every single storm is going to be different. every natural disaster is going to be different. so, maybe there s some lessons learned from my background, maybe there are different circumstances that we ll have to deal with on the ground here. do you think at all you re sending the wrong message to the residents of your town? can t the folks in your town say, the mayor s not going, so i m not going to leave either. no, i ve been crystal clear to everyone that they need to consider the evacuation. first of all, the winds are going to be extreme. the storm surge is going to be potentially damaging. there are going to be times in the middle of this storm that if somebody has an emergency, we re not going to be able to get to them. and there s a likely condition that we re going to not going to have power for a long time. so, the education has been important. we ve actually seen a lot of people evacuate that have never evacuated before, and that s great. i m i appreciate that, but i
many people on the ground, a lot that we know that will be affected by this and what keeps us going is knowing that we can get the information out there to the noaa national hurricane center and to the forecasters and the media so people on the ground will listen. paul, i m not sure if i just lost you in my ear, but can you still hear me? i ll try can you hear me? sh great, we still have a connection. wonderful. you said you found a little bit of good news tonight. it did go from a category 4 to a category 3 this afternoon. i feel like people hear that and they might think, oh, this storm s not going to be as dangerous as people are making it out to be. what do you tell them? well, so, that s something we hear a lot. category 3 hurricane is a major hurricane, and so what we want people on the ground to know is not to focus on whether it s a category 3 or category 4. we re talking about a major hurricane, and whether it fills
smell and that then they requested that fema test it before they did anything else with it. do you know if that water has been tested? because clearly, they are still in need of drinkable water down there. yeah, i have read the reports. i don t know the status on the testing that you mentioned. i do know that there have been millions hundreds of millions of bottles of water that have been distributed by fema and not just fema but by our nongovernmental partners as well and private sector partners and even the territory of puerto rico as well in the aftermath of the event, but i have read your report. i am still trying to get some of the details surrounding that as well. but we re still on that research phase right now. okay. because you know, a lot of people want to know the answer to that as people down in puerto rico still need water. the fema report that we were talking about talks about lessons learned, as you said, and you said lessons are learned after every storm. here s h
warning was being broadcast today, stay at your own peril. emergency services are going to be discontinued. there will be no police. there will be no fire. there will be no ambulance service. we are an independent lot here in this county. that said, protect your loved ones. reporter: kate, if there is a silver lining to this slowing down of the storm, it is going to give folks here in myrtle beach a few hours tomorrow to either convince those holdouts or to find those people who don t have the means to evacuate and get them away from the beach. as of tonight, myrtle beach does look like a ghost town. there is a curfew that starts at 10:00. thank you so much. outfront now, the mayor of boefrt, north carolina, rhett newton. thanks for coming in. so, your town is under a mandatory evacuation. i just spoke with another mayor. he was leaving as soon as he finished up our interview. you, though, are staying behind.
still safe. but also, in that same speech, he said that his administration is already receiving tons of accolades for their efforts ahead of hurricane florence. of course, that reminds you of what he said just yesterday about hurricane maria when he was talking about what an incredible success it was for his administration for the way that they responded to that. that s typically not how you hear these leaders respond to something, some kind of tragedy like that, but that s what president trump was saying today. now, right now, he s over at his trump hotel just down here from the white house at a fund-raiser tonight for republicans, but the question over the next few days was how does he fill that consoler in chief role. does he display empathy for those people that are going to be affected by a storm that even president trump is saying is going to be better than anticipated because he struggled with that before, with tossing paper towels in puerto rico or saying it was a lovely trip w