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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Special Hurricane Edition

Aired November 25, 2004 - 19:00   ET

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

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


CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Carol Lin at the CNN Center.
President Bush worked the phones this holiday, phoning up soldiers from around the world in different war zones. No surprise trips like last year, when he went to Iraq. We're told the Bushes are having leftovers today at their Texas ranch. They laid out the full Thanksgiving dinner yesterday for their guests, the king and queen of Spain.

And U.S. and Iraqi authorities released photos today of what they say is a laboratory used to make chemicals. A Pentagon official confirmed to CNN that instructions for making anthrax, explosives, and blood agents were also found inside the Falluja facility. They are investigating.

And now on to Orelon Sidney's holiday forecast.

(WEATHER FORECAST)

LIN: And have you seen this man? Or actually sponge? His name is Bob, his pants are square, and he's missing. Someone swiped a six- foot-tall Spongebob from the roof of a burger joint in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. And it's not an isolated incident. We are hearing of sponge-nappings also in Utah and Minnesota. All pineapples under the sea have been searched.

That's the news this hour. "ANDERSON COOPER 360" begins right now. Keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news.

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: I'm Anderson Cooper in Punta Gorda, Florida.

It was a season like no other, defying predictions, destroying homes and dreams. A special hurricane edition of 360 starts now.

Deadly winds from storm after storm.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's what you call a disaster area.

COOPER: Waking from a real-life nightmare in Hurricane Alley.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just want to forget it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Try to move on.

COOPER: How do you start over after nature's fury turns your world completely upside down? Bulldozed buildings, bulldozed jobs. When the big one hits, how do you pick up the pieces without putting your employees out of work?

Tracking the killer storms. We go 360 with our meteorologist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our job was to get that word out that a cat four making landfall is going to do an awful lot of damage.

COOPER: Are these hurricanes nature's warning? And are more violent hurricane seasons on the way?

Squall lines erode the poverty lines, with defenseless thousands losing their footing. We'll focus on the struggle to help those who suffered the deadliest toll.

And muzzling the marauding storms.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sea band radar...

COOPER: A look at what's being done to tackle this most powerful foe.

ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360, Hurricanes 2004.

COOPER: The waters off Punta Gorda are calm now. They're serene. It's hard to imagine that just a couple of months ago, the eye of Hurricane Charley came roaring up this river.

Charley hit Florida hard. But then came Hurricane Frances, and then Hurricane Ivan, and Hurricane Jeanne. Not exactly the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, but four hurricanes in less than two months devastated parts of this state. Lives were lost, and many more lives were forever changed.

Charley hit Punta Gorda, Florida, on August 13. Frances came next, striking the east coast on September 4. Ivan followed close behind, slamming into Gulf shores, Alabama, on September 16. And then there was Jeanne, September 25, hitting Stewart, Florida.

In the next hour, we'll take you back into the eyes of the storms. You'll feel their power. You'll see the devastation they've left behind. And you'll hear from scientists about what, if anything, they can do in the future to stop hurricanes before they hit.

We have a team of correspondents deployed around the state of Florida, Gary Tuchman in Vero Beach, Gerri Willis in Orlando, and John Zarrella in Punta Gorda.

The season's first hurricane, Alex, just skimmed the North Carolina coast on August 3. But 10 days later came Charley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): Two thousand and four was definitely a hurricane season for the record books. Millions of Florida residents ordered to evacuate an unprecedented four times.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody was expecting this.

COOPER: The relentless series of hurricanes devastated the Caribbean with unmerciful violence. And in their wake, a relief effort the scope of which has rarely been seen. It started with Hurricane Charley. Many were caught off guard by its erratic movements.

ORELON SIDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Breaking news for us, because we are now reporting that this is a category four storm.

COOPER: A last-minute turn sent Charley plunging into Punta Gorda with 145-mile-an-hour winds.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's indescribable. You just pray that the wind drops, because we don't seem like we could have taken another five minutes.

COOPER: Charley barreled up Florida's west coast, ravaging homes and citrus groves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've never been so scared in my life.

COOPER: It pushed north, killing 31 people.

Just three weeks later, Hurricane Frances put residents on the road again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This thing is just so, so very large, winds at 145 miles per hour. It's almost the entire size of Texas.

COOPER (on camera): It's going to be a long night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is probably about as bad as we've seen it.

COOPER (voice-over): Frances took aim at Florida's east coast, making landfall near Sewell's (ph) Point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just got back after five months in Baghdad, Iraq, and I thought that was a problem, getting shot at. And today I wish I was back in Baghdad. I tell you, the nightmare's only about to begin for everybody.

COOPER: The nightmare lingered. Once ashore, Frances's slow movement caused flooding and extensive damage as it crawled across the peninsula.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was long. It was the longest one I've ever gone through, and I've gone through quite a few.

COOPER: Adding to its deadly toll, Frances made landfall a second time as a tropical storm on the panhandle, churned up the eastern seaboard, spinning out tornadoes, claiming 33 lives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's another storm on the horizon. It is Hurricane Ivan.

COOPER: Coastal residents could barely catch their breath and buy supplies when, just 11 days later, Ivan came into view. The storm was intense and wobbly, losing strength, regaining it, then losing it again. Ivan was still a category four when it slammed into Gulf Shores, Alabama, on September 16. Hurricane-force winds once again hammered Florida's panhandle at 165 miles an hour.

GOV. JEB BUSH (R), FLORIDA: This was a devastating storm, as was projected. My heart goes out to the people that have lost a lot, because there will be extensive damage. And some loss of life, sadly.

COOPER: Ivan proved terrible indeed. Forty-three people were killed.

Nine days later, there was Jeanne. Florida residents, already weary from storm after storm, weathered yet another. Jeanne wasn't as powerful as its predecessors, but it was still a hurricane. Ground zero, Stewart, Florida, just miles from where Frances struck.

(on camera): And it's obviously very hard to stand. Our equipment keeps breaking down. The cameras keep getting water inside them.

Whoa!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At this point in time, it is hard to stand up. Remember you asked me -- you asked me about 20 miles an hour ago, when is it going to be very hard to do this? And I said about 100. And this is pretty darn close.

COOPER (voice-over): Jeanne's path of destruction, an eerie echo of the earlier storm, layering more damage on the already bruised and battered landscape, killing six people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's no way that you can replace these things, ever.

GOV. JEB BUSH: This state will not only survive, it will rebound. We will be stronger, and we will be better because of what we've gone through.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: If you go to the areas hit hard by the hurricanes, it's easy to see the destroyed buildings and destroyed homes. But if you spend any time in those areas, you'll also find something less visible, uncertainty, the uncertainty that comes with having to start over.

Gary Tuchman has that side of the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The wrath of Hurricane Frances, the fury of Hurricane Jeanne, two powerful storms that, against all odds, hit land at the exact same place on Florida's east coast.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The roof came off like a can of sardines with a key, rolled off. And we paid somebody to come and screw it back down the day or -- the day before Jeanne hit, creating those holes...

TUCHMAN: And when Jeanne hit Carol Taylor's home, the place where she and her husband, Don, planned to spend the rest of their lives, the destruction was complete. The house was totaled.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was the absolute culmination of our life. It was everything.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we don't have enough insurance monies coming to replace the loss.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nope. This is no good.

TUCHMAN: The Taylors live in Vero Beach, Florida, 10 miles from the ocean, in a development called Lakewood Village, where almost every one of the 320 homes suffered some damage, and about 40 of the homes were total losses.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You walk around and you hear people saying, Well, we don't want to forget this, we're going to have a T-shirt made up of, you know, Hurricane 2004. Who in their right mind would want to remember something like this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just want to forget it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Forget it. Try to move on to something that we don't even know what it's going to be yet.

TUCHMAN: Weeks after the hurricanes, the Taylors had not yet seen a dime of insurance money.

(on camera): The people who live here in Lakewood Village come from all over the United States and Canada. They move here for a fresh start. They move here to retire. They move here to pursue the Florida dream, which, this summer in this community, turned into a real-life nightmare.

(voice-over): This is what many of the living-room ceilings look like in Lakewood Village.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That was the floor.

TUCHMAN: Janet Huntley's home is another one of the uninhabitable ones.

JANET HUNTLEY, LAKEWOOD VILLAGE RESIDENT: Haven't seen an insurance adjuster.

TUCHMAN: She is staying in an RV with her husband, Al, with the hope that eventual insurance money covers the costs of a new home in Lakewood Village. HUNTLEY: I can cry at the drop of a hat. And I never -- I used to be able to control my emotions. When I worked, I was an executive secretary, and you know, you just didn't show, you had nerves of steel. Well, now they're like jelly. And if somebody says something to me that just hits me the wrong way, I cry. And I not cry, I sob.

