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CNN Live At Daybreak
Hurricane Ivan Sweeps Ashore with Fury
Aired September 16, 2004 - 04:00 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 COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is here. Hurricane Ivan sweeps ashore with a fury. You're looking at David Mattingly in Panama City. He's east of the storm. We'll get to him in a bit.
It is Thursday, September 16.
This is an expanded three hour edition of DAYBREAK.
And good morning to you.
From the CNN Global Headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Carol Costello.
Now in the news, need we say more? Hurricane Ivan. We've got our correspondents in key areas watching the storm. Gary Tuchman is in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where the storm came ashore just a couple of hours ago. Chris Lawrence and Kareen Wynter are in Pensacola, Florida. John Zarrella in New Orleans. Susan Candiotti is in Biloxi, Mississippi. Anderson Cooper and meteorologist Rob Marciano are in Mobile, Alabama. And David Mattingly is covering things for us in Panama City Beach, Florida.
But first, let's head to the forecast center to see where exactly this thing is and how long it's going to stick around -- good morning, Chad.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning.
We finally have a new satellite picture. We have what we call eclipsing in the overnight hours. The sun is actually banging on the satellite and it can't send a signal back down. It actually can't see because it's blinded like you are driving into the sunshine.
Here is the eye itself, though, now moving just to the east of Mobile and just to the west of Pensacola. Anyone that's to the east of this eye is getting hit a lot harder than anyone to the west of this eye, although our Rob Marciano is out there and he's reporting wind gusts over 70 miles per hour now. You get east of that, almost toward Pensacola, and actually you'll have significantly higher wind gusts there.
I want to switch some sources and I want to show you what's going on here on the radar. I was actually going to come over, for my producers and my directors, P.A. number seven. This is where this is coming out of. And this is a significant radar maker here. I can actually zoom into many other spots for you as this moves on by, from Pensacola right on over to Panama City. Let's see if we can't get that satellite picture off there and get either to the weather switcher -- there we go. Now I can actually show you what's going on. Here we go. From Mobile over to Pensacola, I can zoom in. And notice this red band to the west of Pensacola. The red band continues up north and northeast of Mobile and back down around to the back side of Mobile and Mobile, where our two reporters are. I see them standing and getting blowing around in the wind now.
I'll zoom in to where the weather is much worse than that, on the east side, Carol. This severe thunderstorm area here just to the west of Pensacola making significant damage down here along the beach. As I keep going in, the names of the cities will begin to pop in. And I hope you don't recognize them, because if you do, they don't look like they did when you left.
As we keep getting closer and closer and closer, it's Perdido Beach, Perdido Heights and Perdido Key, all the way over to Fort McRae, this area right here. I'll even pan down a little bit for you. Still more storms pounding the shoreline and this shoreline very well may be taking a pounding enough to actually make a cut across that shoreline where that actually would cut that island in half. And sometimes that happens. And, in fact, we actually had a significant cut across parts of the Cape Hatteras area when Isabel went over. This whole thing, that's the area that could be getting the cut right now.
As I pan out for you and zoom back out, you'll be able to see a couple of things here on the radar picture that you probably couldn't see before. We have this spinning around here, a little bit of dry air rotating into the system on this side. There probably is not a southern eye wall. If there was, our Gary Tuchman would be getting it right now, because he is located right there, Gulf Shores.
If anybody gets the eye wall, Gary Tuchman got it this time.
COSTELLO: Well, Chad, we just heard from Gary Tuchman. He said the eye passed over him and things were very calm.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: And very beautiful, in fact.
MYERS: Correct. Now, there is a little piece of the western eye wall rotating around the back side here and it will hit him with some winds, probably maybe 30 to 35 miles per hour, but not some of the numbers that we were seeing before.
Here is a number right here out of just the naval air station south of Pensacola. Winds gusting right now to 98 miles per hour, Carol.
COSTELLO: Unbelievable. You know, just north of Gulf Shores, where Gary Tuchman is, where it's calm now because the eye is there...
MYERS: Right here. Yes? COSTELLO: Yes, let's head to Mobile, Alabama to check in with Anderson Cooper and Rob Marciano, because they're getting blasted by wind right now. What a difference.
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, what a difference a few miles make. You know, often as a little boy I wondered what the eye wall of a hurricane looks like. I now know. This apparently is it. This is what we're in.
MARCIANO: We're in it. We're in the eye wall. I've got to assume now, and Chad can confirm this, that we're starting to slide into the western eye wall, just about 20 minutes ago, and it was really low. And we were in the northwestern eye wall. I'm just glad we're not in the northeastern eye wall, because things are even worse over there.
I've got to estimate the winds here 80, 90 miles an hour sustained, with higher gusts.
We should mention, Carol, that we're protected here. We go about 10 yards that way and we're in it, and we're in it big time. It's way too dangerous to be standing out there.
COOPER: Yes, and what's also interesting, Carol, just a couple hours ago, we were sort of hunched down using that big planter over there as sort of a blockage for safety. As you can see, it's not too safe anymore. The winds just picked it up and knocked it straight over. That's about 600 pounds. That gives you some sense just of how strong these winds are. You know, we can't even step out now 10 feet. We wouldn't even be able to stand in those winds, they're so high.
As you well know, Carol, here in Mobile, thousands of people evacuated over the last 24 hours or so. A lot of people still hunkered down in their homes, trying to ride out this storm.
We've been driving around all night surveying the damage. A lot of drowned trees, a lot of drowned branches. The awning of this hotel ripped right off, this steel awning. It's not wrapped around a tree. There are a number of trees down even here on Water Street.
