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CNN Live At Daybreak

Americans Kidnapped; Hurricane Ivan

Aired September 16, 2004 - 05:30   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 COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to continue our rolling live coverage of Hurricane Ivan in just a bit, but we do have some developing news to tell you about out of Iraq this morning. Gunmen have kidnapped two Americans, along with a British citizen, in Iraq. An Iraqi Interior Minister confirms that the three were forced from a residence in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood.
Let's go live to Baghdad now and CNN's Diana Muriel to tell us more.

Good morning.

DIANA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

We're getting more details about this abduction that took place at this residence where the three employees of the al-Khaleej Services Company, which translates in Arabic as the Gulf Services Company, were early this morning.

The attack happened at 6:00 at this villa in the Mansur District on the western bank of the Tigris, a very upscale district of Baghdad, as you say. It seems from the witness of a neighbor, a 60-year-old woman who lives adjacent to the villa, that the night guard that is supposes to have shown up last night did not show up. And that one of the men who was abducted came out of the house to turn the generator on early in the morning at around 6:00. That's when the attack happened.

There were 11 abductors traveling in two vehicles. One was a minivan and one was a sedan car, six in one and five in the car. The six went into the building and took the men. The five stayed outside acting as a lookout. No shots were fired. All the men were dressed in civilian clothes. They took the three hostages, one British citizen and two American citizens. They also took a Nissan car that was parked outside the buildings at that time.

Now police have told us that there was some weapons found in the house, but they believe that those weapons belonged to the company, the al-Khaleej Company, and weren't left behind by the abductors.

And the police officer, of course, expressing surprise that there was no one on guard there at that house. It seems, according to this neighbor, that there was one guard posted for day duty and one guard posted for night duty. And that night duty guard never showed up last night and wasn't there this morning when the men were abducted -- Carol. COSTELLO: So it just seems like it was very planned, a planned operation. It just seems so unsafe, though, to live in a house in residential Baghdad with just one guard in the day and one guard at night.

MURIEL: Well, as you say, this was not an opportune hostage taking. This was a planned operation. Similar, not quite as large in scale, as the one that we saw where the two Italian aid workers, the two female aid workers, were abducted just over a week ago here in central Baghdad.

Again, a very clear operation, they knew what time the -- it seems that they knew what time the man was going to come out and turn the generator on. It was a pattern that had been established at that particular residence. And, as you say, it is very unsafe.

There is only limited security available here in Baghdad. The international zone, where the U.S. Embassy is based, as well as other embassies, and the interim Iraqi national government has its headquarters, is relatively safe. But I use that term advisedly, Carol. There is very, very -- there is nowhere here in Baghdad that you can really describe as safe.

COSTELLO: We understand. Diana Muriel, live in Baghdad this morning, thank you.

Again, two Americans and a British citizen kidnapped in Baghdad.

Our coverage of Hurricane Ivan continues now. In case you are just joining us, Ivan came ashore at about 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time. It came ashore at Gulf Shores, Alabama, packing winds of up to 130 miles per hour.

Bill Hemmer is about 40 miles north of Gulf Shores in Mobile, Alabama. He joins us live now.

Good morning -- Bill.

BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol, hello again.

About north and west, in fact. Behind me is the Mobile River on the other side of that is the Mobile Bay. And then you go to the southeast is where you find Gulf Shores, right along the water on the northern edge of the Gulf Coast.

Just got off the phone with the mayor's office. He was up all night. He says 190,000 people without power right now in Mobile, which seems like a pretty low number, Carol, considering what we're going through at this point. But when you consider also there are only 250,000 people living in this city, puts you right around 75, 80 percent of the people now without power.

Amazingly enough, Carol, our hotel, our location here still has electricity. In fact, it never went out throughout the entire night. In fact, we still have that cable signal here, too. I talked with a couple residents across the street who rode out the storm in a local bar called Beats (ph). They say it doesn't surprise them. They say they have been through many, many storms in this part of the county and the power hasn't gone out in more than 10 years. That's a good sign.

Another good sign, down on the street, Carol, we talked about this 30 minutes ago, that storm surge that everybody talked about, that flooding that was a strong possibility, has not accumulated, at least in this part of Mobile, which is a very good sign for all the homes and the businesses down here.

The flip-side of that is this, there are very, very strong winds. It really just pounded this city for six, seven, eight hours throughout the night last night into the early morning hours, taking down large trees. A number of signs have been blown down. The street lamps, really thick steel, Carol, just knocked off at the core, slammed down to the asphalt. There's going to be a major cleanup process here in Mobile, Alabama.

City officials also say they are well into the millions of dollars of damage. That number could go higher than that. But considering all that, Carol, they believe their city came through this storm OK. The other good news about this, no reported fatalities, at least in this city today, and that is certainly a good sign as well.

Gusting winds, a little bit here and there, Carol, but again, we're still on that western edge of the eye. We expect the backside of this storm to come through maybe within the next hour. Things should kick up again at that point, but we'll wait and see until we get there -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, thank you, Bill. Bill Hemmer live in Mobile, Alabama.

We want to head south to where the storm actually made landfall, and that would be in Gulf Shores, Alabama. That's where Gary Tuchman is right now, and he joins us live.

Doesn't look good there -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, we are getting the backside of the storm right now. And unlike where Bill is, we have no cable, we have no electricity. As a matter of fact, most of the 140,000 people who live in this county near the Gulf Shores area are without electricity. Very few have it, according to emergency operations officials.

