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CNN Live Saturday

Frances Makes Landfall

Aired September 04, 2004 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Carol Lin, and here is a look at what's happening right now in the news. After stalling off Florida's east coast for more than a day -- or actually, for most of the day, Hurricane Frances has finally come ashore along the Florida coast. Maximum sustained winds now are 105 miles an hour.
And on the west coast, the problem isn't wind and rain, it's wind and fire. A blaze sparked by a burning motor home destroyed 11 homes in Calaveras County. Another wildfire is burning close to northern California's wine producing region in the Alexander Valley.

And President Clinton has received more than 15,000 get well messages. He's awaiting a heart bypass operation early next week. The former president jokes that the Republicans aren't the only ones who want four more years.

And you'll have to wait one more day for THE CAPITAL GANG. We are delaying them until 11 p.m. on Sunday, so we can bring you live coverage of Hurricane Frances.

Welcome back to our special coverage of Hurricane Frances. I'm Carol Lin at CNN's global headquarters in Atlanta.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Miles O'Brien. The eye of the storm has finally made landfall, just within the last hour, but wind and rain have been pounding some cities all day. In this hour, we'll get updates from our correspondents. There you see them. All along the coast of Florida.

LIN: But right now, places like Melbourne, Fort Pierce and West Palm Beach are a special concern. Tornado watches and warnings have come and gone, including a warning near the Kennedy Space Center.

Now, the hurricane is moving so slowly it will be a problem in the central and western parts of Florida on Sunday. But unlike Hurricane Charley, which blew over the state quickly, Frances could be a long, slow marathon of misery.

O'BRIEN: All right. Before we check in on the ground, let's check in with Jacqui Jeras in the weather center. She'll give us the sort of the god's eye view of all of this as it unfolds -- Jacqui.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, Miles, the eye wall is making landfall as we speak. This just gives you the wide perspective to show you where that hurricane is, bearing down -- let's zoom in and give you a better perspective, show you where the worst of the thunderstorm activity is right now. There you can see the coastline. Here is Fort Pierce. Some of these reds and oranges moving on shore. These are major downpours here. Typically we've seen about a half of an inch to an inch an hour. Well, that's going to be picking up to be one to two inches plus per hour. And this is also where those hurricane force winds are, the maximum sustained winds. So we're going to start to see those 70, 80, 90, maybe 100 mile per hour winds, with those gusts certainly beyond 100 miles per hour.

This is the eye, this big blue hole that you see in the middle of the screen, and you can see how large it is still. So it is going to take its time moving onshore. And we can expect this eye wall to be sitting here for a couple of hours.

Now, I want to show you where the tornado watch is, as we go back over to our other computer source, and show you that we do have the threat of tornadoes. We've got a couple of warnings already tonight, but right now, just a watch in effect from just south of Jacksonville, it's heading down towards West Palm Beach, and all the way over here to Fort Myers. Tampa is included in this watch as well, and that will continue ongoing through the night. So we have seen some rotation on the Doppler radar, but at this point, no (UNINTELLIGIBLE). The other thing to keep in mind that you really can't see a tornado in conditions like this, unfortunately.

A couple of the wind gusts reports -- we still haven't seen anything much over 90 miles per hour, but these are as of the top of the hour. We've got 40 in Daytona, we've got 52 miles per hour right now. Not reporting in Melbourne, but that's not a big surprise. We're going to start having some equipment failures very likely, and also getting some rain maybe on some of the radars. Sixty-one miles per hour in West Palm Beach, and about 31 miles per hour in the Miami area at this hour.

Forecast track. Want to talk about that a little bit, because this is going to move very slowly across the Florida peninsula, kind of turning on up to the north into the west, and it is going to be making a second landfall, of course, weakening pretty dramatically as it hits land, but the thing to keep in mind, we're not talking about the winds after we get into this, we are going to talk about the flood threat. This rain's just not stopping, coming down very, very heavy, eight to 12 inches widespread; 20, 25 inches are going to be possible in a few locations. So flooding is overall I think is going to be the big story here -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Jacqui, I've been looking at the tide tables for this part of the world where the eye is coming across, the Hobbs Sound- Gomez area, and right now it's low tide. High tide, according to here...

JERAS: About midnight.

O'BRIEN: ... should be about 3:45, and that high tide is a big concern. At that point, will the storm be kicking up a big surge, and how much concern is there for that?

JERAS: Right. Well, the latest (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that I've seen, Miles, actually has it pushing in towards the Fort Pierce area, where the center of the eye is going to be, and that's where you're going to have the biggest storm surge. And that's predicted to come in right around midnight, which is right around when high tide is there. Of course, the tides are a little bit different depending where you are on the shoreline, but that means that's going to add a couple of extra feet to the storm surge. It may be seven to eight feet.

O'BRIEN: Jacqui Jeras in the weather center, thanks very much. Carol.

LIN: All right, Miles, we want to go where the action is right now. In Melbourne, Florida, that's where Anderson Cooper is weathering out this hurricane. Anderson, I know, I've been watching you for the last hour, and it looks like it's getting pretty bad out there.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, it's really been in the last half hour or so that the winds have picked up substantially. We're getting a lot of wind. In fact, it's interesting, it is blowing so hard, the rain just looks like white lines, they look like continuous white lines, and it's something I've never actually seen before.

We checked in with the local hospital. There are no reports of injuries at this point, that is certainly some good news. The people in this area have really heeded the warnings of Jeb Bush, to seek safety early, and for those who decided not to drive somewhere at this point, obviously, it is far too late. They're just seeking safety in their homes, in a small room if possible, a bathroom, a closet even will do.

But we are seeing these very high sustained winds, and it is expected that this is going to go on, really, all night long, for the next, you know, 12 hours or so.

The eye of the storm is further south than where we are, so we're not going to get, you know, when the eye actually comes over you. There is a brief sort of period where it calms down greatly. We're not going to get that at all. We are going to have these continued sustained winds. It's probably going to get worse before it gets better, Carol.

LIN: Yeah. You bet, Anderson. You're getting the upper part of the eye and the storm, it's going to be unrelenting in your location. We're going to check back with you. Thank you. Miles.

O'BRIEN: Let's move a little farther down to the south, to Fort Pierce. That's considered ground zero, still, for this hurricane. CNN's Gary Tuchman joining us now and -- Gary, can you hear me OK?

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, it's very hard to hear...

O'BRIEN: All right, I think we just lost him. I thought that maybe I had just personally lost him; apparently we've lost Gary. Obvious reasons for that. We'll get back to him as soon as we can -- Carol. LIN: All right, we were -- I was just talking with Anderson Cooper, who is north of Gary up in Melbourne. I've got the mayor on the telephone right now, John Buckley is the mayor of Melbourne. Mayor Buckley, give me the situation as you know it right now. Anderson Cooper was just reporting that there weren't any injuries yet reported at local hospitals. Is that true?

MAYOR JOHN BUCKLEY, MELBOURNE, FLORIDA: Nothing yet that I know of. All we've had is wind and rain.

LIN: All right. What about -- where are you? Are you in a safe location?

BUCKLEY: I'm in my house in north Melbourne.

LIN: All right. What's the situation out in front of your windows?

BUCKLEY: Just raining and wind.

LIN: Because I have heard people actually who decided in Melbourne not to evacuate the area. In fact, some people in your districts are actually hurricane parties as we speak.

BUCKLEY: Yeah, we -- but most of the people -- we do have some people in Melbourne that over on the beach side. Now, those were the ones that were asked to evacuate.

LIN: All right. And some people down in Fort Pierce, where our Gary Tuchman is reporting, Gary was telling me that some of these people chose not to evacuate, and suddenly now they're calling police, asking for help. Authorities cannot get to them, as they explained. Do you have any contingency plans?

BUCKLEY: I don't think we have the same situation here.

LIN: All right. How prepared are you in Melbourne?

BUCKLEY: We've done everything that we can. The concern -- the main concern are the trailer parks. We have a 740 trailer park right at the airport, and we've asked those people to evacuate, and most of them either have gone into motels, or we have a shelter -- we're using our high schools for the shelter.

LIN: I am hearing that flooding is really going to be the biggest problem, as Hurricane Frances moves over your area.

BUCKLEY: Exactly.

LIN: What can you do in terms of -- are you ready for urban rescue teams? What sort of preparations in that area?

BUCKLEY: Well, we do have some low areas that are going to cause a problem. Other parts of the city, I think where I am, I am 15, 20 feet above sea level. I don't think I have a problem at all. LIN: Mayor John Buckley in Melbourne. We wish you well. It sounds like things are going very smoothly there. A different story, perhaps, down at Fort Pierce. Miles.

O'BRIEN: Let's go a little farther south, and Fort Pierce -- we're still trying to raise Gary Tuchman, for obvious reasons not easy to communicate with him.

John Zarrella is in West Palm Beach, and being in West Palm Beach is a little better than being in Palm Beach on this particular night. John Zarrella seeking the more sheltered side of the barrier island, although it doesn't look so sheltered right now, John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, Miles, because the wind has shifted directions now. I think we're probably, you know, on the south side of the eye wall or the eye of this thing, because the wind is coming out of the west.

If you take a look at those trees, those palm trees and that wind blowing through those trees, and that rain, the stinging rain basically coming out of the due west on us, so I am assuming, given the counterclockwise circulation of the storm, that we'd be on the south side.

We ran into a couple of people who were out walking and said they'd been over in Palm Beach, and it's actually fairly calm on that side, and that -- but there is a tremendous amount of beach erosion, which of course you would suspect.

We've been in these kinds of conditions for I'd say the better part of an hour, or an hour and a half now. Certainly the winds gusting here to hurricane force. Pretty sustained now. For most of the afternoon and early evening hours, Miles, it was coming and going. The gusts would come and go.

O'BRIEN: All right, unfortunately, we've ran into that same problem. You can imagine what this moisture does to all those wires that are required in order to bring a signal just like that to your living room. We're going to try to raise John Zarrella, we're going to try to raise Gary Tuchman, and we're going to do our best to ride out this storm with them.

I believe we do have Gary Tuchman. Gary, have you gotten it all together with all the gear and are you able to keep it dry enough to communicate for a moment? Gary Tuchman?

TUCHMAN: Miles, it's very hard to hear you, Miles, it's very hard to hear you, so I am going to answer all your questions, because I know I won't be able to hear any of your questions.

