Florida's coastal residents are being urged to flee the approaching hurricane, but the mayors of two cities along the coast say they are concerned about those ignoring calls to evacuate.
West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio said parts of her city are under a mandatory evacuation order and yet some have decided to ride out the storm.
"We have a whole younger population that's now living in the downtown area, which is part of the evacuation zone and I think the young people might be taking this for granted a little bit because they don't have the history of hurricane and hurricane damage," she said in an interview with CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Thursday.
Hurricane Matthew is expected to be a Category 4 level when it hits land. It has "potentially disastrous impacts for Florida," the National Hurricane Center said in its 2 p.m. EDT update. A state of emergency has been declared for Florida by President Barack Obama.
Cape Canaveral Mayor Bob Hoog said he has evacuated his city and despite multiple pleas to leave, several people have stayed behind.
"They're going to be having a problem. There's very skeletal crew as far as fire department on standby. They have moved the equipment to safer ground," he told "Power Lunch" on Thursday.
Meanwhile, any financial assessment of the storm's potential damage has not been made at this point, Muoio said.
She'll be out with her team Saturday morning viewing the damage.
"We have a lot of new construction in our city because we're going through a very big building boom and we've got some partially built buildings. We have cranes in our downtown. So we're concerned about all that," Muoio said.
—CNBC's Christine Wang contributed to this report.