joining us now by phone is vince jones with the atlantic county office of emergency management. if you are familiar with that area, that's in new jersey. thanks for being with us, vince. i know you have been working tirelessly to just prepare that area. how are you preparing? and what is your advice for folk who is live in new jersey? >> caller: one of the first things we did here, having the city of atlantic city, having to move that large amount of residency, evacuation -- mandatory evacuation orders went into effect on friday. and for the most part, along our barrier islands, everyone heeded those warnings and have evacuated. right now, we have some very strong wind gusts coming in, tropical storm-force wind gusts, sustained winds. very heavy rain bands, flooding on the barrier islands. very significant flooding further inland, as the rain bands are coming in and the rain bands are actually -- they would come in, stop, come in. now they are coming in in a steadier pace as the storm moves up to our neck of the woods. and like you were saying, the storm is so large and it covers

i want to bring in vince jones with me right now, t.j. he is the emergency management coordinator. i want to talk to you about a number of things. first of all, the mandatory evacuation. looked like a ghost town when we drove through here. obviously, a lot of residents decided to leave. a lot of the guests in the hotels were forced to leave. how many are left and how did it go in terms of evacuation? >> up and down the barrier islands in atlantic county, again, like you said, we had a mandatory evacuation that went into effect yesterday, 6:00 a.m. all the -- for the most part, most of the residents are gone, have evacuated the barrier islands. there were a few resident who is did opt to stay behind. when we met with those residents, and we did meet face-to-face, we explained the storm, explained the severity of the storm, explained why it was very important that they do leave. some did change their mind at that point and agreed with our local officials and did leave. some still opted to remain behind. we explained the circumstances of them staying behind and they fully understood t