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American Morning

Hurricane Katrina Strikes South Florida; President Bush Gets Personally Involved With Iraqi Constitutional Process

Aired August 26, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien. Hurricane Katrina strikes South Florida, killing at least three people, leaving more than a million without power. But the worst could still come for major flooding. We're live with the latest. Now Katrina is back over water, upgraded again to a hurricane within the last two hours. She could hit Florida once more in a matter of days.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Carol Costello in for Miles. Iraq's constitution in serious doubt this morning. Now President Bush steps in personally to help break the impasse.

O'BRIEN: Lance Armstrong going on the offensive against new doping charges. His side of the story, on this AMERICAN MORNING.

COSTELLO: He will be back on Monday. And happy Friday, everyone. Good morning. I'm Carol in for Miles.

Let's get right to the situation in Florida.

O'BRIEN: It is not looking really good. CNN, of course, is your hurricane headquarters, and we have been tracking Katrina all night. The pictures truly tell the story. Powerful winds, rain sweeping across South Florida. They downed trees and power lines and caused lots of damage in and around Miami. You're looking at some of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina this morning. We've got Jason Carroll. He's in Miami for us. Susan Candiotti is at Hollywood Beach.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Let's get to Jason Carroll. As we mentioned, he's in Miami, and he's near a highway overpass which was essentially destroyed by Katrina's force.

Jason, good morning to you.

Pretty destructive considering a category-one storm.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Only a category one, but you could never tell from the destruction that was caused here at this point. Crews are using torches and heavy equipment to try to clean up all the mess that was left behind. Take a look at that glass. Actually, Soledad, (INAUDIBLE) where it happened, about 100 yards from there. That is where it happened...

O'BRIEN: Let me stop you, because we're having a really hard time hearing you. And obviously, I know in the aftermath, the difficulty that it is to get some of the technical problems worked out, so we're going to see if we can improve the audio so we can hear the improve the audio so we're going to see if we can improve the audio so we can hear what's Jason's is talking about, because the devastation to that overpass which was under construction is pretty remarkable. We'll get back to him in just a moment.

Let's move on to Susan Candiotti. She's in Hollywood Beach for us this morning.

Susan, we spoke to you yesterday where everybody was just sort of waiting for the hurricane to hit. What's the scene there today?

CANDIOTTI: This area, in particular, didn't make out too badly, but a relentless pounding from Hurricane Katrina, and tragically it resulted in at least three deaths. People hit by trees primarily. One man who was sitting in his car, another one who had swerved to avoid a tree, ran into another tree, and a third person who went outside to inspect damage, they always warn against that, who was also hit by a tree and tragically killed.

The other major problem here, flooding in low-lying areas, especially in South Dade, up to 15 to 20 inches of rain in some spots. People walking around in knee-deep water, we are told. Also power outages, that's a key problem here. More than a million people without power; 700,000 in Miami-Dade County, 500,000 in Broward County, almost a hundred-thousand in Palm Beach County.

And now as the sun is coming up, they hope to get some 4,000 utility workers out there to restore power as quickly as is possible.

O'BRIEN: All right, Susan Candiotti for us. Of course, that is a big story for many folks there, who are struggling with those power issues today, and the workers struggling as well.

Thanks, Susan.

Stay with us, obviously, all day for updates on Hurricane Katrina. CNN is your hurricane headquarters.

Let's turn to Southern California now; about 500,000 utility customers were left without power. Now that's obviously not due to the hurricane; it's due to problems with a major transmission line. Southern California Edison imposed the rolling blackouts on Thursday afternoon. That cut electricity to the L.A. area for just about half an hour. The blackout brought back memories, of course, of similar power cuts which were imposed back in early 2001. Those blackouts were partly caused by a scheme by Enron. You'll recall the now- bankrupt energy giant, and they were trying to manipulate utility rates -- Carol.

COSTELLO: President Bush is getting personally involved with the Iraqi constitutional process. CNN has learned that he made a phone call to one of the Shiite leaders this week. Aneesh Raman is live in Baghdad.