But we haven't seen the kind of flooding that we feared. It still may come, but that storm surge we had been talking about not going to hit here, as we had thought, because the storm moved a little eastward.
MARCIANO: Yes, we got a favorable track. I mean the fact that it went over Gulf Shores means that it moved east. It means that we're on the western side of this. The greatest storm surges are always in the center and to the east. So we missed it by about 20 or 30 miles, and that's great news, because if it was 20 or 30 miles the other way, we'd be talking about a storm surge of 15, 16, maybe even 18 feet right down here in downtown Mobile.
It will still flood here because of the rain and because of the mild, the more mild surge. But north winds, Anderson, are going to help blow that water out. The eastern side of the bay, though, can't say the same for them. They're going to see a significant surge.
COOPER: Yes, that is certainly bad news for them as well as a lot of people who may be...
COSTELLO: Hey guys? Guys?
COOPER: ... hear breathing a sigh of relief.
Yes, Carol?
COSTELLO: For people who have never been to Mobile, tell us exactly where you are and what it's like. The electricity must be out around you.
COOPER: Yes, well, basically we're in a hotel right on the waterfront in downtown Mobile, Alabama. The Mobile River is just over there. That feeds into Mobile Bay. Mobile, Alabama is about, I don't know, 20 or 30 miles inland. So we're not right on the ocean. So we're somewhere -- we're not on the Gulf. So we're somewhere protected, in that sense.
We're actually father inland than Gary Tuchman, who is on Gulf Shores.
MARCIANO: But the big deal, Carol, kind of like New Orleans. New Orleans is below sea level, but here in Mobile, we're just barely above sea level. Just some of the western suburbs are ooh, 20 feet above sea level. I mean they're on dry ground here. But Mobile, because of that, floods very easily. And on top of that, when any sort of hurricane comes through, storm surge is the major -- the biggest concern. Because a category one storm that makes a direct hit is going to significantly flood this area.
We had a category three landfall not more than two hours ago and luckily it's just passing to our east. So the storm surge shouldn't be nearly as bad.
But the winds certainly damaging. We talked about that. And that's going to continue to pepper this area probably for the next three to four hours.
COSTELLO: Well, I want to head...
COOPER: And, Carol, I think the next hurricane you should come down with us.
COSTELLO: Actually, I would love to. Actually, I've covered hurricanes and it's not very comfortable because there's no place to sleep and it's so eerie because the electricity is out and you start hearing all sorts of things and your mind starts playing tricks on you. Very bizarre.
COOPER: No, it's true.
COSTELLO: But we're going to leave you there for just as second.
We want to travel actually south to Gulf Shores to talk to Gary Tuchman, who experienced the actual eye of the storm -- good morning, Gary.
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning to you, and still experiencing it. For one hour and 20 minutes now, we've had virtually no rain. We have very light winds. And it's now been 80 minutes since this has gone on.
Now, we anticipate any time now for winds to return, but we have heard the good news from Chad that it won't be as bad as it was just before. But literally an hour and a half go, we had 100 mile per hour gusts. And within 10 minutes, it went from those 100 mile per hour gusts to almost nothing. And it really is an amazing part of Mother Nature that you can have that when you have Anderson and Rob, who are 40 miles to my northwest as the crow flies, going through what they're going through, and here we are sitting here where you can just walk around and have a picnic if you wanted to.
But there certainly is a false sense of security. For the first time in 10 hours we've seen some people on the road who are driving. Bad decision, not only because the weather is going to get bad again, but because there are power lines in the streets. There are trees down in the streets. There is serious flooding right now and obviously that is not a good thing to do.
But as of right now, it does appear that as far as the weather goes here where the center of the storm has passed that the worst is over. But there is still some bad stuff to come -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Gary, stay with us.
We're going to bring Chad in to talk about this bizarre phenomenon as far as the eye is concerned.
So for an hour and 20 minutes, Gary has seen no wind, no rain. It's pretty nice outside.
MYERS: That is right. He is actually in the center of the eye itself. And it's a chaser's dream. But unfortunately he also got battered to get there. I'm going to zoom in in
Here a little bit for you.
This is the outer eye wall now that's really hammering extreme eastern, southern Alabama now, moving into the western sections. This line you see right there, that's the line between Alabama and Florida. And Pensacola, obviously, right here, the naval air station down here.
Here is where Gary Tuchman is right here. The entire north side of the eye wall has already passed him and there really isn't much of a south side of the eye wall. It looks like it's trying. It would have tried, if it was over water, to reform an eye wall right here. This part here would have been the part that's actually coming around and around and around and around. So as we zoom you back out, I'm trying to zoom you back out, the entire area begins to circulate around and around and around.
We will go to a different area here. I'm going to switch sources here so that I can show you what's going to happen here. If I can, let's see if I can get you to a different radar -- yes, let's go to this one. I'm going to walk in front of it, Carol, because I can explain it a little bit better.
What we have here, the outer band is on this side. And you can actually see some of the circulation here. The circulation, or actually storms that are circulating, that very well may have tornado warnings on them or, if they don't, they may soon.
Montgomery, you did have a tornado warning on it and your storm right there is still circulating.
Here's another part of the eye wall, another outer band of an eye wall, another inner eye wall and then obviously the one right here that we're obviously so concerned about, that one that actually spins around, the one that does have the 130 mile per hour winds, and, in fact, some of those higher gusts than that, and that's just east of where Gary is. Gary is right in the center right there. And there's no wind where he is because the wind is going around him.
COSTELLO: Well, Gary -- stay with me, Chad.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: Let's go back to Gary.
Gary, you say you see people driving around the streets now. They fear that the worst is over, right?
