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CNN Live At Daybreak

Hurricane Lashes Southeastern Florida; Walter Reed to Close

Aired August 26, 2005 - 06:00   ET

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


KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is Friday, August 26.
Katrina scales back, then picks up steam again. The lesson with this category one storm -- don't underestimate the power of a hurricane, no matter how big or small.

Saying good-bye to a piece of military and medical history. From soldiers to presidents, this hospital has seen its share of important patients.

And later, do you rent or own? See why one may be less cost- efficient than you think.

From the Time Warner Center in New York, this is DAYBREAK.

I'm Kelly Wallace in today for Carol Costello.

Good Friday morning, everyone.

Thanks so much for waking up with us.

We will have much more on hurricane Katrina in just a moment with Chad Myers.

Also ahead, Lance Armstrong has some strong words for the French.

And a mystery unsolved -- two years later, what do we know about the pizza delivery bombings?

Those stories, but first, now in the news, in Iraq, another deadline missed. The interim government tried but failed to get a draft constitution approved by midnight. The main sticking point is the issue of federalism or how much autonomy separate regions of the country should have. A one day extension for the talks is in effect.

A county judge hears a request today from the ex-wife of confessed serial killer BTK. Paula Rader is trying to intervene in several civil lawsuits filed against Dennis Rader by families of his victims. It's an effort to protect proceeds from the sale of the couple's home and other property.

At least 17 people are dead after fire raced through an apartment building in Paris and local officials say up to half of the dead are children. Most of the victims were immigrants from West Africa.

To Chad Myers, who is very busy in Atlanta -- Chad, what is hurricane Katrina looking like now? CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, it was a tropical storm. You may see that on the bottom of the screen. It did lost a little of its strength overnight, but now it has regained strength and the 5:00 advisory has it back above 74 miles per hour, which it takes to be a hurricane.

There is the storm itself. It has reemerged into the Gulf of Mexico, as we knew it would. But it took a little different path. It traveled down south and across the Everglades and then over western Monroe County, northern Monroe County, and then back out here into the water. So it didn't spend as much time on land as it could have had it traveled something like this -- see, that's a long distance -- because now it's back in the water.

Still seeing significant rain Key Colony Beach right on down through Marathon. There's the eye itself now. This is all Everglades. You've got to think about this. This hurricane didn't hit a mountain range and slowed it down. This hit a swamp, the Everglades. It didn't really get into cold water ever. It never really got into that much dry land. That's why the storm never lost any intensity.

It put down a lot of rain. Cutler Ridge, you are the bull's eye there. That's 18 inches of rain in some of those spots there. We are seeing this storm still moving across. There you see how it's going, turning a little bit on up toward the west and then to the northwest and here it goes folks. It's going to be headed to somewhere between Louisiana and the western Gulf Coast here of Florida and it's going to be a category two or a category three, which means it could be very close to a major hurricane at about 115 miles per hour.

WALLACE: Unbelievable. And Chad...

MYERS: That's for the weekend. And then next week. But still...

WALLACE: Absolutely.

People will be watching it very closely.

MYERS: They will.

WALLACE: Chad, we'll talk to you in a few minutes.

MYERS: All right.

WALLACE: Thanks so much.

MYERS: You're welcome.

WALLACE: And we are continuing this hour with much more on hurricane Katrina, the storm that is drowning South Florida right now. Katrina being blamed for four deaths all in Broward County. Three of those deaths involved trees blown over by the storm's winds. The fourth person was killed when his car hit a tree. 1.3 million customers losing power last night. Airports closed now in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Also closed throughout the area, schools, courts and two ports.

Well, we want to find out how people in the storm's path are doing and coping.

Our Susan Candiotti is there.

She's in Hollywood Beach, between Fort Lauderdale and Miami -- Susan, good to see you again.

Give us a sense of what you're seeing there now.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kelly.

Not much structural damage, as is to be expected from a category one storm. But briefly, we want to show you this drowned palm tree right here as just an example of a lot of fallen trees in the area. Preliminary we've got power outages left and right across South Florida. We're talking about more than a million Florida Power and Light customers without power. You can see that from the storefronts here, not lit up.

And just, we'll spin over the camera this way a little bit. There's a high rise apartment building that you can probably barely make out there, but it is bathed in darkness. That's 700,000 of those million customers with power out in Miami-Dade County. Another half million in Broward County and almost 100,000 in Palm Beach County.