TUCHMAN (on camera): Now, you come up to the back of your house, and you see a portion of the house right there that doesn't look like it's part of your house.

BOB EBERLING, LAKEWOOD VILLAGE RESIDENT: No, it isn't.

TUCHMAN: What is that over there?

EBERLING: That's the roof to someone else's house.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Bob Eberling's house was bought by his father two decades ago.

EBERLING: I'm just glad he's not alive today to see it. I just think he'd be devastated. I mean, he took such pride in this house and took such good care of it. And in one night, it's completely destroyed.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Nancy Davis, like virtually everybody here, evacuated before both storms. Hurricane Frances caused significant damage to her modest home. Hurricane Jeanne finished it off.

NANCY DAVIS, LAKEWOOD VILLAGE RESIDENT: And it took a while to sink in that I had no home left.

TUCHMAN: Carol and Don Taylor are temporarily living in an RV while they plan their move back to Massachusetts, where they will live with family members, their Florida dream about to conclude.

(on camera): You've got to be very grateful that you have each other.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes. Yes. That's the only thing that really...

TUCHMAN (voice-over): For the Taylors, and for so many others, this hurricane season changed everything.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, Vero Beach, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: More than 1 million people in the state of Florida alone have already signed up for federal disaster aid in the wake of the hurricanes. And that doesn't even include all the businesses hit hard by the storms. We'll have their story coming up next.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm John Zarrella in Punta Gorda. Hurricane Charley altered the landscape here forever. But it could not destroy one businesswoman's will to rebuild.

COOPER: Also ahead, why was this hurricane season so severe? And is it a sign of what's to come? We'll get some answers from the experts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was just devastating.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were you scared?

DAVID MYERS, IT METEOROLOGIST: It touches you in a way that you probably -- you wouldn't get looking at a radar screen back here in Atlanta. You only get to be touched like that if you're down on the scene.

Obviously a very emotional time. But, I mean, how long did it last?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, for (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

MYERS: Those were not tears of pain. Those were tears of joy that they made it.

All of a sudden from behind me I hear this, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" And this woman is running through the courtyard. Didn't even know if she was alive or not.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, you're alive.

MYERS: It was an amazing moment. And then it was one story like that after another, after another, of human, literally human survival, where when you see it on a radar, it's just a big red circle with a hole in the middle. But when you get down there, and you realize that people had to live through that, it was just one really touching moment after another.

COOPER: They're rebuilding an apartment complex destroyed by Hurricane Charley.

You could say that we all got hit by the hurricanes this year. We all had to pay higher gas and produce prices because of the storms. But there's no doubt that people here in Florida got hit the hardest. Thousands of businesses were destroyed, and right now the rush is on to rebuild.

John Zarrella has that side of the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA (voice-over): The view from the window of the Spago Day Spa in Punta Gorda is telling. Before Friday, August 13, there was a laundry across the street, a strip mall down to the left, a service station was right over there.

Now, except for the piles of rubble and the heavy machinery removing the remains of the bulldozed buildings, there is an unobscured view across an open lot.

Given what she's seen around her, Caroline Boesmans knows she's lucky.

CAROLINE BOESMANS, OWNER, SPAGO DAY SPA: We're going to put you in the rope today.

ZARRELLA: But for Boesmans, who owns Spago, there is no escape from Charley's aftermath.

BOESMANS: It's just, you cannot believe what you're seeing or what you're going through. Every day is a struggle.

ZARRELLA: A struggle that began in the immediate days after the storm. Boesmans, with the help of her employees, began cleaning up what was left. The 50-year-old building that housed her hairstyling salon was leveled. There was nothing left but the shell.

(on camera): But this brand-new addition, open less than a year and home to the day spa, was virtually untouched. And less than two weeks after Charley, Boesmans was already making room in the day spa for the hairstylists.

(voice-over): To keep her employees and her customers, Boesmans had to reopen quickly.

BOESMANS: And so it's not a physical demolition that can stop you. You have those people that rely on you as well for their employment, as well as for the services. And no, you just need to do this.

ZARRELLA: The price has been steep. Boesmans was underinsured. She lost a quarter of a million dollars. A loan from the SBA, Small Business Administration, has kept her going. Reconstruction of the old building is under way. Eleven of her 16 employees are still here, and back to work.

And making customers like Carol Kerlucker look good is cathartic.

CAROL KERLUCKER, CUSTOMER: I think the depression's lifting a little bit, but I think at first the depression was horrible.

ZARRELLA: Everyone who came in had a story to tell.

SUE REDMOND, STYLIST, SPAGO DAY SPA: You almost felt like you were doing a community service, because of the way people left, and you could just see that -- oh, you know, that they just got to talk about it.

ZARRELLA: Slowly, business is coming back, and slowly, life is returning.

REDMOND: Three weeks ago, I was at this stoplight, and I heard birds chirping. And, you know, it's something that you don't really notice when it's happening all the time. But you notice it when it's back and it was gone. And I thought, Oh, I haven't heard that sound in a long time.

ZARRELLA: Time. It came to a stop on the afternoon of August 13, and it will be a long time still before the people here are whole again.

John Zarrella, CNN, Punta Gorda, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Do you ever wonder what's behind the upsurge in these storms? Are they a violent side effect of global warming, or are there other factors at work here?

We asked CNN meteorologist Chad Myers to investigate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Without a doubt, wild, wicked weather defines the 2004 hurricane season. With 14 named storms and six major hurricanes, this has been one of the most intense and deadly seasons on record.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa!

MYERS: But why was this year so extreme?

Scientists found that several factors were to blame for creating the perfect storm season. They say a warm Atlantic Ocean, low wind shear, and irregular rainfall patterns, combined with powerful currents, steered a record number of storms toward land.

Experts say that coastal residents should brace themselves. Stormy weather like this may be around for a while. They say the tropics are in a very active phase in this current storm cycle, a climatic condition characterized by more or less severe hurricane seasons. And this one packed a punch.

PHILIP KLOTZBACH, RESEARCHER, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY: It looks in general that probably the next 10 to 15 years, most of them are probably going to be active years.

MYERS: Although experts admit they don't have all the answers.

Researchers at Colorado State University have worked for over two decades to fine-tune the science of storm forecasting. They compare historic storm data, sea surface temperatures, and other records to current data, and try to predict how long a cycle will last, and how busy a storm season will be.

They found that the 19 named storms that defined the 1995 Atlantic hurricane season whipped through the warmest ocean temperatures on record. That hot event was the start of a very active phase in the current storm cycle, marked by stronger, longer, and more frequent storms than decades past.

KLOTZBACH: The seasons have tended to be fairly active since 1995. The activity this year was somewhat even above that.

MYERS: Florida was the first state in over a century to be hit by four hurricanes in one season. Scientists say they've never seen so many storms hit the same place so fast in recorded history. They blame the high hurricane activity and irregular wind currents for sending so many storms to the state.

And this storm season broke records. Ivan became the longest- lasting major hurricane in over a century. It stayed active for 22 days. Hurricane Frances caused the largest evacuation in Florida history, with over 3 million forced to flee. And with over $20 billion insured losses so far, 2004 stands to be the most expensive hurricane season in U.S. history.

Chad Myers, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: This year's hurricane damage to Florida is only part of the story.

JOHN SOLOMON, CARE INTERNATIONAL: The destruction there was really devastating. I've never seen such destruction before.

COOPER: When we come back, the devastating toll on the Caribbean.

ANNOUNCER: September 8, 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history ravaged Galveston, Texas. The category four hurricane had no name, but would forever be known as the Great Storm. One out of every six Galveston residents -- some 8,000 men, women, and children -- died. The hurricane's 150-mile-an-hour winds completely wiped out 12 blocks of Galveston, destroying nearly three-quarters of the island city.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNEY: I'm at McGill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, to meet up with an elite class of weather warriors, those who hunt hurricanes.

But once you get kind of your bearings, it's absolutely amazing, because it's like taking the picture out of the book and sitting on it, and actually looking down on it.

What we actually did was fly the periphery of the storm and drop instrument packages in order to gain data for the hurricane center's model.

What surprised me is that as you looked out on the horizon, you could actually see the rain bands kind of curving in towards the center. I had a panoramic view of the whole thing. It was absolutely incredible once the sun came up. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing.

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Lucia Newman in Havana, Cuba. When Hurricane Charley hit this island back in August with hurricane winds exceeding 100 miles an hour, Cuba was ready. More than 200,000 people had already been evacuated, and although there were four deaths, many here are still counting their blessings.