TUCHMAN: Well, I don't want to make it sound like that everyone has come out of their house and is starting to do some joy riding. We've just seen -- we hadn't seen any cars, Carol, for 10 hours. I mean people have been very compliant. They really got out of Dodge.
So we've seen a couple of cars on the streets for the first time. Obviously, that is not a good move. But it's not like everyone is going out and driving right now. You know, the fact is that most people have left the Alabama coast, knew it was not smart to be here, and the emergency officials are very pleased with the compliance they've had during this hurricane.
COSTELLO: OK, we have someone who lives in Mobile Bay, actually, John McNeil.
He's on the phone with us right now.
He has a home on the west side of Mobile Bay.
And, obviously, John, you have stayed to brave the storm.
Tell us what it's been like. JOHN MCNEIL, MOBILE, ALABAMA RESIDENT: Well, we lost power around 10:00. The -- I forget what time it was I last talked with you all. And one of the comments I made, I said I was hoping it didn't get worse. Well, it's been getting worse. We were thinking it was going to be letting up by now, but it's -- we're hearing a lot of trees hitting the ground. Of course, we can't see what's just around our house.
We're hearing the pine trees mainly. You can hear them snap. It sounds like somebody's snapping their fingers. And then, of course, there's a big thud right after that when it hits the ground.
We're assuming that we're losing a lot of the oak trees and the pecan trees because of all this rain. We didn't have this rain during Frederick in '79, so we didn't -- it was just -- it was devastating. But this, I'm assuming when the sun comes up, we're going to see a lot worse, because this wind has just been relentless and constant.
COSTELLO: I'm sure.
MCNEIL: The noise, the howling of the noise is unbelievable.
COSTELLO: It's very scary, I know. I've experienced that myself.
Tell us about your home and how you fortified it against this hurricane.
MCNEIL: We boarded up. This is literally the first time we've ever boarded up. When we started hearing the reports of, you know, Frederick coming in as a category three and this was coming in as a category four, we thought well, let's board up. And it's a brick home. It's -- we're on Dove River, which, my house is on Dove River about -- we're about 1.2 miles from Mobile Bay, the western shore of Mobile Bay, where Dove River...
COSTELLO: Now, why did you decide to stay? And are you glad you did?
MCNEIL: At this point, we're glad we did. It's -- we're prepared. We've got provisions, generators and fuel and food and chainsaws, three chainsaws. We've got one of my sons here from the University of Alabama. He came down and brought some more provisions. And I've got another son up there who will come in as soon as the storm passes to bring more provisions.
And it -- one reason we stayed is we feel safe in this house. This is a brick house and we're -- it's just it would be a very hard situation to get to the house if we weren't here after the storm passes by because of all the trees that will just -- after seeing what fell with Frederick, it just takes a long time to get here.
COSTELLO: You know, I talk to people all the time who want to brave the storm and they stay and they have no regrets. But, you know, common sense would say oh, why didn't you get out of there? Because, you know, eventually you would have gotten back to your home. MCNEIL: Eventually we would have. But we feel as though the trees that are -- we only have a couple of trees that are of concern. They're that size and that close to the house. But we're -- we feel pretty confident that we'll be OK and we were just, we were very glad to see the hurricane at the last minute take the trek a little bit more to the east so that the tidal surge would not come up Mobile Bay, like we originally thought it would.
COSTELLO: Absolutely.
John McNeil, thank you for joining DAYBREAK this morning.
And you stay safe.
The Red Cross is 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.
This special three hour edition of DAYBREAK will be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: September 12, 1979. Hurricane Frederick swept across the fragile coastal reaches of Alabama and Mississippi. Witnesses say the category three storm leveled parts of Mobile, making it look like a bomb went off. Frederick caused millions of dollars in damage to southern Alabama alone. With the added destruction in Mississippi and parts of Florida, Frederick proved costly, indeed. Damage was more than $2 billion.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Some perspective regarding hurricanes for you. Thirty-six percent of all U.S. hurricanes hit Florida. Seventy-six percent of category four or higher hurricanes have slammed into either Florida or Texas, and about half of the hurricanes to hit the middle Gulf Coast, southern Florida, and, yes, even New York, have been major hurricanes.
At least two people in the Florida Panhandle have been killed by hurricane Ivan. The storm's outer edge spawned a number of tornadoes as it moved across the state.
CNN's David Mattingly joins us now from Panama City Beach, Florida.
And I guess you're 70 to 80 miles now from where the eye is hitting, but I can see the weather, well, it's terrible.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol.
We are seeing gusts well in excess of 60 miles an hour out here, possibly more than 70 miles an hour at times. There are three bridges that link these beaches to the mainland and according to the Panama City Beach police, those bridges are now closed. They closed them when we reach sustained winds of 55 miles per hour. They're very tall bridges in order to allow marine traffic underneath. So it's unsafe for anyone to try and drive over them now. So they've got those bridges closed off.
We've got the wind ripping through here with a lot of rain. It stings when it meets your skin. We've been seeing all kinds of debris going up and down the beach here, 4 x 8 sheets of plywood, 4 x 4 posts, pieces of decking, all kinds of things coming out in this surf.
We rescued this Frisbee just a short time ago. And I'm going to use it to demonstrate what kind of winds we're seeing right now. I'm going to turn my back to you and toss it up. And hopefully we'll be able to follow it for a little bit. Here goes.
COSTELLO: Oh, well I don't think...
MATTINGLY: Probably the strongest Frisbee toss I've ever had. And it's still going. It's still going down there.
COSTELLO: Oh, it's still up in the air?