I can tell you that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) much stronger hurricanes before. Hugo -- Hugo and Andrew come to mind, but never anything that just lasts as long as this. It is just bearing (ph) down south Florida and central Florida, where it's hitting. Since 10:30 this morning, we've had these torrential rains and winds, and right now it is the worst it's been at this point. You can see behind me, the palm trees blowing. Five minutes ago -- there is a light poll between the palm trees. I don't know if you can see them. Five minutes ago, a light poll just like that, about four polls down, fell on the street, and that's why we try to stay as far as we can from the light polls, and we keep a careful eye on the palm trees.

But right now, we just talked to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a short time ago. They say we're having sustained winds now of 85 miles per hour, sustained hurricane force winds. As I said, it has been doing this all day since 10:30 this morning, with hours to go, but it wasn't as bad.

We went out to take a look at some of the damage. Some of the damage we saw in the middle of the afternoon included a street with one car parked on the side and a tree on top of it. Very unlucky motorist who decided not to move his car.

All up and down US 1, along the coast, which is just about a mile and a half from the beach. Right now, we're at a half mile from the beach. Signs were down. Trees were down. Power lines were down. Much damage, and that's hours ago. We talked to police, to authorities here, who say that there are many structures, businesses, homes and stores, that have had partial collapses or complete collapses. A KMart in Fort Pierce -- most of the roof has blown off, and it's now flooding from these torrential rains that are pouring inside.

We saw a boat in the Intercostal, a boat with no one at the helm. We're near a marine now, where there have been 90 (ph) boats bouncing up and down, but one of the boats apparently got away and is floating around in the Intercostal right now, with no skipper.

We anticipate finding lots more damage when daylight comes, but we're still talking about nine hours from now before daylight.

Authorities here at the emergency operations center in St. Lucie County are very concerned. They've had lots of calls from people who all of a sudden are saying, we wish we went to the shelter, can you please help us? And police are telling us now, we are not out in the street. We can't help you. Get in your house. Get behind as many walls as you can, and wait it out.

There was a checkpoint over a bridge behind us, that goes onto the barrier islands, Huntington Island. Supposed to be abandoned, no one is supposed to be there. Police were guarding it for the last two days. We were there about two hours ago. The police are gone. If you want to go there, you can, but if you do, you're not too smart. I hope I answered all your questions, Miles, because I am not going to be able to hear anything. Back to you.

O'BRIEN: Gary Tuchman, riding out the storm in Fort Pierce, and if he could hear me, I would tell him to be as safe as he can as he covers this story throughout the night.

And you can follow Frances' projected path from the safe confines of your living room, by logging onto cnn.com/hurricanes. You'll also find links to emergency information and resources, as well as tips on what you should do in a hurricane.

LIN: Well, in this particular hurricane. Stay tuned to CNN, because we got a lot more. We're going to be talking about people and showing you people there trying to get comfortable, trying to stay busy, in shelters, as they wonder what happened to their homes. We're going to go live to a Florida shelter where hundreds of Floridians have gone to escape.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH ANDERSON: I was sleeping in bed, and the next thing I knew, I just heard things crashing in. I was looking up at the ceiling, and I looked up, and I see things coming in. I rolled over to one side, and the next thing you know, the whole roof was coming in on my head.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Just one tale of many, many thousands to be told. We are watching it unfold. The eye of Hurricane Frances at long last making landfall in and around the Fort Pierce area of Florida. Such a huge storm, though, it's obviously much more widespread than all of that.

2.8 million Floridians forced to evacuate, the largest evacuation in Florida, really the largest evacuation we can recall anywhere. Among those evacuated, about 70,000 have sought shelter in public shelters of various stripes.

Joining us with more on that is CNN's Jason Bellini, who is at a shelter in Melbourne -- Jason.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet Madison, Megan and Morgan, all eight months old. Meet Daniel and Dalton, 2 years old, and meet the mom of all five, Lisa Hernell-Hair (ph). She's made the Red Cross shelter a home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Since this is a strange place, the boys have done really well. They think it's a little party or a picnic.

BELLINI: Lisa came prepared to stay a while.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We almost have a master suite here. We have our own refrigerator and microwave and TV.

BELLINI: She moved here Thursday afternoon.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My first big hurricane, I guess, and we have a lot of windows in the house in the back.

BELLINI: Even with the help of relatives, five children under 2 is a challenge. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They sleep in the tent. We've raised up one of the sides so they can stay cool. In case the hurricane hits, we all grab a baby and run for shelter and just kind of hold them close. So we kind of have our own little plan. There's five of us adults to juggle, and then five babies.

BELLINI (on camera): If what happens?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If the hurricane got really bad here, as far as the buildings and all.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: OK, that was Jason Bellini. We do not have Jason Bellini live because of some technical difficulties. We'll check in with him in just a little while, and we wish that mother with her five children well all throughout this ordeal -- Carol.

LIN: Yeah, there's going to be a lot of suspense tonight, because the storm, the hurricane is about to make landfall. Things are heating up. We're having difficulty with some of our equipment. We do have John Zarrella live, though, in West Palm Beach, where obviously things are in full gear -- John.

ZARRELLA: They really are. I apologize for losing that audio. This equipment is not made for hurricanes. Certainly, not much equipment made for hurricanes.

It's really, really pounding us now. It's continuing to get worse and worse, and I don't know where you lost my audio last go- around, but I was saying that we ran into some people who had been over at Palm Beach, and they said that the beach is pretty much eroded over there, but that actually, on the Palm Beach Side, we're on the West Palm side, it's actually a little calmer over there, and that's because these winds that you can see are -- and there really is stinging rain now. You can't even put your face into it any longer.

The winds are coming pretty much due west, which would be a fairly good -- out of the west, a good indication that we are on the south side of the center of circulation of this storm. And you can see, as Doug Hart (ph) pans up there into those trees that those palm trees are just blowing and blowing, and you know, it's -- many, many other kinds of trees, of course, have come down, but I guess there is a reason that palm trees grow in the tropics. It's a lot tougher to bring them down than many other kinds.

Lots of debris on the ground. Lots of fallen power lines and trees. Lots of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) transformers, those charges of blue light that we've been seeing all night from off in the distance. A little bit of a lull here for a minute in the wind gusts. And then of course they pick right back up again.

There was a building over a tile company in West Palm that lost a portion of its roof earlier today, as the weather began to deteriorate and move in, and of course there have been lots of other businesses damaged, and a lot of -- this is really, really coming at us now pretty strong. I'm not sure if it's gusting to hurricane force or not here yet, but certainly pretty darn close, and this driving rain has been going on now for a couple of hours. Earlier in the day, just a sprinkle, just a drizzle, a lot of wind, but just a drizzle.

But now, as we're right close to the center of circulation of this storm, the rains have been coming down very, very hard for the last couple of hours, and again, the wind has steadily picked up and increased. And you know, in 25 years of covering hurricanes, I've seen them come and go, but this is the first one that I've been in that has just lingered and lingered. Most of them get in and out in a hurry. They move pretty fast. But this one has just been on top of us, unrelenting, hour after hour, and I would suspect we're in for a long, long night of pretty much exactly what we're seeing tonight, if not a little bit worse, as the evening progresses, with that eye wall coming on shore -- Carol.

LIN: Right, John, the eye wall of Hurricane Frances just beginning to nudge, nudge against the coast as it's moving on shore to make official landfall. The situation, you're right, is going to get worse before it gets better. Twenty inches of rain predicted on the ground.

We have much more to cover as we keep our eye on Hurricane Frances. In fact, up next, we're going to go live to the oldest city in America to see how it's holding up against Frances.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: All right. You're looking at a pretty dramatic live picture right now out of West Palm Beach, Florida, from WPBF, our affiliate there, at the palm tree, a pretty pathetic sight as it practically lays horizontal there.

We were just talking with John Zarrella, who has been lashed by these unrelenting rains. Jacqui Jeras standing by in the CNN weather center. Jacqui, right now, the coastline it appears that the eye wall is now just hovering over the eastern shoreline...

JERAS: Yeah, it is.

LIN: Of the state of Florida.

JERAS: It's right there. It's been hovering there for at least a half an hour right now, Carol, and there you can see that palm tree just bent over, that rain totally horizontal. We certainly have those sustained hurricane force winds now. Gusts may be reaching as high as 120 miles per hour.

We've been checking regularly here for some reports, to try and get a little bit more information of those winds, but the problem is, a lot of the instruments are starting to break and are not reporting. So it's tough to get a little bit of information on the specific winds, but you have that eye wall certainly in place.

If we can go over to our Viper system right now, the PA7 (ph) in the control room, and I want to show you a little bit closer view. There you can see the satellite view, but we're going to change that on over, and show you the radar view, and zoom in real close here and show you exactly where that eye wall is. There, we come on down, here is Fort Pierce, and you can see these outer bands, too, by the way, up in Melbourne, even farther out. We are even seeing some strong showers and thunderstorms all the way on the west coast, there towards the Tampa area.

Here is the eye, the big blue hole you see in the middle. It doesn't quite look like the center of the eye quite making its way on shore, but certainly the eye wall is there. It's continuing to hover. These rain bands coming in, pushing in from the north into the east. We're going to watch that swirl around. We still have that high threat of tornadoes throughout this area in addition to that, and the rainfall is just coming down, probably about one to two inches per hour right now, so that flooding is certainly going to be starting. That storm surge is going to be coming up here in the next couple of hours as that center moves on it. Could be anywhere between seven and eight feet. At its highest point, high tide coming in. Many locations around midnight, you get around those inlets, and you're losing -- or adding a couple of hours for when your high tide comes in, so that of course is going to be a big concern.

A lot of yellows, a lot of the reds coming on in, and with these squalls, as they come through, that's when your winds are going to be picking up. So for those of you that live a little bit farther inland or that are watching from hopefully somewhere else if you're a little bit farther inland, it may get calm for a while here, and then all of a sudden you'll see these big squalls come in, and those winds are going to be gusting maybe 50, 60 miles an hour inland as well.

So this is a massive storm, and we're starting to see some of those rainfall numbers pick up a little bit. We're going to switch this over and show you our Doppler radar estimated rainfall totals. There you can see Fort Pierce. Some of these greens on the range of about two to three plus inches of rainfall. There you can see about three around Fort Pierce. Head down to West Palm Beach. We've got a report out of there, about 4.5, or 4.6 inches there.

And take a look offshore. There, we've got a nice big bullet of six inches of rainfall, and that's been going on over the last 12 hours or so, where we're starting to see some of these numbers beginning to move up once again.