But many other Caribbean nations were not as fortunate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NEWMAN: (voice-over): In a devastating six-week period, Charley, Ivan, Frances, and Jeanne wreaked havoc across the Atlantic and took the lives of thousands in the region.

This costly killer season tore apart homes and shattered lives with record-breaking intensity.

SOLOMON: The destruction there was really devastating. I've never seen such destruction before.

NEWMAN: From Grenada to Jamaica and Cuba to the Dominican Republic, island nations were hit with intense winds and massive flooding.

But nowhere was rocked as powerfully as Haiti, which suffered devastating mud slides, the government saying thousands killed and over a quarter of a million homeless. Experts say it could take many months or even years for some nations to recover.

SOLOMON: People are destitute, homeless. They've lost livestock. So that's going to have a big impact. Agriculture lands have been destroyed. So it will take a long time for them to get back to their original lives, you see.

NEWMAN: Throughout the Caribbean, residents struggled to clean up from one storm before another major force blew ashore. And so far, the costs of this catastrophe have gone through the roof.

TIM GALLAGHER, USAID: Well, I think it was a very difficult situation this hurricane season, especially in the countries of Haiti and Grenada, where the impacts were quite severe.

NEWMAN: Damage estimates are now in the billions. And unlike U.S. communities hard-hit by the same hurricanes, many people in the Caribbean are not insured. Even those with the funds to foot the bill have to line up for the limited supply to go around.

For months, millions remained in the dark, as electricity was slow to return. And on some islands, major utilities like water still run dry, while the sewerage overflows.

Relief workers say their top priority is to keep disease from invading the area and turning an already bad scene into a nightmare.

SOLOMON: There are health agencies working there. CARE is also delivering diesel for the local water infrastructure so they can get the water to the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) plants running up (UNINTELLIGIBLE). NEWMAN: But all is not lost. Experts on the ground say that some islands are on the road to recovery and since tourism is the top moneymaker for most nations in the region, local officials are working overtime to rebuild their piece of paradise. Lucia Newman, CNN, Havana, Cuba.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Coming up -- new technologies that just might help reduce the strength of a hurricane.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Kathleen Koch in western Pennsylvania. More than 1,000 miles from where they roar on shore, hurricanes can still wield deadly force. A look at inland flooding coming up.

COOPER: August 24th, 1992. Hurricane Andrew devastated southeastern Florida. The category 5 hurricane flattened the town of Homestead, killing 15 people there and leaving a quarter of a million others looking for shelter. Andrew was the most expensive natural disaster to ever hit the U.S., doing $26 1/2 billion in damage. So many Andrew-related claims were filed, nearly a dozen insurance companies went out of business.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: They're going to get the winds, obviously, no matter what. But the storm surge is definitely dependent on the track of this thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Broadcasting live from the middle of hurricane Ivan was a fascinating experience but at times a bit frightening. I'll say this. I was a little bit more nervous than Anderson was. I don't want my epitaph to read "weather man dies of stupidity in a storm." It was difficult to stand. We tied a rope around our ankles and -- which a couple of the guys on the crew would hold on to. At times it did feel like we were going to be swept away by the wind.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I'd rather be out here, 10 out of 10 days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Coastal residents are used to hurricanes, but further inland people can often be caught unaware. Remember, the Florida hurricanes caused heavy rains and major flooding in Georgia, Pennsylvania, even parts of New Jersey. As little as six inches of water can knock someone off their feet. It takes a lot less than that to ruin the inside of someone's home. Kathleen Koch reports now on one small town and what happened there when the water started to rise. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was unlike anything western Pennsylvania had ever seen. Back-to-back record rains from hurricane Frances September 8th and hurricane Ivan nine days later, 14,000 evacuated and returned to devastation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Normally, it's not locked.

KOCH: Russ Sniffen runs a Laundromat in Etna, one of the hardest-hit towns.

SNIFFEN: Every one of them that are brought up so far, the motors arc and the relays in the top bang and they're fried.

KOCH: The entire downtown from the city offices to the fire department was flooded.

MAYOR TOM RENGERS, ETNA, PENNSYLVANIA: Files and computers and everything was all up under water back here.

KOCH: Inland flooding from hurricanes is unpredictable and deadly. Sixty percent of people killed in hurricanes die in inland areas.

BOB DAVIS, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: A moving hurricane that moves inland will generally cause significant flooding. That's almost a given. The very thing that you can't forecast is exactly what area will be hit by that heavy rain.

KOCH: So Etna's 3,000 residents had little warning, nor did they expect what followed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need you to divide up into teams.

KOCH: A massive volunteer effort put the town back together.

SISTER MARGUERITE KROPINAK, ETNA TEAM NEIGHBORHOOD ASSIST: Our short-term goal is to try to get the houses safe, secure, and have people move back home. We have over 100 to 150 families in this town alone not able to go back to their homes because of the devastation that is still in those homes.

KOCH: Terry McManus, Diane Steiner and their five children were given shelter by a local convent after their apartment ceiling collapsed under the heavy rains.

DIANNE STEINER, STORM VICTIM: I mean, we were soaking wet from trying to cover the holes, trying to save the living room, save furniture.

TERRY McMANUS, STORM VICTIM: It's day by day. You know, I mean we stick together. You know, just -- I mean, you pray, and you get up and you keep getting up. That's all I've ever done.

KOCH: As for preventing flooding, some inland communities dredge rivers and creeks so they hold more water, but that doesn't work in a storm of this magnitude. Another option, move residents out of the flood plain. It's a tough sell in Etna and other towns, where most want to believe the hurricane flooding was a once in a lifetime disaster.

JOHN TOMICHER, FLOOD VICTIM: To go where? To do what? I was raised down the street. Water is not something new to me. It's just this much water was a little more than I expected.

KOCH: So most are starting over, with a little help from a lot of friends.

JOHN GASPER, FLOOD VICTIM: I've been trying to do what I can myself. But now that these people come in, it's a big help.

KROPINAK: The wonderful volunteers that to this very day continue to work day in and day out, getting nothing for themselves. That's what makes this area around Pittsburgh so very special.

KOCH: Kathleen Koch, CNN, Etna, Pennsylvania.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: People have come out with a lot of pretty far-fetched ideas about how to weaken a hurricane. Someone even suggested towing an iceberg underneath a storm's eye, not exactly practical. CNN's John Zarrella looks now at the state of hurricane research.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Max Mayfield has labeled it the X files.

MAX MAYFIELD, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: The harmonizer, which is connected to the nerve endings coming from the brain to -- I don't understand what he's talking about here.

ZARRELLA: Each year Mayfield, the National Hurricane Center director, gets dozens of proposals from well-meaning individuals who believe they have found a way to snuff out hurricanes. If only there was a silver bullet that would save lives, property, and money. In the 1960s through the early '80s, the Federal government went looking for it. A project called "storm fury" was born to try and find a way to reduce the strength of hurricanes.

Maybe you could reduce it 10 to 15 percent, and that's what we thought.

ZARRELLA: Bob Sheets worked on the program for 15 years.

BOB SHEETS: Now, people think 10 to 15 percent is not much, but that will halve the damage. I mean, it's not a $20 billion storm. It's a $10 billion storm.

ZARRELLA: The plan -- seed the hurricane with silver iodide crystals. The crystals would force precipitation. Making rain would release heat, force the eye wall to expand and thus reduce the strength of the storm.

In 1969, the work seemed to pay off. A hurricane was seeded, twice. Both times the eye wall changed and the winds were reduced. But the team could never prove if the seeding had forced the change or if the change was part of the natural cycle hurricanes go through. When project "storm fury" ended, money for hurricane research was reduced to a trickle.

HUGH WILLOUGHBY, INTL. HURRICANE RESEARCH CTR: We were done cutting fat and skin and we were down to muscle and bone.

ZARRELLA: Hugh Willoughby ran NOAA's hurricane research division until a couple of years ago.

WILLOUGHBY: I'd just been beating my head against the wall for five years and thought I'd let somebody else take it a charge at the wall.

ZARRELLA: It has been frustrating for everyone involved in hurricane research and forecasting. After "storm fury," Bob Sheets went on to run the National Hurricane Center.

SHEETS: We had some real battles at time over keeping enough funds to just keep the staff.

ZARRELLA: Last year, for example, earthquake research got $100 million.

(on-camera): According to the International Hurricane Research Center, hurricane studies received a quarter of that amount even though hurricanes annually take more lives and cause more damage. Now in the wake of this brutish season, Congress is moving to provide more funding for equipment upgrades and research.

