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American Morning
The Aftermath Of Hurricane Katrina
Aired September 10, 2005 - 8:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A new chain of command for hurricane relief, as embattled FEMA director Michael Brown is sent back to Washington. What that means for storm victims trying to rebuild their lives. We're live on that story straight ahead.
New questions this morning about the deaths of 31 people at a New Orleans- area nursing home, and now a state investigation into why they were not evacuated.
And slow but steady progress. The Army Corps of Engineers says it could take as little as one month to drain floodwaters out of New Orleans.
You're watching a special weekend edition of AMERICAN MORNING.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING, with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.
M. O'BRIEN: Good morning to you.
And good morning to you. Welcome back.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you very much. It's very nice -- very, very nice to be home.
Welcome back, everybody. Thanks.
Also ahead, 9/11 four years later. We're going to talk with a former 9/11 commissioner about the emotional anniversary and the lessons that were learned from that disaster.
First, though, let's get the very latest on Hurricane Katrina this morning.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, mission critical time. The death toll in New Orleans may be far less than some officials feared. The city's homeland security chief says initial recovery efforts have turned up fewer bodies than they thought. The mayor had estimated 10,000 dead at one point.
The Air Force is set to begin spraying for mosquitoes in New Orleans and surrounding areas this weekend. The stagnant waters, fertile ground for all kinds of mosquitoes and flies. State health officials would like to prevent the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile virus.
And FEMA says it is discontinuing that debit card program for Katrina victims. FEMA officials say the program required too much staff. Evacuees are still eligible for money, but through checks or direct deposits.
FEMA director Michael Brown is in Washington this morning, and Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen is now in charge of relief efforts in the region. The Bush administration announced that switch on Friday.
Elaine Quijano at the White House with more on that. Elaine, what's the latest?
ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And good morning, Miles.
It was just a week ago that President Bush told FEMA director Michael Brown he was doing a, quote, "heck of a job."
Well, what a difference a week makes. Friday, as you mentioned, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that Vice Admiral Thad Allen, chief of staff of the U.S. Coast Guard, would be taking over from Michael Brown, Brown, of course, retaining his job as head of FEMA, but sent back here to Washington, as you mentioned.
Now, Allen was Brown's assistant in the region. He will be taking the lead in the recovery efforts for FEMA on the ground. Brown, of course, under intense fire for his qualifications, and what some say is his inexperience in disaster management.
Brown has also been criticized for appearing to be out of touch. He said last week, after a day of desperate images on TV at the New Orleans Convention Center, that he did not know the city was using that building as a staging center. And yesterday, these comments from Brown to the Associated Press, Brown saying, quote, "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep. And then I'm going to go right back to FEMA and continue to do all I can to help these victims."
Now, senior officials are taking pains to say that this a decision, a move initiated not by President Bush, but by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Officials, of course, saying that this was something that the president essentially left up to the secretary. But, of course, the switch is highly uncharacteristic of this administration. This is a president who does not like to appear to be out of touch or to be caving, rather, to public pressure on personnel matters.
Tomorrow, we should tell you that the president will observe the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attacks with a moment of silence before heading back to the Gulf region for what will be his third visit, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Elaine Quijano at the White House. Thank you very much -- Soledad?
S. O'BRIEN: So how will FEMA move forward with a new point man for Hurricane Katrina relief? John Copenhaver is a former regional director of FEMA, and he joins us from the CNN Center in Atlanta.
Nice to see you. Thank you for talking with us.
Do you think that the fact that Mike Brown has been yanked is an indication of an admission that, in fact, he did drop the ball here?
JOHN COPENHAVER, FORMER FEMA OFFICIAL: Well, Soledad, I think that he had to be pulled, because the controversy that surrounds him now is going to impair his effectiveness. There's no way that he could do the job that he needs to do, running the largest disaster response effort in the history of this country, with all of that controversy swirling around him.
So I don't know that it's as much an admission that his lack of experience has hurt this disaster response, as it is just saying flat out, the controversy's not going to help him get the job done.
S. O'BRIEN: Do you think that he is a fall guy for an organization that came across as very disorganized, or do you think that he individually actually bears a lot of the responsibility?
COPENHAVER: I don't know who is going to end up bearing a responsibility for what happened.
