Remarks by President Trump in Briefing with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and FEMA Administrator Brock Long on Hurricane Michael | Eastern North Carolina Now

    THE PRESIDENT: I say, "God bless you all." That's my message - because that's what it is. The storm is there. I mean, that storm is there. It's sort of too late to do anything about it now from the standpoint of moving.

    Tell us about that. If somebody said - they're watching this now, and they want to leave, it's -

    ADMINISTRATOR LONG: The window to evacuate has come to a close. I mean, you know, once - you know, in some cases -

    THE PRESIDENT: (Inaudible.)

    ADMINISTRATOR LONG: - all these barrier islands, they have to shut down the drawbridges at certain sustained winds. And quite honestly, the ocean has already started rising in some of those areas where we're anticipating the storm surge.

    And as I said earlier, the most important thing is, is that if you're in an area and you can't get out of that area, try to get elevated, and try to get into a facility that you think can withstand the winds.


    Q Is there anything that you're doing for this storm differently than you did for hurricanes Maria or any of the other past hurricanes?

    ADMINISTRATOR LONG: You know what? We're putting the full force of the federal government and the firepower of the federal government down and pre-staging to be able to help our state partners. We don't treat -

    THE PRESIDENT: But I do think we're trying to move people more here because of the winds. We're worried about the houses. You know, these houses weren't built for 180-mile-an-hour winds. You have wind gusts up to 185, they say. That's as bad as - pretty much as bad as it can get. And these houses aren't built for that kind of destruction.

    So I think more than anything else, we're trying to move more people out than we've ever before.

    ADMINISTRATOR LONG: I think what was different was Governor Scott leaning forward and using the wireless emergency alert. And I think that's the first time that it's actually been used in this platform, to my knowledge. And, you know, just trying to hammer home the -

    SECRETARY NIELSEN: That was a great way to communicate with those barrier islands you see, using that alert system.

    Q A lot of folks, I think, woke up and they were surprised when they saw Category 4. Were state and local officials, or was the federal government in any way caught off guard by the strength of this?

    ADMINISTRATOR LONG: FEMA was not, by any means, and neither was the state of Florida. You know, the bottom line is, is that any time we're dealing with a Gulf Coast storm, we always plan for one category, possibly two, higher - because we understand that trying to forecast the intensity of these storms is very difficult for the National Hurricane Center to do. So, therefore, we always plan one or two categories higher than what's actually forecast days in advance, because we know that the window to actually move people into position and get ready shuts pretty quickly in Gulf Coast storms because of the (inaudible).

    SECRETARY NIELSEN: This is why we have National Hurricane season, right? I mean, the whole season we encourage everybody to be prepared, have your kits, know how you'll communicate with your family, know your evacuation route. Because sometimes they increase in intensity so quickly. If you're thinking about it then for the first time, you're not going to be safe. So that's why we have the season. During that whole season, you should be prepared for a hurricane.

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, this was projected to be a storm three days ago, not a hurricane. And it grew, and it grew as rapidly as anything they've ever seen. That's the problem. And we're very, very prepared. We have massive amounts of food and water that gets brought in immediately as it's leaving. I mean, literally, we follow it right in.

    And the electrical folks and, you know, the different electrical companies, they have thousands - they're going to have over 10,000 people, and they're literally waiting, and they go and follow it in. They have to clear out the streets. But they literally follow it right in.

    So that's going to be okay. I mean, the thing we're worried about is that initial - the wind. Because supposedly, if you believe everything you're seeing not only from our people, if you see it on television, they haven't seen winds like this. So this is different than a lot of water, which is bad too. But they have not seen winds like this in a long time.

    ADMINSTRATOR LONG: Yep, you can replace all the infrastructures.

    THE PRESIDENT: Some of it they had almost 200 miles an hour, and I've never even heard of that before. I've never heard of it. It's almost like a big - it's like a big tornado, a massive tornado. So we have to be very careful, and we just hope the structures can hold up. And if they can't, we hope people aren't in those structures; that they were able to get out.

    Well, thank you all very much. We appreciate you very much.

    Q Can I ask one more on Khashoggi? Do you have a message to the Saudi government? Are you demanding information?

    THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, we are. We're demanding everything. And we want to see what's going on here. That's a bad situation. And, frankly, the fact that it's a reporter, you could say, in many respects, it makes it - it brings it to a level.

    It's a very serious situation for us and for this White House. We do not like seeing what's going on. Now, as you know, they're saying we had nothing to do with it. But so far, everyone is saying they had nothing to do with it. And it's inside of Turkey. And the Turkish government is working very strongly so far, so we'll see what happens.

    Q Sounds like you don't buy their denials.

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, I want to see what happens. And we're working very closely with Turkey, and I think we'll get to the bottom of it.

    Thank you all very much.

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