(voice-over): The most pressing need, experts say, is figuring out what makes hurricanes strengthen.

WILLOUGHBY: Rapid intensification. Just what happened in Charley will unquestionably be a factor in the next hurricane catastrophe.

ZARRELLA: Computer models that better predict where a hurricane will make landfall and how strong it will be, would save taxpayers a minimum of $100 million per event. It is estimated that each mile of coastline evacuated costs $1 million.

SHEETS: If you can narrow that down and say Tampa, you don't have to worry, it's going to go a little bit more to the right, you just saved markedly -- well, a lot more than you'd ever spend on hurricane research in my lifetime probably.

ZARRELLA: The bottom line, hurricane experts say, is that insufficient funding of hurricane research has been penny-wise and pound foolish. And you'd better not count on Max Mayfield finding a silver bullet in his X files.

MAYFIELD: This one requires the use of the quadri-pole resonator.

ZARRELLA: Do you know what that is?

MAYFIELD: You don't have one of those?

ZARRELLA: No. I don't have one of those.

MAYFIELD: I don't have one of those.

ZARRELLA: John Zarrella, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the wake of the storms, the emerging debate over whether homeowners are paying more than their fair share of the $20 billion hurricane tab.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hurricane Floyd formed into a powerful category 4 on September 14th, 1999. It ravaged portions of the Bahamas. Watch its destruction as Floyd tore apart a pier as it hit Daytona Beach, Florida. As Floyd turned north, it weakened a bit, but hitting land again near Cape Fear, North Carolina. The high rainfall created massive inland flooding. Floyd is responsible for one death in the Bahamas but claimed 56 lives in the United States.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACQUI JERAS, METEOROLOGIST: This is a dangerous storm. This is a major hurricane, a category three, winds of 115 miles per hour.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JERAS: Doing Jeanne was almost old hat. As we were watching the storm system roll in, we're like, we've been here before. We've seen this happen. So it was almost getting confusing at times. You had to think about it, is this Jeanne or is this Frances? If you look at the imagery that we have, you took the two storms and we superimposed them together, it was incredible how similar they were in size and location of making landfall. All you could think was these poor people, here we go again.

COOPER: In August and September more than half of Florida's 67 counties experienced hurricane force winds at least once. Florida citrus growers took a direct hit, $9 billion in losses. Trees were downed, groves flooded. We're now seeing the smallest orange crop in 11 years, the smallest grapefruit crop in 67 years. Of course for people, the storm's cost is more than just financial. It's all too personal. Thousands here in Florida can never return to their homes. FEMA built this mobile home park in just six weeks, housing for some 300 families. Many of the people here and throughout storm-damaged areas are finding out the hard way what their insurance does and does not cover. Gerri Willis reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JANETTE HENRY, FLORIDA RESIDENT: Over here this -- the big tree stump that you see here is the one that fell onto this room.

GERRI WILLIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is what the aftermath of the season of hurricanes looks like for Janette Henry, a Kissimmee, Florida resident. And she's not alone. Up and down her street, homes are being fixed, roofs patched, as the debris of four storms continues to pile up. Across Florida, one in five homes were damaged by the hurricanes. The quartet of storms that socked the state had the biggest economic impact of any season since hurricane Andrew mauled Dade County in 1992. This year's damage total, 20 billion and counting.

HENRY: When the hurricanes hit, we weren't prepared for what we were going to have to pay out of pocket.

WILLIS: After Andrew, however, insurers knew exactly how bad things could get. In the wake of that terrible storm that shut down 11 underwriters, state legislators reformed rules to keep the industry solvent. A catastrophe fund was started. Building codes were strengthened. And insurers were allowed to charge new, higher deductibles of as much as 2 to 5 percent of a home's value per storm. Insurance Information Institute economist Bob Hartwig says the reforms following Andrew were every bit necessary.

BOB HARTWIG, INSURANCE INFORMATION INSTITUTE: We'll need to continue to make changes to the Florida market going forward. To put things in perspective, hurricane Andrew wiped out every dime of profit homeowners' insurance had ever made in the history of Florida.

WILLIS: Even so, the fairness of those reforms are being questioned now by those who say they shifted the financial burden onto homeowners.

TOM GALLAGHER, FLORIDA CFO: These high multiple deductibles will not work because people cannot afford them and they can't rebuild their homes. And banks are going to have to foreclose mortgages if people can't get insurance.

WILLIS: Tom Gallagher, who oversees Florida's insurance industry and others, are considering changing the law in Florida to limit deductibles to one per season. In most cases, the state successfully negotiated an end to multiple deductibles this year.

Another reform on the way -- making those deductibles cheaper for those willing to pay higher premiums. But the changes may come too late for Janette, who is still picking up the pieces from the damage of three storms that hit her house. More than likely, she'll continue paying for the hurricane for the rest of her life. She's using a 30- year Federal loan to bankroll the cost.

HENRY: I'm afraid that I may spend some of their money for something that they don't want me to and that I'll end up in jail for it. This has really been a nightmare.

WILLIS: Gerri Willis, CNN, Kissimmee, Florida. (END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Many small business owners are also struggling with insurance companies, trying to reopen. One day after Charley came roaring ashore, I met Dave Brake, who owned Brake's Dairy King here in Punta Gorda. As we walked through the ruins of his shattered business, he talked about the uncertainty of what was to come.

DAVE BRAKE, BRAKE'S DAIRY KING: These are some of the first dollars that we got when we first opened up.

COOPER: That was then. And this is what it looks like now. Dave, as you see what was your business, what goes through your mind? It's been more than three months now.

We drive by, and you just kind of hang your head as you walk by or drive by. It's just unbelievable that something like this can happen like overnight. You know, one day you've got a business that's really, you know starting to come around and really work for you, and then all of a sudden, you know, it's in rubble.

COOPER: Everyone else sort of moves on. People watch it on TV. And then you're really the one sort of left behind, you know, with nothing left.

BRAKE: And really, it is. Because you're just starting from scratch all over again. You know, we had -- we'd worked this business for like five years, almost six years. And by the time we go through, we've gone through our business and everything, and you know, you get to meet a lot of people, and we had a lot of employees that are out of work right now too, which we really feel for, and hopefully we can get them back to work sometime, too, because we had 18 employees at the time all this happened. So there's 18 people out of work.

COOPER: What do you think you've learned about hurricanes, about disasters like this?

BRAKE: I think they're part of nature. There's no doubt about that. I mean, you have to -- you have to roll with the punches. And that's one of the prices that we pay to live in this paradise, you know. And it will be rebuilt and a lot of people have talked very enthusiastically about doing this. The big thing about hurricanes is carry enough insurance.

COOPER: You think if we came back a year from now there will be one of your ice cream parlors here?

BRAKE: We sure hope so. We're hoping for like six to eight months that we can find someplace and just giving everybody time to get some of these roofs back on and businesses back on. A lot of things that rental space and lease space right now has gone through the roof due to the fact that there's so little of it in this area.

COOPER: Coming up -- what it's like to report from the eye of the storm.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: A quick update now on Chuckie. Remember him? The 11- foot, 1,000-pound alligator gave zookeepers the slip when Ivan struck. Chuckie floated out of his exhibit with the rising flood waters and hid in a little-used swampy area of Alabama's Gulf coast zoo. He was captured seven days later after he became a media darling though he apparently didn't enjoy his bout with freedom. Zoo officials say if you get too close now he hisses at you. Apparently, that's alligator speak for "back off."

And finally tonight, taking storm coverage to the nth degree. Standing out in the middle of a hurricane is not the most sensible thing to do. The winds can easily knock you over and debris is flying through the air. The objective is to stay on the air as long as you can. To do that CNN relies on a team of professionals who've covered dozens of storms.

True, they are a little bit crazy. During hurricane Ivan they tied a rope to my leg to try to keep me secure.

CHARLIE MOORE, AC 360 SR. PRODUCER: All right. I'm serious. I'm going to pull him out of there because he cannot sit out there.

COOPER: This is the glamour of this job that I love.

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of the storm, easy to be taken by its power and its strength.

It's very almost difficult to stand at times. You really have to push yourself into the wind.

But the truth is the hardest part of covering a hurricane isn't standing out in the storm. The hard part is covering what the storm leaves behind. When the wind has died down and the sun returns, you see the devastation.

See a bicycle over here, a candle untouched here. Homes shredded like cardboard, lives lost, lives forever changed. That of course is the true measure of a hurricane's power and in the face of that power, we seem very small indeed.