Couple things. One, FEMA has a tremendous wealth of dedicated, experienced professionals within the agency. A lot of the people that I worked with, some of the finest people I have known, are still there, and they know what to do. Why that tremendous talent and experience wasn't able to translate into better results in New Orleans, I don't know.
I don't know where the disconnect was, but it's something that we have to find out.
S. O'BRIEN: Well, what's changed? Because if -- I mean, as you well know, last year in Florida FEMA got incredibly high marks for its relief efforts there. What's happened in a year?
COPENHAVER: Well, you have to understand that last year, the response in Florida was more of a characteristic, more typical hurricane landfall response. We know the kinds of things that hurricanes do when they make landfall. They push in water, there's water damage, there is wind damage, and the kinds of things that happen, power outages, et cetera, are well known.
And the response that we saw in Florida, the multiple responses, went along the lines of the kinds of things that FEMA's done many times.
The situation in New Orleans was not typical. It was not the same kind of disaster. It wasn't something that we had done and done many times. So clearly, the response there was, in essence, breaking new ground, and we'd have to say right now...
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, (INAUDIBLE)...
COPENHAVER: ... need to do something.
S. O'BRIEN: ... except that breaking new ground, except at the end of the day, what those two disasters had in common was that you had people who desperately needed help immediately.
COPENHAVER: There's no question about that. That's true.
S. O'BRIEN: Let's move on and talk about what happens in the days ahead for FEMA. Obviously the first days of relief were, I think it's fair to say, very, very poorly done. But there's much more to relief than just the first couple of days after a disaster. What happens now? What does FEMA have to do?
COPENHAVER: FEMA has to keep its eye on the ball, and that is, to provide help to the people that were displaced by this disaster. There are hundreds of thousands of people that are literally scattered around the country that are going to need all the help that they can get.
They're going to need some normalcy restored to their lives. They're going to hopefully have to get their mail delivered, they're going to buy groceries, they're going to have someplace to live, I would hope, other than a common shelter such as the Astrodome in Houston.
FEMA's going to have to concentrate on helping to get those people back to some kind of a normal life, even though it's not going to be completely normal, but do it as quickly as possible.
S. O'BRIEN: The debit card program that was on, then off, then, I think, on and off shows a complete confusion in FEMA, is that fair to say?
COPENHAVER: I don't know. I would say that the debit card program has never been used on this scale. This is a huge scale to be using that program. And if, in fact, they were developing problems because of how large the scale of the response with the debit card program is, I think that it's a good thing that they pulled it and replaced it with something that works, while they figure out how to fix it.
S. O'BRIEN: We'll see. John Copenhaver is the former director of FEMA. Thank you for talking with us.
COPENHAVER: Thank you, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Miles?
M. O'BRIEN: People who live along the Carolina coast watching tropical storm Ophelia right now.
Bonnie Schneider is at the CNN Weather Center. Ophelia likely to become a hurricane again, Bonnie? BONNIE SCHNEIDER, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely, within the next 12 to 24 hours, Miles, because the storm is actually going to stall out. It's moving to the northeast at about 10 miles per hour right now, and it doesn't look very impressive on this satellite picture, because some of the upper-level winds have sheared it apart a it overnight. That's why it's a tropical storm with maximum winds at 70 miles per hour.
Not much of a difference, when you talk about a category 1 hurricane and a strong tropical storm, so we're expecting Ophelia, actually, to make a turn to -- back towards the west. And that'll occur sometime tomorrow.
And once it sits out over these open waters a little bit longer, it will likely strengthen to a category 1 hurricane, and then possibly make landfall as a category two.
Difficult to say right now, as far as intensity and the exact track of where Ophelia will go in the next few days, but this turn scenario is likely, according to the Hurricane Center, and really anywhere from coastal Georgia back up to coastal North Carolina needs to be on the lookout for Ophelia in the days to come.
We're expecting landfall somewhere in the vicinity of Tuesday, but once again, depending where this storm goes, will really determine a better idea of the timing and location of where Ophelia will make landfall.
It's too bad, Miles, this storm wouldn't just keep moving out to sea, but that turn is expected.
M. O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much, Bonnie, watching that Ophelia closely for us.
Let's check the headlines now. Tony Harris at the CNN Center with that. Good morning, Tony.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, Miles.