We have been standing out in the torrential rain now for most of the last 14 hours. The only part of the last 14 hours where we haven't had heavy rain was for an hour and 20 minutes, between 2:50 a.m. Eastern Time and 4:10 a.m. Eastern Time, when the eye of this hurricane passed over us.

And all of a sudden went from 100 mile per hour gusts to completely calm winds, the rain stopped and it was exactly like they explained the eye should be. It was just completely calm outside. It was like (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We felt like we were inside a grocery store or a shopping mall, like being indoors.

And then as soon -- almost as quickly as it stopped, it started again. And that was about an hour and 40 minutes ago where the winds picked up again but from a whole different direction. The winds are now coming from behind me, the south moving north. Before, for the hours before that, they were coming from the east to the west.

So we are dealing now in this county with a lot of flooding, with a lot of trees and power lines down. And on the Barrier Islands behind me, Gulf Shores Beach, which has been evacuated all day today, we are being told by emergency officials there is serious flooding and serious damage.

We also want to update you on the situation we told you about earlier, a woman going into premature labor, being brought to the hospital, could not make it to the hospital. Picked up in a military vehicle, brought to the emergency operation center. We are told, as of now, she is at the emergency operation center with qualified medical personnel. But as of now, she has not had her baby.

Carol, back to you.

COSTELLO: Yes, and just to make clear once again, because that's such a fascinating story to me, this poor, pregnant woman, she was not in the ordered evacuation area, right?

TUCHMAN: We believe she was not in the ordered evacuation area. For the people in this county there are no shelters, that's the important point. They advise everyone to go as far north as they can, that it wasn't safe to have any shelters in this county and therefore unsafe and at your own risk (ph). They told everyone south of Interstate 10, which is where we are, mandatory evacuation, north of Interstate 10, another part of this county, not mandatory evacuations. We believe she was from the area where there is a voluntary evacuation.

COSTELLO: All right, Gary Tuchman. He is in Gulf Shores, Alabama where the storm hit. That's where the eye of the storm passed over. And as Gary said, it was eerily calm there for a short period of time. And then, as you can see now, it's pretty darn nasty there.

I want to go through some of the damage reports that we've accumulated in the past couple of hours here on CNN. Bill Hemmer just told us in Mobile, Alabama, 190,000 people without power. He talked to a couple of guys who actually rode out this storm at a bar who were doing just fine. Not much of a storm surge in Mobile and water really hasn't accumulated on the streets, and that certainly is good news.

Jim Reed, we have him on the phone. He's a veteran storm chaser who has had more than his share of activity in the past few weeks in Florida. He joins us now on the trail of Hurricane Ivan.

Where exactly are you?

JIM REED, STORM CHASER: Well right now we're in Mobile, Alabama.

COSTELLO: What's going on there? Tell us about that from your perspective.

REED: OK, I can tell you that just in the last half-hour we did cross over the bridge on Interstate 10 heading west. It was extremely windy. We proceeded very carefully. The tunnel is closed, as expected. We were able to come back around to where we are based, but the power is out. Some of the lights are down. So not a good time to get back out yet. We were simply trying to get back to our base of operations.

COSTELLO: Yes, I can't believe you went over a bridge.

REED: Well we have done this before very carefully. And we know from doing it in steps whether or not it's safe to proceed. And if we had determined that it was simply too windy, we would have stopped and turned around, I assure you.

COSTELLO: That just sounds so frightening to me. We talked to Bill Hemmer just a short time ago, he said that people were surprised that there wasn't more flooding.

REED: We were too, a little bit. You had to be very careful because there were dry stretches, followed by roads that were completely submerged by anywhere from three to maybe six or nine inches of water. So there is water standing on some of the roads in the Mobile area on at least the east side.

COSTELLO: And what about the winds and the damage the winds have caused?

REED: Well we actually rode out the hurricane. We intercepted the northeast quadrant in the Loxley area, I believe it was. If you'll give me a second here, I'll just double check real quick. And we did experience winds in excess of 100 miles an hour. We were forced to take shelter and to document the storm from our shelter position.

And I can tell you that in that area, and I believe it's just north of -- I believe it's called Foley, if I'm not mistaken, we did witness a number of fairly large uprooted trees. There is some structural damage. A lot of awnings over at gas stations. Just, you know, a lot of wind damage that you would associate with a powerful hurricane.

COSTELLO: Yes, we're getting a lot of e-mails into CNN about people who have loved ones in Mobile, Alabama, or at least have property there, and they are very concerned about that right now. Is it pretty much a ghost town there now?

REED: It is very much a ghost town right now, and for good reason. We are only -- we are no longer on the road, I might add, but we were only on the road in an effort to get back to our base where we have equipment and we can actually increase our safety. But it is -- we may have encountered one vehicle in the 45 minutes to an hour that we were out on the road.

COSTELLO: That's actually a very good thing. So where do you go from here -- storm chaser Jim?

REED: My goodness, I'm really hoping nature gives all of us a break. This has been an extraordinary season. And quite frankly, we have learned so much and collected so much data that we need time to digest it all and process it all. And I'm just praying for everyone that the season ends as soon as possible.

COSTELLO: I hope so, too. Good luck to you, Jim Reed, storm chaser.

REED: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Joining us -- joining DAYBREAK this morning.

We've been hearing a lot of reports of damage in Florida, too, and I just want to run down some of the reports that we've been getting the past several hours. Okaloosa (ph) County, Florida, in the Fort Walton Beach area, we talked to the mayor. We also talked to an emergency management officer there. That's located between Pensacola and Panama City.