I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for watching this special edition of "360."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired November 25, 2004 - 19:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Carol Lin at the CNN Center.
President Bush worked the phones this holiday, phoning up soldiers from around the world in different war zones. No surprise trips like last year, when he went to Iraq. We're told the Bushes are having leftovers today at their Texas ranch. They laid out the full Thanksgiving dinner yesterday for their guests, the king and queen of Spain.

And U.S. and Iraqi authorities released photos today of what they say is a laboratory used to make chemicals. A Pentagon official confirmed to CNN that instructions for making anthrax, explosives, and blood agents were also found inside the Falluja facility. They are investigating.

And now on to Orelon Sidney's holiday forecast.

(WEATHER FORECAST)

LIN: And have you seen this man? Or actually sponge? His name is Bob, his pants are square, and he's missing. Someone swiped a six- foot-tall Spongebob from the roof of a burger joint in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. And it's not an isolated incident. We are hearing of sponge-nappings also in Utah and Minnesota. All pineapples under the sea have been searched.

That's the news this hour. "ANDERSON COOPER 360" begins right now. Keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news.

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: I'm Anderson Cooper in Punta Gorda, Florida.

It was a season like no other, defying predictions, destroying homes and dreams. A special hurricane edition of 360 starts now.

Deadly winds from storm after storm.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's what you call a disaster area.

COOPER: Waking from a real-life nightmare in Hurricane Alley.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just want to forget it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Try to move on.

COOPER: How do you start over after nature's fury turns your world completely upside down? Bulldozed buildings, bulldozed jobs. When the big one hits, how do you pick up the pieces without putting your employees out of work?

Tracking the killer storms. We go 360 with our meteorologist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our job was to get that word out that a cat four making landfall is going to do an awful lot of damage.

COOPER: Are these hurricanes nature's warning? And are more violent hurricane seasons on the way?

Squall lines erode the poverty lines, with defenseless thousands losing their footing. We'll focus on the struggle to help those who suffered the deadliest toll.

And muzzling the marauding storms.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sea band radar...

COOPER: A look at what's being done to tackle this most powerful foe.

ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360, Hurricanes 2004.

COOPER: The waters off Punta Gorda are calm now. They're serene. It's hard to imagine that just a couple of months ago, the eye of Hurricane Charley came roaring up this river.

Charley hit Florida hard. But then came Hurricane Frances, and then Hurricane Ivan, and Hurricane Jeanne. Not exactly the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, but four hurricanes in less than two months devastated parts of this state. Lives were lost, and many more lives were forever changed.

Charley hit Punta Gorda, Florida, on August 13. Frances came next, striking the east coast on September 4. Ivan followed close behind, slamming into Gulf shores, Alabama, on September 16. And then there was Jeanne, September 25, hitting Stewart, Florida.

In the next hour, we'll take you back into the eyes of the storms. You'll feel their power. You'll see the devastation they've left behind. And you'll hear from scientists about what, if anything, they can do in the future to stop hurricanes before they hit.

We have a team of correspondents deployed around the state of Florida, Gary Tuchman in Vero Beach, Gerri Willis in Orlando, and John Zarrella in Punta Gorda.

The season's first hurricane, Alex, just skimmed the North Carolina coast on August 3. But 10 days later came Charley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): Two thousand and four was definitely a hurricane season for the record books. Millions of Florida residents ordered to evacuate an unprecedented four times.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody was expecting this.

COOPER: The relentless series of hurricanes devastated the Caribbean with unmerciful violence. And in their wake, a relief effort the scope of which has rarely been seen. It started with Hurricane Charley. Many were caught off guard by its erratic movements.

ORELON SIDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Breaking news for us, because we are now reporting that this is a category four storm.

COOPER: A last-minute turn sent Charley plunging into Punta Gorda with 145-mile-an-hour winds.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's indescribable. You just pray that the wind drops, because we don't seem like we could have taken another five minutes.

COOPER: Charley barreled up Florida's west coast, ravaging homes and citrus groves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've never been so scared in my life.

COOPER: It pushed north, killing 31 people.

Just three weeks later, Hurricane Frances put residents on the road again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This thing is just so, so very large, winds at 145 miles per hour. It's almost the entire size of Texas.

COOPER (on camera): It's going to be a long night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is probably about as bad as we've seen it.

COOPER (voice-over): Frances took aim at Florida's east coast, making landfall near Sewell's (ph) Point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just got back after five months in Baghdad, Iraq, and I thought that was a problem, getting shot at. And today I wish I was back in Baghdad. I tell you, the nightmare's only about to begin for everybody.

COOPER: The nightmare lingered. Once ashore, Frances's slow movement caused flooding and extensive damage as it crawled across the peninsula.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was long. It was the longest one I've ever gone through, and I've gone through quite a few.

COOPER: Adding to its deadly toll, Frances made landfall a second time as a tropical storm on the panhandle, churned up the eastern seaboard, spinning out tornadoes, claiming 33 lives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's another storm on the horizon. It is Hurricane Ivan.

COOPER: Coastal residents could barely catch their breath and buy supplies when, just 11 days later, Ivan came into view. The storm was intense and wobbly, losing strength, regaining it, then losing it again. Ivan was still a category four when it slammed into Gulf Shores, Alabama, on September 16. Hurricane-force winds once again hammered Florida's panhandle at 165 miles an hour.

GOV. JEB BUSH (R), FLORIDA: This was a devastating storm, as was projected. My heart goes out to the people that have lost a lot, because there will be extensive damage. And some loss of life, sadly.

COOPER: Ivan proved terrible indeed. Forty-three people were killed.

Nine days later, there was Jeanne. Florida residents, already weary from storm after storm, weathered yet another. Jeanne wasn't as powerful as its predecessors, but it was still a hurricane. Ground zero, Stewart, Florida, just miles from where Frances struck.

(on camera): And it's obviously very hard to stand. Our equipment keeps breaking down. The cameras keep getting water inside them.

Whoa!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At this point in time, it is hard to stand up. Remember you asked me -- you asked me about 20 miles an hour ago, when is it going to be very hard to do this? And I said about 100. And this is pretty darn close.

COOPER (voice-over): Jeanne's path of destruction, an eerie echo of the earlier storm, layering more damage on the already bruised and battered landscape, killing six people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's no way that you can replace these things, ever.

GOV. JEB BUSH: This state will not only survive, it will rebound. We will be stronger, and we will be better because of what we've gone through.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: If you go to the areas hit hard by the hurricanes, it's easy to see the destroyed buildings and destroyed homes. But if you spend any time in those areas, you'll also find something less visible, uncertainty, the uncertainty that comes with having to start over.

Gary Tuchman has that side of the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The wrath of Hurricane Frances, the fury of Hurricane Jeanne, two powerful storms that, against all odds, hit land at the exact same place on Florida's east coast.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The roof came off like a can of sardines with a key, rolled off. And we paid somebody to come and screw it back down the day or -- the day before Jeanne hit, creating those holes...

TUCHMAN: And when Jeanne hit Carol Taylor's home, the place where she and her husband, Don, planned to spend the rest of their lives, the destruction was complete. The house was totaled.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was the absolute culmination of our life. It was everything.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we don't have enough insurance monies coming to replace the loss.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nope. This is no good.

TUCHMAN: The Taylors live in Vero Beach, Florida, 10 miles from the ocean, in a development called Lakewood Village, where almost every one of the 320 homes suffered some damage, and about 40 of the homes were total losses.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You walk around and you hear people saying, Well, we don't want to forget this, we're going to have a T-shirt made up of, you know, Hurricane 2004. Who in their right mind would want to remember something like this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just want to forget it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Forget it. Try to move on to something that we don't even know what it's going to be yet.

TUCHMAN: Weeks after the hurricanes, the Taylors had not yet seen a dime of insurance money.

(on camera): The people who live here in Lakewood Village come from all over the United States and Canada. They move here for a fresh start. They move here to retire. They move here to pursue the Florida dream, which, this summer in this community, turned into a real-life nightmare.

(voice-over): This is what many of the living-room ceilings look like in Lakewood Village.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That was the floor.

TUCHMAN: Janet Huntley's home is another one of the uninhabitable ones.

JANET HUNTLEY, LAKEWOOD VILLAGE RESIDENT: Haven't seen an insurance adjuster.

TUCHMAN: She is staying in an RV with her husband, Al, with the hope that eventual insurance money covers the costs of a new home in Lakewood Village. HUNTLEY: I can cry at the drop of a hat. And I never -- I used to be able to control my emotions. When I worked, I was an executive secretary, and you know, you just didn't show, you had nerves of steel. Well, now they're like jelly. And if somebody says something to me that just hits me the wrong way, I cry. And I not cry, I sob.