MATTINGLY: It probably will show up -- no, it's on the ground. But it will probably show up in another state the way the wind is going right now.
But that's just a demonstration of what's going on out here. There is a curfew in effect. People are not allowed outside until the morning. Everyone wondering what the beach is going to look like when they do come out in the morning, because this beach is the bread and butter of this town. People come here to enjoy these beaches by the millions over the years, particularly at spring break, when it's not unusual to see up to 400,000 young people coming here to party.
Of course, this is a dramatically different scene from what they might be used to. Instead of the white sand beaches, we're seeing a lot of white sea foam. Sometimes waves come in here, they look like they're completely covered with shaving cream they're so frothy and whipped up.
But we're keeping an eye out for beach erosion. During hurricane Opal in 1995, large portions of this beach were actually gouged out by the winds and the surf. It doesn't seem to be nearly that severe, but there is still a lot of action on this beach. At times, it looks like there's a river coming this way because of the way the wind is whipping the surf down the beach.
And you can probably just notice how much stronger the rain has gotten in just the last few minutes. We are possibly 100 miles or so from where the eye of this storm made landfall. And, Carol, just look at the conditions here. It just gives you an idea of the magnitude of this hurricane.
COSTELLO: David Mattingly, thank you very much.
We want to go to Chad right now to talk more about the magnitude of this storm, because it's gigantic. What is it, 40 miles across, Chad?
MYERS: Oh, just the eye itself is 40 miles from one side to the other, of course. Now, we have hurricane winds that extend almost 100 miles from the eye itself. Here is the eye here, right over Mobile, the back side of the eye here. Coming into Mobile, the front side, the most dangerous side coming right into the western edge now of Pensacola.
The line between Florida and Alabama really getting hit the hardest now. They have the right side of the eye wall. That's forward motion plus the spin plus the gusts. And a couple of folks have been calling in here and writing in on the e-mail system about their kids in Tallahassee. What are they seeing?
Well, in fact, they're not seeing anything when it comes to the eye wall. But they're seeing one of these outer bands, one of these fingers, as you will, as the whole thing starts to spin around. You get one after another after another. And here's Tallahassee right here. And the sheer marker right here showing some rotation in some of these storms as they move from the southwest on up toward the northeast. And as it does, you can see the motion of this thing just kind of pushes this part this way, this part this way, and a couple of these things have been rotating.
The sheer markers come and go. That just means that once in a while the storms are spinning and sometimes they are not. But we did have a tornado warning earlier for Montgomery, Alabama. And so the spread of this thing now is getting much, much larger. The potential for this storm now to affect so many more people is getting much, much larger.
This is like a very big person now sitting on a very small chair. The bottom kind of spreads out. Now the bottom of this storm is spreading out. The core is not going to be so intense as it moves onshore. But then the winds are actually going to get stronger farther from the storm. And, in fact, it could be 150 miles away where we'll see tropical storm force, 50 mile per hour winds as this thing heads straight on up toward the north and toward the northeast -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Chad, we have an interesting graphic just to demonstrate the size of this storm.
MYERS: OK.
COSTELLO: It's literally the size of Texas. If we could take a look at that graphic right now. There it is right behind you.
MYERS: Sure.
COSTELLO: The other thing I wanted to ask you about are tornadoes. Because I understand several tornadoes have hit the city of Pensacola.
MYERS: Yes. COSTELLO: And, in fact, the most disturbing thing we heard earlier this morning was from the mayor, John Fogg, a tornado actually took a direct hit on a hospital there. We don't know much more information than that, but we're going to try to get the mayor back on the phone. But...
MYERS: Let me explain -- on the radar I can show you kind of what's going on.
COSTELLO: OK.
MYERS: Every time you get a strong cell to rotate around -- you can see them in the yellows here -- there's obviously the reds and the yellows here, but that's the eye itself. And then back out here, the other odds, outer eye wall, it is actually spinning, as well. This whole thing has so much of what we call vorticity to it, so much spin with the whole thing that every time you get a cell that develops along this line, you can get the potential for one of those cells to continue to spin. And that's the one we've been watching here around Tallahassee.
And so we see these spins. Every time we get a new radar picture, there's a different spin. Sometimes one will spin for a long time or it'll only spin for 15 or 20 minutes. When we had Frances move over, the entire central part of Florida was under a tornado warning, just numbers of tornado warnings as these storms spun. And they lined up just like this, Carol, all the way down, all the way down, all the way down. For a time here, I was measuring about 15 or 16, counting the spins here to see how many I could find right now.
This is all the way out. There's one. This is going to move ahead for you. But there was one up here, there's one down here, two down here and then obviously some lightning strikes with them, as well.
So, yes, the potential for the tornadoes not really in the center with the eye, but far away. When you think you're safe, that's where you're actually going to be in terrible with those tornadoes.
COSTELLO: So heed the warning.
MYERS: When you hear the sirens, you know where to go.
COSTELLO: That's right.
Thank you, Chad.
We're going to take a short break.
We'll be back with much more on hurricane Ivan on DAYBREAK.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: September 5, 1996, hurricane Fran howled across North Carolina's Cape Fear. The storm surge from the category three hurricane devastated coastal areas. And Fran's heavy rains generated flooding from the Carolinas to Pennsylvania. The storm's winds damaged homes and buildings from North Carolina to Virginia. When the cost was tallied, Fran did some $3.2 billion in damage.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: In case you're just joining us, hurricane Ivan has, indeed, made landfall in Alabama near Mobile, Alabama, to be exact. The eye is exactly over where Gary Tuchman is standing by right now. And that is Gulf Shores, Alabama.