There are reports of homes destroyed, businesses destroyed, 77,000 people without electricity. The streets, some of them anyway, literally underwater. In fact, the emergency management officer told us she wanted people to stay inside their homes until noon tomorrow, because you never know what's under the water on those streets. It could be live electrical lines. There could be a sinkhole underneath the streets and you would literally be sucked into that. So they want people to stay off of flooded streets. Stay in your homes.

Let's see, there's also a 24-hour citizen line that they have. And most citizens are calling in that their roofs have come off and they want people to come out and help them. But no emergency crews are working right now, because it's just too dangerous, so people will have to do as best they can on their own.

Gulf Breeze, Florida, city manager Buzz Eddy called in, no electricity there, no water. In fact, if the water comes on again, he's urging people to boil it before they drink it. He says there are streets underwater there. And he said it's been worse than expected and that he's talking about the storm surge and the tornadoes there.

In fact, speaking of tornadoes, there have been tornado warnings all over the place, at least in that area.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Yes.

COSTELLO: Here's Chad to tell us more about them.

MYERS: Yes, these are getting a little bit old now, but that's OK, I'm going to read them to you now. The northwestern Jefferson County, northeastern Leon County, that's in Florida, and also western Russell County, those are all under tornado warnings. As that comes out, we'll definitely let you know.

You can see all the red counties here in Alabama and also into Florida, the entire area in a tornado watch box, Carol. If you're in that area, you just need to know that the potential for tornadoes exists all night. If you hear the sirens, just get into that interior room or get in the basement, if you have one.

Back to you.

COSTELLO: You know, Chad, I'm just going to pull up our e-mails here...

MYERS: Yes.

COSTELLO: ... because a lot of people have questions about where their loved ones live or their property. And some of the loved ones have not left Florida, so.

MYERS: Sure.

COSTELLO: Perdido Key, Florida, you have any information about that?

MYERS: Hit very hard. Probably Charleyesque (ph) damage. The hardest hit area of the storm so far Perdido Key, which is here is Mobile, here is Pensacola, Perdido Key right there. And you get to Orange Beach, you get to Perdido itself.

You can zoom in, yes, go ahead. I see the little guy zooming in there.

That entire area was hit by this really strong outer rain band, the right side of the eyewall. Winds were there to at least 130 to 140 miles per hour. Keep right on going. You keep getting closer and closer and closer, Perdido will actually show up.

Here's Gulf Shores, that's where the eye actually went over. Keep going, you'll find it as you get closer and closer and closer. Here is Perdido Beach, down south Perdido Key. That really is what, I hate to use the term, but that is ground zero for the hurricane. I hope they evacuated, because that key does not look anything like it did earlier today.

COSTELLO: So there you go, Matthew (ph).

Here is another one. This is from Carol (ph). Dolphin Island, Orange Beach, Alabama.

MYERS: Same idea. Orange Beach right here, took the eyewall itself. It took part of the northwest and northeastern side of the eyewall as it moved on by. So the winds were actually from this direction rather than a straight on like Perdido Beach took it. The entire island, though, is going to be devastated, Carol. Most of the structures are going to have some type of damage, if not catastrophic damage on all of these Barrier Islands. This is not all that far, you could drive from Orange Beach all the way over to Perdido Key in probably even six minutes in traffic. So this is really the area that got hit the hardest all the way over to Pensacola.

Pensacola, you got hit just as hard as well, and there's a lot of people over there in not as strong as structures. Most of the people that build structures along the shore build them expensive, they build them nice, they build them on stilts.

Well, Pensacola, you get an awful lot of people that are just living there. And there's obviously a naval air station base there as well, and that took winds to about 120. Where Perdido and Gulf Shores took winds, east of Gulf Shores, I'll say that, Perdido Beach probably took winds to about 130 to 135, which is the same wind speed that you got with Charley.

COSTELLO: Yes, it's good you mentioned Pensacola, because Karen (ph) is from the Pensacola area and she was asking specifically about the airport there. We don't know exactly what's happening there. But we did talk to the mayor of Pensacola two hours ago now, wouldn't you say -- Chad?

MYERS: Yes, probably.

COSTELLO: Yes, Mayor John Fogg. He said a tornado went...

MYERS: That's where the storm surge went. This is where the storm surge went into Pensacola Bay.

COSTELLO: Well tornadoes were spawned by the storm and a couple of tornadoes.

MYERS: There was.

COSTELLO: One of them hit a hospital. In fact, the mayor said the hospital took a direct hit. We don't know which hospital it is though.

MYERS: Right.

COSTELLO: We're trying to get the mayor back on the phone. We sent him searching for more information. And as you might imagine, it's very difficult to get information out of Florida right now. But he said that tornado hit the hospital and it also damaged the civic center. And the civic center is where they were sending people to safety. It was a shelter.

MYERS: Yes, you know that happens sometimes where you think you're sending someplace, and without that tornado, nothing would have happened to that shelter. It would have been fine, but part of the roof is obviously off of it now.

COSTELLO: Yes, the people have moved to the center, so it's a big place.

MYERS: Yes.

COSTELLO: So we think that everybody is OK in that shelter.

Thank you, Chad, we'll get back to you.

MYERS: All right.

COSTELLO: The Red Cross standing by to move into the areas affected by Hurricane Ivan. If you want to help the Red Cross with your donations, please call 1-800-HELP-NOW. That's 1-800-HELP-NOW.

More on Hurricane Ivan when DAYBREAK returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Some perspective about hurricanes for you now. The practice of giving female names to hurricanes began during World War II after the publication in 1941 of the novel "Storm" by George Stewart. In 1979, male names were added to the list of Atlantic hurricanes. Government forecasters have predicted as many as four major hurricanes this season.