And with this hurricane we have at least four deaths to tell you about. We'll talk about at least three of them for you now. One of them involving a man who was driving down the street in Fort Lauderdale when a tree fell on top of his car, crashing him and killing him instantly.

In another case, a man who had simply gone outside to inspect a fallen tree branch on his trailer was, in fact, felled by a tree or hit by a tree that had fallen right on top of him. That happened in Plantation, Florida. And in another instance, a man who, let's see, I've forgotten about the third one. A man who was driving and, in fact, was trying to avoid a tree that had fallen into the street when he was struck and ran into another tree.

So this is the kind of -- the tragedies that you hear about from time to time.

The other thing you want to watch out for in South Florida is going to be possible deaths from electrocution. That's why authorities are warning people to stay inside because there is a lot of standing water, a lot of street flooding and you don't know, you could be contaminated by bacteria, power lines that might still be alive. If you see anything down, they say, assume that the line is hot. You hear that every time there's a hurricane, this time no exception.

And, Kelly, just to put everything into perspective here and to remind folks, Florida has been hit by six hurricanes now in just over a year's time. This is the eleventh named storm of the season. Last year, there were about 12 or 13. And remember, we are just now hitting the peak of hurricane season. It's far from over here, Kelly. And so a lot of cleanup expected to begin as the sun comes up -- back to you.

WALLACE: Far from over, indeed, Susan.

And you have covered almost all of these storms that hit Florida over the past year, I know.

Give us a sense -- and we talked about this list last hour -- in terms of how Floridians prepared for this one. Was there a sense that people were taking this a little lightly, not as seriously as, perhaps, other storms?

CANDIOTTI: Well, people, of course, heard all the warnings and they knew primarily this would be more of a rain event than to expert major wind damage. That's -- you don't expert that with a category one storm. And so a lot of people were, in fact, complacent. Others did, in fact, board up their homes just to be on the safe side. And certainly they were warned that there would be major power outages very, very likely.

So if you were smart, you had those hurricane supplies. And if not, you are going to have to wait this thing out until all those utility workers can get the power back on line. And who knows at this point how long that's going to take.

WALLACE: Well, we hope it happens soon.

Susan, thanks so much.

We'll check in with you at the half hour.

Susan Candiotti reporting from Hollywood Beach in Florida.

As day breaks, home and car owners, as well as work crews, Susan was mentioning, will be out in South Florida surveying all the damage. Katrina causing flooding and power outages.

Reporter Gary Nelson with CNN affiliate WFOR-TV shows us what he saw overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

GARY NELSON, WFOR-TV CORRESPONDENT: Driving around the Kendall area in South Dade tonight, my photographer, Abel Castillo (ph) and I are struck by the number of trees that are down. Lots of trees, the limbs lying in the roadways. On this stretch of Kendall Drive, the power is on. It's a wonder. Look at these power poles leaning out, the lines dangling from them. Look at that pole right there, if you can see it, snapped almost in two.

This Kendall gas station, the cowlings, front and back, the housings on every gas pump torn off by the winds. The gas hoses sprawled out like spaghetti. In some places, the street flooding came and quickly receded. But it left behind lots of stalled out, flooded cars going nowhere fast.

What happened?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were coming down Kendall. We didn't realize it was this flooded and we just got stuck because of the water.

NELSON: The water got (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The water in the car.

NELSON: Many neighborhoods, some homes, are flooded. We're in the South Dade area, west of Dufalls (ph) at 107th Avenue and 138th Street. This neighborhood pretty much underwater.

You're about to meet the Rodriguez family. We couldn't quite get to them. The water was too deep.

Describe the conditions in there, Mr. Rodriguez. Tell us what it's like.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: It's horrible. You know, it's like living in the middle of a lake. We must have five to seven inches of rain inside, out of -- water inside the house, everywhere in the house.

NELSON: How long have you lived here, Mr. Rodriguez?

RODRIGUEZ: Twenty-six years.

NELSON: And you've never seen it like this?

RODRIGUEZ: Never. Never like this, no.

NELSON: As we drive about in the dark of night, it is not a pretty sight here in South Dade. And one can only wonder, one can only worry what the daylight might reveal.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

WALLACE: And, once again, that was reporter Gary Nelson, with CNN affiliate WFOR.

Katrina hitting hard elsewhere, in Miami, as well. A highway overpass under construction has collapsed in the middle of the storm. This bridge is over Florida Highway 836, west of the city.