Now in the news, U.S. and Iraqi troops are going house to house looking for insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar. American Humvees and fighting vehicles have swept through nearly one-third of the city. Iraq's defense minister says more than 140 suspected insurgents have been killed in the past two days, and almost 2,000 suspects have been taken into custody.
There's word a Pentagon plan to reconfigure dozens of military bases throughout the country is not as cost-effective as originally thought. According to the Associated Press, the Pentagon overestimated the savings by $30 billion. Nonetheless, the federal commission overseeing these recommendations has approved most of them. The plan has been sent to the president for his approval.
In Louisiana, questions about the deaths of 31 people at a nursing home outside of New Orleans. The patients were trapped when the storm hit. A nurse at St. Rita's Nursing Home says she doesn't understand why no one came to evacuate them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TAMMY DAIGLE, ST. RITA'S NURSE: They knew they were elderly. They knew they were incapable of getting out on their own. They were sick. They were infirm. They were -- but they deserved to live. They did not deserve to drown and not know what happened to them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: The nurse says she was told that administrators had no plans to evacuate the 60 residents. Several concerned relatives called the home. Some of them picked up their family members. Louisiana's attorney general's office says it will investigate.
And a global call for aid for Katrina evacuees. Artists U2 and Mary J. Blige were among dozens performing live last night at Shelter for the Storm, a concert for the Gulf Coast. The one-hour telethon aired in the U.S. and in nearly 100 countries. Donations will go to the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.
Eleven minutes after the hour now. Back to Miles and Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Thanks, Tony.
Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, the parallels between 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Could lessons from the terrorist attacks have helped the hurricane victims?
M. O'BRIEN: And the psychological toll on children displaced by Hurricane Katrina. How one third-grader is coping with his new school hundreds of miles from home.
That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: Tomorrow marks the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Are there any lessons we can learn from a terrorist attack that applied to a natural disaster?
Tim Roemer is a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, and a former member of the 9/11 commission. He's here to talk about that.
Mr. Roemer, good to have you back with us.
TIM ROEMER, FORMER 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Thanks, Miles, good to see you.
M. O'BRIEN: Unfortunately, Katrina laid bare a lot of deficiencies, didn't it?
ROEMER: It surely did. If you asked me right here, Miles, what are the first couple words that come to mind after 9/11, they'd be courage and unity. After Katrina, it would probably be chaos and dysfunction. What have we learned from Katrina now, and how can we apply these lessons to better prepare the country? And I think there are a number of lessons here.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, let's start with what's on the top of your list. I think a lot of people, quite frankly, are appalled that, after all the money that has been spent, all the time, all the effort, that there was just a complete breakdown.
ROEMER: It still makes me angry today. What we have learned, I hope, Miles, is that we have had our first post-9/11 test, and we have miserably failed. We're not prepared for a disaster. We're not prepared for a large-scale terrorist attack. Our government couldn't drop water to our most needy citizens. We couldn't get generators to people in hospitals. We didn't go by an evacuation plan.
I think the first place to start here is not just pointing the finger, it's to get things right and be accountable. We have a number of recommendations from the 9/11 commission that are still not done four years after 9/11.
Provide radio spectrums so that we can have better communications when we have to evacuate a city.
M. O'BRIEN: And this was a big problem in New Orleans.
ROEMER: This was a big problem in New York City and New Orleans.
We have to have evacuation plans that are actually implemented and practiced. We haven't seen nearly enough of that going into this in New Orleans, when they knew a levee could break, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: How many times do we have to learn this lesson? That's the thing. I -- it just amazes me that we don't wake up.
ROEMER: Well, you know, today, Miles, I will be with 9/11 families and talking about 9/11 four years ago. And imagine, if we can wake up the American people to this, how tough it is when you sit down with a mother or a father, and they've lost a son or a daughter, and how uncomfortable and difficult that is. Imagine sitting down with 700 or 800 people and having those conversations.
We can't do this anymore. We can't make these mistakes.
I hope an independent commission will look into this. I hope somebody like President Carter might be appointed to help rebuild and reopen the city of New Orleans, take on some of the urban-poor issues, the employment issues, the housing issues. And let's pass the rest of the 9/11 commission recommendations.
Let's make this country safer. We're not safer yet.