But let's talk about Hurricane Ivan right now. It is pounding the Gulf Coast of the United States, especially along Alabama and along Florida.

Susan Candiotti is in Biloxi, Mississippi where there is some flooding reported.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. However, people here are far more fortunate than those to the east because it turns out that this area is on the weaker end of the storm. We do report a lot of power outages and a lot of flooding that was expected to flood these low lying areas here, especially those that are on the back bay of Biloxi and Gulfport.

We can report to you that there are indeed downed power lines. There is debris in some of the roads. However, I just spoke with civil defense officials and they report that Highway 90, that probably a lot of people are familiar with that runs along the Gulf Coast, is passable, at the very least between Interstate 110 and Highway 49, which is a major north-south route. So that's very good news for a lot of people.

However, about half of Mississippi Power's customers, and it services the southern end of the state, have lost their power. That's about 50,000 customers, most of them in Jackson County, which is of course east of here and closer to the Mississippi-Alabama border.

I did speak just a short time ago with someone who rode out the storm. He is the CEO of a hotel casino, a floating casino, and he stayed across the road in the hotel. He has not yet had a chance to see where there is any flooding. He is hopeful that the casino is all right. He is one of the customers that lost power, so, but he did have an uneventful night, as he put it. Now shelters, we understand, very fortunately there have been no injuries either in shelters or have been reported to civil defense officials anyone living in businesses or residences. They have had reports of fire, some roof damage, but other than that, they seem to have done fairly well so far.

From time to time, Carol, we get an increase in rain. And I'm hearing the forecasters are predicting a lot of that, at least through half this day before things start to clear up. And of course damage assessment teams will be anxious to get out there when the sun comes up. And there will be a briefing in less than an hour now, internal briefing with the civil defense people, to get a damage report, what they are hearing from the overnight hours -- Carol.

COSTELLO: You know, Susan, I was wondering about those floating casinos, so they can't just like sail away away from the storm.

CANDIOTTI: Well of course they have got moorings and they have got strong, you know, ropes and other ways to keep them in place. And they did go through this back in Hurricane Jorge. When I was back here in 1998, some of those casinos did in fact suffer some damage. This one that's shaped like a pirate ship broke away from its moorings and they suffered a lot of damage. So this can happen. They're hopeful it doesn't happen again. But of course they are supposed to be secured. They know that they are in a hurricane prone area and so they are all anxious to see how everyone made out.

COSTELLO: Susan Candiotti, live from Biloxi, Mississippi this morning, thank you.

Let's head to the Forecast Center now and check in with Chad. He's got new tornado warnings to tell you about.

MYERS: Yes, one more, Carol, for actually for the city of Tuskegee, Macon County in southeastern Alabama. I can zoom in here for you. You can see Tuskegee. There's rotation back out here. There was rotation in here earlier. And I can zoom in a little bit farther for you.

This is what's going to happen now. We are kind of -- we're in between what is clear skies on up in northern Georgia and the eye down across parts of Alabama and western Florida, the Panhandle of Florida. And in between here, I'll zoom out for you, we get these lines, just they are lines of cells, and there is actually more than one. But every time that we get a new line developing, we're going to be able to zoom in here and show you a strong squall.

Well at times those squalls, like this one here, are going to begin to spin. And that spin is what the weather service will begin to put out tornado warnings. And in fact, they may put out quite a few of them before the night is over or the morning is over, depending on if you're just getting up or just going to sleep.

COSTELLO: Thank you, Chad.

The governor of Alabama says his state has never seen a storm the size of Hurricane Ivan. He's asked President Bush to declare much of the state a federal disaster area. But the worst could still be ahead for Alabama, you know, with all the rain.

CNN's Anderson Cooper is in Mobile. Here is what he has seen so far this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): But the hope here though is that people have been prepared, they have evacuated or tonight they are hunkered down, because this storm is coming and it is coming on fast.

I thought it was bad two hours ago, I thought it was bad an hour ago, it gets worse and worse and worse.

It's very almost difficult to stand at times. You really have to push yourself into the wind. And I'm parallel to the wind. If I turn perpendicular, at this point it would -- I'm not sure I could actually even stand up. It is getting very nasty out here very fast.

Definitely think the winds are a little bit stronger right now. Well I got the video, oh man, I got some video to show you.

Two homes catching fire. Authorities did respond to it. There were fire trucks on the scene. We don't have any word on any injuries. We hope those homes had been evacuated. Most of the homes, a lot of the homes here have been evacuated already. There are a lot of police out on the streets. They are afraid of looting. But at this point, it's hard to imagine anyone looting in this kind of temperature and this kind of wind.

Yes, OK, this is a big gust right there.

We're in a pretty secure location, believe it or not. I know the picture is probably pretty bad. I know my mom is probably watching, she's not all that thrilled, but it's actually, we're very safe. We took a long time to pick this location, and so we feel pretty good about it. As long as the satellite truck stays upright, we're going to try to stay on the air.

I'll kind of look around and see if CNN brought a boat, because it looks like, or I hope it doesn't happen, but it looks like we're going to have some difficulty just getting around tomorrow.

One has to feel for the people who are living through it, but to see Mother Nature at its full force is it makes you feel very insignificant, I've got to tell you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: That is for sure. Anderson is out of the storm right now. Things are a little better in Mobile, Alabama at this time.

