Page 14 - Michael Cramer News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Very easily have water in their first floor. >> very much so. and that's why our council earlier in the week went and issued a mandatory evacuation for 8:00 last night, and then a curfew for 8:00 last night, trying to encourage people to leave, because this will be a devastating event for rain and storm surge. and people aren't used to that here. we do get storms, and our storms are usually in the one and two category type storms, or at least they have been recently. but this one is a little bit different with that storm surge and the amount of rain. >> yeah. and the length of time also that i...

Power hospitals and schools, trying to be as ready as possible for what is ahead. joining me right now is michael cramer. michael, what is your biggest concern at this hour from what you're seeing? >> presently, now that the storm has actually reduced in speed, our main concern is the storm surge and the rain. we're talking about 20 to 40 inches of rain, and 9 to 13-foot storm surge. to put that in perspective, most of our housing on the coast is elevated. and that would mean that even with an elevated structure, you would have water on the first floor, the first habitable floor. >> so for any...

13 foot storm surge, we'll easily have half of our community under water. >> bill: a final question and i need a quick answer. i don't know how to answer it myself and why i ask it. if you're in a river town, i understand the flooding 10 feet it comes up. you're on the ocean. how does 10 feet of flooding affect you? >> 10 feet affects us in two ways. one, we have the ocean, the sound, and the river. so we get 10 feet all the way around. and so for us that constitutes a whole section of our community that will be completely under water just because of the surges. that's basically any of our ele...

It is unbelievable. if we turn -- [inaudible] >> bill: we're going to dry our best throughout the day here to make sure the equipment works but also that we stay in a safe area. and we don't take many chances here. wealth owe -- we'll get a connection back with griff in a moment. if you were taking the cape fear river you would hit carolina beach. michael cramer is the sound manager. i believe we have a connection with you on the phone. how are things where you are? >> right now pretty calm. we're in the eyewall and we've gotten a little bit of a break in the wind and the weather here for just...

>> right now it looks like we have just a couple of small issues for damage, roofs here and there, small wall that has collapsed. but other than that, most of it is minor debris, trees and things like that. not very much flooding. we don't have too much in the way of power lines or phone lines in the road but we are completely out of power on the island. so that's about 6,000 residents. >> bill: you are about on the underbelly of the storm, is that right, michael, the southern end of it? >> yes, that's correct. >> bill: do you think there might have been a note of optimism being at that angle ...