M. O'BRIEN: That's funny, I hadn't heard his name mentioned as sort of a post-Katrina czar. That would be an interesting choice.
And as you mentioned that, implied in all of that, is that we haven't had, as we did post-9/11, a Rudy Giuliani character, you know, that scene of him walking down, you know, Come with me, literally, or, Follow me, I think he said.
And he truly, in a symbolic way, at least, despite all the deficiencies of the radios and so forth, stepped into a situation and offered leadership which people could kind of rally around.
All this talk about FEMA and the structural issues, whether it's cabinet level, or, you know, the flow-chart issues, really, it boils down to, there wasn't anybody like that in the wake of this incident.
ROEMER: Well, it's about leadership. It's about presidential leadership, it's about leadership at the local and the state level. And that then creates good things, Miles. It creates unity. After 9/11, we had Democrats and Republicans unified. We had the president at 90 percent popularity, skyrocketing in the ratings.
Now we have division, we have disunity, we have people pointing fingers. And we have big problems.
M. O'BRIEN: But he...
ROEMER: We have lots of problems on security.
But what Katrina also did, it blew the veil off a big problem in America in our inner cities, and that's the urban poor. What are we going to do about this? How is Congress going to address this?
M. O'BRIEN: It's hard to legislate leadership, isn't it (INAUDIBLE)?
ROEMER: It's very difficult. We need to see that in people today. We need it more than ever.
M. O'BRIEN: All right, Tim Roemer, thanks for dropping by.
ROEMER: Thanks, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Former congressman Tim Roemer, formerly of the 9/11 commission.
Soledad?
S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, getting back to normal, or at least trying to. It's a confusing time for children. We'll take a look at some of the kids displaced by Katrina, who are suddenly trying to adjust to a new school in a new state.
Stay with us. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Across the nation, schools are opening their doors to children displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
AMERICAN MORNING's Kelly Wallace tagged along with one little boy as he tries to adjust to new teachers, new friends, and a new life.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is Steve.
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Steve Coronado seems like your typical third-grader. Backpack in tow, he's off to class. But this isn't his regular school.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Which way from here? Because (INAUDIBLE)...
WALLACE: Steve's family got out of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit and came to San Antonio, where their relatives live.
(on camera): Was it hard for you, with, you know, leaving New Orleans before the hurricane? Not. How come?
STEVE CORONADO, NEW ORLEANS EVACUEE: Because -- Yes, it was hard.
WALLACE: It was hard. Why was it hard?
CORONADO: Because I can't see my best friend no more, or my other best friend that I had.
WALLACE (voice-over): The 8-year-old has been attending Stafford Elementary School for over a week.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I pledge to always do my best to make my parents and my school proud...
WALLACE: He says he likes this class much better than his old class in New Orleans.
CORONADO: Because my class that I was in, it was the meanest teacher in the school.
WALLACE (on camera): Why was this teacher the meanest teacher in the school?
CORONADO: Because when you walk around -- when you walk to go get a pencil, she yells at you, First you raise your hand before you get a pencil!
WALLACE (voice-over): While hundreds of evacuees are being registered at schools throughout San Antonio, Steve is the only one enrolled in this school so far. That worried Steve's mom.
LETICIA JORDAN, STEVE'S MOTHER: Absolutely. I mean, you know, here's an 8-year-old child, you know, our lives have been turned upside-down. New school. He's got to make new friends. And he had a tough time out at it for the first couple of days.
WALLACE: But he's not alone. Tonia Dillon, the school's new principal, was born in New Orleans. Her entire family has ties to the city.
TONIA DILLON, PRINCIPAL, STAFFORD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: And for that reason, I feel a special bond with Steven, because he is from my hometown, and he's going through what so many of my relatives are also going through. They've lost their homes, they've lost their worldly possessions, and they're feeling displaced.
WALLACE: And so a counselor checks in with Steve regularly. So does Ms. Dillon.
DILLON: Well, I don't want any of the parents to get the impression I'm playing favorites, but as with any student who is in a time of need, I am checking on him daily. And he's doing very, very well. He's extremely resilient.
WALLACE (on camera): You seem like you're the most popular kid in the class.
CORONADO: How?
WALLACE: How? Well, it seems like everyone likes you in the class. Isn't that true?