Stay with us for our continuing coverage of Hurricane Ivan. The category 3 storm moves on land. We'll have much more for you in the next hour of DAYBREAK.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired September 16, 2004 - 05:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to continue our rolling live coverage of Hurricane Ivan in just a bit, but we do have some developing news to tell you about out of Iraq this morning. Gunmen have kidnapped two Americans, along with a British citizen, in Iraq. An Iraqi Interior Minister confirms that the three were forced from a residence in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood.
Let's go live to Baghdad now and CNN's Diana Muriel to tell us more.

Good morning.

DIANA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

We're getting more details about this abduction that took place at this residence where the three employees of the al-Khaleej Services Company, which translates in Arabic as the Gulf Services Company, were early this morning.

The attack happened at 6:00 at this villa in the Mansur District on the western bank of the Tigris, a very upscale district of Baghdad, as you say. It seems from the witness of a neighbor, a 60-year-old woman who lives adjacent to the villa, that the night guard that is supposes to have shown up last night did not show up. And that one of the men who was abducted came out of the house to turn the generator on early in the morning at around 6:00. That's when the attack happened.

There were 11 abductors traveling in two vehicles. One was a minivan and one was a sedan car, six in one and five in the car. The six went into the building and took the men. The five stayed outside acting as a lookout. No shots were fired. All the men were dressed in civilian clothes. They took the three hostages, one British citizen and two American citizens. They also took a Nissan car that was parked outside the buildings at that time.

Now police have told us that there was some weapons found in the house, but they believe that those weapons belonged to the company, the al-Khaleej Company, and weren't left behind by the abductors.

And the police officer, of course, expressing surprise that there was no one on guard there at that house. It seems, according to this neighbor, that there was one guard posted for day duty and one guard posted for night duty. And that night duty guard never showed up last night and wasn't there this morning when the men were abducted -- Carol. COSTELLO: So it just seems like it was very planned, a planned operation. It just seems so unsafe, though, to live in a house in residential Baghdad with just one guard in the day and one guard at night.

MURIEL: Well, as you say, this was not an opportune hostage taking. This was a planned operation. Similar, not quite as large in scale, as the one that we saw where the two Italian aid workers, the two female aid workers, were abducted just over a week ago here in central Baghdad.

Again, a very clear operation, they knew what time the -- it seems that they knew what time the man was going to come out and turn the generator on. It was a pattern that had been established at that particular residence. And, as you say, it is very unsafe.

There is only limited security available here in Baghdad. The international zone, where the U.S. Embassy is based, as well as other embassies, and the interim Iraqi national government has its headquarters, is relatively safe. But I use that term advisedly, Carol. There is very, very -- there is nowhere here in Baghdad that you can really describe as safe.

COSTELLO: We understand. Diana Muriel, live in Baghdad this morning, thank you.

Again, two Americans and a British citizen kidnapped in Baghdad.

Our coverage of Hurricane Ivan continues now. In case you are just joining us, Ivan came ashore at about 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time. It came ashore at Gulf Shores, Alabama, packing winds of up to 130 miles per hour.

Bill Hemmer is about 40 miles north of Gulf Shores in Mobile, Alabama. He joins us live now.

Good morning -- Bill.

BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol, hello again.

About north and west, in fact. Behind me is the Mobile River on the other side of that is the Mobile Bay. And then you go to the southeast is where you find Gulf Shores, right along the water on the northern edge of the Gulf Coast.

Just got off the phone with the mayor's office. He was up all night. He says 190,000 people without power right now in Mobile, which seems like a pretty low number, Carol, considering what we're going through at this point. But when you consider also there are only 250,000 people living in this city, puts you right around 75, 80 percent of the people now without power.

Amazingly enough, Carol, our hotel, our location here still has electricity. In fact, it never went out throughout the entire night. In fact, we still have that cable signal here, too. I talked with a couple residents across the street who rode out the storm in a local bar called Beats (ph). They say it doesn't surprise them. They say they have been through many, many storms in this part of the county and the power hasn't gone out in more than 10 years. That's a good sign.

Another good sign, down on the street, Carol, we talked about this 30 minutes ago, that storm surge that everybody talked about, that flooding that was a strong possibility, has not accumulated, at least in this part of Mobile, which is a very good sign for all the homes and the businesses down here.

The flip-side of that is this, there are very, very strong winds. It really just pounded this city for six, seven, eight hours throughout the night last night into the early morning hours, taking down large trees. A number of signs have been blown down. The street lamps, really thick steel, Carol, just knocked off at the core, slammed down to the asphalt. There's going to be a major cleanup process here in Mobile, Alabama.

City officials also say they are well into the millions of dollars of damage. That number could go higher than that. But considering all that, Carol, they believe their city came through this storm OK. The other good news about this, no reported fatalities, at least in this city today, and that is certainly a good sign as well.

Gusting winds, a little bit here and there, Carol, but again, we're still on that western edge of the eye. We expect the backside of this storm to come through maybe within the next hour. Things should kick up again at that point, but we'll wait and see until we get there -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, thank you, Bill. Bill Hemmer live in Mobile, Alabama.

We want to head south to where the storm actually made landfall, and that would be in Gulf Shores, Alabama. That's where Gary Tuchman is right now, and he joins us live.

Doesn't look good there -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, we are getting the backside of the storm right now. And unlike where Bill is, we have no cable, we have no electricity. As a matter of fact, most of the 140,000 people who live in this county near the Gulf Shores area are without electricity. Very few have it, according to emergency operations officials.