Our big concern, since this thing is just sitting there, not moving very fast, is certainly the flood threat, and this is the forecast rainfall totals, what we can see and expect in between now and Monday. And look at that. Daytona Beach may be up to 20 inches. A little farther on down to the south, towards the Cape, we're looking at maybe 17 inches. Farther inland, we'll see those numbers reduced just a little bit, and you can see where we have some significant rainfall totals as head out all the way into the panhandle, into south Georgia. You've got flood watches in effect. So a massive storm, affecting so many people right now. The worst of it, we are in it at this hour.

Can we go back to the Viper system again and show you that radar and show you some of that, those inner bands which are coming in, and show you very strong activity that's going on? I guess we don't have it at this time.

Oh, there we go. We're on the Viper. He's going to go back and give us some of those -- there we go. Here is the rainfall, and there is that center of the eye. I think, you know, we saw John Zarrella out there at West Palm Beach. It might not be too long where he's going to be looking up and not seeing any of that rain. So you know when the eye is coming onshore, all of a sudden that rain stops and then you come on out, and you have those clear conditions, but this is really -- we talk about the good and the bad side of the storm. Right now, those guys are getting hit with the good side of the storm, and you see how bad that is. When the second part comes onshore, we're going to have another punch.

So we have a long duration event here. This is going to be ongoing throughout the night, across central Florida, throughout much of the day tomorrow, and then heading across much of the southeast into the early part of next week -- Carol.

LIN: All right, thanks, Jacqui. Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. As we bear witness to the eye wall brushing the land in Florida, across the peninsula, right around 10:30 Eastern time, for much of this day, Hurricane Frances battered the islands of the Bahamas, causing at least two deaths, untold damage. Way too early to really total it up, of course. CNN's Karl Penhaul has been riding the storm out there. Karl, put it all into some perspective. I guess you can give us really a sense of what Florida has in store over the next few hours.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly, Miles, if Florida experiences anything like the Grand Bahamas has been experiencing, then what they will feel is that the tail of Hurricane Frances is way more vicious than the leading edge. Yesterday, the leading edge moved into Grand Bahamas, and we were here thinking, well, this isn't going to be any great big deal. Yes, there was some flooding. Yes, it did seem to be pulling down some trees, but not the real bashing that we've been expecting.

And then when we woke up this morning, we were in the eye of the storm. Things seemed eerily calm. And then, about mid-day and into the afternoon, things really did pick up with a vengeance. These winds have been so, so powerful, driving water ashore from the ocean to the depth of about eight or 10 feet in some areas. We went around with the police force this afternoon, driving on a bulldozer truck down to the ocean side to look for an elderly couple that refused to abandon their home. We were unable to reach the home of that elderly couple -- precisely the cause, the police chief here fears that the strength of the wind may flip the bulldozer. He was also concerned that a tidal surge would engulf that bulldozer. So we had to turn back out at that stage. And certainly feel the tail end of Frances is still lashing the island here. The winds are subsiding somewhat. That is noticeable from earlier on, but there's still a little bit of wind through town, a little bit of rain through town. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) very dark now, there's no power on the island at all. The emergency services are venturing out again now to answer those calls of roofs coming off, and helping anybody that still needs to be helped into other shelters, to those shelters. But the emergency services certainly have a long night ahead of them, and it won't be until tomorrow that they can count out a full damage assessment.

What we do know so far, though...

O'BRIEN: CNN's Karl Penhaul, obviously losing communication there briefly. We've been running into that quite a bit throughout the night. We hope you understand, and we hope you'll have a little bit of patience for that.

LIN: What makes it interesting is that we're at such a critical part. This is really the moment we've been waiting for, to see what happens when the eye walls hits, and these fast winds start blowing, and the rain is pouring down. In fact, we're seeing that situation right now in Melbourne, Florida. That's where we find Anderson Cooper and meteorologist Chad Myers, with his wind machine, Anderson.

COOPER: Yeah, it really is. It's remarkable. I mean, Chad, I think in just the last couple of minutes, it feels like it's really picked up.

MYERS: Yeah, and the irony is here, Anderson, we are in a protected area. I was just over on the other side of the parking lot, and the winds gusted there 78. And so we're only about 58 right here, and it's still a lot of force on the body. I mean, it just picks you up and moves you. You can't even stand still in one spot. Maybe we lost our protection, I'm not sure.

Yeah, that was a wind gust of at least 65. And after you see enough of them for a while, you get to feel what they are.

Are you tasting salt on your lips, though?

COOPER: Yeah, yeah absolutely.

MYERS: Yeah. And you know what, the rain coming down is fresh water. A hurricane does not rain salt water. It picks up only fresh water out of the ocean, and then dumps it as pure rain. So the salt we're tasting is really the spray off the river, which is kind of (UNINTELLIGIBLE), or the salt off the ocean, which is of course fully salty.

COOPER: Now, this is just one of the outer bands of the northern eye wall, correct?

MYERS: Now we're getting closer. There was almost, as I could see it on the radar, it almost looked like there were three concentric eye walls up on the north side, three really big areas of convection. And we are now in one of that, that the outer most eye wall. There will be two more to come. The strongest eye wall will be, of course, about 20 miles south of here. But if this is the third one, I don't need to see the second one or the first one. COOPER: Yeah. But there's not going to be any let-up, really? I mean, this is going to continue through the night.

MYERS: You know, we had a nice let-up for a while. It would rain and then it would stop, and we even had almost a little bit of a sunset. That's all gone now. Not only is the sun gone, but there is no breaks in between the rainfall anymore. It's just one band right after another, after another.

COOPER: I've never seen rain like this. I mean, it looks like snow. You can even see it -- it looks like straight lines, and written in white. It's surreal.

MYERS: You jinxed it about an hour ago, when you said, oh, we haven't seen any rain here. And we really hadn't seen a lot of rain all day. Well, now, we're making up for it. Now, obviously, it's really easy to see it on radar. The entire area there that's in the oranges and the reds, all that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) around the eye wall. Now we're in it. Obviously, it's raining hard. It's raining sideways. But the good news is all the boaters here in the marina, all the boats are still floating. They're getting a beating out there, but they're all at least still up in the water.

COOPER: And really, I mean, until once the darkness came, we really didn't see too much damage. I mean, yes, some power lines down, but in terms of houses, things looked pretty much OK, as far as we could tell.

MYERS: Well, we now know that some power polls are down around the city, and just even here, we know there is not a lot of damage, because we're next to the water, but if you go inland a little bit, there is a lot of shingles coming off roofs, a lot of siding now coming off, and many of the mobile homes that have the roof-overs, the cardboards (ph) for the mobile home, a lot of those are shredding now, and that aluminum is flying through the air.

COOPER: And our information is probably a little bit old, about 30 minutes old by now, but the last time we checked, there were no reports of injuries in the local hospital, which is a very good thing indeed.

MYERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) tornado warnings too, that scare us once in a while. We have these little cells that come through this band, and as the bands come through, individual cells are rotating in that band, so we'll get these tornado warnings. You can't see anything. Not only can you not see out because it's raining, but obviously it's dark. If there is a tornado two blocks away, we couldn't see it.

COOPER: And the winds -- I mean, I am no meteorologist, but it feels like the winds are picking up.

MYERS: Well, I play one on TV, and the winds are picking up.

COOPER: OK.

We're going to try to stay this location as long as we can. There is a very solid building just a few hundred feet from here that we've arranged as a shelter, in case things get really bad.

MYERS: Absolutely. I feel really good about this. I've done enough tornadoes and hurricanes to know that we are in a very safe location. We're 15 feet above sea level. These storms are just not going to be that high where we are here. We just have a lot of wind to deal with.

COOPER: You anticipate the water from the marina coming up on the boardwalk down there?

MYERS: It may come up a little bit, but most of the storm surge is going to be southward, downward, where the eye wall is. That's where the suction is. That's where the low pressure is, and that's where the storm surge will be.

Yes, we will have the water over -- definitely over the sea wall there, no question about it.

COOPER: I think I'm about to -- what is this reading?

MYERS: I can't even see it. Eighty-six.

COOPER: Wow.

MYERS: Eighty-six miles an hour on that gust.

COOPER: Wow.

MYERS: You don't get your hands in the way of those things...

COOPER: I think that's the biggest gust we've had.

MYERS: It is. The strongest gust that we had before was only 74, and now what happened to our protection -- our protected location I'm not sure, but the winds have changed direction. And they will. They will continue to rotate around a little bit, as we get closer and closer to the eye wall.

COOPER: When does it end? I mean, when does it start to slow down? I know that may be an impossible question.

MYERS: Well, I would say probably by 4:00 a.m., we start to see the worst of it, because that's when our location gets as closest to the eye wall as we're going to get.

COOPER: So at 4:00 a.m., we see the worst of it? Or we stop seeing the worst of it?

MYERS: No, the wind will be at its peak at 4:00 a.m.

COOPER: So this isn't the worst of it.

MYERS: Absolutely not. No, we have another 10 or 15 miles an hour to go.

COOPER: How did I get -- how did I get this shift? MYERS: You volunteered.

COOPER: I guess I did. I don't know.

Carol, it's a pretty remarkable scene, and as Chad just said, it's only going to get worse.

LIN: Anderson, good question. Thank you very much for tolerating the winds, for hanging in there. Stay safe. It's not worth risking your life for television. Give our best to Chad. You are looking at Anderson Cooper, Chad Myers in hurricane force winds, officially.

We have much more from the field. We are up and down the coast of Florida, as now Hurricane Frances, the eye wall has officially made landfall.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: All right. Live pictures there. That comes from our affiliate, WPBF, and we believe that shot is in West Palm Beach. That's where they're based, anyhow. And if you look in the lower middle part of your screen there, you can sort of really get a sense of the effect. This is almost kind of like a swaying, balmy breeze in the foreground, but that palm tree really is the tell-tale there, as it is bent over at full 90 degree angle, parallel with the ground, as the eye wall comes ashore in Florida. We got winds pushing 100 miles an hour. Not just yet. Chad Myers is out there with an anomameter (ph). Of course, he's up in Melbourne, and he registered in the 80s.

So those 100 mile an hour winds are being felt right now as we speak in Florida, as the eye of Hurricane Frances at last comes ashore, or aland, if you will.

LIN: Our meteorologist Jacqui Jeras in the CNN weather center. Jacqui, how long does the eye sit in position? How quickly is Frances going to be moving ashore?