Aneesh, to be a fly on the wall. What do you know about this discussion?

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning.

We're told the president calling Abdel Aziz Hakim on Wednesday. Hakim is a leader of SCIRI (ph), a religious Shia organization, the biggest Shia party in this government. The president urging the Shia negotiators to stay at the table and see if they can bridge the divide that exists between the Shia-Kurd coalition, and the Sunnis on that major issue of federalism. I chose, Carol, really the deep U.S. involvement in this process, and the very difficult bind the government is in.

At one level, the U.S. has long said any delay in the political process only seeks to strengthen the insurgency. We saw another delay last night, just after midnight. The speaker of the national assembly say they are extending by one day the self-imposed deadline for compromise.

But on the other hand, Carol, alienating the Sunnis, which pushing the draft document forward seems like it will do, also strengthens the insurgency. The domestic insurgence in Iraq are primarily made up of Sunnis. So it is the near impossible task of trying to keep this process on track, but at the same time make sure that the Sunnis are on board with a draft constitution -- Carol.

COSTELLO: OK, so what's next? I know there is a deadline, you know, for another day, but what happens if that deadline isn't met?

RAMAN: Well, the Iraqi government says the only legal deadline it had to meet was on Monday when a draft constitution had to be put forth to the national assembly. These are now just self-imposed deadlines for them to end talks. The only real deadline now is a logistical one. They have to, at some point, finalize these talks, print these draft document in million of copies, distribute it to the Iraqi people, pass a law that would govern the referendum to come by mid-October. So they have only have so far that they can go before they risk jeopardizing that October vote -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Aneesh Raman live in Baghdad this morning.

Anti-war activists Cindy Sheehan is taking her protest on the road. After leaving Crawford at the end of the month, Sheehan says she's planning a bus tour across the country. She also wants to set up camp in Washington until President Bush agrees to meet with her. In the meantime, dozens of Bush supporters are arriving in Crawford. Their part of the You Don't Speak for Me Cindy Tour. A major rally is planned for tomorrow.

O'BRIEN: Authorities are investigating a deadly fire in Paris this morning . The fire quickly spread through a seven-story apartment building. It killed at least 17 people, injured 30 others. Officials say up to 130 people might have been in the building at the time, many of them children. More than 200 firefighters worked to try to control that fire.

The death toll is expected to rise in Central Europe after days of torrential rains. At least 34 people have been killed there. Many more are missing. Forecasters warn there's still more rain to come for several countries. Romania is among the hardest hit. Thousands of homes have been destroyed there, an estimated $400 million worth of damage, another $200 million worth of agricultural losses.

The flooding is in sharp contrast to the extreme drought in southern Europe. Firefighters in Portugal have finally gained the upper hand against a number of wildfires. They've been burning for two weeks now.

COSTELLO: Now a CNN exclusive. Lance Armstrong, appearing on Larry King Live for his first TV interview since a French newspaper said it had proof he took a performance enhancing drug. Here is part of that interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LANCE ARMSTRONG, PROFESSIONAL CYCLIST: That kind of accusation is preposterous. If you consider the science, if you consider the protocol involved in drug testing, if you consider the standards that have been over dozens of years, you know that none of that was followed here. So for Jean Marie to say that was a shock to me, first of all, because I actually spoke to him that very same day for about 30 minutes on the telephone. I called him at his house in Paris, and he didn't say any of those things to me. In fact, he just sort hemmed and hawed, and said I'm surprised. I said, I'm surprised, too. I think we're all surprised.

But none of the stuff that, of course, I read in the paper came across in his phone call to me, but this thing stinks. It's not good for me, and the unfortunate thing is that you're potentially dealt with something that you have to face for the rest of your life. And, like I said, protocol wasn't followed. And there is no backup sample to confirm what they say is a positive test.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: We'll hear more of the interview later this hour. The seven-time Tour De France winner discusses whether he will take legal action against the French newspaper that made those allegations, and you know, he has taken legal action before.

O'BRIEN: It costs a lot of money, take a lot of time, and...