We have been standing out in the torrential rain now for most of the last 14 hours. The only part of the last 14 hours where we haven't had heavy rain was for an hour and 20 minutes, between 2:50 a.m. Eastern Time and 4:10 a.m. Eastern Time, when the eye of this hurricane passed over us.

And all of a sudden went from 100 mile per hour gusts to completely calm winds, the rain stopped and it was exactly like they explained the eye should be. It was just completely calm outside. It was like (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We felt like we were inside a grocery store or a shopping mall, like being indoors.

And then as soon -- almost as quickly as it stopped, it started again. And that was about an hour and 40 minutes ago where the winds picked up again but from a whole different direction. The winds are now coming from behind me, the south moving north. Before, for the hours before that, they were coming from the east to the west.

So we are dealing now in this county with a lot of flooding, with a lot of trees and power lines down. And on the Barrier Islands behind me, Gulf Shores Beach, which has been evacuated all day today, we are being told by emergency officials there is serious flooding and serious damage.

We also want to update you on the situation we told you about earlier, a woman going into premature labor, being brought to the hospital, could not make it to the hospital. Picked up in a military vehicle, brought to the emergency operation center. We are told, as of now, she is at the emergency operation center with qualified medical personnel. But as of now, she has not had her baby.

Carol, back to you.

COSTELLO: Yes, and just to make clear once again, because that's such a fascinating story to me, this poor, pregnant woman, she was not in the ordered evacuation area, right?

TUCHMAN: We believe she was not in the ordered evacuation area. For the people in this county there are no shelters, that's the important point. They advise everyone to go as far north as they can, that it wasn't safe to have any shelters in this county and therefore unsafe and at your own risk (ph). They told everyone south of Interstate 10, which is where we are, mandatory evacuation, north of Interstate 10, another part of this county, not mandatory evacuations. We believe she was from the area where there is a voluntary evacuation.

COSTELLO: All right, Gary Tuchman. He is in Gulf Shores, Alabama where the storm hit. That's where the eye of the storm passed over. And as Gary said, it was eerily calm there for a short period of time. And then, as you can see now, it's pretty darn nasty there.

I want to go through some of the damage reports that we've accumulated in the past couple of hours here on CNN. Bill Hemmer just told us in Mobile, Alabama, 190,000 people without power. He talked to a couple of guys who actually rode out this storm at a bar who were doing just fine. Not much of a storm surge in Mobile and water really hasn't accumulated on the streets, and that certainly is good news.

Jim Reed, we have him on the phone. He's a veteran storm chaser who has had more than his share of activity in the past few weeks in Florida. He joins us now on the trail of Hurricane Ivan.

Where exactly are you?

JIM REED, STORM CHASER: Well right now we're in Mobile, Alabama.

COSTELLO: What's going on there? Tell us about that from your perspective.

REED: OK, I can tell you that just in the last half-hour we did cross over the bridge on Interstate 10 heading west. It was extremely windy. We proceeded very carefully. The tunnel is closed, as expected. We were able to come back around to where we are based, but the power is out. Some of the lights are down. So not a good time to get back out yet. We were simply trying to get back to our base of operations.

COSTELLO: Yes, I can't believe you went over a bridge.

REED: Well we have done this before very carefully. And we know from doing it in steps whether or not it's safe to proceed. And if we had determined that it was simply too windy, we would have stopped and turned around, I assure you.

COSTELLO: That just sounds so frightening to me. We talked to Bill Hemmer just a short time ago, he said that people were surprised that there wasn't more flooding.

REED: We were too, a little bit. You had to be very careful because there were dry stretches, followed by roads that were completely submerged by anywhere from three to maybe six or nine inches of water. So there is water standing on some of the roads in the Mobile area on at least the east side.

COSTELLO: And what about the winds and the damage the winds have caused?

REED: Well we actually rode out the hurricane. We intercepted the northeast quadrant in the Loxley area, I believe it was. If you'll give me a second here, I'll just double check real quick. And we did experience winds in excess of 100 miles an hour. We were forced to take shelter and to document the storm from our shelter position.

And I can tell you that in that area, and I believe it's just north of -- I believe it's called Foley, if I'm not mistaken, we did witness a number of fairly large uprooted trees. There is some structural damage. A lot of awnings over at gas stations. Just, you know, a lot of wind damage that you would associate with a powerful hurricane.

COSTELLO: Yes, we're getting a lot of e-mails into CNN about people who have loved ones in Mobile, Alabama, or at least have property there, and they are very concerned about that right now. Is it pretty much a ghost town there now?

REED: It is very much a ghost town right now, and for good reason. We are only -- we are no longer on the road, I might add, but we were only on the road in an effort to get back to our base where we have equipment and we can actually increase our safety. But it is -- we may have encountered one vehicle in the 45 minutes to an hour that we were out on the road.

COSTELLO: That's actually a very good thing. So where do you go from here -- storm chaser Jim?

REED: My goodness, I'm really hoping nature gives all of us a break. This has been an extraordinary season. And quite frankly, we have learned so much and collected so much data that we need time to digest it all and process it all. And I'm just praying for everyone that the season ends as soon as possible.

COSTELLO: I hope so, too. Good luck to you, Jim Reed, storm chaser.

REED: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Joining us -- joining DAYBREAK this morning.

We've been hearing a lot of reports of damage in Florida, too, and I just want to run down some of the reports that we've been getting the past several hours. Okaloosa (ph) County, Florida, in the Fort Walton Beach area, we talked to the mayor. We also talked to an emergency management officer there. That's located between Pensacola and Panama City.

