Rick Scott: Hurricane Irma Is ‘Bigger’ and ‘Stronger’ than Andrew

RUSH EXCERPT:

TAPPER: "Joining me on the phone is Florida governor Rick Scott. What’s the most important thing that people in Florida need to know right now?"
SCOTT: "They need to watch this storm. This is bigger than Andrew. It’s stronger than Andrew. It has way more wind, way more storm surge than Andrew ever had, and we know how devastating that was. I was down in the Florida keys this morning which we’re evacuating. You need to make sure when someone tells you to evacuate, don’t wait. Because that’s when the lines get long on the roads, things like that. When someone tells you to evacuate, evacuate. Take this seriously and think, I can rebuild. You can’t rebuild somebody’s life. I want to take care of every resident and every visitor in my state."
TAPPER: "How are people evacuating? Where are they going?"
SCOTT: "We’re opening up shelters all across the state. The Red Cross has volunteers coming down. We have 250 additional volunteers that have signed up. We do need more volunteers. We have regular shelters, special needs shelters, pet shelters around the state as people go in other parts of the state to get away from this. We have shelters for them. We’re directing where they should go. We’ve got evacuation — we have mandatory in the keys. I was down there this morning. We have advisory evacuations in Miami-Dade and Broward County. But other counties are looking at this as we follow this track. We’re going to have the shelter. There will not be a lack of shelters. The storm surge, what people don’t realize, the storm surge can go miles inland. It can cover an entire house. You look at what happened in Harvey. We can get an unbelievable storm surge out of this. This will be a big, big, big storm."