TUCHMAN (on camera): Now, you come up to the back of your house, and you see a portion of the house right there that doesn't look like it's part of your house.

BOB EBERLING, LAKEWOOD VILLAGE RESIDENT: No, it isn't.

TUCHMAN: What is that over there?

EBERLING: That's the roof to someone else's house.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Bob Eberling's house was bought by his father two decades ago.

EBERLING: I'm just glad he's not alive today to see it. I just think he'd be devastated. I mean, he took such pride in this house and took such good care of it. And in one night, it's completely destroyed.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Nancy Davis, like virtually everybody here, evacuated before both storms. Hurricane Frances caused significant damage to her modest home. Hurricane Jeanne finished it off.

NANCY DAVIS, LAKEWOOD VILLAGE RESIDENT: And it took a while to sink in that I had no home left.

TUCHMAN: Carol and Don Taylor are temporarily living in an RV while they plan their move back to Massachusetts, where they will live with family members, their Florida dream about to conclude.

(on camera): You've got to be very grateful that you have each other.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes. Yes. That's the only thing that really...

TUCHMAN (voice-over): For the Taylors, and for so many others, this hurricane season changed everything.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, Vero Beach, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: More than 1 million people in the state of Florida alone have already signed up for federal disaster aid in the wake of the hurricanes. And that doesn't even include all the businesses hit hard by the storms. We'll have their story coming up next.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm John Zarrella in Punta Gorda. Hurricane Charley altered the landscape here forever. But it could not destroy one businesswoman's will to rebuild.

COOPER: Also ahead, why was this hurricane season so severe? And is it a sign of what's to come? We'll get some answers from the experts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was just devastating.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were you scared?

DAVID MYERS, IT METEOROLOGIST: It touches you in a way that you probably -- you wouldn't get looking at a radar screen back here in Atlanta. You only get to be touched like that if you're down on the scene.

Obviously a very emotional time. But, I mean, how long did it last?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, for (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

MYERS: Those were not tears of pain. Those were tears of joy that they made it.

All of a sudden from behind me I hear this, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" And this woman is running through the courtyard. Didn't even know if she was alive or not.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, you're alive.

MYERS: It was an amazing moment. And then it was one story like that after another, after another, of human, literally human survival, where when you see it on a radar, it's just a big red circle with a hole in the middle. But when you get down there, and you realize that people had to live through that, it was just one really touching moment after another.

COOPER: They're rebuilding an apartment complex destroyed by Hurricane Charley.

You could say that we all got hit by the hurricanes this year. We all had to pay higher gas and produce prices because of the storms. But there's no doubt that people here in Florida got hit the hardest. Thousands of businesses were destroyed, and right now the rush is on to rebuild.

John Zarrella has that side of the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA (voice-over): The view from the window of the Spago Day Spa in Punta Gorda is telling. Before Friday, August 13, there was a laundry across the street, a strip mall down to the left, a service station was right over there.

Now, except for the piles of rubble and the heavy machinery removing the remains of the bulldozed buildings, there is an unobscured view across an open lot.

Given what she's seen around her, Caroline Boesmans knows she's lucky.

CAROLINE BOESMANS, OWNER, SPAGO DAY SPA: We're going to put you in the rope today.

ZARRELLA: But for Boesmans, who owns Spago, there is no escape from Charley's aftermath.

BOESMANS: It's just, you cannot believe what you're seeing or what you're going through. Every day is a struggle.

ZARRELLA: A struggle that began in the immediate days after the storm. Boesmans, with the help of her employees, began cleaning up what was left. The 50-year-old building that housed her hairstyling salon was leveled. There was nothing left but the shell.

(on camera): But this brand-new addition, open less than a year and home to the day spa, was virtually untouched. And less than two weeks after Charley, Boesmans was already making room in the day spa for the hairstylists.

(voice-over): To keep her employees and her customers, Boesmans had to reopen quickly.

BOESMANS: And so it's not a physical demolition that can stop you. You have those people that rely on you as well for their employment, as well as for the services. And no, you just need to do this.

ZARRELLA: The price has been steep. Boesmans was underinsured. She lost a quarter of a million dollars. A loan from the SBA, Small Business Administration, has kept her going. Reconstruction of the old building is under way. Eleven of her 16 employees are still here, and back to work.

And making customers like Carol Kerlucker look good is cathartic.

CAROL KERLUCKER, CUSTOMER: I think the depression's lifting a little bit, but I think at first the depression was horrible.

ZARRELLA: Everyone who came in had a story to tell.

SUE REDMOND, STYLIST, SPAGO DAY SPA: You almost felt like you were doing a community service, because of the way people left, and you could just see that -- oh, you know, that they just got to talk about it.

ZARRELLA: Slowly, business is coming back, and slowly, life is returning.

REDMOND: Three weeks ago, I was at this stoplight, and I heard birds chirping. And, you know, it's something that you don't really notice when it's happening all the time. But you notice it when it's back and it was gone. And I thought, Oh, I haven't heard that sound in a long time.

ZARRELLA: Time. It came to a stop on the afternoon of August 13, and it will be a long time still before the people here are whole again.

John Zarrella, CNN, Punta Gorda, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Do you ever wonder what's behind the upsurge in these storms? Are they a violent side effect of global warming, or are there other factors at work here?

We asked CNN meteorologist Chad Myers to investigate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Without a doubt, wild, wicked weather defines the 2004 hurricane season. With 14 named storms and six major hurricanes, this has been one of the most intense and deadly seasons on record.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa!

MYERS: But why was this year so extreme?

Scientists found that several factors were to blame for creating the perfect storm season. They say a warm Atlantic Ocean, low wind shear, and irregular rainfall patterns, combined with powerful currents, steered a record number of storms toward land.

Experts say that coastal residents should brace themselves. Stormy weather like this may be around for a while. They say the tropics are in a very active phase in this current storm cycle, a climatic condition characterized by more or less severe hurricane seasons. And this one packed a punch.

PHILIP KLOTZBACH, RESEARCHER, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY: It looks in general that probably the next 10 to 15 years, most of them are probably going to be active years.

MYERS: Although experts admit they don't have all the answers.

Researchers at Colorado State University have worked for over two decades to fine-tune the science of storm forecasting. They compare historic storm data, sea surface temperatures, and other records to current data, and try to predict how long a cycle will last, and how busy a storm season will be.

They found that the 19 named storms that defined the 1995 Atlantic hurricane season whipped through the warmest ocean temperatures on record. That hot event was the start of a very active phase in the current storm cycle, marked by stronger, longer, and more frequent storms than decades past.

KLOTZBACH: The seasons have tended to be fairly active since 1995. The activity this year was somewhat even above that.

MYERS: Florida was the first state in over a century to be hit by four hurricanes in one season. Scientists say they've never seen so many storms hit the same place so fast in recorded history. They blame the high hurricane activity and irregular wind currents for sending so many storms to the state.

And this storm season broke records. Ivan became the longest- lasting major hurricane in over a century. It stayed active for 22 days. Hurricane Frances caused the largest evacuation in Florida history, with over 3 million forced to flee. And with over $20 billion insured losses so far, 2004 stands to be the most expensive hurricane season in U.S. history.

Chad Myers, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: This year's hurricane damage to Florida is only part of the story.

JOHN SOLOMON, CARE INTERNATIONAL: The destruction there was really devastating. I've never seen such destruction before.

COOPER: When we come back, the devastating toll on the Caribbean.

ANNOUNCER: September 8, 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history ravaged Galveston, Texas. The category four hurricane had no name, but would forever be known as the Great Storm. One out of every six Galveston residents -- some 8,000 men, women, and children -- died. The hurricane's 150-mile-an-hour winds completely wiped out 12 blocks of Galveston, destroying nearly three-quarters of the island city.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNEY: I'm at McGill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, to meet up with an elite class of weather warriors, those who hunt hurricanes.

But once you get kind of your bearings, it's absolutely amazing, because it's like taking the picture out of the book and sitting on it, and actually looking down on it.

What we actually did was fly the periphery of the storm and drop instrument packages in order to gain data for the hurricane center's model.

What surprised me is that as you looked out on the horizon, you could actually see the rain bands kind of curving in towards the center. I had a panoramic view of the whole thing. It was absolutely incredible once the sun came up. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing.

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Lucia Newman in Havana, Cuba. When Hurricane Charley hit this island back in August with hurricane winds exceeding 100 miles an hour, Cuba was ready. More than 200,000 people had already been evacuated, and although there were four deaths, many here are still counting their blessings.