There are reports of homes destroyed, businesses destroyed, 77,000 people without electricity. The streets, some of them anyway, literally underwater. In fact, the emergency management officer told us she wanted people to stay inside their homes until noon tomorrow, because you never know what's under the water on those streets. It could be live electrical lines. There could be a sinkhole underneath the streets and you would literally be sucked into that. So they want people to stay off of flooded streets. Stay in your homes.

Let's see, there's also a 24-hour citizen line that they have. And most citizens are calling in that their roofs have come off and they want people to come out and help them. But no emergency crews are working right now, because it's just too dangerous, so people will have to do as best they can on their own.

Gulf Breeze, Florida, city manager Buzz Eddy called in, no electricity there, no water. In fact, if the water comes on again, he's urging people to boil it before they drink it. He says there are streets underwater there. And he said it's been worse than expected and that he's talking about the storm surge and the tornadoes there.

In fact, speaking of tornadoes, there have been tornado warnings all over the place, at least in that area.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Yes.

COSTELLO: Here's Chad to tell us more about them.

MYERS: Yes, these are getting a little bit old now, but that's OK, I'm going to read them to you now. The northwestern Jefferson County, northeastern Leon County, that's in Florida, and also western Russell County, those are all under tornado warnings. As that comes out, we'll definitely let you know.

You can see all the red counties here in Alabama and also into Florida, the entire area in a tornado watch box, Carol. If you're in that area, you just need to know that the potential for tornadoes exists all night. If you hear the sirens, just get into that interior room or get in the basement, if you have one.

Back to you.

COSTELLO: You know, Chad, I'm just going to pull up our e-mails here...

MYERS: Yes.

COSTELLO: ... because a lot of people have questions about where their loved ones live or their property. And some of the loved ones have not left Florida, so.

MYERS: Sure.

COSTELLO: Perdido Key, Florida, you have any information about that?

MYERS: Hit very hard. Probably Charleyesque (ph) damage. The hardest hit area of the storm so far Perdido Key, which is here is Mobile, here is Pensacola, Perdido Key right there. And you get to Orange Beach, you get to Perdido itself.

You can zoom in, yes, go ahead. I see the little guy zooming in there.

That entire area was hit by this really strong outer rain band, the right side of the eyewall. Winds were there to at least 130 to 140 miles per hour. Keep right on going. You keep getting closer and closer and closer, Perdido will actually show up.

Here's Gulf Shores, that's where the eye actually went over. Keep going, you'll find it as you get closer and closer and closer. Here is Perdido Beach, down south Perdido Key. That really is what, I hate to use the term, but that is ground zero for the hurricane. I hope they evacuated, because that key does not look anything like it did earlier today.

COSTELLO: So there you go, Matthew (ph).

Here is another one. This is from Carol (ph). Dolphin Island, Orange Beach, Alabama.

MYERS: Same idea. Orange Beach right here, took the eyewall itself. It took part of the northwest and northeastern side of the eyewall as it moved on by. So the winds were actually from this direction rather than a straight on like Perdido Beach took it. The entire island, though, is going to be devastated, Carol. Most of the structures are going to have some type of damage, if not catastrophic damage on all of these Barrier Islands. This is not all that far, you could drive from Orange Beach all the way over to Perdido Key in probably even six minutes in traffic. So this is really the area that got hit the hardest all the way over to Pensacola.

Pensacola, you got hit just as hard as well, and there's a lot of people over there in not as strong as structures. Most of the people that build structures along the shore build them expensive, they build them nice, they build them on stilts.

Well, Pensacola, you get an awful lot of people that are just living there. And there's obviously a naval air station base there as well, and that took winds to about 120. Where Perdido and Gulf Shores took winds, east of Gulf Shores, I'll say that, Perdido Beach probably took winds to about 130 to 135, which is the same wind speed that you got with Charley.

COSTELLO: Yes, it's good you mentioned Pensacola, because Karen (ph) is from the Pensacola area and she was asking specifically about the airport there. We don't know exactly what's happening there. But we did talk to the mayor of Pensacola two hours ago now, wouldn't you say -- Chad?

MYERS: Yes, probably.

COSTELLO: Yes, Mayor John Fogg. He said a tornado went...

MYERS: That's where the storm surge went. This is where the storm surge went into Pensacola Bay.

COSTELLO: Well tornadoes were spawned by the storm and a couple of tornadoes.

MYERS: There was.

COSTELLO: One of them hit a hospital. In fact, the mayor said the hospital took a direct hit. We don't know which hospital it is though.

MYERS: Right.

COSTELLO: We're trying to get the mayor back on the phone. We sent him searching for more information. And as you might imagine, it's very difficult to get information out of Florida right now. But he said that tornado hit the hospital and it also damaged the civic center. And the civic center is where they were sending people to safety. It was a shelter.

MYERS: Yes, you know that happens sometimes where you think you're sending someplace, and without that tornado, nothing would have happened to that shelter. It would have been fine, but part of the roof is obviously off of it now.

COSTELLO: Yes, the people have moved to the center, so it's a big place.

MYERS: Yes.

COSTELLO: So we think that everybody is OK in that shelter.

Thank you, Chad, we'll get back to you.

MYERS: All right.

COSTELLO: The Red Cross standing by to move into the areas affected by Hurricane Ivan. If you want to help the Red Cross with your donations, please call 1-800-HELP-NOW. That's 1-800-HELP-NOW.

More on Hurricane Ivan when DAYBREAK returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Some perspective about hurricanes for you now. The practice of giving female names to hurricanes began during World War II after the publication in 1941 of the novel "Storm" by George Stewart. In 1979, male names were added to the list of Atlantic hurricanes. Government forecasters have predicted as many as four major hurricanes this season.