CORONADO: Not everybody.
WALLACE: Not everybody?
(voice-over): Normal third-grade concerns wherever you are, normalcy. That's just what Steve and his family are seeking.
Kelly Wallace, CNN, San Antonio.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: Louisiana officials estimate that 185,000 students have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In Mississippi, the storm has forced 160,000 students from their schools.
M. O'BRIEN: I think he's going to get a lot of best friends pretty quickly, yes.
S. O'BRIEN: Oh, yes. He's a cute little boy, isn't he?
M. O'BRIEN: Cute little kid. That's tough, that's a tough situation.
S. O'BRIEN: He's trying to make it work.
M. O'BRIEN: So what do you tell your child about all this? And that just doesn't go for people who are directly affected, just kids out there in general. It's all over the TV, the newspapers, wherever you go.
Dr. Phil has visited with some of the young evacuees in Baton Rouge. Listen to what he told Anderson Cooper.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. PHIL MCGRAW, VISITED KATRINA VICTIMS: If your children are watching this, don't let them see it all the time. They need to see it, they need to understand it, and then get them involved in the process. They need to give money, they need to give from their own piggy bank so they feel like they did something for the children here.
The best medicine is to give. And for people -- for adults and kids, that will help a lot. I mean, you feel better when you know you did something.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, that's an important thing. You know, my kids have done that, they've donated a little bit of money. And your kids have...
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, my daughter did, too, you know, because she was sort of flipped out a little bit that I was going to New Orleans, and she said she's going to start saving her money, and can't decide to give it to tsunami victims still, or give it to the -- I said, you know, How about both? We'll split it down the middle.
M. O'BRIEN: Right, right.
S. O'BRIEN: I think that's really good advice from Dr. Phil.
M. O'BRIEN: It's also important, you know, because we are focusing on it so much, especially in our family, is, you know, just to turn off the TV a little while and move on a little bit. It's good advice from Dr. Phil.
S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, the search for bodies in the flood and in the homes of the Crescent City. We're going to take you live to New Orleans and Jeff Koinange for the very latest on that.
Stay with us. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody. It's just about half past the hour on this special weekend edition of AMERICAN MORNING.
Coming up, we're going to take a look at how more than two dozen newborns are doing after they were rescued from the storm. Most of them, though, without their parents.
M. O'BRIEN: But first, let's get back to New Orleans. It now appears that searchers there are finding fewer bodies than initially believed would be found.
Our Jeff Koinange is in New Orleans this morning. He joins us now. What's latest, Jeff, on that search effort?
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, the search is continuing, like you say. The waters still being drained out of the city. But again, that speculation is still early days. It's very optimistic. And it would be a good thing in the end if they do find a lot less bodies than anticipated, but the math, Miles, simply doesn't add up.
We spent most of Friday with various law enforcement agencies going literally door to door. And there's a lot of literally thousands of military and police personnel playing their effort in search and rescue. But apart from that, there's also an army of volunteers playing their role in this ongoing crisis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are from the church! We're not police, sir! We'd like to help you!
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The power of persuasion in times of trouble. These are members of a Christian organization who have come to New Orleans all the way from Las Vegas. Supported by the National Guard, their mission is to try to talk people like Dave Gutierrez into leaving his fast deteriorating city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are not the police!
KOINANGE: But the more they talked, it seems, the more Gutierrez resists.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, he went back into the house. I'm trying to get him out again.
KOINANGE: They managed to reach Gutierrez's sister by telephone and get us to hand him the phone.
DAVE GUTIERREZ, RESIDENT: Get out of here and go where?
KOINANGE: But Gutierrez isn't convinced. He retreats inside his house, but comes out a short while later.
GUTIERREZ: I'm not going to leave.
KOINANGE: Tell me why, Dave?
GUTIERREZ: Because this is my home. I live in New Orleans. This is my home.
KOINANGE: He insists if it comes to forced removals, he still won't leave.
GUTIERREZ: They can't do that to people.
KOINANGE: Pastor Raymond Junta isn't about to give up. He's seen his fair share of crises and says he's here to make sure no one gets left behind.
RAYMOND JUNTA, REV.: I was the chaplain at the World Trade Center for three months. I was the chaplain at the Oklahoma City. And I've never seen anything like this in my life to see an entire city annihilated by water. And just the despair and homelessness in the hearts of the people is just overwhelming.
