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The Aftermath of Hurricane Dennis; Latest on Investigation into Who Was Responsible for Terrorist Bombings in London

Aired July 11, 2005 - 08:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The aftermath of Hurricane Dennis -- debris, drowned trees and power lines litter dozens of counties in Florida and Alabama, all major disaster areas. At least $1 billion in damages estimated. Residents all along the Gulf Coast taking part in a massive and now routine cleanup effort.
Meanwhile, tropical depression Dennis now inland and pummeling the Tennessee Valley, dumping heavy rain, threatening major flooding across parts of Tennessee and Kentucky and Illinois.

You're watching a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you.

Welcome back to our special coverage of hurricane Dennis and its aftermath.

S. O'BRIEN: Here's a look at the situation as it stands right now. Dennis has been downgraded to a tropical depression as it delivers heavy rain to parts of the Southeast. Federal emergency agencies are fanning out this morning assessing damages and delivering aid to affected areas.

Dennis brought extensive flooding to St. Marks, Florida. The water now, though, receding there. Otherwise, damage across the Florida Panhandle was nowhere near as bad as after hurricane Ivan last year.

M. O'BRIEN: So, where is the storm now? Where is it headed? What's it doing? Plenty.

Rob Marciano has that for us -- Rob, good morning.

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Miles.

Alabama, Mississippi, right on the border is where this thing is. Most of the moisture -- here's about where the center is. Most of the moisture is now to the north, so it's kind of lost a bit of its punch to the south, although it's still gusty down to the south.

Officially, that's where the low is. Officially winds of 35 miles an hour around the center of the low and officially it has been downgraded to a tropical depression now, tropical depression Dennis. And its movement will be out actually toward the Mississippi River.

Here's the cloud canopy with this storm. You can see most of the action down to the south has been lost. But winds still gusty down here, as that air tries to fill in an area of low pressure, which is pretty much just a little hole in the atmosphere that Mother Nature tries to fill herself.

Again, the moisture is going to be heaviest from Memphis, Tennessee across toward Nashville, even up toward Evansville, Indiana, Paducah, Kentucky and over toward maybe even Lexington and Louisville, possibly. So some heavy rain especially out ahead of this train -- this little feeder band is really kicking in across parts of Panama.

Miles, this is tropical depression number five, way out there, Atlantic Ocean/Caribbean. But it may very well be our next tropical storm later on today. The name would be Emily. And then we start the whole thing all over again -- back to you.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, I -- you know, it's a little early, but do you have any projections on where it's headed?

MARCIANO: Well, actually, I think I have this loaded. Yes, here we go.

M. O'BRIEN: It just so happens.

MARCIANO: It just so happens, because you asked and you're a nice guy.

Tropical...

M. O'BRIEN: Oh, that's nice.

MARCIANO: It's expected to become a tropical storm later on today. And the time clock to your right hand corner of the screen there. And by Wednesday, it gets toward the Leeward Islands. By Wednesday night it gets a little bit stronger. Thursday morning it gets a little bit stronger. Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center has it as a hurricane near Puerto Rico. So...

M. O'BRIEN: OK, that's Thursday and Friday of this week?

MARCIANO: Of -- what's today, Monday? Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes.

MARCIANO: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: OK. All right. Boy. All right, and no rest for the weary.

Thank you very much.

MARCIANO: I'm sorry you asked.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. I am.

MARCIANO: See you. M. O'BRIEN: The fishing village of St. Marks, Florida has some serious damage to contend with this morning.

Dennis brought in a surprising 10 or 12 foot floodwater appearance in the town. The water came in, the water left, but it sure left a thick layer of muck behind, a big mess for folks there, very surprising. When last we saw Chad Myers yesterday, he was in Panama City, pretty close to where the eye of Dennis came ashore.

This is, Chad, we're talking 300 miles to the east here, right, of the eye where it hit?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely. Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: And this is not a place that was really on the radar, so to speak, for potential damage.

MYERS: It really wasn't. What happened, Miles, is that if you take a look at Florida, the map of Florida, from Apalachicola all the way over to the Steinhatchee River, that's a big upside down V or an upside down U, kind of a lambda looking thing. And all that wind blew up into that V and we are at the tip of the upside down V. That is St. Marks, Florida, all the way along 98 there. Even Angelo's Restaurant, world famous Angelo's Restaurant over on the Ochlockonee River, really damaged by this storm surge flood.