But let's talk about Hurricane Ivan right now. It is pounding the Gulf Coast of the United States, especially along Alabama and along Florida.

Susan Candiotti is in Biloxi, Mississippi where there is some flooding reported.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. However, people here are far more fortunate than those to the east because it turns out that this area is on the weaker end of the storm. We do report a lot of power outages and a lot of flooding that was expected to flood these low lying areas here, especially those that are on the back bay of Biloxi and Gulfport.

We can report to you that there are indeed downed power lines. There is debris in some of the roads. However, I just spoke with civil defense officials and they report that Highway 90, that probably a lot of people are familiar with that runs along the Gulf Coast, is passable, at the very least between Interstate 110 and Highway 49, which is a major north-south route. So that's very good news for a lot of people.

However, about half of Mississippi Power's customers, and it services the southern end of the state, have lost their power. That's about 50,000 customers, most of them in Jackson County, which is of course east of here and closer to the Mississippi-Alabama border.

I did speak just a short time ago with someone who rode out the storm. He is the CEO of a hotel casino, a floating casino, and he stayed across the road in the hotel. He has not yet had a chance to see where there is any flooding. He is hopeful that the casino is all right. He is one of the customers that lost power, so, but he did have an uneventful night, as he put it. Now shelters, we understand, very fortunately there have been no injuries either in shelters or have been reported to civil defense officials anyone living in businesses or residences. They have had reports of fire, some roof damage, but other than that, they seem to have done fairly well so far.

From time to time, Carol, we get an increase in rain. And I'm hearing the forecasters are predicting a lot of that, at least through half this day before things start to clear up. And of course damage assessment teams will be anxious to get out there when the sun comes up. And there will be a briefing in less than an hour now, internal briefing with the civil defense people, to get a damage report, what they are hearing from the overnight hours -- Carol.

COSTELLO: You know, Susan, I was wondering about those floating casinos, so they can't just like sail away away from the storm.

CANDIOTTI: Well of course they have got moorings and they have got strong, you know, ropes and other ways to keep them in place. And they did go through this back in Hurricane Jorge. When I was back here in 1998, some of those casinos did in fact suffer some damage. This one that's shaped like a pirate ship broke away from its moorings and they suffered a lot of damage. So this can happen. They're hopeful it doesn't happen again. But of course they are supposed to be secured. They know that they are in a hurricane prone area and so they are all anxious to see how everyone made out.

COSTELLO: Susan Candiotti, live from Biloxi, Mississippi this morning, thank you.

Let's head to the Forecast Center now and check in with Chad. He's got new tornado warnings to tell you about.

MYERS: Yes, one more, Carol, for actually for the city of Tuskegee, Macon County in southeastern Alabama. I can zoom in here for you. You can see Tuskegee. There's rotation back out here. There was rotation in here earlier. And I can zoom in a little bit farther for you.

This is what's going to happen now. We are kind of -- we're in between what is clear skies on up in northern Georgia and the eye down across parts of Alabama and western Florida, the Panhandle of Florida. And in between here, I'll zoom out for you, we get these lines, just they are lines of cells, and there is actually more than one. But every time that we get a new line developing, we're going to be able to zoom in here and show you a strong squall.

Well at times those squalls, like this one here, are going to begin to spin. And that spin is what the weather service will begin to put out tornado warnings. And in fact, they may put out quite a few of them before the night is over or the morning is over, depending on if you're just getting up or just going to sleep.

COSTELLO: Thank you, Chad.

The governor of Alabama says his state has never seen a storm the size of Hurricane Ivan. He's asked President Bush to declare much of the state a federal disaster area. But the worst could still be ahead for Alabama, you know, with all the rain.

CNN's Anderson Cooper is in Mobile. Here is what he has seen so far this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): But the hope here though is that people have been prepared, they have evacuated or tonight they are hunkered down, because this storm is coming and it is coming on fast.

I thought it was bad two hours ago, I thought it was bad an hour ago, it gets worse and worse and worse.

It's very almost difficult to stand at times. You really have to push yourself into the wind. And I'm parallel to the wind. If I turn perpendicular, at this point it would -- I'm not sure I could actually even stand up. It is getting very nasty out here very fast.

Definitely think the winds are a little bit stronger right now. Well I got the video, oh man, I got some video to show you.

Two homes catching fire. Authorities did respond to it. There were fire trucks on the scene. We don't have any word on any injuries. We hope those homes had been evacuated. Most of the homes, a lot of the homes here have been evacuated already. There are a lot of police out on the streets. They are afraid of looting. But at this point, it's hard to imagine anyone looting in this kind of temperature and this kind of wind.

Yes, OK, this is a big gust right there.

We're in a pretty secure location, believe it or not. I know the picture is probably pretty bad. I know my mom is probably watching, she's not all that thrilled, but it's actually, we're very safe. We took a long time to pick this location, and so we feel pretty good about it. As long as the satellite truck stays upright, we're going to try to stay on the air.

I'll kind of look around and see if CNN brought a boat, because it looks like, or I hope it doesn't happen, but it looks like we're going to have some difficulty just getting around tomorrow.

One has to feel for the people who are living through it, but to see Mother Nature at its full force is it makes you feel very insignificant, I've got to tell you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: That is for sure. Anderson is out of the storm right now. Things are a little better in Mobile, Alabama at this time.

Stay with us for our continuing coverage of Hurricane Ivan. The category 3 storm moves on land. We'll have much more for you in the next hour of DAYBREAK.

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