplies. this is the moment they talked about being prepared for. now is the time to do something. you're not going anywhere. many people are losing power as it continues to get more intense. >> we may be 15, 20, half an hour away from irma coming ashore and making its way up the coast of florida. going to hit the florida keys we expect sometime within the next half hour to hour or so. we saw earlier just north of that in florida city where we have miguel almaguer, he could barely stand up. the winds were so, so intense. they are as we've been hearing from our correspondents intensifying. just getting pummelled by winds and rain. after a break, we'll take at

conditions and how officials are responding. stay with msnbc. we've got you covered. we know many of you are in florida or have friends, family in florida. we have our koornts well positioned to keep you informed throughout the day, so keep it here on msnbc.

♪ 6:48 here on the east coast. unfortunately we're seeing most people have hunkered down. we're not seeing people out and about in the streets in the areas already being affected by irma, except, of course, for our correspondents including marianna who has been in miami beach where we have really seen the winds pick up. i understand that you just saw an official and were able to talk to him. what were you able to find out? >> reporter: chris, i just spoke

to people from emergency management, the last patrol car that we've seen out here in miami beach. the conditions continue to worsen as this storm is barrelling towards florida right now. they told me that first responders are hunkered down. th absolutely cannot be out on the streets right now trying to save people who are still out here there aresome people walking around and that absolutely everyone should hunker down and be safe for the next couple of hours. this is when the hurricane is about an hour and a half away from the keys. i am in at the southernmost point of miami beach. you're already starting to feel these hurricane-strength winds. as experts were telling you before, miami is expected to get winds up to 100 miles per hour. you can see here by the minute, chris, it is very hard to stand on the street. a street that is usually crowded with people that looks like

this. so again, not a place where you want to be at right now. emergency management also telling me, of course, there's a curfew in place for miami beach. a barrier it's a barrier island where no one should be walking out on the streets and they're saying save for a few homeless people, everyone is hunkered down, of course, we're out here but it's our job to be out here as it has been all morning long. chris. >> how long is that curfew? place? >> he says that for now -- for now, throughout the morning and he said that we're going to see the worst of it throughout the morning toward noon here at miami beach. for now the curfew is in place it's been in place overnight, couldn't really tell me when it would be lifted. >> all right, mariana, take care

out there. go ahead. >> chris, first responders for the past couple days have told me when sustained winds reach 40 miles per hour, we're clearly past that point here, they cannot be out on the streets anymore. that goes for police officers, and the residents of miami beach. yesterday when we were here, there was a change in mood when the storm shifted and went west, people were out on the beach, surfing, not what officials here want to be looking at. hopefully when people try to come out this morning and see the conditions they will go back home. that is what first responders and that emergency management team want to see here today. because the storm wasn't going to hit miami directly, it let people's guards down here. but again hopefully the expectation is when they try to come out today and see the

conditions here, they will hunker down and seek shelter for when the storm passes through florida and goes west towards naples. >> you take care out there. thank you for that. we're going to go north to the mayor of flauort lauderdale. we understand there are trees down, power lines. what's the situation you're seeing. >> i think it's similar to what you saw on miami beach and north of us. we put a curfew in place here in broward county yesterday at 4:00 and that's going to remain in place until further order, because the biggest problem i see is even as the storm moves out sometime later today we have to deal with downed power lines, we have to deal with flooding water. you don't know what's in those puddles of water, what's underneath that. so we're encouraging everybody that lives in fort lauderdale o

tt too by the way the curfew. >> i was talking to a reporter from the "palm beach coast" that a few residents when they saw the track was going to go left, more of them decided to stay home and ride the storm out. do you have any idea how many did that and what's your advice to them right now. >> you better stay inside your home to ride the storm out. we don't want anybody on the roads. we've sent out notice here through every method we can to stay off the roads. i was outside in the last half hour checking the conditions and it's a solid, steady wind. there's gusts that have come through. we've had power outages as you've described, here in broward county, probably tens of thousands across broward county.

so those who have decided to stay home, we're okay with that now, but just stay inside. because we had to take our police with and first responders and firefighters off the road because the winds got above 40 miles per hour and they're not coming back until we've had a chance to assess the situation. we're not going to put first responders in harm's way. which means if you want to go out and do something stupid, you're going to be your own first responders. >> i think that's an important point. our first responders put themselves in harm's way day in and day out, but there's a point at which it becomes too dangerous. i was talking earlier again to an emergency management official who described what's going on in florida as almost a military like operation the way they are staging people, the way they are ready to go out the minute the

storm is over and it's safe. give us a sense of where you are, how prepared you are, what do you think are going to be the immediate needs once this storm goes through. >> i think it's important to remember because how big the storm was, bad it was, we had four or five days to prepare. other places didn't have that much time. but here in fort lauderdale, we were in the bull's eye. we had time to ramp up our emergency operations, public safety professionals. thousands of employees who are on stand by and have done remarkable work, incredible work. we're ready. we had plenty of notice. the other parts of florida where we're suggesting some of that assistance that's going to come from the state and federal government is going to be directed because they only had 12, 24, 36 hours because of the big shift that you all described over the last day and a half.

we're ready to assist our residents and neighbors and neighboring communities as soon as this area clears. >> are you satisfied that state officials, federal officials have done everything possible they can do to prepare for what looks like the inevitable right now? >> i'll tell you, the state of florida has been very upfront on this and very cooperative. i've had experience in this. i spent eight years in the florida house of representatives before becoming mayor. so the state has done their job, the federal government seems ready, willing and able to do their job. i want to make sure the neighbors understand that their job is going to be, right now to stay inside, stay off the streets, and then when we give the all-clear, we're going to need neighbors to assist to the north of us, west of us, step up and help rebuild the community.

>> major jack seiler. good luck to you p. >> thank you. have a good morning. >> check out this one, this is hollywood, florida and more than a quarter million customers are in the state. that's down by about half. at one point officials told us it was half a million. but they say it will reach into the millions as the day goes on and the storm moves into the land. we'll continue to update you all morning long, continuous coverage of irma's track and its impact here on msnbc.