It's a category three storm and the winds are very strong and the rain is coming down. It's coming down really hard.
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Aired September 16, 2004 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is here. Hurricane Ivan sweeps ashore with a fury. You're looking at David Mattingly in Panama City. He's east of the storm. We'll get to him in a bit.
It is Thursday, September 16.
This is an expanded three hour edition of DAYBREAK.
And good morning to you.
From the CNN Global Headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Carol Costello.
Now in the news, need we say more? Hurricane Ivan. We've got our correspondents in key areas watching the storm. Gary Tuchman is in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where the storm came ashore just a couple of hours ago. Chris Lawrence and Kareen Wynter are in Pensacola, Florida. John Zarrella in New Orleans. Susan Candiotti is in Biloxi, Mississippi. Anderson Cooper and meteorologist Rob Marciano are in Mobile, Alabama. And David Mattingly is covering things for us in Panama City Beach, Florida.
But first, let's head to the forecast center to see where exactly this thing is and how long it's going to stick around -- good morning, Chad.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning.
We finally have a new satellite picture. We have what we call eclipsing in the overnight hours. The sun is actually banging on the satellite and it can't send a signal back down. It actually can't see because it's blinded like you are driving into the sunshine.
Here is the eye itself, though, now moving just to the east of Mobile and just to the west of Pensacola. Anyone that's to the east of this eye is getting hit a lot harder than anyone to the west of this eye, although our Rob Marciano is out there and he's reporting wind gusts over 70 miles per hour now. You get east of that, almost toward Pensacola, and actually you'll have significantly higher wind gusts there.
I want to switch some sources and I want to show you what's going on here on the radar. I was actually going to come over, for my producers and my directors, P.A. number seven. This is where this is coming out of. And this is a significant radar maker here. I can actually zoom into many other spots for you as this moves on by, from Pensacola right on over to Panama City. Let's see if we can't get that satellite picture off there and get either to the weather switcher -- there we go. Now I can actually show you what's going on. Here we go. From Mobile over to Pensacola, I can zoom in. And notice this red band to the west of Pensacola. The red band continues up north and northeast of Mobile and back down around to the back side of Mobile and Mobile, where our two reporters are. I see them standing and getting blowing around in the wind now.
I'll zoom in to where the weather is much worse than that, on the east side, Carol. This severe thunderstorm area here just to the west of Pensacola making significant damage down here along the beach. As I keep going in, the names of the cities will begin to pop in. And I hope you don't recognize them, because if you do, they don't look like they did when you left.
As we keep getting closer and closer and closer, it's Perdido Beach, Perdido Heights and Perdido Key, all the way over to Fort McRae, this area right here. I'll even pan down a little bit for you. Still more storms pounding the shoreline and this shoreline very well may be taking a pounding enough to actually make a cut across that shoreline where that actually would cut that island in half. And sometimes that happens. And, in fact, we actually had a significant cut across parts of the Cape Hatteras area when Isabel went over. This whole thing, that's the area that could be getting the cut right now.
As I pan out for you and zoom back out, you'll be able to see a couple of things here on the radar picture that you probably couldn't see before. We have this spinning around here, a little bit of dry air rotating into the system on this side. There probably is not a southern eye wall. If there was, our Gary Tuchman would be getting it right now, because he is located right there, Gulf Shores.
If anybody gets the eye wall, Gary Tuchman got it this time.
COSTELLO: Well, Chad, we just heard from Gary Tuchman. He said the eye passed over him and things were very calm.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: And very beautiful, in fact.
MYERS: Correct. Now, there is a little piece of the western eye wall rotating around the back side here and it will hit him with some winds, probably maybe 30 to 35 miles per hour, but not some of the numbers that we were seeing before.
Here is a number right here out of just the naval air station south of Pensacola. Winds gusting right now to 98 miles per hour, Carol.
COSTELLO: Unbelievable. You know, just north of Gulf Shores, where Gary Tuchman is, where it's calm now because the eye is there...
MYERS: Right here. Yes? COSTELLO: Yes, let's head to Mobile, Alabama to check in with Anderson Cooper and Rob Marciano, because they're getting blasted by wind right now. What a difference.
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, what a difference a few miles make. You know, often as a little boy I wondered what the eye wall of a hurricane looks like. I now know. This apparently is it. This is what we're in.
MARCIANO: We're in it. We're in the eye wall. I've got to assume now, and Chad can confirm this, that we're starting to slide into the western eye wall, just about 20 minutes ago, and it was really low. And we were in the northwestern eye wall. I'm just glad we're not in the northeastern eye wall, because things are even worse over there.
I've got to estimate the winds here 80, 90 miles an hour sustained, with higher gusts.
We should mention, Carol, that we're protected here. We go about 10 yards that way and we're in it, and we're in it big time. It's way too dangerous to be standing out there.
COOPER: Yes, and what's also interesting, Carol, just a couple hours ago, we were sort of hunched down using that big planter over there as sort of a blockage for safety. As you can see, it's not too safe anymore. The winds just picked it up and knocked it straight over. That's about 600 pounds. That gives you some sense just of how strong these winds are. You know, we can't even step out now 10 feet. We wouldn't even be able to stand in those winds, they're so high.
As you well know, Carol, here in Mobile, thousands of people evacuated over the last 24 hours or so. A lot of people still hunkered down in their homes, trying to ride out this storm.
We've been driving around all night surveying the damage. A lot of drowned trees, a lot of drowned branches. The awning of this hotel ripped right off, this steel awning. It's not wrapped around a tree. There are a number of trees down even here on Water Street.
But we haven't seen the kind of flooding that we feared. It still may come, but that storm surge we had been talking about not going to hit here, as we had thought, because the storm moved a little eastward.