We want to get the latest now from Alex Alvarez of our affiliate WPLG in Miami -- Alex, good to see you.

Give us a sense of what you're seeing on the ground there.

ALEX ALVAREZ, WPLG-TV CORRESPONDENT: Sure. Well, what you're looking at right now is a live look here at our major highway, our major thruway here in Miami connecting the east side and west side of the city. This is the 836, which at this time of the morning on a typical workday, on a Friday, at 6:10, as it would be, would be packed full of cars. Luckily that was not the case because, as you can see behind me, what is in the distance there is a part of an overpass that was currently under construction that collapsed on top of the 836 here as a result of the hurricane force winds. This happened about 9:00 last night here in the Miami area.

Now, in the distance there, what they're doing right now is trying to remove the 90 tons of debris. And I should say it's a lot more than that, because there are 16 beams that made up that section that is now gone. Each section, or each beam, rather, weighed 90 tons. So you can imagine just how much of a difficult cleanup and a tedious cleanup this is.

Luckily, nobody was injured. It's amazing that nobody, luckily, was under that piece of roadway here along the highway when it actually came down. We are told that the reason it came down is due to it not being completely done and fixed to the area. They underestimated the punch that Katrina had and this is what happened as a result of that.

So the 836 here in Miami does remain shut down in both directions, as they try to clean this up. It is going to be, again, a very long and a tedious process. They do hope to have it reopened by the end of tonight, but, of course, what they're hoping for is that it will definitely be opened on Monday, come time when everybody does return to work here in Miami.

That's the latest here.

Reporting live from Miami, I'm Alex Alvarez for CNN.

WALLACE: Alex, thanks so much.

As you said, lucky, indeed, that no one was hurt in that.

And, again, that was Alex Alvarez from our affiliate WPLG-TV.

And we are hearing from you, our citizen journalists. You guys are out there covering the storm. And here's some video from Jose. This is what Katrina looked like as it blew through Kendall, Florida, around 8:00 p.m. last night. And that is just west of Coral Gables and Miami.

We are looking for a few more good citizen journalists. If you live in an area impacted by Tropical Storm Katrina, which we know now is hurricane Katrina, e-mail us your photos. You can do that by logging onto cnn.com/stories. Please also be sure to include your name, location and phone number.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: And still to come this hour, much more on hurricane Katrina. What happens when the power outages strike the very people you rely on to get you the latest information?

But first, here's a look at what else is making news this Friday morning, August 26th.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: And welcome back to this Friday edition of DAYBREAK.

Turning now to the base closing commission, which today is taking up the contentious issue of realigning the Air Force and Air National Guard.

States fiercely oppose the Pentagon's plans to vastly reconfigure these branches of the military. Proposed closings include South Dakota's Ellsworth Air Force Base and New Mexico's Cannon Air Force. Yesterday, the commissioners decided to shut down Air Force facilities in Alaska and California.

Siding with the Pentagon, the base closing commission voted to shut down the Army's historic Walter Reed Hospital.

CNN's Bruce Morton has been around Washington a long time and he takes a look at this prominent facility.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It opened in 1909. Fifty buildings now, 113 acres, four more than the Vatican, and lots of history. Famous patients? Well, presidents -- Dwight Eisenhower. He died here. Harry Truman, George Herbert Walker Bush. Richard Nixon came in 1960 after banging his knee on a car door and developing septic arthritis. They treated him in the days before his 1960 debate with John Kennedy, but he didn't stay long enough for a full recovery, and that may have contributed to his poor physical appearance in the first nationally televised presidential debate.

General John Pershing, who was commander of the American troops in France in World War 1 was here and lived long enough to bless General George Patton before he left for the invasion of North Africa in World War 2.

Cartoonist Gary Trudeau visited to do research. His character B.D. in the strip "Doonesbury," lost a leg in Iraq and was treated here.

And it's been home recently for real life veterans of that war.

This President Bush visited some of them last year.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Every time I continue to Walter Reed, I'm struck by the courage and the bravery of our men and women who wear the uniform. It's such an honor to meet the troops who have been wounded.

MORTON: Ten beds when it opened, maybe 2,000 during World War 2, 5,500 rooms now, about 14,000 patients a year. And more history than most of us can imagine.

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

WALLACE: Saying good-bye to a treasure there.