Now, this was a salt water flood, not a rain induced flood. The wind blew the water in the Gulf of Mexico and Apalachicola Bay for so long in the same direction, it kept pushing it up and pushing it up, and at high tide, all the water was coming right up.

The sheriff here coming through, back here behind me. That is a shed where all boats are covered. That's Shields Marina. They were there at the time when the water came up. I just talked to them. They said the water came up six feet in about two hours. They did everything they can -- they could to get all of the boats up. They got the lines loose to get the boats up as they were floating higher and higher. The only thing that didn't happen was that the power didn't get shut off in some spots and transformers were smoking when they got in the water.

Obviously salt water conducts electricity a little better than fresh water. But still, fresh water conducts it, as well. So now all of this damage, all the areas you see even here behind me here, and the grocery store here, all affected with a saltwater flood. All of the electricity, all the boxes all will have to be replaced with this flood because of the saltwater corrosion that's going to happen with all of that copper that's in all of the homes. Many of the homes, actually, may be total losses. We won't know that until the insurance company gets out here and takes a look at what's going on -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Saltwater, when it encounters copper pipes, that can be a total loss?

MYERS: I lost you, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Are you there? Can you hear me?

MYERS: Yes, go ahead. Yes, go ahead.

I've got you back.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, the question was, when saltwater encounters copper pipes, which most people have, that can be a total loss?

MYERS: No. The copper electricity lines.

M. O'BRIEN: Oh, I see. I'm sorry.

MYERS: The electricity lines are all copper, as well. And then you've got your electrical boxes and then you have every other box that's all basically copper here. There was some aluminum wire used back in the '70s, but that's pretty much all replaced now so...

M. O'BRIEN: And you don't want that stuff. You don't want that stuff.

MYERS: No. Not at all.

So now all that copper is going to have to be taken out and all that conduit and everything is going to have to be put back in.

M. O'BRIEN: Ooh, what a mess.

MYERS: And that's a very expensive proposition.

M. O'BRIEN: That is a huge, huge, proposition.

MYERS: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Chad Myers, keep us posted from there.

MYERS: Sure.

M. O'BRIEN: Appreciate it -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Another problem to talk about now, many residents in the storm's path who don't have any electricity this morning. Power officials are working to assess the full damage.

John Hutchison is the public affairs manager at Gulf Power and he joins us by phone from Pensacola.

Nice to talk to you, sir.

Thanks for being with us.

Give me a sense of how bad it got at the height of the storm.

JOHN HUTCHISON, GULF POWER, PUBLIC AFFAIRS MANAGER: Well, the winds were up to 120 miles an hour and this morning we've got almost 500 miles of power lines that are out of service. We've got about 240,000 customers without power this morning.

But the good news is we've got over 3,300 workers coming into northwest Florida to help us get the power back on. The first thing we'll be doing this morning is a comprehensive damage assessment to understand why those 500 miles of line are out of service. And then we'll begin to get to work to get the largest lines up first, the transmission lines.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, so 30 folks -- 30,000 folks coming in, a quarter of a million people without power, though.

Howl long do you think it'll take to get them and their power restored?

HUTCHISON: We'll know that better after we do this damage assessment. We're going to try and get some airplanes in the air today to fly the transmission lines. By noon we'll have a good handle on that. But I think it's certainly safe to say within two weeks everybody who can receive power should have power. Hopefully it'll be sooner than that, but until we do that damage assessment, it's difficult to say how long it's going to take...

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, I can imagine...

HUTCHISON: ... to get the power back on.

S. O'BRIEN: ... you know, because to some degree, we haven't talked about downed lines, but really it's not so much the lines, it's the posts that are down. And those have to be just reassembled and put back into the ground, right?

HUTCHISON: That's correct. And it's also the large transmission towers. The large lines that bring that power to the population center, those have to be put up first. It really does us no good to go into your neighborhood and hang a transformer if those lines are not -- if they don't have electricity. So to get electricity to the neighborhoods, we have to get the large lines up first. And that's where the damage assessment comes in -- how many of those towers are laying on the ground and what is it going to take to get them back up? And then we'll be able to guess how long.