MARCIANO: Yes, we got a favorable track. I mean the fact that it went over Gulf Shores means that it moved east. It means that we're on the western side of this. The greatest storm surges are always in the center and to the east. So we missed it by about 20 or 30 miles, and that's great news, because if it was 20 or 30 miles the other way, we'd be talking about a storm surge of 15, 16, maybe even 18 feet right down here in downtown Mobile.
It will still flood here because of the rain and because of the mild, the more mild surge. But north winds, Anderson, are going to help blow that water out. The eastern side of the bay, though, can't say the same for them. They're going to see a significant surge.
COOPER: Yes, that is certainly bad news for them as well as a lot of people who may be...
COSTELLO: Hey guys? Guys?
COOPER: ... hear breathing a sigh of relief.
Yes, Carol?
COSTELLO: For people who have never been to Mobile, tell us exactly where you are and what it's like. The electricity must be out around you.
COOPER: Yes, well, basically we're in a hotel right on the waterfront in downtown Mobile, Alabama. The Mobile River is just over there. That feeds into Mobile Bay. Mobile, Alabama is about, I don't know, 20 or 30 miles inland. So we're not right on the ocean. So we're somewhere -- we're not on the Gulf. So we're somewhere protected, in that sense.
We're actually father inland than Gary Tuchman, who is on Gulf Shores.
MARCIANO: But the big deal, Carol, kind of like New Orleans. New Orleans is below sea level, but here in Mobile, we're just barely above sea level. Just some of the western suburbs are ooh, 20 feet above sea level. I mean they're on dry ground here. But Mobile, because of that, floods very easily. And on top of that, when any sort of hurricane comes through, storm surge is the major -- the biggest concern. Because a category one storm that makes a direct hit is going to significantly flood this area.
We had a category three landfall not more than two hours ago and luckily it's just passing to our east. So the storm surge shouldn't be nearly as bad.
But the winds certainly damaging. We talked about that. And that's going to continue to pepper this area probably for the next three to four hours.
COSTELLO: Well, I want to head...
COOPER: And, Carol, I think the next hurricane you should come down with us.
COSTELLO: Actually, I would love to. Actually, I've covered hurricanes and it's not very comfortable because there's no place to sleep and it's so eerie because the electricity is out and you start hearing all sorts of things and your mind starts playing tricks on you. Very bizarre.
COOPER: No, it's true.
COSTELLO: But we're going to leave you there for just as second.
We want to travel actually south to Gulf Shores to talk to Gary Tuchman, who experienced the actual eye of the storm -- good morning, Gary.
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning to you, and still experiencing it. For one hour and 20 minutes now, we've had virtually no rain. We have very light winds. And it's now been 80 minutes since this has gone on.
Now, we anticipate any time now for winds to return, but we have heard the good news from Chad that it won't be as bad as it was just before. But literally an hour and a half go, we had 100 mile per hour gusts. And within 10 minutes, it went from those 100 mile per hour gusts to almost nothing. And it really is an amazing part of Mother Nature that you can have that when you have Anderson and Rob, who are 40 miles to my northwest as the crow flies, going through what they're going through, and here we are sitting here where you can just walk around and have a picnic if you wanted to.
But there certainly is a false sense of security. For the first time in 10 hours we've seen some people on the road who are driving. Bad decision, not only because the weather is going to get bad again, but because there are power lines in the streets. There are trees down in the streets. There is serious flooding right now and obviously that is not a good thing to do.
But as of right now, it does appear that as far as the weather goes here where the center of the storm has passed that the worst is over. But there is still some bad stuff to come -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Gary, stay with us.
We're going to bring Chad in to talk about this bizarre phenomenon as far as the eye is concerned.
So for an hour and 20 minutes, Gary has seen no wind, no rain. It's pretty nice outside.
MYERS: That is right. He is actually in the center of the eye itself. And it's a chaser's dream. But unfortunately he also got battered to get there. I'm going to zoom in in
Here a little bit for you.
This is the outer eye wall now that's really hammering extreme eastern, southern Alabama now, moving into the western sections. This line you see right there, that's the line between Alabama and Florida. And Pensacola, obviously, right here, the naval air station down here.
Here is where Gary Tuchman is right here. The entire north side of the eye wall has already passed him and there really isn't much of a south side of the eye wall. It looks like it's trying. It would have tried, if it was over water, to reform an eye wall right here. This part here would have been the part that's actually coming around and around and around and around. So as we zoom you back out, I'm trying to zoom you back out, the entire area begins to circulate around and around and around.
We will go to a different area here. I'm going to switch sources here so that I can show you what's going to happen here. If I can, let's see if I can get you to a different radar -- yes, let's go to this one. I'm going to walk in front of it, Carol, because I can explain it a little bit better.
What we have here, the outer band is on this side. And you can actually see some of the circulation here. The circulation, or actually storms that are circulating, that very well may have tornado warnings on them or, if they don't, they may soon.
Montgomery, you did have a tornado warning on it and your storm right there is still circulating.
Here's another part of the eye wall, another outer band of an eye wall, another inner eye wall and then obviously the one right here that we're obviously so concerned about, that one that actually spins around, the one that does have the 130 mile per hour winds, and, in fact, some of those higher gusts than that, and that's just east of where Gary is. Gary is right in the center right there. And there's no wind where he is because the wind is going around him.
COSTELLO: Well, Gary -- stay with me, Chad.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: Let's go back to Gary.
Gary, you say you see people driving around the streets now. They fear that the worst is over, right?
