CNN "The Situation Room"- Transcript: Hurricane Prepardness

Interview

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GOV. RICK SCOTT (R), FLORIDA: We have got concerns all across the state now, because it's going to be coming clear across the state.

MACHADO: The storm is expected to make landfall as early as Monday morning. Florida's governor is taking every precaution, declaring a state of emergency, and calling up the National Guard. SCOTT: The biggest concern now is, one, we don't know how much

land it's going to go over. We don't know how much water we're going to get.

MACHADO: Tonight, Florida residents are preparing for the storm: stocking up on supplies, taking no chances.

SCOTT: You stop and think about your family for a second. Think about your entire family. Make sure every member of your family's ready.

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MACHADO: And being ready is really what it's all about. We've already seen residents being cautious. They are going out there; they're filling up their gas tanks. They're stocking up on essential items like water and nonperishable food items.

And you have to remember that it's been about ten years since south Florida has been impacted by a storm. The last time that we saw a storm here was back in 2005 with Hurricane Wilma. That storm claimed the lives of at least six people, Wolf.

BLITZER: Alina Machado in Miami for us. All right, Alina, we'll stay in close touch with you.

I want to get the latest forecast from our meteorologist, Jennifer Gray. She's at the CNN weather center. What is the latest forecast, Jennifer?

JENNIFER GRAY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, Wolf, we just got the updated track during the last hour in your show. And there is a little bit of a weakening that's going to take place with this storm. And also the track has shifted a little bit farther to the west.

I want to show you why the storm is most likely going to weaken over the next 12 to 24 hours. Let's go to the floor.

We can show you where the storm is now. Just to the south of the Dominican Republic in Haiti. And there are some very high mountain peaks on the Dominican Republic in Haiti. Hispaniola has some mountain peaks as high as 8,000 to 10,000 feet. And what happens when you have a storm interact with that land mass is it's going to shear that storm apart. It's really going to tear it apart. It's going to cause this storm to become very disorganized and weaken. That's what's expected to happen, and that's why we've seen changes to that track in the last hour and a half.

So here's the latest on the storm: 50-mile-per-hour winds, basically the same as what we saw earlier today, moving at about 21 miles per hour.

So the latest forecast, the track has moved farther to the west. It has it weakening to a tropical depression once it approaches Cuba Saturday afternoon. All of this interaction with land over Cuba is really going to disorganize this storm. Once it gets north of Cuba, by Sunday afternoon, could possibly

re-strengthen over the warm water south of the Florida Straits. But it's not going to have a lot of time.

But the latest forecast track has it possibly re-strengthening to a tropical storm and then heading towards the west coast of Florida. It is going to dump a lot of rain. Regardless of how strong this storm is, it is going to dump a lot of rain across portions of south Florida, and they need the rain. South Florida does, especially the Miami area. They are in a drought. Tampa does not.

So by the time this storm gets to Tampa, they're already so saturated. We could see quite a bit of flooding in Tampa. And then this storm is going to continue its track northward.

Here's the computer models. They've been shifting east and west over the past couple of days, most of them agreeing on this track. But Wolf, this is something to monitor, especially with that intensity quite unknown at this moment.

BLITZER: And if it avoids Florida and just one of those tracks shows it going into the Gulf of Mexico where the water is very warm, that storm could really pick up, right?

GRAY: Absolutely. Any time the storm enters warmer water, if it can get its act back together again once it crosses over Cuba, we could see some re-strengthening. And that's when you'd really want to watch it, especially if it goes into the Gulf of Mexico.

BLITZER: All right, Jennifer, thanks very much.

The state of emergency right now covers every county in Florida. The governor, Rick Scott, says the danger is very real.

Governor Scott is joining us right now. Governor, thank you so much for joining us. I know you're incredibly busy. But what's the latest information you're getting about this Tropical Storm Erika?