But many other Caribbean nations were not as fortunate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NEWMAN: (voice-over): In a devastating six-week period, Charley, Ivan, Frances, and Jeanne wreaked havoc across the Atlantic and took the lives of thousands in the region.

This costly killer season tore apart homes and shattered lives with record-breaking intensity.

SOLOMON: The destruction there was really devastating. I've never seen such destruction before.

NEWMAN: From Grenada to Jamaica and Cuba to the Dominican Republic, island nations were hit with intense winds and massive flooding.

But nowhere was rocked as powerfully as Haiti, which suffered devastating mud slides, the government saying thousands killed and over a quarter of a million homeless. Experts say it could take many months or even years for some nations to recover.

SOLOMON: People are destitute, homeless. They've lost livestock. So that's going to have a big impact. Agriculture lands have been destroyed. So it will take a long time for them to get back to their original lives, you see.

NEWMAN: Throughout the Caribbean, residents struggled to clean up from one storm before another major force blew ashore. And so far, the costs of this catastrophe have gone through the roof.

TIM GALLAGHER, USAID: Well, I think it was a very difficult situation this hurricane season, especially in the countries of Haiti and Grenada, where the impacts were quite severe.

NEWMAN: Damage estimates are now in the billions. And unlike U.S. communities hard-hit by the same hurricanes, many people in the Caribbean are not insured. Even those with the funds to foot the bill have to line up for the limited supply to go around.

For months, millions remained in the dark, as electricity was slow to return. And on some islands, major utilities like water still run dry, while the sewerage overflows.

Relief workers say their top priority is to keep disease from invading the area and turning an already bad scene into a nightmare.

SOLOMON: There are health agencies working there. CARE is also delivering diesel for the local water infrastructure so they can get the water to the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) plants running up (UNINTELLIGIBLE). NEWMAN: But all is not lost. Experts on the ground say that some islands are on the road to recovery and since tourism is the top moneymaker for most nations in the region, local officials are working overtime to rebuild their piece of paradise. Lucia Newman, CNN, Havana, Cuba.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Coming up -- new technologies that just might help reduce the strength of a hurricane.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Kathleen Koch in western Pennsylvania. More than 1,000 miles from where they roar on shore, hurricanes can still wield deadly force. A look at inland flooding coming up.

COOPER: August 24th, 1992. Hurricane Andrew devastated southeastern Florida. The category 5 hurricane flattened the town of Homestead, killing 15 people there and leaving a quarter of a million others looking for shelter. Andrew was the most expensive natural disaster to ever hit the U.S., doing $26 1/2 billion in damage. So many Andrew-related claims were filed, nearly a dozen insurance companies went out of business.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: They're going to get the winds, obviously, no matter what. But the storm surge is definitely dependent on the track of this thing.

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ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Broadcasting live from the middle of hurricane Ivan was a fascinating experience but at times a bit frightening. I'll say this. I was a little bit more nervous than Anderson was. I don't want my epitaph to read "weather man dies of stupidity in a storm." It was difficult to stand. We tied a rope around our ankles and -- which a couple of the guys on the crew would hold on to. At times it did feel like we were going to be swept away by the wind.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I'd rather be out here, 10 out of 10 days.

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COOPER: Coastal residents are used to hurricanes, but further inland people can often be caught unaware. Remember, the Florida hurricanes caused heavy rains and major flooding in Georgia, Pennsylvania, even parts of New Jersey. As little as six inches of water can knock someone off their feet. It takes a lot less than that to ruin the inside of someone's home. Kathleen Koch reports now on one small town and what happened there when the water started to rise. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was unlike anything western Pennsylvania had ever seen. Back-to-back record rains from hurricane Frances September 8th and hurricane Ivan nine days later, 14,000 evacuated and returned to devastation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Normally, it's not locked.

KOCH: Russ Sniffen runs a Laundromat in Etna, one of the hardest-hit towns.

SNIFFEN: Every one of them that are brought up so far, the motors arc and the relays in the top bang and they're fried.

KOCH: The entire downtown from the city offices to the fire department was flooded.

MAYOR TOM RENGERS, ETNA, PENNSYLVANIA: Files and computers and everything was all up under water back here.

KOCH: Inland flooding from hurricanes is unpredictable and deadly. Sixty percent of people killed in hurricanes die in inland areas.

BOB DAVIS, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: A moving hurricane that moves inland will generally cause significant flooding. That's almost a given. The very thing that you can't forecast is exactly what area will be hit by that heavy rain.

KOCH: So Etna's 3,000 residents had little warning, nor did they expect what followed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need you to divide up into teams.

KOCH: A massive volunteer effort put the town back together.

SISTER MARGUERITE KROPINAK, ETNA TEAM NEIGHBORHOOD ASSIST: Our short-term goal is to try to get the houses safe, secure, and have people move back home. We have over 100 to 150 families in this town alone not able to go back to their homes because of the devastation that is still in those homes.

KOCH: Terry McManus, Diane Steiner and their five children were given shelter by a local convent after their apartment ceiling collapsed under the heavy rains.

DIANNE STEINER, STORM VICTIM: I mean, we were soaking wet from trying to cover the holes, trying to save the living room, save furniture.

TERRY McMANUS, STORM VICTIM: It's day by day. You know, I mean we stick together. You know, just -- I mean, you pray, and you get up and you keep getting up. That's all I've ever done.

KOCH: As for preventing flooding, some inland communities dredge rivers and creeks so they hold more water, but that doesn't work in a storm of this magnitude. Another option, move residents out of the flood plain. It's a tough sell in Etna and other towns, where most want to believe the hurricane flooding was a once in a lifetime disaster.

JOHN TOMICHER, FLOOD VICTIM: To go where? To do what? I was raised down the street. Water is not something new to me. It's just this much water was a little more than I expected.

KOCH: So most are starting over, with a little help from a lot of friends.

JOHN GASPER, FLOOD VICTIM: I've been trying to do what I can myself. But now that these people come in, it's a big help.

KROPINAK: The wonderful volunteers that to this very day continue to work day in and day out, getting nothing for themselves. That's what makes this area around Pittsburgh so very special.

KOCH: Kathleen Koch, CNN, Etna, Pennsylvania.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: People have come out with a lot of pretty far-fetched ideas about how to weaken a hurricane. Someone even suggested towing an iceberg underneath a storm's eye, not exactly practical. CNN's John Zarrella looks now at the state of hurricane research.

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ZARRELLA (voice-over): Max Mayfield has labeled it the X files.

MAX MAYFIELD, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: The harmonizer, which is connected to the nerve endings coming from the brain to -- I don't understand what he's talking about here.

ZARRELLA: Each year Mayfield, the National Hurricane Center director, gets dozens of proposals from well-meaning individuals who believe they have found a way to snuff out hurricanes. If only there was a silver bullet that would save lives, property, and money. In the 1960s through the early '80s, the Federal government went looking for it. A project called "storm fury" was born to try and find a way to reduce the strength of hurricanes.

Maybe you could reduce it 10 to 15 percent, and that's what we thought.

ZARRELLA: Bob Sheets worked on the program for 15 years.

BOB SHEETS: Now, people think 10 to 15 percent is not much, but that will halve the damage. I mean, it's not a $20 billion storm. It's a $10 billion storm.

ZARRELLA: The plan -- seed the hurricane with silver iodide crystals. The crystals would force precipitation. Making rain would release heat, force the eye wall to expand and thus reduce the strength of the storm.

In 1969, the work seemed to pay off. A hurricane was seeded, twice. Both times the eye wall changed and the winds were reduced. But the team could never prove if the seeding had forced the change or if the change was part of the natural cycle hurricanes go through. When project "storm fury" ended, money for hurricane research was reduced to a trickle.

HUGH WILLOUGHBY, INTL. HURRICANE RESEARCH CTR: We were done cutting fat and skin and we were down to muscle and bone.

ZARRELLA: Hugh Willoughby ran NOAA's hurricane research division until a couple of years ago.

WILLOUGHBY: I'd just been beating my head against the wall for five years and thought I'd let somebody else take it a charge at the wall.

ZARRELLA: It has been frustrating for everyone involved in hurricane research and forecasting. After "storm fury," Bob Sheets went on to run the National Hurricane Center.

SHEETS: We had some real battles at time over keeping enough funds to just keep the staff.

ZARRELLA: Last year, for example, earthquake research got $100 million.

(on-camera): According to the International Hurricane Research Center, hurricane studies received a quarter of that amount even though hurricanes annually take more lives and cause more damage. Now in the wake of this brutish season, Congress is moving to provide more funding for equipment upgrades and research.