TUCHMAN: Well, I don't want to make it sound like that everyone has come out of their house and is starting to do some joy riding. We've just seen -- we hadn't seen any cars, Carol, for 10 hours. I mean people have been very compliant. They really got out of Dodge.
So we've seen a couple of cars on the streets for the first time. Obviously, that is not a good move. But it's not like everyone is going out and driving right now. You know, the fact is that most people have left the Alabama coast, knew it was not smart to be here, and the emergency officials are very pleased with the compliance they've had during this hurricane.
COSTELLO: OK, we have someone who lives in Mobile Bay, actually, John McNeil.
He's on the phone with us right now.
He has a home on the west side of Mobile Bay.
And, obviously, John, you have stayed to brave the storm.
Tell us what it's been like. JOHN MCNEIL, MOBILE, ALABAMA RESIDENT: Well, we lost power around 10:00. The -- I forget what time it was I last talked with you all. And one of the comments I made, I said I was hoping it didn't get worse. Well, it's been getting worse. We were thinking it was going to be letting up by now, but it's -- we're hearing a lot of trees hitting the ground. Of course, we can't see what's just around our house.
We're hearing the pine trees mainly. You can hear them snap. It sounds like somebody's snapping their fingers. And then, of course, there's a big thud right after that when it hits the ground.
We're assuming that we're losing a lot of the oak trees and the pecan trees because of all this rain. We didn't have this rain during Frederick in '79, so we didn't -- it was just -- it was devastating. But this, I'm assuming when the sun comes up, we're going to see a lot worse, because this wind has just been relentless and constant.
COSTELLO: I'm sure.
MCNEIL: The noise, the howling of the noise is unbelievable.
COSTELLO: It's very scary, I know. I've experienced that myself.
Tell us about your home and how you fortified it against this hurricane.
MCNEIL: We boarded up. This is literally the first time we've ever boarded up. When we started hearing the reports of, you know, Frederick coming in as a category three and this was coming in as a category four, we thought well, let's board up. And it's a brick home. It's -- we're on Dove River, which, my house is on Dove River about -- we're about 1.2 miles from Mobile Bay, the western shore of Mobile Bay, where Dove River...
COSTELLO: Now, why did you decide to stay? And are you glad you did?
MCNEIL: At this point, we're glad we did. It's -- we're prepared. We've got provisions, generators and fuel and food and chainsaws, three chainsaws. We've got one of my sons here from the University of Alabama. He came down and brought some more provisions. And I've got another son up there who will come in as soon as the storm passes to bring more provisions.
And it -- one reason we stayed is we feel safe in this house. This is a brick house and we're -- it's just it would be a very hard situation to get to the house if we weren't here after the storm passes by because of all the trees that will just -- after seeing what fell with Frederick, it just takes a long time to get here.
COSTELLO: You know, I talk to people all the time who want to brave the storm and they stay and they have no regrets. But, you know, common sense would say oh, why didn't you get out of there? Because, you know, eventually you would have gotten back to your home. MCNEIL: Eventually we would have. But we feel as though the trees that are -- we only have a couple of trees that are of concern. They're that size and that close to the house. But we're -- we feel pretty confident that we'll be OK and we were just, we were very glad to see the hurricane at the last minute take the trek a little bit more to the east so that the tidal surge would not come up Mobile Bay, like we originally thought it would.
COSTELLO: Absolutely.
John McNeil, thank you for joining DAYBREAK this morning.
And you stay safe.
The Red Cross is 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.
This special three hour edition of DAYBREAK will be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: September 12, 1979. Hurricane Frederick swept across the fragile coastal reaches of Alabama and Mississippi. Witnesses say the category three storm leveled parts of Mobile, making it look like a bomb went off. Frederick caused millions of dollars in damage to southern Alabama alone. With the added destruction in Mississippi and parts of Florida, Frederick proved costly, indeed. Damage was more than $2 billion.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Some perspective regarding hurricanes for you. Thirty-six percent of all U.S. hurricanes hit Florida. Seventy-six percent of category four or higher hurricanes have slammed into either Florida or Texas, and about half of the hurricanes to hit the middle Gulf Coast, southern Florida, and, yes, even New York, have been major hurricanes.
At least two people in the Florida Panhandle have been killed by hurricane Ivan. The storm's outer edge spawned a number of tornadoes as it moved across the state.
CNN's David Mattingly joins us now from Panama City Beach, Florida.
And I guess you're 70 to 80 miles now from where the eye is hitting, but I can see the weather, well, it's terrible.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol.
We are seeing gusts well in excess of 60 miles an hour out here, possibly more than 70 miles an hour at times. There are three bridges that link these beaches to the mainland and according to the Panama City Beach police, those bridges are now closed. They closed them when we reach sustained winds of 55 miles per hour. They're very tall bridges in order to allow marine traffic underneath. So it's unsafe for anyone to try and drive over them now. So they've got those bridges closed off.
We've got the wind ripping through here with a lot of rain. It stings when it meets your skin. We've been seeing all kinds of debris going up and down the beach here, 4 x 8 sheets of plywood, 4 x 4 posts, pieces of decking, all kinds of things coming out in this surf.
We rescued this Frisbee just a short time ago. And I'm going to use it to demonstrate what kind of winds we're seeing right now. I'm going to turn my back to you and toss it up. And hopefully we'll be able to follow it for a little bit. Here goes.
COSTELLO: Oh, well I don't think...
MATTINGLY: Probably the strongest Frisbee toss I've ever had. And it's still going. It's still going down there.
COSTELLO: Oh, it's still up in the air?
MATTINGLY: It probably will show up -- no, it's on the ground. But it will probably show up in another state the way the wind is going right now.
