sheriff zena stephens just got back to her own house after being flooded out during tropical storm imelda last september. >> my story is a lot of people's story. and so we understand how fast things can go really bad. > reporter: the civic center is now a staging area for residents who need help getting out, but even with mandatory evacuation orders in place, some residents are refusing to leave. >> if something were to happen to the roof or something, i would want to be here to fix it to the roof or something, i while i could. >> reporter: i mean, but that's pretty dangerous. >> ( sighs ) i know. we've been fortunate so far. we've made it. it's just scary to leave your stuff behind. >> reporter: more than half a more than hale in texas and louisiana are being ordered to evacuate. space is limited, and evacuations are more complicated with covid-19. >> remember, just because a hurricane is coming to texas, does not mean that covid-19 either has or is going to leave texas. >> o'donnell: experts predict hurricane laura's winds could mimic what we saw with hurricanes ike and rita. right now,

as far as these pictures that we're looking at zena do they represent a big headache. insofar as we're not seeing pictures of people cleaning up the streets we're not seeing pictures of the aid operation getting up and running we're not seeing pictures of the survivors going back home they don't have homes to go back to anyway what we're seeing beamed live around the world is people protesting people demonstrating put things on fire and the authorities using tear gas and now there's talk of statements from the army. yes but on it it's exactly what you said these are the scenes the world is watching just a few days after a disaster that killed dozens of people are still. missing as search operation operations continue these people here are betting on the support of the international community some of them are holding plot cards saying do not give them money do not they're not legitimate they are not credible authorities do not give them a lifeline the international community has been swift in their response to help lebanon sending supplies aid rescue teams but the inter

country already on its knees so much has been lost when there was already so little and a short time ago zena gave us this update from beirut port. horney to the health minister dozens 8 remain missing the search operations continue trying to find bodies or or even survivors trapped underneath the rubble either at beirut ports or in other buildings across the city so dozens of families really don't know the fate of their loved ones and we saw many shop owners there in despair there's there's a sense of desperation they say who is going to bail us out who is going to help us we don't have money to fix our shops this was our only source of livelihood there is a deep crisis here a workforce 32 percent of the workforce is unemployed 50 percent of the population live below the poverty line so they are wondering who is going to provide them help 300000 people are now homeless some are lucky enough to have relatives in other areas in the country but others are started to gather their belongings put them in suitcases and we watched some of them do that and and head to churches or mosques to find shel

gas against those protesters let's go to a honda correspondent who's at another location in beirut zena just give us a sense of not so much what you're seeing but what the atmosphere is like there. there's a lot of tension but there's also defiance if you see in the distance that security forces are using excessive amounts of tear gas to force the anti-establishment protesters away from the parliament building people have been pushed back there have been running battles as protesters try to storm parliament building we've seen scenes like this many many times in in recent months but the chance that i'm now hearing in the background is you know we are we will stay we will continue to took to fight there's a lot of defiance there's a lot of anger many people here have told us that we expected this to happen we didn't expect them to just to sit back and and allow us to to to demand change to. what we've they've taken to the streets not just to demand a new political and security establishment to govern this country what these people want is for those in power to be held accountable for a b