JERAS: Frances is still moving very slowly. In fact, we got part of the advisory in early from the 11:00 advisory, and there is a statement on here and a discussion saying that the center of the hurricane should be inland in 12 hours. So we're looking at the eye wall making landfall right now, but the center of this big hole here is going to take 12 hours, and that's just the first half of the storm. You've got to wait for the second half before it moves on.

We saw those pictures from Chad. If we could zoom on up on our Viper up here and take you into Melbourne, where he is. He's not in the eye wall just yet. I mean, to illustrate this, there you can see, this is one of the feeder bands that's moving through. And whenever you get one of these squall lines like this, you're going to get a huge increase in bursts in your wind speed and in your wind gusts.

It's down here, right around Fort Pierce, right around West Palm, where we are seeing the eye wall. If we could move down just a little bit on our radar. There you can see those heavier bands. This is where the worst of the weather is right now, and it's not going to take too long, maybe another three, four, five, six hours before we start to see things quiet down just a little bit.

And as I mentioned, 12 hours. So look at these feeder bands and how slow these are moving. Those of you that are getting clocked right now, it's going to be, you know, almost half a day before you're over and done with the worst of the storm, before you get that second punch. So certainly this is an extremely long event. And when I see something like this, when they say it's going to take 12 hours for the center of that eye -- that is just unbelievable. A very long period of time to be just pummelled with these hurricane force winds, 100 miles per hour.

We're still looking at maximum sustained winds. That is on this advisory already, that they're sticking at 90 knots, which does equate to about 105 miles per hour. Still going to see gusts up to maybe 120, maybe 125 miles per hour. And the hurricane force winds have been extending out about 75 miles from the storm, so that's certainly being felt well inland.

And take a look at those sheets of rain. This is from Fort Pierce, and that is right where that eye wall is coming down right now. You can see those trees just bending over. The wind is just very strong, and you can see that rain absolutely horizontal, and that has got to hurt. Hopefully, we just have that camera shooting out the window, and hopefully everybody is in a safe place at this time, because this is the worst of the storm.

The rainfall totals are not all that impressive as of yet, but we are going to be looking at them to increase. We've had maybe three, four inches around Fort Pierce, and you can expect to see maybe three to six in the next six hours, and then you're going to add on top of that, as you get into that second half. And so we're going to be seeing some flooding. Of course, storm surge is also a very big concern. We're going to be watching for that storm surge to come in with the center, and so that is going to be coming in, and maybe another 12 hours, so we're going to be looking at maybe a different time when that storm surge starts to come in -- Miles. Carol.

LIN: Thanks, Jacqui. Thanks, Jacqui, very much.

Let's go to a couple of people -- actually, one particular person, whom I spoke with just a few weeks ago when he was chasing Hurricane Charley. That is what Jim Reid does. He is a hurricane chaser. He studies these things. He videotapes these things. He lives on them.

This time, he is smack in the middle of Hurricane Frances. He is somewhere between Stewart and West Palm Beach. Jim, can you hear me?

JIM REID, STORM CHASER: Yes, I can.

LIN: Jim, where exactly are you?

REID: That's a really good question. It's so incredibly dark because of the lack of electricity that it's very difficult to get a solid idea of where we are.

LIN: So what are you seeing right now? Because when I -- when you were chasing Hurricane Charley, you videotaped some crazy stuff, and you nearly got yourself killed.

REID: Well, that was a mishap. We've learned a lot from that. And we applied everything that we learned in Charley to Frances. And Frances is a much different storm. And it's had its own challenges today. It's certainly been...

LIN: Share some of them.

REID: ... with a lot of riffs (ph)...

LIN: Share some of them. Jim, share some of them.

REID: What was that?

LIN: Share a challenge with me.

REID: Well, today we actually were on one of the outer banks, one of the outer barrier islands. We were on Hutchinson Island, just east of Fort Pierce, and winds were such that we had to be very careful of storm surge. With Charley, we didn't really have much of a threat with the storm surge. This time, we had high winds and we had a storm surge, which meant we had to be very careful with how we timed things, or we wouldn't be able to get back onto the mainland.

LIN: What do you find most interesting about Frances? What is it that you're trying to learn?

REID: I think right now, personally, I find the duration extremely fascinating. This is a very long hurricane, the longest in my career. It's my 11th, and I've never been in one that lasted this long or taken this long to make landfall.

We are just about, probably about within 20 to 30 minutes of being in the eye, and then we will study what that's like, and take some measurements, do some data collecting.

LIN: Which part of the hurricane anatomy are you most interested in? I would think you'd be most interested in the eye wall, where you can actually study the intensity of the winds.

REID: Absolutely. Our goal for Hurricane Frances, as it was with Hurricane Charley, was to penetrate the northeastern quadrant of the eye wall, which is typically the most violent. If you are well trained as we are, and experienced, you can do it with minimal risk. There still are very high risks involved, don't get me wrong, but with Frances, we're talking about a lot of rain. The winds have been very impressive, in my opinion. I covered Isabel last year, and Frances -- or, I'm sorry, excuse me, Frances seems like an extension of that in terms of the wind.

LIN: It is a massive, massive hurricane. The eye, Jim, so large. All of Hurricane Charley could fit in the eye of Hurricane Frances.

REID: It's great to see people having evacuated, having boarded up. They were very well prepared for this. Law enforcement did an excellent job and is doing an excellent job. We've encountered a number of people on the road, that is law enforcement, that have everything under control. They're doing a great job. And it's very important that people remember to stay home, because there are a lot of electrical power flashes going on right now, and sometimes that's the only way we can see to get around is when we occasionally have these very large, bright green and blue flashes.

LIN: Jim, you got a dangerous job, but I know that you're collecting important data that the National Hurricane Center and others are going to be very interested in.

REID: Thank you.

LIN: Stay safe, do good work, stay in touch. We'll catch up with you, all right?

REID: Thank you very much.

LIN: All right, thanks very much, Jim Reid. Hurricane chaser, what a job.

Much more ahead as now Hurricane Frances beginning to make landfall. Stay right there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Welcome back to our special coverage of Hurricane Frances. I'm Carol Lin at the CNN global headquarters. If you want to see and know what it's like to stand in hurricane force winds, come with us right now as we show you some live pictures, and we're going to take you -- this is -- you're looking at Fort Pierce, this is the basically what is going to be ground zero of Hurricane Frances as the eye of the storm now begins to make landfall. Our Gary Tuchman is on the telephone right now, because it's simply too dangerous to be outside.

Gary, as we look at this live picture, at your location, give me an idea of what's going on around you?

TUCHMAN: Carol, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), intense part of the storm, there is no question about it. We've been watching these winds and these rains come down, track the storm (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Since about 9:30 tonight, we've had the hurricane (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We have 90 miles per hour sustained winds. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). The (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are abandoned. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) headed that way, around there, the intercostal waterway (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Trees have come down. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the west of the city of Fort Pierce.

The city is part of that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that has been (UNINTELLIGIBLE). And the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that have been (UNINTELLIGIBLE) because of the storm. (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

LIN: Gary, Gary, let me interrupt you just for a second because it's very, very difficult to understand you. It sounds like you're talking into your hand. And I can understand why, because of the technology that you have to deal with, in order to communicate with us. Gary, if you can still hear, just point by point, a little more slowly. I heard you say that there were 99 mile per hour winds, sustained, that trees were down. Earlier, you were saying that there were people who were trapped in their homes now regretting that they didn't evacuate, and the police weren't going to be able to do anything for them.

TUCHMAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a little better now.

LIN: Just slightly better, just speak a little bit more slowly.

TUCHMAN: I'm going to speak very slowly. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 90 -- nine, zero...

LIN: Ninety, OK.

TUCHMAN: Sustained winds (UNINTELLIGIBLE). That there are some trees down throughout the city of Fort Pierce, population 39,000, but you wouldn't know anyone lived here tonight. There is nobody out and about. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) police that they are covering (ph) this. We see (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that's the only light, except the TV lights, that's how (UNINTELLIGIBLE). But it's dark, and it's (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and there's water (ph) (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

LIN: All right. Gary, I know it's a dangerous situation out there. Thank you very much for phoning in. It's amazing to see the pictures from his camera position, in the lights and the wind -- the rain is literally horizontal.

O'BRIEN: Just the fact that we were able to even do what we just did...

LIN: Is remarkable.

O'BRIEN: Is pretty remarkable, considering what's going on there.

So we're talking about the eye wall now. And this is the first taste of the eye wall, the back end of the eye wall, we're told, listening to Karl Penhaul, is something to fear even more. But nevertheless, we're talking about 90 mile an hour winds, we're talking about well in the saturation point on the way to perhaps 20 inches of rain. And while it's a category two storm, as opposed to the category four that Charley was three weeks ago, the fact that it is moving so slowly, drenching, causing that big storm surge, may linger for two high tides, and has stricken about a 300-mile swath of the state of Florida, puts this particular storm definitely into the history books.

Now, on the line with us from the Emergency Management Department in St. Lucie County, which is where Fort Pierce is, Fort Pierce being the county seat, county with about 215,000 people, is Donald Daniels. Mr. Daniels, can you hear me?

DONALD DANIELS, ST. LUCIE CO. EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: Yes, how are you doing?

O'BRIEN: All right. First of all, you're safe and sound where you are?

DANIELS: Yeah, we're pretty fortunate. We have our emergency operations center as a large concrete bunker with earth built up around, so we -- and inside, we can't even feel the effects of the storm whatsoever.

O'BRIEN: All right, so you can -- can you see CNN now? Can we see that shot we have? That's a place that is probably familiar to you.

DANIELS: No, I have been unable to. We keep losing the signal.

O'BRIEN: I'm sorry, I didn't hear your answer there.

DANIELS: I've been unable to. We keep losing the signal.

O'BRIEN: Oh, understand. It's down by the waterfront in a new park area. It seems like things are holding up pretty well in that location. Obviously, a lot of swaying palm trees and horizontal, almost rocket-propelled rain coming across the screen. What are you hearing from other people in other parts of the county?

DANIELS: Well, the information we're getting is similar to what you just told me. We're getting in excess of 90 mile an hour sustained winds. We expect it to get up to about 100, 103, five possibly by midnight, and we're also getting gusts in excess of 100 miles an hour. So there are a lot of trees down. They've been uprooted, they're broken. We've got a lot of traffic lights are down everywhere. They're either hanging or on the ground, you know, damage to several buildings. I'm sure there is a lot more, but we've had some reports of some damage down by the waterside to a structure, and also some mobile homes that are situated down in that area.