But this is certainly, the damage is not as widespread as hurricane Ivan was. After hurricane Ivan, we did to have one light bulb burning in Escambia or Santa Rosa County. And this morning almost half of all customers in both counties do have power. So we're starting from a better place.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, so it's all relative.

How many folks, at the height of it, were out during hurricane Ivan? I'm curious.

HUTCHISON: Three-hundred and sixty-five thousand customers in hurricane Ivan. We serve 400,000 customers, so that was almost 90 percent of our customers, all in the Florida Panhandle from hurricane Ivan, which obviously affected a much wider area than hurricane Dennis did.

S. O'BRIEN: All right. Well, you know, as we keep saying all morning, it is all relative.

John Hutchison, thanks for talking with us.

HUTCHISON: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: He's the manager of public affairs for Gulf Power.

Time to get a look at the headlines.

Kelly Wallace is at Time Warner Center in New York -- hey, Kelly, good morning again.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Soledad.

Good morning to you.

And here are some stories now in the news.

President Bush says the attacks in London are fresh proof for the need to stamp out terrorism. In less than three hours, he is set to deliver a progress report on the war on terror. He will speak at the FBI training academy in northern Virginia. CNN will have live coverage of that speech at 10:40 a.m. Eastern.

Two pilots at an air show in Canada are dead in a horrific collision and it's all caught on tape. Disturbing pictures show the planes exploding in a ball of flames. The show, taking place in Saskatchewan, the Canadian province north of Montana and North Dakota. No one on the ground was injured. That crash is now under investigation.

A siege in Los Angeles ending with the shooting death of a suspect and a toddler. But it's not clear if the baby was shot by police or the suspect himself. Police say a man emerged from his home carrying the 19-month-old girl then opened fire. Both were killed. A police officer was also shot, but is expected to survive. Officers say they did everything they could to hold their fire.

And the FBI confirms the human remains found in western Montana are those of missing 9-year-old Dylan Groene. The boy and his 8-year- old sister Shasta disappeared nearly two months ago from the scene of a grizzly triple murder. Convicted sex offender Joseph Duncan has been charged with kidnapping and is likely to face additional charges. Duncan is set to appear in court July 19.

That gets you caught up with the latest headlines.

Back to Soledad in Atlanta.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Kelly, thanks.

Gosh, this is sort of the news everybody expected about Dylan Groene. M. O'BRIEN: Yes. It's still awfully sad.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, it really is.

M. O'BRIEN: You know, even though it is something that we sort of expected.

Up next on the program, it is the morning after. Emergency officials getting a first look at the damage from Dennis.

Florida Senator Mel Martinez receiving a briefing this morning. He will be our guest ahead.

S. O'BRIEN: And we're going to take you live to one of the counties that was declared a disaster area by President Bush. So how long before life there gets back to normal?

That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: What was hurricane Dennis is still causing a lot of trouble to the nation's mid-section today, now tropical depression Dennis.

Meanwhile, in the Panhandle of Florida, they are really assessing the damage this morning.

Florida Senator Mel Martinez just got a briefing on the hurricane damage and he will join Governor Jeb Bush on a tour of some of these hard hit areas -- Pensacola, Milton, Pace, Shalimar.

He is now joining us live from Tallahassee.

Senator Martinez, good to have you with us.

You've been getting some fairly up to the moment updates.

Why don't you just tell us what you're hearing about damage.

SEN. MEL MARTINEZ (R), FLORIDA: Well, Miles, it appears that the damage of structures has not been nearly as severe as we had feared or as we had in a storm like Ivan. But the fact is that there's still a lot of scattered damage, and that is being assessed now little by little. Great power outages, 240,000 people without power. We've seen some great amount of flooding because of that eastern eye wall of the storm pushing a lot of tide into communities like St. Marks and others.

So we're seeing some road erosion. Highway 98 has been badly damaged in some stretches of in it the north Florida area. So there's a lot of damage, although it's not as severe as what we saw before. And most of all, we're very fortunate that to the moment there appears to be no loss of life, although just now at first light today is that these rescue teams are getting into areas where people would not evacuate just to assess and see it.