SCOTT: Well, what Jennifer said is right. Our biggest concern right now is the water, how much rain we're going to get. The southern part of the state can take some water, but it looks like it's going to come -- the track is going to come right back into Tampa. And Tampa is saturated. The Hillsborough Peninsula (ph), all those counties have just been saturated. They've gotten so much water. We still have some flooding that's from -- from a few weeks ago.

So -- but being on the west side of the storm track means looks like we'll get a lot of rain. And so I've brought -- I'm mobilized part of the National Guard. We have another 8,000 members we can mobilize. Our county emergency management teams are working well. We're going to make sure all of our citizens are prepared.

What you do every day by letting them know what's going on is important. I've said to all of our citizens, follow the news. CNN does a great job. Let people know where this is and get prepared. [18:35:08] So you've declared a state of emergency. Walk us

through, practically speaking, what that means as far as getting ready for whatever happens.

SCOTT: So what we do is it helps our emergency management teams all across the state, because they can get positioned. It helps our utilities get positioned. Our utilities across the state are prepositioning. We believe mobilize our National Guard, which we've mobilized some of our National Guard. It's faster to mobilize the National Guard. It's basically position everybody for what's going to happen.

But we're going to continue to follow it. We're doing constant calls with our county emergency management teams, with our utilities, with the Red Cross, keeping everybody informed. We're making sure all of our citizens stop and think about their families. Three days of water, three days of food, radio. Make sure you know what your evacuation route would be.

Wolf, as you know, a lot of people moved to the state since our last hurricane. We always have a lot of visitors. We have about 100 million visit areas year now in our state. We've got to keep all of them informed to get ready for whatever happens. We're going to pray for the best but prepare for the worst.

BLITZER: Yes, because I've lived through some of these storms, hurricanes, in Florida over the years and elsewhere, as well. You lose power very quickly, as well. You've got a lot of senior citizens who are living in high-rise buildings. What do you do about that once the power goes out at hospitals and nursing homes, places like that?

SCOTT: Well, the first thing we're doing, we're already calling through people that we think might need emergency shelter. People that might need it for healthcare reasons. We have worked with our hospitals to make sure they have the backup power they need.

We are prepositioning utility workers and utility assets to try to prevent problems or if there's a problem it quickly comes back online. We have worked -- we've let all our National Guard members that we might mobilize know that we might mobilize them.

So it's basically saying, OK, so if this happens we're ready to make a decision and react right, right now. But again, all of our citizens have got to do their part. You know, be prepared yourself. Don't completely rely on our first responders, who I know are going to do a great job.

BLITZER: You know, it's interesting. And I'm not suggesting that what you're bracing fare right now is anything along the lines of Katrina, but this is the 10th anniversary of Katrina. We all know the devastation and the death that caused.

Looking back, what lessons have you learned from Katrina, some of these other storms, that should be applied right now?

SCOTT: Well, you look at Katrina, but we just had the anniversary of Andrew which hit south Florida, 1992.

So most of it is our citizens, one, need to be prepared. Because you don't know what's going to happen, if you're going to lose power. So you need to make sure you're ready. But then on top of that, preposition your assets. Know where your vulnerabilities are.

We've improved our building codes, all sorts of things to help prevent the problems after Andrew, in particular. So we've done a lot of the right things in our state. We're already making sure at the southern part of the state we're pushing water out of our canals and things like that.

So we're positioning ourselves to be ready for whatever happens. But Wolf, you have to understand, remember three years ago right after the Republican convention we had a hurricane right at that point that missed us. Ultimately went to Louisiana. But we had 20 inches of snow -- or 20 inches of water in Palm Beach county, which no one anticipated. We had a lot of flooding there.

So we had -- we just have to be prepared and follow it. Because you're not sure what's going to happen.

BLITZER: At a minimum you can have high winds, and you're going to have a lot of rain right now. Let's hope it doesn't get worse than that. Let's hope it doesn't even get to that point. Governor, thanks so much for joining us. Good luck to you, good luck to everyone in Florida.

SCOTT: Thanks, Wolf.

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