Still to come here on DAYBREAK, is there light at the end of the tunnel for a troubled airline?

And our coverage of hurricane Katrina continues with a look at the damage as folks in Florida look ahead to sunrise.

But first, we want to say good morning to Delray Beach, Florida.

You see there some trees shaking, some rain. We hope they're doing OK there.

DAYBREAK will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: And time now for a little "Business Buzz."

United Airlines says it has secured offers of up to $3 billion in debt financing. The company says those commitments, while not yet finalized, would allow it to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy by late this year or early next year.

Are you ready for Stern times two? Sirius Satellite Radio says it'll have two round the clock channels devoted to shock jock Howard Stern. Stern begins working for Sirius in January. One or both of the channels will carry Stern's live morning show. Other programming ideas are still being developed. That will be interesting, indeed.

Well, turning to the housing market. As it boomed, Americans were buying, not renting.

But Carrie Lee tells us renting may be making a comeback.

Why is that?

CARRIE LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, at least in the metro areas, Kelly.

Well, it seems like home prices have just gotten too expensive for some people, so they're looking to rent instead, or continue renting, and that demand is pushing prices up, starting to, anyway. Now, even with declines last month, the median home price still above $200,000. And that's leading to a reversal in the five year long slump for rentals.

In the past year, rents rose about 85 percent in about 85 percent of large cities, according to Global Retail Analytics. Two years ago, rents were falling in 85 percent of markets. The average rent rose 2 1/2 percent this spring compared to last year and renters also have been getting some perks, such as one month free, no security deposit and no application fee.

So all of this has helped fill apartments as vacancy rates fell in the second quarter compared to a record high in 2004.

Now, of course, rising rents could be bad for current apartment dwellers. In some cases, landlords are going to try to raise rent to keep up with demand. So it depends on what kind of agreement you have with your current landlord.

WALLACE: I wish I had more time, but I'm told I can't ask any questions because I rent.

LEE: That's...

WALLACE: I didn't buy. I want to know when I should buy, but that'll be for another day.

LEE: Well, that's the big question, yes, and over the time, of course, prices have gone up a lot, even though last month we did see a bit of a drop.

WALLACE: All right, Carrie Lee with the "Business Buzz."

Good to see you.

LEE: You, too.

WALLACE: Thanks so much.

Still to come here on DAYBREAK, we know you laugh at reporters blowing in the wind during dangerous hurricanes, but you rely on news teams to bring you the information you need when you're in the path of the storm. So what happens when the lights go out during breaking news? Get an incredible insider's look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: From the Time Warner Center in New York, this is DAYBREAK.

I'm Kelly Wallace in today for Carol Costello.

Good morning, everyone.

Thanks so much for waking up with us.

Chad Myers will have much more on hurricane Katrina in just a moment. She is now back to hurricane status.

But first, these stories now in the news.

It is deja vu all over again in Iraq. The interim government has failed for the third time to meet a deadline on the constitution it's drafting. Sunnis are objecting to federalism, which would give other ethnic groups regional autonomy. A fast moving wildfire in southern Oregon has destroyed six homes in the rural community of Selma. Officials urged 30 to 40 other homeowners to evacuate. The fire, which began yesterday, has burned 2,000 acres.

Floodwaters are finally receding across Europe. Now, difficult cleanup and rescue operations are getting underway. At least 42 people have been killed in those floods and thousands of homes have been washed away.

To Chad in Atlanta at the Forecast Center -- Chad, we're talking about flooding in Europe.

MYERS: Yes.

WALLACE: We're going to see some flooding likely in South Florida.

MYERS: There was flooding overnight. The waters really go down quite quickly in South Florida, as well. So when we try to get out there today and look for the flooding, a lot of the water is going to get into the canals and go away. But it comes up so quickly, some of those areas had three to four inches an hour for like four hours at a time.

The storm, though, the center of the storm has ejected itself. It's now back over into the Gulf of Mexico again. This is Florida Bay, Monroe County and also down toward the Keys. The Keys really getting hard hit now. They had a tornado in Marathon yesterday. The tornado did some damage at the Marathon Airport. But you can see the squall lines still coming through the Keys this morning from Marathon on up to Duck Key and the like.

Fifteen to 18 inches of rain right here in this city, Cutler Ridge, and all through South Dade. That entire area there really inundated by flooding yesterday. And it's still going to be going on today, but a lot of it is coming down.

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