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Aired September 4, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Carol Lin, and here is a look at what's happening right now in the news. After stalling off Florida's east coast for more than a day -- or actually, for most of the day, Hurricane Frances has finally come ashore along the Florida coast. Maximum sustained winds now are 105 miles an hour.
And on the west coast, the problem isn't wind and rain, it's wind and fire. A blaze sparked by a burning motor home destroyed 11 homes in Calaveras County. Another wildfire is burning close to northern California's wine producing region in the Alexander Valley.

And President Clinton has received more than 15,000 get well messages. He's awaiting a heart bypass operation early next week. The former president jokes that the Republicans aren't the only ones who want four more years.

And you'll have to wait one more day for THE CAPITAL GANG. We are delaying them until 11 p.m. on Sunday, so we can bring you live coverage of Hurricane Frances.

Welcome back to our special coverage of Hurricane Frances. I'm Carol Lin at CNN's global headquarters in Atlanta.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Miles O'Brien. The eye of the storm has finally made landfall, just within the last hour, but wind and rain have been pounding some cities all day. In this hour, we'll get updates from our correspondents. There you see them. All along the coast of Florida.

LIN: But right now, places like Melbourne, Fort Pierce and West Palm Beach are a special concern. Tornado watches and warnings have come and gone, including a warning near the Kennedy Space Center.

Now, the hurricane is moving so slowly it will be a problem in the central and western parts of Florida on Sunday. But unlike Hurricane Charley, which blew over the state quickly, Frances could be a long, slow marathon of misery.

O'BRIEN: All right. Before we check in on the ground, let's check in with Jacqui Jeras in the weather center. She'll give us the sort of the god's eye view of all of this as it unfolds -- Jacqui.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, Miles, the eye wall is making landfall as we speak. This just gives you the wide perspective to show you where that hurricane is, bearing down -- let's zoom in and give you a better perspective, show you where the worst of the thunderstorm activity is right now. There you can see the coastline. Here is Fort Pierce. Some of these reds and oranges moving on shore. These are major downpours here. Typically we've seen about a half of an inch to an inch an hour. Well, that's going to be picking up to be one to two inches plus per hour. And this is also where those hurricane force winds are, the maximum sustained winds. So we're going to start to see those 70, 80, 90, maybe 100 mile per hour winds, with those gusts certainly beyond 100 miles per hour.

This is the eye, this big blue hole that you see in the middle of the screen, and you can see how large it is still. So it is going to take its time moving onshore. And we can expect this eye wall to be sitting here for a couple of hours.

Now, I want to show you where the tornado watch is, as we go back over to our other computer source, and show you that we do have the threat of tornadoes. We've got a couple of warnings already tonight, but right now, just a watch in effect from just south of Jacksonville, it's heading down towards West Palm Beach, and all the way over here to Fort Myers. Tampa is included in this watch as well, and that will continue ongoing through the night. So we have seen some rotation on the Doppler radar, but at this point, no (UNINTELLIGIBLE). The other thing to keep in mind that you really can't see a tornado in conditions like this, unfortunately.

A couple of the wind gusts reports -- we still haven't seen anything much over 90 miles per hour, but these are as of the top of the hour. We've got 40 in Daytona, we've got 52 miles per hour right now. Not reporting in Melbourne, but that's not a big surprise. We're going to start having some equipment failures very likely, and also getting some rain maybe on some of the radars. Sixty-one miles per hour in West Palm Beach, and about 31 miles per hour in the Miami area at this hour.

Forecast track. Want to talk about that a little bit, because this is going to move very slowly across the Florida peninsula, kind of turning on up to the north into the west, and it is going to be making a second landfall, of course, weakening pretty dramatically as it hits land, but the thing to keep in mind, we're not talking about the winds after we get into this, we are going to talk about the flood threat. This rain's just not stopping, coming down very, very heavy, eight to 12 inches widespread; 20, 25 inches are going to be possible in a few locations. So flooding is overall I think is going to be the big story here -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Jacqui, I've been looking at the tide tables for this part of the world where the eye is coming across, the Hobbs Sound- Gomez area, and right now it's low tide. High tide, according to here...

JERAS: About midnight.

O'BRIEN: ... should be about 3:45, and that high tide is a big concern. At that point, will the storm be kicking up a big surge, and how much concern is there for that?

JERAS: Right. Well, the latest (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that I've seen, Miles, actually has it pushing in towards the Fort Pierce area, where the center of the eye is going to be, and that's where you're going to have the biggest storm surge. And that's predicted to come in right around midnight, which is right around when high tide is there. Of course, the tides are a little bit different depending where you are on the shoreline, but that means that's going to add a couple of extra feet to the storm surge. It may be seven to eight feet.

O'BRIEN: Jacqui Jeras in the weather center, thanks very much. Carol.

LIN: All right, Miles, we want to go where the action is right now. In Melbourne, Florida, that's where Anderson Cooper is weathering out this hurricane. Anderson, I know, I've been watching you for the last hour, and it looks like it's getting pretty bad out there.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, it's really been in the last half hour or so that the winds have picked up substantially. We're getting a lot of wind. In fact, it's interesting, it is blowing so hard, the rain just looks like white lines, they look like continuous white lines, and it's something I've never actually seen before.

We checked in with the local hospital. There are no reports of injuries at this point, that is certainly some good news. The people in this area have really heeded the warnings of Jeb Bush, to seek safety early, and for those who decided not to drive somewhere at this point, obviously, it is far too late. They're just seeking safety in their homes, in a small room if possible, a bathroom, a closet even will do.

But we are seeing these very high sustained winds, and it is expected that this is going to go on, really, all night long, for the next, you know, 12 hours or so.

The eye of the storm is further south than where we are, so we're not going to get, you know, when the eye actually comes over you. There is a brief sort of period where it calms down greatly. We're not going to get that at all. We are going to have these continued sustained winds. It's probably going to get worse before it gets better, Carol.

LIN: Yeah. You bet, Anderson. You're getting the upper part of the eye and the storm, it's going to be unrelenting in your location. We're going to check back with you. Thank you. Miles.

O'BRIEN: Let's move a little farther down to the south, to Fort Pierce. That's considered ground zero, still, for this hurricane. CNN's Gary Tuchman joining us now and -- Gary, can you hear me OK?

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, it's very hard to hear...

O'BRIEN: All right, I think we just lost him. I thought that maybe I had just personally lost him; apparently we've lost Gary. Obvious reasons for that. We'll get back to him as soon as we can -- Carol. LIN: All right, we were -- I was just talking with Anderson Cooper, who is north of Gary up in Melbourne. I've got the mayor on the telephone right now, John Buckley is the mayor of Melbourne. Mayor Buckley, give me the situation as you know it right now. Anderson Cooper was just reporting that there weren't any injuries yet reported at local hospitals. Is that true?

MAYOR JOHN BUCKLEY, MELBOURNE, FLORIDA: Nothing yet that I know of. All we've had is wind and rain.

LIN: All right. What about -- where are you? Are you in a safe location?

BUCKLEY: I'm in my house in north Melbourne.

LIN: All right. What's the situation out in front of your windows?

BUCKLEY: Just raining and wind.

LIN: Because I have heard people actually who decided in Melbourne not to evacuate the area. In fact, some people in your districts are actually hurricane parties as we speak.

BUCKLEY: Yeah, we -- but most of the people -- we do have some people in Melbourne that over on the beach side. Now, those were the ones that were asked to evacuate.

LIN: All right. And some people down in Fort Pierce, where our Gary Tuchman is reporting, Gary was telling me that some of these people chose not to evacuate, and suddenly now they're calling police, asking for help. Authorities cannot get to them, as they explained. Do you have any contingency plans?

BUCKLEY: I don't think we have the same situation here.

LIN: All right. How prepared are you in Melbourne?

BUCKLEY: We've done everything that we can. The concern -- the main concern are the trailer parks. We have a 740 trailer park right at the airport, and we've asked those people to evacuate, and most of them either have gone into motels, or we have a shelter -- we're using our high schools for the shelter.

LIN: I am hearing that flooding is really going to be the biggest problem, as Hurricane Frances moves over your area.

BUCKLEY: Exactly.

LIN: What can you do in terms of -- are you ready for urban rescue teams? What sort of preparations in that area?

BUCKLEY: Well, we do have some low areas that are going to cause a problem. Other parts of the city, I think where I am, I am 15, 20 feet above sea level. I don't think I have a problem at all. LIN: Mayor John Buckley in Melbourne. We wish you well. It sounds like things are going very smoothly there. A different story, perhaps, down at Fort Pierce. Miles.

O'BRIEN: Let's go a little farther south, and Fort Pierce -- we're still trying to raise Gary Tuchman, for obvious reasons not easy to communicate with him.

John Zarrella is in West Palm Beach, and being in West Palm Beach is a little better than being in Palm Beach on this particular night. John Zarrella seeking the more sheltered side of the barrier island, although it doesn't look so sheltered right now, John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, Miles, because the wind has shifted directions now. I think we're probably, you know, on the south side of the eye wall or the eye of this thing, because the wind is coming out of the west.

If you take a look at those trees, those palm trees and that wind blowing through those trees, and that rain, the stinging rain basically coming out of the due west on us, so I am assuming, given the counterclockwise circulation of the storm, that we'd be on the south side.

We ran into a couple of people who were out walking and said they'd been over in Palm Beach, and it's actually fairly calm on that side, and that -- but there is a tremendous amount of beach erosion, which of course you would suspect.

We've been in these kinds of conditions for I'd say the better part of an hour, or an hour and a half now. Certainly the winds gusting here to hurricane force. Pretty sustained now. For most of the afternoon and early evening hours, Miles, it was coming and going. The gusts would come and go.

O'BRIEN: All right, unfortunately, we've ran into that same problem. You can imagine what this moisture does to all those wires that are required in order to bring a signal just like that to your living room. We're going to try to raise John Zarrella, we're going to try to raise Gary Tuchman, and we're going to do our best to ride out this storm with them.

I believe we do have Gary Tuchman. Gary, have you gotten it all together with all the gear and are you able to keep it dry enough to communicate for a moment? Gary Tuchman?

TUCHMAN: Miles, it's very hard to hear you, Miles, it's very hard to hear you, so I am going to answer all your questions, because I know I won't be able to hear any of your questions.