COSTELLO: But luckily he has a lot of money.

O'BRIEN: And a fair amount of time.

COSTELLO: Now that he's retired.

O'BRIEN: Now there is the question, is it worth it? Because there's no love lost between the newspaper and Lance Armstrong, not even with just this event, but historically, they don't like him.

COSTELLO: Yes, and people love him here.

O'BRIEN: Right.

COSTELLO: And maybe it's a good thing that this is happening in France at this particular time in history, and maybe that will save his reputation, but we're going to talk more about that later.

O'BRIEN: That's ahead. Still to come this morning, sexual harassment at the nation's military academy. The Pentagon task force says it's widespread. So what's being done to fix the problem? We'll look at that.

COSTELLO: And next, more on the path of destruction left behind by Hurricane Katrina. A closer look at one of the areas hit the hardest. That's just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Katrina's grasp, though, still being felt all across South Florida. We told you about the highway overpass that was pretty much ripped apart. Luckily, it looks like nobody injured there.

Our next guest was among the first to arrive on the scene. Lieutenant Eric Baum is with the Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue. He's in Miami this morning.

Thanks for being with us. I know you're really busy, so we certainly appreciate your time, sir.

LT. ERIC BAUM, MIAMI-DADE FIRE AND RESCUE: Not a problem.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about what you first saw when you got to the scene. What did it look like?

BAUM: We got here in hurricane-force winds, just blinding rain coming right at us, very dark. A lot of the lights not operable here. It's very hard to see what's going on. It's almost surreal when you're looking at it the daylight, let alone when you have rain in your face and all of the wind. We immediately decided to start a search using our thermal-imaging cameras to see if any of the victims were under here. We spoke to law enforcement, and we knew that cars were traversing the area, and as we are a life safety issue-oriented department, we want to make sure nobody is in there, we had to assume the worse, hoping for the best, but assume the worse.

O'BRIEN: So cars were traversing the area, but this is an overpass that was under construction. So the idea that people would actually be going over the overpass is probably pretty unlikely.

Tell me a little bit about the work you did and when you concluded that nobody was involved in any kind of accident or injury.

BAUM: Yes. the traffic would of been going east-west, actually in the eastbound lane here. We knew this was under construction. It was over the 836. When we got here, there's just so many things you have to start doing to start a search. We started using our thermal-imaging cameras on the hopes that if there was a vehicle under there, we would get a reading as a heat source, from an engine, a tailpipe, something of a sort, or from themselves.

Then what we did is called in our USAR truck, an urban search and rescue technical rescue team to come out to the scene. They have a lot more sophisticated searching equipment. It was decided by the incident commander that we needed to deploy some of our canine assets, to bring some of our dogs out here. That so we could search much quicker, much more efficiently, and to put the dogs in areas where it was just too unsafe given the high amount of rain and wind going and the challenge if somebody was alive to go ahead and look in that area.

O'BRIEN: It's all pretty remarkable when you consider, as you pointed out, a driving rain. You're trying to get all this work done, and you really don't know if there's anybody trapped under there or not. Have you been surprised by the damage that a category-one storm has caused? I think many of us are sort of conditioned to think, well, category three is a strong storm, category five is going to be devastating, but category one not so bad?

BAUM: You know, this is the anniversary of Andrew, and a lot of our firefighters have been here a long time, have that in mind. I, myself, with the urban search and rescue team, have gone out for Charley and other things. It's different when it's in your backyard. What we do during and after a storm is the same no matter how big it is. We have crews out right now doing damage assessments, snapshots to give back to our command center, so we know exactly the extent of the damage.

O'BRIEN: And how's the extent of that damage? Forgive me for interrupting you, but you're doing assessments now, so how does it look right now? So how bad is it, across the area, not just...

BAUM: I'm out in the field, but just judging by the amount of damage done here, we're going to assume the worst. But we are going to go out. We are going to put helicopters up. We're going to go ahead and do -- have all of our fire trucks, our rescue trucks go out into the field and systemically examine for damage out there. So we can get a better overall picture. I do know we have some problems with flooding at two area hospitals. We're going to be working with the hospital officials and with our emergency operation center, to go ahead and evacuate the people there, and make other contingency plans. With the hospitals not being able to work there, we're going to take people who are in need of medical care and bring them to the other facilities.

