Hurricane Ian barrels toward Florida

Deanne Criswell, Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, told CNN’s New Day Wednesday that Hurricane Ian will have catastrophic impacts and warned people who have not evacuated to make sure they were putting themselves and their families in a safe place.

“This is going to be catastrophic impacts, and not just where we’re going to see the storm make landfall, but we’re also really concerned about all of the inland flooding because it’s bringing with it a lot of rain and it’s going to move slowly,” she said. “Which means people that are in the path, they are going to experience the impacts for a long period of time.”

Criswell said her biggest concern is the water, both the storm surge and the inland flooding water, as water is one of the leading causes of death in these storms.

FEMA has put together search and rescue teams, she said, which are currently stationed in Miami and include people from a number of groups, including the Department of Defense and the US Coast Guard.

Criswell said they are already seeing the impacts from the storm.

“As the storm moves and as it’s safe for our search and rescue teams to go in, they will begin going in to start searching those areas to see and assess damage, but most importantly look for people that may need help getting out of the area,” she said. “We’re going to follow this storm as soon as it’s safe for those teams to get in there and make sure that we’re finding anybody who needs help.”

“If you have not evacuated yet, you need to stay, you need to shelter in place, you need to get to the highest part of your home and you need to make sure that you are putting yourself and your family in a safe place until emergency responders can get to you,” Criswell said, adding that they won’t wait for the storm to completely pass, but until FEMA says it’s safe for emergency responders.

“But just because they’re out, doesn’t mean that individuals should be out, they need to stay put until the storm completely passes,” she said. “And then when they do go out, they need to be really cautious, so many dangers that are going to be out there with the flooding, the water, the downed power lines, a lot of dangers our there even after the storm passes.”