I can tell you that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) much stronger hurricanes before. Hugo -- Hugo and Andrew come to mind, but never anything that just lasts as long as this. It is just bearing (ph) down south Florida and central Florida, where it's hitting. Since 10:30 this morning, we've had these torrential rains and winds, and right now it is the worst it's been at this point. You can see behind me, the palm trees blowing. Five minutes ago -- there is a light poll between the palm trees. I don't know if you can see them. Five minutes ago, a light poll just like that, about four polls down, fell on the street, and that's why we try to stay as far as we can from the light polls, and we keep a careful eye on the palm trees.

But right now, we just talked to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a short time ago. They say we're having sustained winds now of 85 miles per hour, sustained hurricane force winds. As I said, it has been doing this all day since 10:30 this morning, with hours to go, but it wasn't as bad.

We went out to take a look at some of the damage. Some of the damage we saw in the middle of the afternoon included a street with one car parked on the side and a tree on top of it. Very unlucky motorist who decided not to move his car.

All up and down US 1, along the coast, which is just about a mile and a half from the beach. Right now, we're at a half mile from the beach. Signs were down. Trees were down. Power lines were down. Much damage, and that's hours ago. We talked to police, to authorities here, who say that there are many structures, businesses, homes and stores, that have had partial collapses or complete collapses. A KMart in Fort Pierce -- most of the roof has blown off, and it's now flooding from these torrential rains that are pouring inside.

We saw a boat in the Intercostal, a boat with no one at the helm. We're near a marine now, where there have been 90 (ph) boats bouncing up and down, but one of the boats apparently got away and is floating around in the Intercostal right now, with no skipper.

We anticipate finding lots more damage when daylight comes, but we're still talking about nine hours from now before daylight.

Authorities here at the emergency operations center in St. Lucie County are very concerned. They've had lots of calls from people who all of a sudden are saying, we wish we went to the shelter, can you please help us? And police are telling us now, we are not out in the street. We can't help you. Get in your house. Get behind as many walls as you can, and wait it out.

There was a checkpoint over a bridge behind us, that goes onto the barrier islands, Huntington Island. Supposed to be abandoned, no one is supposed to be there. Police were guarding it for the last two days. We were there about two hours ago. The police are gone. If you want to go there, you can, but if you do, you're not too smart. I hope I answered all your questions, Miles, because I am not going to be able to hear anything. Back to you.

O'BRIEN: Gary Tuchman, riding out the storm in Fort Pierce, and if he could hear me, I would tell him to be as safe as he can as he covers this story throughout the night.

And you can follow Frances' projected path from the safe confines of your living room, by logging onto cnn.com/hurricanes. You'll also find links to emergency information and resources, as well as tips on what you should do in a hurricane.

LIN: Well, in this particular hurricane. Stay tuned to CNN, because we got a lot more. We're going to be talking about people and showing you people there trying to get comfortable, trying to stay busy, in shelters, as they wonder what happened to their homes. We're going to go live to a Florida shelter where hundreds of Floridians have gone to escape.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH ANDERSON: I was sleeping in bed, and the next thing I knew, I just heard things crashing in. I was looking up at the ceiling, and I looked up, and I see things coming in. I rolled over to one side, and the next thing you know, the whole roof was coming in on my head.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Just one tale of many, many thousands to be told. We are watching it unfold. The eye of Hurricane Frances at long last making landfall in and around the Fort Pierce area of Florida. Such a huge storm, though, it's obviously much more widespread than all of that.

2.8 million Floridians forced to evacuate, the largest evacuation in Florida, really the largest evacuation we can recall anywhere. Among those evacuated, about 70,000 have sought shelter in public shelters of various stripes.

Joining us with more on that is CNN's Jason Bellini, who is at a shelter in Melbourne -- Jason.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet Madison, Megan and Morgan, all eight months old. Meet Daniel and Dalton, 2 years old, and meet the mom of all five, Lisa Hernell-Hair (ph). She's made the Red Cross shelter a home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Since this is a strange place, the boys have done really well. They think it's a little party or a picnic.

BELLINI: Lisa came prepared to stay a while.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We almost have a master suite here. We have our own refrigerator and microwave and TV.

BELLINI: She moved here Thursday afternoon.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My first big hurricane, I guess, and we have a lot of windows in the house in the back.

BELLINI: Even with the help of relatives, five children under 2 is a challenge. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They sleep in the tent. We've raised up one of the sides so they can stay cool. In case the hurricane hits, we all grab a baby and run for shelter and just kind of hold them close. So we kind of have our own little plan. There's five of us adults to juggle, and then five babies.

BELLINI (on camera): If what happens?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If the hurricane got really bad here, as far as the buildings and all.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: OK, that was Jason Bellini. We do not have Jason Bellini live because of some technical difficulties. We'll check in with him in just a little while, and we wish that mother with her five children well all throughout this ordeal -- Carol.

LIN: Yeah, there's going to be a lot of suspense tonight, because the storm, the hurricane is about to make landfall. Things are heating up. We're having difficulty with some of our equipment. We do have John Zarrella live, though, in West Palm Beach, where obviously things are in full gear -- John.

ZARRELLA: They really are. I apologize for losing that audio. This equipment is not made for hurricanes. Certainly, not much equipment made for hurricanes.

It's really, really pounding us now. It's continuing to get worse and worse, and I don't know where you lost my audio last go- around, but I was saying that we ran into some people who had been over at Palm Beach, and they said that the beach is pretty much eroded over there, but that actually, on the Palm Beach Side, we're on the West Palm side, it's actually a little calmer over there, and that's because these winds that you can see are -- and there really is stinging rain now. You can't even put your face into it any longer.

The winds are coming pretty much due west, which would be a fairly good -- out of the west, a good indication that we are on the south side of the center of circulation of this storm. And you can see, as Doug Hart (ph) pans up there into those trees that those palm trees are just blowing and blowing, and you know, it's -- many, many other kinds of trees, of course, have come down, but I guess there is a reason that palm trees grow in the tropics. It's a lot tougher to bring them down than many other kinds.

Lots of debris on the ground. Lots of fallen power lines and trees. Lots of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) transformers, those charges of blue light that we've been seeing all night from off in the distance. A little bit of a lull here for a minute in the wind gusts. And then of course they pick right back up again.

There was a building over a tile company in West Palm that lost a portion of its roof earlier today, as the weather began to deteriorate and move in, and of course there have been lots of other businesses damaged, and a lot of -- this is really, really coming at us now pretty strong. I'm not sure if it's gusting to hurricane force or not here yet, but certainly pretty darn close, and this driving rain has been going on now for a couple of hours. Earlier in the day, just a sprinkle, just a drizzle, a lot of wind, but just a drizzle.

But now, as we're right close to the center of circulation of this storm, the rains have been coming down very, very hard for the last couple of hours, and again, the wind has steadily picked up and increased. And you know, in 25 years of covering hurricanes, I've seen them come and go, but this is the first one that I've been in that has just lingered and lingered. Most of them get in and out in a hurry. They move pretty fast. But this one has just been on top of us, unrelenting, hour after hour, and I would suspect we're in for a long, long night of pretty much exactly what we're seeing tonight, if not a little bit worse, as the evening progresses, with that eye wall coming on shore -- Carol.

LIN: Right, John, the eye wall of Hurricane Frances just beginning to nudge, nudge against the coast as it's moving on shore to make official landfall. The situation, you're right, is going to get worse before it gets better. Twenty inches of rain predicted on the ground.

We have much more to cover as we keep our eye on Hurricane Frances. In fact, up next, we're going to go live to the oldest city in America to see how it's holding up against Frances.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: All right. You're looking at a pretty dramatic live picture right now out of West Palm Beach, Florida, from WPBF, our affiliate there, at the palm tree, a pretty pathetic sight as it practically lays horizontal there.

We were just talking with John Zarrella, who has been lashed by these unrelenting rains. Jacqui Jeras standing by in the CNN weather center. Jacqui, right now, the coastline it appears that the eye wall is now just hovering over the eastern shoreline...

JERAS: Yeah, it is.

LIN: Of the state of Florida.

JERAS: It's right there. It's been hovering there for at least a half an hour right now, Carol, and there you can see that palm tree just bent over, that rain totally horizontal. We certainly have those sustained hurricane force winds now. Gusts may be reaching as high as 120 miles per hour.

We've been checking regularly here for some reports, to try and get a little bit more information of those winds, but the problem is, a lot of the instruments are starting to break and are not reporting. So it's tough to get a little bit of information on the specific winds, but you have that eye wall certainly in place.

If we can go over to our Viper system right now, the PA7 (ph) in the control room, and I want to show you a little bit closer view. There you can see the satellite view, but we're going to change that on over, and show you the radar view, and zoom in real close here and show you exactly where that eye wall is. There, we come on down, here is Fort Pierce, and you can see these outer bands, too, by the way, up in Melbourne, even farther out. We are even seeing some strong showers and thunderstorms all the way on the west coast, there towards the Tampa area.

Here is the eye, the big blue hole you see in the middle. It doesn't quite look like the center of the eye quite making its way on shore, but certainly the eye wall is there. It's continuing to hover. These rain bands coming in, pushing in from the north into the east. We're going to watch that swirl around. We still have that high threat of tornadoes throughout this area in addition to that, and the rainfall is just coming down, probably about one to two inches per hour right now, so that flooding is certainly going to be starting. That storm surge is going to be coming up here in the next couple of hours as that center moves on it. Could be anywhere between seven and eight feet. At its highest point, high tide coming in. Many locations around midnight, you get around those inlets, and you're losing -- or adding a couple of hours for when your high tide comes in, so that of course is going to be a big concern.

A lot of yellows, a lot of the reds coming on in, and with these squalls, as they come through, that's when your winds are going to be picking up. So for those of you that live a little bit farther inland or that are watching from hopefully somewhere else if you're a little bit farther inland, it may get calm for a while here, and then all of a sudden you'll see these big squalls come in, and those winds are going to be gusting maybe 50, 60 miles an hour inland as well.

So this is a massive storm, and we're starting to see some of those rainfall numbers pick up a little bit. We're going to switch this over and show you our Doppler radar estimated rainfall totals. There you can see Fort Pierce. Some of these greens on the range of about two to three plus inches of rainfall. There you can see about three around Fort Pierce. Head down to West Palm Beach. We've got a report out of there, about 4.5, or 4.6 inches there.

And take a look offshore. There, we've got a nice big bullet of six inches of rainfall, and that's been going on over the last 12 hours or so, where we're starting to see some of these numbers beginning to move up once again.