But up until now, we have no loss of life to report, which we're very, very fortunate to say.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, we're glad to hear that and we hope that holds.

Let's talk about, first of all, Escambia in Santa Rosa County -- it's a little bit to the West -- before we get to St. Marks.

What sorts of damage there and especially in those spots where Ivan was a big problem, are there any special problems associated with all of that?

MARTINEZ: Well, clearly, we have the loss of power is a huge problem in that area. And that's obviously one that affects everything else. With the National Guard this morning, they have staged overnight and they're preparing to bring in water and ice, which is going to be a tremendous relief to the people there. You have to understand, too, Miles, that these are folks who are just recovering, still in the process of recovering from a very terrible storm only 10 months ago.

So this is really adding to a lot of misery that already is in the area. We had 3,000 people that are out -- 3,000 homes that are in temporary shelters still. And those 3,000 people we're assessing today what their situation is to make sure that the housing is OK for them to return to. So these are 3,000 families that are still not in their permanent homes from Ivan last year that are now being affected again by this more current situation.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, let's go east and talk about St. Marks here. That one caught, I think, most everybody by surprise, probably the folks there in Tallahassee who watch these things.

Will that part of the state be declared a disaster area, first of all? And what's going to be done for those folks?

MARTINEZ: There's about four or five counties, including St. Marks, which is in Wakulla County, that are going to be evaluated this morning. And I would anticipate that they'll be joining the disaster declaration. I think that that'll come later today. As you know, the governor and I and Senator Nelson and other state officials are going to be traveling west in just a little while and that's part of what we'll be doing, too, is just to assess the entirety of damage.

But no question that another five or six Florida counties are going to also be joining the disaster declaration. Wakulla County, which is where St. Marks is located, probably will be heading the list of all of those there.

The flood damage there has been very, very extensive and it is still under six feet of water, most of St. Marks. And so that's going to create a tremendous amount of devastation.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, yes, that flow with the hurricane really battered them.

Overall, Senator, do you have the sense of this -- and I don't want to minimize anybody's loss through all this, because there are people that are hurting this morning -- but do you get the sense you sort of dodged a bullet here?

MARTINEZ: Well, I think we dodged a big bullet, no question. I don't think it's on the level of the magnitude of Ivan. But, you know, to those who have been affected by this one, obviously, this is a big tragedy for them. We're going to go assess everything and we'll know a little more by the end of today.

And, by the way, we still have tornadoes that are forming. There are some feeder bands that are still coming through. So we have concern throughout the day and into the night that there may be additional tornadoes in the area.

So we're hoping that it is not nearly what we thought it might be as we were looking at the prospects of this storm yesterday, as we watched and waited.

M. O'BRIEN: Twenty-four hours ago, if we were talking, it looked a lot more grim, didn't it, Senator?

MARTINEZ: That's right. It sure did. It sure did.

M. O'BRIEN: Senator Mel Martinez, a safe journey as you tour the damage today.

MARTINEZ: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Thanks for spending some time with us -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: There is a state of emergency to tell you about in parts of southern Colorado today, where firefighters battle a wildfire which is now covering 8,000 acres. The fire, near the town of Beulah, nearly quadrupled in size over the weekend, fed by strong winds and brush, as well. Dense smoke prevented aircraft from getting close enough to drop retardant on the center.

Jeff Marcu of Denver affiliate KKTV live for us near Beulah, about 150 miles south of Denver -- hey, Jeff, give me a sense of the evacuations, how many people are out so far?

JEFF MARCU, KKTV REPORTER: So far, Soledad, more than 5,000 people have been evacuated. But out in this area of southern Colorado, it's not just families. A lot of these families have a lot of land with livestock. So not only do they have to worry about their families, also their animals.

Let me step out of the way and show you how severe this fire is. Like you said, more than 8,000 acres burning, 5,000 families evacuated. There are hundreds of firefighters out here. If you look at these steep hills and mountains, you see why this is such a tough fire to fight. Some of the hot shot teams are out here, but even for them, the steep ridges and trees and really deep cliffs make it very tough to fight this fire.