KOINANGE: In the end, Gutierrez rejects their pleas, but gladly accepts a bottle of water.
Such as the dilemma facing rescue teams across New Orleans 12 days after Hurricane Katrina left the city underwater. In most cases, these teams return to base empty handed. The few stragglers remaining simply refuse to leave.
The National Guard are under orders not to forcibly evacuate residents, even as the threat of water borne diseases mounts. Those who voluntarily agree to evacuate are brought here to a central drop- off point. They are searched, checked for injuries by a team of military physicians, and given water and food while they await the next leg of their journey to safety.
Lieutenant General Russel Honore is the man responsible for the entire ground operation. He compares this crisis to a football game, where his team is behind but the game is far from over.
LT. GEN. RUSSEL HONORE, U.S. ARMY: We're still in the first quarter of this operation, if you make the analogy to America football game. We're in the first quarter. And a lot of things left to be done. And we're here to make it happen.
KOINANGE: To make it happen, the general now commands a growing force of more than 19,000 military and police personnel from across the nation. And that's besides the army of volunteers that have converged on New Orleans.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KOINANGE: And Miles, unfortunately, that search and rescue will very soon become a search and recovery effort.
M. O'BRIEN: Jeff Koinange in New Orleans, thank you very much. Soledad?
S. O'BRIEN: Well, during the rush to get out of New Orleans, a number of children were separated from their parents. So how are families being brought back together?
Joining us this morning to talk about that is Ernie Allen. He is the CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia.
Nice to see you. Thanks for being with us this morning. How many children are we talking about? How many are missing from their parents who are looking for them?
ERNIE ALLEN, CHILDREN'S ADVOCATE: As of yesterday, we've reached 1500 missing child reports. And the numbers are growing.
S. O'BRIEN: What percentage do you think are children who are displaced? And what percentage do you think are children whose parents did not survive the flooding, do you know? ALLEN: We have no idea. Obviously a large percentage of these children who are not missing in the traditional sense, we know where they are. We just don't know where their parents are.
So this is an atypical search process for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, but one in which we are working closely with state and local law enforcement, the FBI, social services agencies. And we're making real headway.
We've already recovered 258 children and reunited them with their families.
S. O'BRIEN: How is that being done? I know you have a phone number, 1-800-the-lost which is the number that usually anybody can call to get in touch with your organization. But what happens when somebody calls? How does it work?
ALLEN: Well, Soledad, the Justice Department asked us to set up a special Katrina missing persons hotline. So we're asking people to call 888-544-5475.
When those reports are received, they captured that information on missing children and adults by our volunteers here, all retired law enforcement officers. They are then validated and verified by a second team of retired law enforcement here beside me.
They then go to our case managers on the second floor of this building, who are working with law enforcement. And we have our Team Adam staff on the scene on the ground in the affected areas.
S. O'BRIEN: Ernie, I'm going to ask you -- forgive me.
ALLEN: We're disseminating...
S. O'BRIEN: Oh, forgive me. And I just want to remind people that for people who missed that phone number at the end of our interview, they're going to get a chance to hear it again. So go grab a pen if you think you can help out.
Sorry for interrupting you there, but I wanted to ask you, we're looking at these pictures as you were talking of your Web site. Some of these kids are really little. I mean, that must be a huge logistical challenge in the teeny tiny ones, you know, whose aren't really old enough to be helpful with the basic information like their name.
ALLEN: Absolutely, Soledad. Many of these people can't even -- these children can't even tell us who they are. So we're using every resource.
In some cases, we've been able to identify the child. And then we search for the parents. In other cases, we're trying to use the power of photographs. Our Team Adam staff with digital cameras is taking pictures of these little people and trying to get them on the air. We're really grateful for all that CNN has done in helping us do that. S. O'BRIEN: Well, we're more than happy to be helping out. I want to show a couple of pictures today. A little girl named Kirarra Roberts. I think she looks like she's about 2 years old. Outside of showing her picture and putting that information, what else are you able to do for kids like this?
ALLEN: Well, we are working with school authorities. She's preschool age, but social service agencies, we have worked very closely with the Louisiana and Texas social service agencies trying to track down the parents.