Our big concern, since this thing is just sitting there, not moving very fast, is certainly the flood threat, and this is the forecast rainfall totals, what we can see and expect in between now and Monday. And look at that. Daytona Beach may be up to 20 inches. A little farther on down to the south, towards the Cape, we're looking at maybe 17 inches. Farther inland, we'll see those numbers reduced just a little bit, and you can see where we have some significant rainfall totals as head out all the way into the panhandle, into south Georgia. You've got flood watches in effect. So a massive storm, affecting so many people right now. The worst of it, we are in it at this hour.

Can we go back to the Viper system again and show you that radar and show you some of that, those inner bands which are coming in, and show you very strong activity that's going on? I guess we don't have it at this time.

Oh, there we go. We're on the Viper. He's going to go back and give us some of those -- there we go. Here is the rainfall, and there is that center of the eye. I think, you know, we saw John Zarrella out there at West Palm Beach. It might not be too long where he's going to be looking up and not seeing any of that rain. So you know when the eye is coming onshore, all of a sudden that rain stops and then you come on out, and you have those clear conditions, but this is really -- we talk about the good and the bad side of the storm. Right now, those guys are getting hit with the good side of the storm, and you see how bad that is. When the second part comes onshore, we're going to have another punch.

So we have a long duration event here. This is going to be ongoing throughout the night, across central Florida, throughout much of the day tomorrow, and then heading across much of the southeast into the early part of next week -- Carol.

LIN: All right, thanks, Jacqui. Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. As we bear witness to the eye wall brushing the land in Florida, across the peninsula, right around 10:30 Eastern time, for much of this day, Hurricane Frances battered the islands of the Bahamas, causing at least two deaths, untold damage. Way too early to really total it up, of course. CNN's Karl Penhaul has been riding the storm out there. Karl, put it all into some perspective. I guess you can give us really a sense of what Florida has in store over the next few hours.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly, Miles, if Florida experiences anything like the Grand Bahamas has been experiencing, then what they will feel is that the tail of Hurricane Frances is way more vicious than the leading edge. Yesterday, the leading edge moved into Grand Bahamas, and we were here thinking, well, this isn't going to be any great big deal. Yes, there was some flooding. Yes, it did seem to be pulling down some trees, but not the real bashing that we've been expecting.

And then when we woke up this morning, we were in the eye of the storm. Things seemed eerily calm. And then, about mid-day and into the afternoon, things really did pick up with a vengeance. These winds have been so, so powerful, driving water ashore from the ocean to the depth of about eight or 10 feet in some areas. We went around with the police force this afternoon, driving on a bulldozer truck down to the ocean side to look for an elderly couple that refused to abandon their home. We were unable to reach the home of that elderly couple -- precisely the cause, the police chief here fears that the strength of the wind may flip the bulldozer. He was also concerned that a tidal surge would engulf that bulldozer. So we had to turn back out at that stage. And certainly feel the tail end of Frances is still lashing the island here. The winds are subsiding somewhat. That is noticeable from earlier on, but there's still a little bit of wind through town, a little bit of rain through town. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) very dark now, there's no power on the island at all. The emergency services are venturing out again now to answer those calls of roofs coming off, and helping anybody that still needs to be helped into other shelters, to those shelters. But the emergency services certainly have a long night ahead of them, and it won't be until tomorrow that they can count out a full damage assessment.

What we do know so far, though...

O'BRIEN: CNN's Karl Penhaul, obviously losing communication there briefly. We've been running into that quite a bit throughout the night. We hope you understand, and we hope you'll have a little bit of patience for that.

LIN: What makes it interesting is that we're at such a critical part. This is really the moment we've been waiting for, to see what happens when the eye walls hits, and these fast winds start blowing, and the rain is pouring down. In fact, we're seeing that situation right now in Melbourne, Florida. That's where we find Anderson Cooper and meteorologist Chad Myers, with his wind machine, Anderson.

COOPER: Yeah, it really is. It's remarkable. I mean, Chad, I think in just the last couple of minutes, it feels like it's really picked up.

MYERS: Yeah, and the irony is here, Anderson, we are in a protected area. I was just over on the other side of the parking lot, and the winds gusted there 78. And so we're only about 58 right here, and it's still a lot of force on the body. I mean, it just picks you up and moves you. You can't even stand still in one spot. Maybe we lost our protection, I'm not sure.

Yeah, that was a wind gust of at least 65. And after you see enough of them for a while, you get to feel what they are.

Are you tasting salt on your lips, though?

COOPER: Yeah, yeah absolutely.

MYERS: Yeah. And you know what, the rain coming down is fresh water. A hurricane does not rain salt water. It picks up only fresh water out of the ocean, and then dumps it as pure rain. So the salt we're tasting is really the spray off the river, which is kind of (UNINTELLIGIBLE), or the salt off the ocean, which is of course fully salty.

COOPER: Now, this is just one of the outer bands of the northern eye wall, correct?

MYERS: Now we're getting closer. There was almost, as I could see it on the radar, it almost looked like there were three concentric eye walls up on the north side, three really big areas of convection. And we are now in one of that, that the outer most eye wall. There will be two more to come. The strongest eye wall will be, of course, about 20 miles south of here. But if this is the third one, I don't need to see the second one or the first one. COOPER: Yeah. But there's not going to be any let-up, really? I mean, this is going to continue through the night.

MYERS: You know, we had a nice let-up for a while. It would rain and then it would stop, and we even had almost a little bit of a sunset. That's all gone now. Not only is the sun gone, but there is no breaks in between the rainfall anymore. It's just one band right after another, after another.

COOPER: I've never seen rain like this. I mean, it looks like snow. You can even see it -- it looks like straight lines, and written in white. It's surreal.

MYERS: You jinxed it about an hour ago, when you said, oh, we haven't seen any rain here. And we really hadn't seen a lot of rain all day. Well, now, we're making up for it. Now, obviously, it's really easy to see it on radar. The entire area there that's in the oranges and the reds, all that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) around the eye wall. Now we're in it. Obviously, it's raining hard. It's raining sideways. But the good news is all the boaters here in the marina, all the boats are still floating. They're getting a beating out there, but they're all at least still up in the water.

COOPER: And really, I mean, until once the darkness came, we really didn't see too much damage. I mean, yes, some power lines down, but in terms of houses, things looked pretty much OK, as far as we could tell.

MYERS: Well, we now know that some power polls are down around the city, and just even here, we know there is not a lot of damage, because we're next to the water, but if you go inland a little bit, there is a lot of shingles coming off roofs, a lot of siding now coming off, and many of the mobile homes that have the roof-overs, the cardboards (ph) for the mobile home, a lot of those are shredding now, and that aluminum is flying through the air.

COOPER: And our information is probably a little bit old, about 30 minutes old by now, but the last time we checked, there were no reports of injuries in the local hospital, which is a very good thing indeed.

MYERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) tornado warnings too, that scare us once in a while. We have these little cells that come through this band, and as the bands come through, individual cells are rotating in that band, so we'll get these tornado warnings. You can't see anything. Not only can you not see out because it's raining, but obviously it's dark. If there is a tornado two blocks away, we couldn't see it.

COOPER: And the winds -- I mean, I am no meteorologist, but it feels like the winds are picking up.

MYERS: Well, I play one on TV, and the winds are picking up.

COOPER: OK.

We're going to try to stay this location as long as we can. There is a very solid building just a few hundred feet from here that we've arranged as a shelter, in case things get really bad.

MYERS: Absolutely. I feel really good about this. I've done enough tornadoes and hurricanes to know that we are in a very safe location. We're 15 feet above sea level. These storms are just not going to be that high where we are here. We just have a lot of wind to deal with.

COOPER: You anticipate the water from the marina coming up on the boardwalk down there?

MYERS: It may come up a little bit, but most of the storm surge is going to be southward, downward, where the eye wall is. That's where the suction is. That's where the low pressure is, and that's where the storm surge will be.

Yes, we will have the water over -- definitely over the sea wall there, no question about it.

COOPER: I think I'm about to -- what is this reading?

MYERS: I can't even see it. Eighty-six.

COOPER: Wow.

MYERS: Eighty-six miles an hour on that gust.

COOPER: Wow.

MYERS: You don't get your hands in the way of those things...

COOPER: I think that's the biggest gust we've had.

MYERS: It is. The strongest gust that we had before was only 74, and now what happened to our protection -- our protected location I'm not sure, but the winds have changed direction. And they will. They will continue to rotate around a little bit, as we get closer and closer to the eye wall.

COOPER: When does it end? I mean, when does it start to slow down? I know that may be an impossible question.

MYERS: Well, I would say probably by 4:00 a.m., we start to see the worst of it, because that's when our location gets as closest to the eye wall as we're going to get.

COOPER: So at 4:00 a.m., we see the worst of it? Or we stop seeing the worst of it?

MYERS: No, the wind will be at its peak at 4:00 a.m.

COOPER: So this isn't the worst of it.

MYERS: Absolutely not. No, we have another 10 or 15 miles an hour to go.

COOPER: How did I get -- how did I get this shift? MYERS: You volunteered.

COOPER: I guess I did. I don't know.

Carol, it's a pretty remarkable scene, and as Chad just said, it's only going to get worse.

LIN: Anderson, good question. Thank you very much for tolerating the winds, for hanging in there. Stay safe. It's not worth risking your life for television. Give our best to Chad. You are looking at Anderson Cooper, Chad Myers in hurricane force winds, officially.

We have much more from the field. We are up and down the coast of Florida, as now Hurricane Frances, the eye wall has officially made landfall.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: All right. Live pictures there. That comes from our affiliate, WPBF, and we believe that shot is in West Palm Beach. That's where they're based, anyhow. And if you look in the lower middle part of your screen there, you can sort of really get a sense of the effect. This is almost kind of like a swaying, balmy breeze in the foreground, but that palm tree really is the tell-tale there, as it is bent over at full 90 degree angle, parallel with the ground, as the eye wall comes ashore in Florida. We got winds pushing 100 miles an hour. Not just yet. Chad Myers is out there with an anomameter (ph). Of course, he's up in Melbourne, and he registered in the 80s.

So those 100 mile an hour winds are being felt right now as we speak in Florida, as the eye of Hurricane Frances at last comes ashore, or aland, if you will.

LIN: Our meteorologist Jacqui Jeras in the CNN weather center. Jacqui, how long does the eye sit in position? How quickly is Frances going to be moving ashore?