(voice-over): The most pressing need, experts say, is figuring out what makes hurricanes strengthen.

WILLOUGHBY: Rapid intensification. Just what happened in Charley will unquestionably be a factor in the next hurricane catastrophe.

ZARRELLA: Computer models that better predict where a hurricane will make landfall and how strong it will be, would save taxpayers a minimum of $100 million per event. It is estimated that each mile of coastline evacuated costs $1 million.

SHEETS: If you can narrow that down and say Tampa, you don't have to worry, it's going to go a little bit more to the right, you just saved markedly -- well, a lot more than you'd ever spend on hurricane research in my lifetime probably.

ZARRELLA: The bottom line, hurricane experts say, is that insufficient funding of hurricane research has been penny-wise and pound foolish. And you'd better not count on Max Mayfield finding a silver bullet in his X files.

MAYFIELD: This one requires the use of the quadri-pole resonator.

ZARRELLA: Do you know what that is?

MAYFIELD: You don't have one of those?

ZARRELLA: No. I don't have one of those.

MAYFIELD: I don't have one of those.

ZARRELLA: John Zarrella, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the wake of the storms, the emerging debate over whether homeowners are paying more than their fair share of the $20 billion hurricane tab.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hurricane Floyd formed into a powerful category 4 on September 14th, 1999. It ravaged portions of the Bahamas. Watch its destruction as Floyd tore apart a pier as it hit Daytona Beach, Florida. As Floyd turned north, it weakened a bit, but hitting land again near Cape Fear, North Carolina. The high rainfall created massive inland flooding. Floyd is responsible for one death in the Bahamas but claimed 56 lives in the United States.

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JACQUI JERAS, METEOROLOGIST: This is a dangerous storm. This is a major hurricane, a category three, winds of 115 miles per hour.

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JERAS: Doing Jeanne was almost old hat. As we were watching the storm system roll in, we're like, we've been here before. We've seen this happen. So it was almost getting confusing at times. You had to think about it, is this Jeanne or is this Frances? If you look at the imagery that we have, you took the two storms and we superimposed them together, it was incredible how similar they were in size and location of making landfall. All you could think was these poor people, here we go again.

COOPER: In August and September more than half of Florida's 67 counties experienced hurricane force winds at least once. Florida citrus growers took a direct hit, $9 billion in losses. Trees were downed, groves flooded. We're now seeing the smallest orange crop in 11 years, the smallest grapefruit crop in 67 years. Of course for people, the storm's cost is more than just financial. It's all too personal. Thousands here in Florida can never return to their homes. FEMA built this mobile home park in just six weeks, housing for some 300 families. Many of the people here and throughout storm-damaged areas are finding out the hard way what their insurance does and does not cover. Gerri Willis reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JANETTE HENRY, FLORIDA RESIDENT: Over here this -- the big tree stump that you see here is the one that fell onto this room.

GERRI WILLIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is what the aftermath of the season of hurricanes looks like for Janette Henry, a Kissimmee, Florida resident. And she's not alone. Up and down her street, homes are being fixed, roofs patched, as the debris of four storms continues to pile up. Across Florida, one in five homes were damaged by the hurricanes. The quartet of storms that socked the state had the biggest economic impact of any season since hurricane Andrew mauled Dade County in 1992. This year's damage total, 20 billion and counting.

HENRY: When the hurricanes hit, we weren't prepared for what we were going to have to pay out of pocket.

WILLIS: After Andrew, however, insurers knew exactly how bad things could get. In the wake of that terrible storm that shut down 11 underwriters, state legislators reformed rules to keep the industry solvent. A catastrophe fund was started. Building codes were strengthened. And insurers were allowed to charge new, higher deductibles of as much as 2 to 5 percent of a home's value per storm. Insurance Information Institute economist Bob Hartwig says the reforms following Andrew were every bit necessary.

BOB HARTWIG, INSURANCE INFORMATION INSTITUTE: We'll need to continue to make changes to the Florida market going forward. To put things in perspective, hurricane Andrew wiped out every dime of profit homeowners' insurance had ever made in the history of Florida.

WILLIS: Even so, the fairness of those reforms are being questioned now by those who say they shifted the financial burden onto homeowners.

TOM GALLAGHER, FLORIDA CFO: These high multiple deductibles will not work because people cannot afford them and they can't rebuild their homes. And banks are going to have to foreclose mortgages if people can't get insurance.

WILLIS: Tom Gallagher, who oversees Florida's insurance industry and others, are considering changing the law in Florida to limit deductibles to one per season. In most cases, the state successfully negotiated an end to multiple deductibles this year.

Another reform on the way -- making those deductibles cheaper for those willing to pay higher premiums. But the changes may come too late for Janette, who is still picking up the pieces from the damage of three storms that hit her house. More than likely, she'll continue paying for the hurricane for the rest of her life. She's using a 30- year Federal loan to bankroll the cost.

HENRY: I'm afraid that I may spend some of their money for something that they don't want me to and that I'll end up in jail for it. This has really been a nightmare.

WILLIS: Gerri Willis, CNN, Kissimmee, Florida. (END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Many small business owners are also struggling with insurance companies, trying to reopen. One day after Charley came roaring ashore, I met Dave Brake, who owned Brake's Dairy King here in Punta Gorda. As we walked through the ruins of his shattered business, he talked about the uncertainty of what was to come.

DAVE BRAKE, BRAKE'S DAIRY KING: These are some of the first dollars that we got when we first opened up.

COOPER: That was then. And this is what it looks like now. Dave, as you see what was your business, what goes through your mind? It's been more than three months now.

We drive by, and you just kind of hang your head as you walk by or drive by. It's just unbelievable that something like this can happen like overnight. You know, one day you've got a business that's really, you know starting to come around and really work for you, and then all of a sudden, you know, it's in rubble.

COOPER: Everyone else sort of moves on. People watch it on TV. And then you're really the one sort of left behind, you know, with nothing left.

BRAKE: And really, it is. Because you're just starting from scratch all over again. You know, we had -- we'd worked this business for like five years, almost six years. And by the time we go through, we've gone through our business and everything, and you know, you get to meet a lot of people, and we had a lot of employees that are out of work right now too, which we really feel for, and hopefully we can get them back to work sometime, too, because we had 18 employees at the time all this happened. So there's 18 people out of work.

COOPER: What do you think you've learned about hurricanes, about disasters like this?

BRAKE: I think they're part of nature. There's no doubt about that. I mean, you have to -- you have to roll with the punches. And that's one of the prices that we pay to live in this paradise, you know. And it will be rebuilt and a lot of people have talked very enthusiastically about doing this. The big thing about hurricanes is carry enough insurance.

COOPER: You think if we came back a year from now there will be one of your ice cream parlors here?

BRAKE: We sure hope so. We're hoping for like six to eight months that we can find someplace and just giving everybody time to get some of these roofs back on and businesses back on. A lot of things that rental space and lease space right now has gone through the roof due to the fact that there's so little of it in this area.

COOPER: Coming up -- what it's like to report from the eye of the storm.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: A quick update now on Chuckie. Remember him? The 11- foot, 1,000-pound alligator gave zookeepers the slip when Ivan struck. Chuckie floated out of his exhibit with the rising flood waters and hid in a little-used swampy area of Alabama's Gulf coast zoo. He was captured seven days later after he became a media darling though he apparently didn't enjoy his bout with freedom. Zoo officials say if you get too close now he hisses at you. Apparently, that's alligator speak for "back off."

And finally tonight, taking storm coverage to the nth degree. Standing out in the middle of a hurricane is not the most sensible thing to do. The winds can easily knock you over and debris is flying through the air. The objective is to stay on the air as long as you can. To do that CNN relies on a team of professionals who've covered dozens of storms.

True, they are a little bit crazy. During hurricane Ivan they tied a rope to my leg to try to keep me secure.

CHARLIE MOORE, AC 360 SR. PRODUCER: All right. I'm serious. I'm going to pull him out of there because he cannot sit out there.

COOPER: This is the glamour of this job that I love.

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of the storm, easy to be taken by its power and its strength.

It's very almost difficult to stand at times. You really have to push yourself into the wind.

But the truth is the hardest part of covering a hurricane isn't standing out in the storm. The hard part is covering what the storm leaves behind. When the wind has died down and the sun returns, you see the devastation.

See a bicycle over here, a candle untouched here. Homes shredded like cardboard, lives lost, lives forever changed. That of course is the true measure of a hurricane's power and in the face of that power, we seem very small indeed.

I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for watching this special edition of "360."

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