O'BRIEN: Meaning you've got a busy day ahead. Lieutenant Baum, we appreciate your time. I know you've got a lot going on. Thanks a lot -- Carol.

BAUM: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Soledad, another casualty of the storm. CNN Miami affiliate WSVN. Here's a look behind the scenes, when the station lost power, knocked off the air about 8:00 Eastern Thursday night, not the kind of thing you want to happen. Listen:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HAYNES, WSVN NEWS ANCHOR: It's unbelievable. And I say that literally, because I've been asking folks around here in the newsplex who have been here for many years, 15, 20 years, they've never seen anything like it. And what you were saying before is true. This place has never been in the eyewall of a hurricane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: A generator that had kept the station going during the region-wide blackout had also failed, but the station was back up and running a short time later.

People living through the storm are sending us their picture. The citizen journalist is named Adilbek. The photo shows damage caused by Hurricane Katrina last night in a mobile home park in Pompano Beach, Florida. Good for them.

You can add to this coverage. If you live in an area affected by Hurricane Katrina, e-mail us your photos. And you can do that by logging on to CNN.com/stories, and please include your name, your location and your phone number.

O'BRIEN: And a pronouncer.

COSTELLO: And a pronouncer. That would help a lot.

O'BRIEN: Stay with us all morning for updates on Katrina, CNN, your hurricane headquarters.

O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, it appears as if Merck is making an about-face with its stance on the controversial drug Vioxx. We'll explain what they're doing just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Merck changes its approach to the Vioxx lawsuits. You knew this was coming. With that story, and tips on new prescriptions on the market, Ellen McGirt. She's is in for Andy this morning, "Minding Your Business."

So we expected that Merck would begin settling after they lost that huge lawsuit.

ELLEN MCGIRT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, wouldn't you, $253 million? It was a sympathetic widow. The jury was absolutely dialed into this, and they've got 5,000 more cases to take a look at. I would take it on a case-by-case basis, and be willing to settle if it made sense.

COSTELLO: Well, you know something, I have a loved one who has taken Vioxx for a number of years, and he doesn't really know how it will affect him down the line. MCGIRT: That's absolutely right. And we need to remember when we think about prescription drugs. There is always the risk associated with it, and studies show, responsible studies show it takes up to seven years before we really understand all the side effects of a particular drug, which is sometimes taking an older, more established drug, like there was in the Vioxx case, may be a better option for the people.

COSTELLO: So Seven years down the road, could people sue Merck again?

MCGIRT: Yes, obviously, this is always going to be an issue as new things come up. But the liability is really about, what did the company know, when did they know it, did they hide information if? As new side effect become available, do they release it to the public? So there's all kinds of legal acid tests that help people decide whether there is wrongdoing on the side of the manufacturer or not.

O'BRIEN: So you say you have to be careful when taking any prescription drug, but something has to be safe, I mean?

MCGIRT: Well, you need to -- one of the first, like these wonderful new drugs we're hearing so much about, billions of dollars are spent marketing these drugs. When you're prescribed something, ask your doctor how much do they really know about this drug?

Oftentimes, they only know what the manufacturer has told them. Have they prescribed them to other patients? Other patients like me? My age, my weight, my gender, my race, all of these are variables, and if they don't know, and if they don't have any clinical experience, then perhaps thinking about and asking for an older, more established, drug, the therapeutic equivalent, something that's bee in the pipeline for a while, might actually be better for you.

Thanks, Ellen.

MCGIRT: My pleasure.

COSTELLO: You'll be back a little later. We appreciate it -- Soledad.

MCGIRT: I sure will.

O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, we continue to track Hurricane Katrina, now gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico. Millions of residents in the Miami area, though, waking up to the destruction she left behind. We've got an update on the damage in South Florida, just ahead.

Stay with CNN. We're your hurricane headquarters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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