So many communities have been evacuated out here. And, again today, it's going to be another hot day. Over the weekend, low humidity, hot temperatures. We're talking mid-90s. Now the sun is up, going to make for another hot day today.

We were out here Friday and we had to drive about 20 miles east to get to where this fire is now, it is such a fast moving fire.

Right now it looks kind of docile. Some smoke out there. But things change so quickly out here. One minute it'll be dry, the next minute you'll see heavy flames.

And a lot of firefighters out here, again, from all throughout Colorado.

So we'll continue to follow this fire. Again, it's going to be another dry day, so firefighters are not expecting an easy one. Possibly more evacuations, Soledad, throughout the day.

S. O'BRIEN: Jeff Marcu.

Good luck to all the folks out there.

Thanks -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come on the program, Dennis at its worst. We'll take you inside this powerful storm as it roared onto land. CNN reporters were there to see it all.

Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Authorities in London are urging people to go about their business as usual today after Thursday's deadly bombings in London. Police say they have intensified security to reassure commuters and tourists traveling around London. Authorities today also released the identification of one of the 49 confirmed victims of the attacks.

Nic Robertson live for us in London outside of the Kings Cross Station -- Nic, let's first begin with leads in the case.

Do police have any?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they don't appear to, Soledad. At this stage they don't appear -- and they're certainly not saying publicly -- that they are chasing down any one particular or any one group of individuals. What we do know is that they have brought into London an array of European Islamic terrorism experts, terrorist experts from all over Europe, and they're consulting with them.

It could be that they're not giving away publicly anything that they know. But the leaks that have been coming out so far -- and they have been very, very small from this tight investigation -- don't give any or give no indication at all that there is a firm lead at this stage -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Nic, what do you know about this meeting that took place over the weekend? It was a meeting between Britain and its allies, the U.S. included.

ROBERTSON: What they're trying to do, what the British authorities are trying to do is work with their European partners to see if there are any names that trigger perhaps a lead in this particular case. What they are doing, for example, with the Spanish authorities, the Spanish authorities have sent their Islamic terrorist experts here. They are cross referencing names, perhaps people who lived in Spain then moved to London. They're cross referencing them, saying what do you know about this individual, what do you know about this individual, trying to put all the names in and look at the potentials for different scenarios.

But what gave the Spanish a real advantage in the Madrid bombings that hasn't happened here so far is after the Madrid bombings, the Spanish authorities found a bomb that didn't detonate. That gave them vital information and that just hasn't happened so far in London -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: How about what we're expected to hear from the British prime minister, Tony Blair? He's supposed to make a statement.

What do they think he's going to say?

ROBERTSON: He's very likely to, again, to reiterate that Londoners and British people should continue to go about their business, that they shouldn't be affected by these bombs. He's very likely to tell people to continue to be vigilant. And that's what we've been hearing from the police and the investigators. They are concerned that there's a potential for another bomb.

But very likely Tony Blair is going to warn the British people that this investigation could take some time. It could be weeks, maybe months, before they actually manage to track down the perpetrators. And terrorism analysts say in cases like this, that can often be the case. It is weeks, months of painstaking work. The forensics on the scenes, the security camera video, of which there are many, many thousands of hours to go through, and anything else they might glean from the public, as well -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Nic Robertson for us.

Nic, thanks.

When we come back, we're going to take you back to our top story, the aftermath of hurricane Dennis. We'll take you inside FEMA's nerve center and show you what happened behind-the-scenes as Dennis was slamming onshore.

This special edition of AMERICAN MORNING continues in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.

It is just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING.

And welcome back to our special coverage of hurricane Dennis and its aftermath.

M. O'BRIEN: Dennis is now a tropical depression moving north through the Mississippi region. But it's really much bigger than that. It's extending all across the southeastern United States as it moves upward into the central part of the U.S.

Rob Marciano is tracking this storm for us.

And you really should be paying attention if you're inland this morning. We know everybody focuses on where it makes landfall. A lot of flooding, a lot of thunder, a lot of activity, a lot of tornadoes to worry about all throughout this part of the country -- Rob.

MARCIANO: You're absolutely right, Miles.

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