AMNA NAWAZ: Let's turn now to St. Petersburg, Florida, another major city in the path of the storm.

Mayor Ken Welch joins us now.

Mr. Mayor, thank you for being with us.

KEN WELCH, Mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida: Glad to be with you tonight.

AMNA NAWAZ: So you're there in St. Petersburg now.

I understand you're at your city's emergency operations center.

Just tell us where you are right now and what's ahead.

KEN WELCH: Well, now we're playing a waiting game.

We're tracking the storm as it comes toward us.

We have locked down the city, evacuated folks.

We have got thousands of folks in our emergency shelters and many more have left the city or the county, which is exactly what we asked them to do to move out of the threat of the storm surge.

And so now we're waiting to see which way the storm actually tracks.

As you know, a storm of this size, 20 or 30 miles' difference can make all the difference in the world in terms of the impact of storm surge.

But we know we're going to be impacted by the broad wind field from this hurricane.

And we're bracing for that and ready to get into recovery tomorrow.

AMNA NAWAZ: There's some predictions that say the storm surge, if it comes on a certain path, could be as high as 15 feet, which is just really impossible to imagine.

In a city like St. Petersburg, what would that do?

What does that look like?

KEN WELCH: Well, there are areas where it would not be survivable.

We saw from Hurricane Helene just two weeks ago what that impact would be.

That was a record-breaking storm for us in terms of storm surge at six to seven feet.

We have never seen it that high.

And, as you said, Hurricane Milton has a potential to more than double that.

And so I think that really got the attention of folks that live in those low-lying areas, and we evacuated areas A, B and C, and those folks have, again, moved out of harm's way, which is a good thing.

So, as long as folks are responsive to what we asked them to do in terms of moving away from that storm surge, not one life has to be lost from that.

And that's the most important thing.

The impacts of the wind is inevitable, and we have to rebuild from that.

But saving lives is the most important thing right now.

AMNA NAWAZ: Do you think Hurricane Helene having come through in some ways made it more real for people, made more people heed the mandatory evacuation who might not have otherwise?

KEN WELCH: No doubt in my mind.

I have talked to folks who said they have never seen water in their neighborhoods before.

And that really convinced them that they needed to move this time.

And we have seen entire neighborhoods that are in those low-lying areas where no one is there now.

They have actually heeded the call.

No, I know it made a big difference.

AMNA NAWAZ: We know there are always people who still don't want to evacuate, other people who simply cannot evacuate.

do you know how many people are left in St. Petersburg and what's your message to them now?

KEN WELCH: Well, we started very early in this process, and this is a routine for us.

We have special needs.

We have transportation, door-to-door transportation for folks who need it who sign up on a special needs registry, that we were still taking names as late as yesterday for that.

And so our message is, there's no reason to stay in an unsafe place.

We have got shelter space.

We have transportation to get you there.

And folks have been very responsive to that, really good utilization of our shelters at this point.

AMNA NAWAZ: But, Mr. Mayor, if I may, do you have any idea how many people may have stayed, how many people are still there?

KEN WELCH: I do not.

The estimate for our county was half-a-million people.

About half of the population were in the evac zone and asked to leave.

Our city, we think it's roughly the same thing, so, 135,000, 140,000 people asked to leave.

And from what we have seen, what we have heard from our folks who've been out in those neighborhoods, they have been responsive.

For the ones who are left, our message is at a certain point, when we get 50-mile-an-hour sustained winds, there will not be emergency response.

We will not be putting our first responders in danger at that point and help will not be available.

AMNA NAWAZ: There's also been a number of reports about construction cranes in downtown St. Petersburg, some as high as 600-feet-tall, that weren't dismantled before the storm.

I think a lot of folks are wondering why not.

And also, if people are in the vicinity of those cranes, are they at risk?

KEN WELCH: So, we have done active outreach to make sure folks are aware of that issue.

And, again, this is a matter of the storm developing so quickly.

It was a tropical storm just a few days ago, became a powerful Cat 5 in 24 hours.

It takes seven days to take these cranes down.

So it's just not possible within the time span of the development of this hurricane to take those down.

And so it's a lesson learned about how we go forward what we require in terms of the strength of those cranes, if they can't be taken down quickly enough to deal with a storm like this.

AMNA NAWAZ: Mr. Mayor, are storms like this the new normal for St. Petersburg and other areas around there?

KEN WELCH: Look, we believe in sea level rising, extreme weather and those changes.

We have developed a Tampa Bay compact of local governments who have changed our investments, our infrastructure approach for years to come.

But the pace of the change is much quicker than even we thought would happen.

And so we need to readdress the pace of our infrastructure improvements and how we deal with adapting to this new normal.

It certainly is a new normal.

These two record-breaking storms within two weeks of each other is evidence of that.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is Mayor Ken Welch of St. Petersburg, Florida.

Mr. Mayor, please stay safe.

We're thinking about you and everyone there.

Hope you stay well.

KEN WELCH: Thank you.