JERAS: Frances is still moving very slowly. In fact, we got part of the advisory in early from the 11:00 advisory, and there is a statement on here and a discussion saying that the center of the hurricane should be inland in 12 hours. So we're looking at the eye wall making landfall right now, but the center of this big hole here is going to take 12 hours, and that's just the first half of the storm. You've got to wait for the second half before it moves on.

We saw those pictures from Chad. If we could zoom on up on our Viper up here and take you into Melbourne, where he is. He's not in the eye wall just yet. I mean, to illustrate this, there you can see, this is one of the feeder bands that's moving through. And whenever you get one of these squall lines like this, you're going to get a huge increase in bursts in your wind speed and in your wind gusts.

It's down here, right around Fort Pierce, right around West Palm, where we are seeing the eye wall. If we could move down just a little bit on our radar. There you can see those heavier bands. This is where the worst of the weather is right now, and it's not going to take too long, maybe another three, four, five, six hours before we start to see things quiet down just a little bit.

And as I mentioned, 12 hours. So look at these feeder bands and how slow these are moving. Those of you that are getting clocked right now, it's going to be, you know, almost half a day before you're over and done with the worst of the storm, before you get that second punch. So certainly this is an extremely long event. And when I see something like this, when they say it's going to take 12 hours for the center of that eye -- that is just unbelievable. A very long period of time to be just pummelled with these hurricane force winds, 100 miles per hour.

We're still looking at maximum sustained winds. That is on this advisory already, that they're sticking at 90 knots, which does equate to about 105 miles per hour. Still going to see gusts up to maybe 120, maybe 125 miles per hour. And the hurricane force winds have been extending out about 75 miles from the storm, so that's certainly being felt well inland.

And take a look at those sheets of rain. This is from Fort Pierce, and that is right where that eye wall is coming down right now. You can see those trees just bending over. The wind is just very strong, and you can see that rain absolutely horizontal, and that has got to hurt. Hopefully, we just have that camera shooting out the window, and hopefully everybody is in a safe place at this time, because this is the worst of the storm.

The rainfall totals are not all that impressive as of yet, but we are going to be looking at them to increase. We've had maybe three, four inches around Fort Pierce, and you can expect to see maybe three to six in the next six hours, and then you're going to add on top of that, as you get into that second half. And so we're going to be seeing some flooding. Of course, storm surge is also a very big concern. We're going to be watching for that storm surge to come in with the center, and so that is going to be coming in, and maybe another 12 hours, so we're going to be looking at maybe a different time when that storm surge starts to come in -- Miles. Carol.

LIN: Thanks, Jacqui. Thanks, Jacqui, very much.

Let's go to a couple of people -- actually, one particular person, whom I spoke with just a few weeks ago when he was chasing Hurricane Charley. That is what Jim Reid does. He is a hurricane chaser. He studies these things. He videotapes these things. He lives on them.

This time, he is smack in the middle of Hurricane Frances. He is somewhere between Stewart and West Palm Beach. Jim, can you hear me?

JIM REID, STORM CHASER: Yes, I can.

LIN: Jim, where exactly are you?

REID: That's a really good question. It's so incredibly dark because of the lack of electricity that it's very difficult to get a solid idea of where we are.

LIN: So what are you seeing right now? Because when I -- when you were chasing Hurricane Charley, you videotaped some crazy stuff, and you nearly got yourself killed.

REID: Well, that was a mishap. We've learned a lot from that. And we applied everything that we learned in Charley to Frances. And Frances is a much different storm. And it's had its own challenges today. It's certainly been...

LIN: Share some of them.

REID: ... with a lot of riffs (ph)...

LIN: Share some of them. Jim, share some of them.

REID: What was that?

LIN: Share a challenge with me.

REID: Well, today we actually were on one of the outer banks, one of the outer barrier islands. We were on Hutchinson Island, just east of Fort Pierce, and winds were such that we had to be very careful of storm surge. With Charley, we didn't really have much of a threat with the storm surge. This time, we had high winds and we had a storm surge, which meant we had to be very careful with how we timed things, or we wouldn't be able to get back onto the mainland.

LIN: What do you find most interesting about Frances? What is it that you're trying to learn?

REID: I think right now, personally, I find the duration extremely fascinating. This is a very long hurricane, the longest in my career. It's my 11th, and I've never been in one that lasted this long or taken this long to make landfall.

We are just about, probably about within 20 to 30 minutes of being in the eye, and then we will study what that's like, and take some measurements, do some data collecting.

LIN: Which part of the hurricane anatomy are you most interested in? I would think you'd be most interested in the eye wall, where you can actually study the intensity of the winds.

REID: Absolutely. Our goal for Hurricane Frances, as it was with Hurricane Charley, was to penetrate the northeastern quadrant of the eye wall, which is typically the most violent. If you are well trained as we are, and experienced, you can do it with minimal risk. There still are very high risks involved, don't get me wrong, but with Frances, we're talking about a lot of rain. The winds have been very impressive, in my opinion. I covered Isabel last year, and Frances -- or, I'm sorry, excuse me, Frances seems like an extension of that in terms of the wind.

LIN: It is a massive, massive hurricane. The eye, Jim, so large. All of Hurricane Charley could fit in the eye of Hurricane Frances.

REID: It's great to see people having evacuated, having boarded up. They were very well prepared for this. Law enforcement did an excellent job and is doing an excellent job. We've encountered a number of people on the road, that is law enforcement, that have everything under control. They're doing a great job. And it's very important that people remember to stay home, because there are a lot of electrical power flashes going on right now, and sometimes that's the only way we can see to get around is when we occasionally have these very large, bright green and blue flashes.

LIN: Jim, you got a dangerous job, but I know that you're collecting important data that the National Hurricane Center and others are going to be very interested in.

REID: Thank you.

LIN: Stay safe, do good work, stay in touch. We'll catch up with you, all right?

REID: Thank you very much.

LIN: All right, thanks very much, Jim Reid. Hurricane chaser, what a job.

Much more ahead as now Hurricane Frances beginning to make landfall. Stay right there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Welcome back to our special coverage of Hurricane Frances. I'm Carol Lin at the CNN global headquarters. If you want to see and know what it's like to stand in hurricane force winds, come with us right now as we show you some live pictures, and we're going to take you -- this is -- you're looking at Fort Pierce, this is the basically what is going to be ground zero of Hurricane Frances as the eye of the storm now begins to make landfall. Our Gary Tuchman is on the telephone right now, because it's simply too dangerous to be outside.

Gary, as we look at this live picture, at your location, give me an idea of what's going on around you?

TUCHMAN: Carol, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), intense part of the storm, there is no question about it. We've been watching these winds and these rains come down, track the storm (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Since about 9:30 tonight, we've had the hurricane (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We have 90 miles per hour sustained winds. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). The (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are abandoned. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) headed that way, around there, the intercostal waterway (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Trees have come down. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the west of the city of Fort Pierce.

The city is part of that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that has been (UNINTELLIGIBLE). And the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that have been (UNINTELLIGIBLE) because of the storm. (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

LIN: Gary, Gary, let me interrupt you just for a second because it's very, very difficult to understand you. It sounds like you're talking into your hand. And I can understand why, because of the technology that you have to deal with, in order to communicate with us. Gary, if you can still hear, just point by point, a little more slowly. I heard you say that there were 99 mile per hour winds, sustained, that trees were down. Earlier, you were saying that there were people who were trapped in their homes now regretting that they didn't evacuate, and the police weren't going to be able to do anything for them.

TUCHMAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a little better now.

LIN: Just slightly better, just speak a little bit more slowly.

TUCHMAN: I'm going to speak very slowly. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 90 -- nine, zero...

LIN: Ninety, OK.

TUCHMAN: Sustained winds (UNINTELLIGIBLE). That there are some trees down throughout the city of Fort Pierce, population 39,000, but you wouldn't know anyone lived here tonight. There is nobody out and about. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) police that they are covering (ph) this. We see (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that's the only light, except the TV lights, that's how (UNINTELLIGIBLE). But it's dark, and it's (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and there's water (ph) (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

LIN: All right. Gary, I know it's a dangerous situation out there. Thank you very much for phoning in. It's amazing to see the pictures from his camera position, in the lights and the wind -- the rain is literally horizontal.

O'BRIEN: Just the fact that we were able to even do what we just did...

LIN: Is remarkable.

O'BRIEN: Is pretty remarkable, considering what's going on there.

So we're talking about the eye wall now. And this is the first taste of the eye wall, the back end of the eye wall, we're told, listening to Karl Penhaul, is something to fear even more. But nevertheless, we're talking about 90 mile an hour winds, we're talking about well in the saturation point on the way to perhaps 20 inches of rain. And while it's a category two storm, as opposed to the category four that Charley was three weeks ago, the fact that it is moving so slowly, drenching, causing that big storm surge, may linger for two high tides, and has stricken about a 300-mile swath of the state of Florida, puts this particular storm definitely into the history books.

Now, on the line with us from the Emergency Management Department in St. Lucie County, which is where Fort Pierce is, Fort Pierce being the county seat, county with about 215,000 people, is Donald Daniels. Mr. Daniels, can you hear me?

DONALD DANIELS, ST. LUCIE CO. EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: Yes, how are you doing?

O'BRIEN: All right. First of all, you're safe and sound where you are?

DANIELS: Yeah, we're pretty fortunate. We have our emergency operations center as a large concrete bunker with earth built up around, so we -- and inside, we can't even feel the effects of the storm whatsoever.

O'BRIEN: All right, so you can -- can you see CNN now? Can we see that shot we have? That's a place that is probably familiar to you.

DANIELS: No, I have been unable to. We keep losing the signal.

O'BRIEN: I'm sorry, I didn't hear your answer there.

DANIELS: I've been unable to. We keep losing the signal.

O'BRIEN: Oh, understand. It's down by the waterfront in a new park area. It seems like things are holding up pretty well in that location. Obviously, a lot of swaying palm trees and horizontal, almost rocket-propelled rain coming across the screen. What are you hearing from other people in other parts of the county?

DANIELS: Well, the information we're getting is similar to what you just told me. We're getting in excess of 90 mile an hour sustained winds. We expect it to get up to about 100, 103, five possibly by midnight, and we're also getting gusts in excess of 100 miles an hour. So there are a lot of trees down. They've been uprooted, they're broken. We've got a lot of traffic lights are down everywhere. They're either hanging or on the ground, you know, damage to several buildings. I'm sure there is a lot more, but we've had some reports of some damage down by the waterside to a structure, and also some mobile homes that are situated down in that area.

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