But that's just a demonstration of what's going on out here. There is a curfew in effect. People are not allowed outside until the morning. Everyone wondering what the beach is going to look like when they do come out in the morning, because this beach is the bread and butter of this town. People come here to enjoy these beaches by the millions over the years, particularly at spring break, when it's not unusual to see up to 400,000 young people coming here to party.
Of course, this is a dramatically different scene from what they might be used to. Instead of the white sand beaches, we're seeing a lot of white sea foam. Sometimes waves come in here, they look like they're completely covered with shaving cream they're so frothy and whipped up.
But we're keeping an eye out for beach erosion. During hurricane Opal in 1995, large portions of this beach were actually gouged out by the winds and the surf. It doesn't seem to be nearly that severe, but there is still a lot of action on this beach. At times, it looks like there's a river coming this way because of the way the wind is whipping the surf down the beach.
And you can probably just notice how much stronger the rain has gotten in just the last few minutes. We are possibly 100 miles or so from where the eye of this storm made landfall. And, Carol, just look at the conditions here. It just gives you an idea of the magnitude of this hurricane.
COSTELLO: David Mattingly, thank you very much.
We want to go to Chad right now to talk more about the magnitude of this storm, because it's gigantic. What is it, 40 miles across, Chad?
MYERS: Oh, just the eye itself is 40 miles from one side to the other, of course. Now, we have hurricane winds that extend almost 100 miles from the eye itself. Here is the eye here, right over Mobile, the back side of the eye here. Coming into Mobile, the front side, the most dangerous side coming right into the western edge now of Pensacola.
The line between Florida and Alabama really getting hit the hardest now. They have the right side of the eye wall. That's forward motion plus the spin plus the gusts. And a couple of folks have been calling in here and writing in on the e-mail system about their kids in Tallahassee. What are they seeing?
Well, in fact, they're not seeing anything when it comes to the eye wall. But they're seeing one of these outer bands, one of these fingers, as you will, as the whole thing starts to spin around. You get one after another after another. And here's Tallahassee right here. And the sheer marker right here showing some rotation in some of these storms as they move from the southwest on up toward the northeast. And as it does, you can see the motion of this thing just kind of pushes this part this way, this part this way, and a couple of these things have been rotating.
The sheer markers come and go. That just means that once in a while the storms are spinning and sometimes they are not. But we did have a tornado warning earlier for Montgomery, Alabama. And so the spread of this thing now is getting much, much larger. The potential for this storm now to affect so many more people is getting much, much larger.
This is like a very big person now sitting on a very small chair. The bottom kind of spreads out. Now the bottom of this storm is spreading out. The core is not going to be so intense as it moves onshore. But then the winds are actually going to get stronger farther from the storm. And, in fact, it could be 150 miles away where we'll see tropical storm force, 50 mile per hour winds as this thing heads straight on up toward the north and toward the northeast -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Chad, we have an interesting graphic just to demonstrate the size of this storm.
MYERS: OK.
COSTELLO: It's literally the size of Texas. If we could take a look at that graphic right now. There it is right behind you.
MYERS: Sure.
COSTELLO: The other thing I wanted to ask you about are tornadoes. Because I understand several tornadoes have hit the city of Pensacola.
MYERS: Yes. COSTELLO: And, in fact, the most disturbing thing we heard earlier this morning was from the mayor, John Fogg, a tornado actually took a direct hit on a hospital there. We don't know much more information than that, but we're going to try to get the mayor back on the phone. But...
MYERS: Let me explain -- on the radar I can show you kind of what's going on.
COSTELLO: OK.
MYERS: Every time you get a strong cell to rotate around -- you can see them in the yellows here -- there's obviously the reds and the yellows here, but that's the eye itself. And then back out here, the other odds, outer eye wall, it is actually spinning, as well. This whole thing has so much of what we call vorticity to it, so much spin with the whole thing that every time you get a cell that develops along this line, you can get the potential for one of those cells to continue to spin. And that's the one we've been watching here around Tallahassee.
And so we see these spins. Every time we get a new radar picture, there's a different spin. Sometimes one will spin for a long time or it'll only spin for 15 or 20 minutes. When we had Frances move over, the entire central part of Florida was under a tornado warning, just numbers of tornado warnings as these storms spun. And they lined up just like this, Carol, all the way down, all the way down, all the way down. For a time here, I was measuring about 15 or 16, counting the spins here to see how many I could find right now.
This is all the way out. There's one. This is going to move ahead for you. But there was one up here, there's one down here, two down here and then obviously some lightning strikes with them, as well.
So, yes, the potential for the tornadoes not really in the center with the eye, but far away. When you think you're safe, that's where you're actually going to be in terrible with those tornadoes.
COSTELLO: So heed the warning.
MYERS: When you hear the sirens, you know where to go.
COSTELLO: That's right.
Thank you, Chad.
We're going to take a short break.
We'll be back with much more on hurricane Ivan on DAYBREAK.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: September 5, 1996, hurricane Fran howled across North Carolina's Cape Fear. The storm surge from the category three hurricane devastated coastal areas. And Fran's heavy rains generated flooding from the Carolinas to Pennsylvania. The storm's winds damaged homes and buildings from North Carolina to Virginia. When the cost was tallied, Fran did some $3.2 billion in damage.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: In case you're just joining us, hurricane Ivan has, indeed, made landfall in Alabama near Mobile, Alabama, to be exact. The eye is exactly over where Gary Tuchman is standing by right now. And that is Gulf Shores, Alabama.
It's a category three storm and the winds are very strong and the rain is coming down. It's coming down really hard.
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