Officials continue to warn residents along Florida’s western coast and residents in southern Georgia and Alabama that Hurricane Irma will bring along storm surges that could be deadly.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott said he relayed these concerns directly to President Trump in a phone call this morning.
“I’m very concerned about the west coast,” Scott said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m concerned about the whole state because of all the wind that we are going to get but the storm surge is absolutely life-threatening.”
Hurricane Irma made landfall Saturday morning as a Category 4 storm in the Florida Keys.
Scott said Irma’s size and projected path make it a disaster that could eclipse the damage and cost from Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the costliest storm in the U.S. before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“But [what] we didn’t have in Andrew, we didn’t have this storm surge,” Scott said.
“And that’s when I was talking to the president — the president said, look, I will provide for whatever resources you need. When I talk to them, I talk to them pretty much every day. But I said, here is the hardest thing in this one — is one, it’s impacting our whole state and the storm surge is just life-threatening on the west coast and through the Keys.”
Scott said he’s called up 7,000 members of the National Guard.