One of the challenges here is we've had cases in which children have been in one shelter, parents in another shelter in another state. And there's been no ability to link the two. That's getting better. Information-sharing, database access is really improving.
S. O'BRIEN: That's good to know. Let's show a final picture of this little girl. I know you don't have a name for her yet. Who takes care -- there we go. And she looks about the same age maybe, maybe a little bit younger, two-ish?
ALLEN: She...
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, go ahead.
ALLEN: No, she may be 2 years old, and is not able to tell us who she is.
S. O'BRIEN: Do you think she's traumatized? Or do you think she's just, you know, a lot of 2 years olds actually don't talk quite yet?
ALLEN: Absolutely. And so many of these children are traumatized. They've seen their whole worlds, everything they have known in their life to date washed away. So it's really important that we make them feel safe and secure and give them hope.
S. O'BRIEN: OK, let's give the number again because I hope everybody who wanted to take this number down went and grabbed their pens and pencils. Ernie, what's the number people should call if they go to the Web site or saw a picture of a child if they know who that is?
ALLEN: It is 888-544-5475.
S. O'BRIEN: Ernie Allen is the CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Thank you. Miles?
M. O'BRIEN: Thank you.
Let's talk about tropical storm Ophelia. This is a storm that can't seem to make up its mind, hurricane or not, what direction it's headed. Nevertheless, Bonnie Schneider is all over it.
Bonnie, good morning. BONNIE SCHNEIDER, METEOROLOGIST: Good morning Miles. You're absolutely right. This is one storm that's really tough to track because of all the changes.
Now it is a tropical storm with maximum winds at 70 miles per hour. But Ophelia won't stay a tropical storm for much longer. We're expecting it to change and upgrade to hurricane status within the next 12 to 24 hours.
Looking at our satellite perspective, you could see some sheering has occurred overnight. That's why the storm has been downgraded, but this storm is likely to become a little bit more organized in the time to come.
The movements to the northeast at about 10 miles per hour. But a shift is expected in the track. It's actually likely to turn back towards the U.S. It's unfortunate, but true. This is according to the National Hurricane Center.
The cone of projection shows really anywhere from Southern Georgia back up to northern sections of the coast of North Carolina. We're watching for a possible landfall sometime on Tuesday.
And the storm does get a little bit more intense as it approaches the shoreline. This is all projected into the future. So we're going to be watching this closely because of all the changes with Ophelia.
Quick look across the country. Just want to show you. It's going to be hot and windy in Kansas and Oklahoma. This hot wind is really kicking things up with temperatures in the mid 90s. Those southerly winds could gust as high as 90 miles per hour.
On the flip side, a taste of fall early on. this morning, we have reports of frost and even some freezing temperatures in upstate New York and Northern Vermont. So I guess that's just a reminder that the summer's almost over -- Miles?
M. O'BRIEN: All right, summer's over. In case we need another reminder. Thank you, Bonnie.
S. O'BRIEN: Bonnie with the bad news.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes. You're all about the bad news today.
SCHNEIDER: Almost over.
Let's get a check of some other headlines right now. Tony Harris in Atlanta with that. Good morning, Tony.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, Miles.
Now in the news, American soldiers in Afghanistan are marking the fourth anniversary of 9/11. Several hundred servicemen and women gathered in a huge tent at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. Some 20,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. At least 189 Americans have been killed there in the past four years. Some changes affecting the Patriot Act. People can now find out if the FBI is watching, what they check out of a library. Until earlier this week, librarians were under a gag order and not allowed to say whether the FBI had been asking questions. The government is expected to appeal.
Former KKK member Edgar Ray Killen is back in prison. Killen was convicted in June for the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers. He was released on bond pending his appeal after telling the judge that he was permanently confined to a wheelchair, but several witnesses testified Friday that they had seen Killen driving around and even stepping out of his car to pump gas.
And the woman accused of planting a finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili admits she did it. Anna Ayalla pleaded guilty Friday to filing a false claim and to a charge of attempted grand theft.
Wendy's claims the bad publicity resulting in the case cost the fast food chain $2.5 million in lost sales. Ayalla is due back in court in November. She faces up to two years in prison.
Fourty-two minutes now after the hour. Now back to Soledad and Miles.
S. O'BRIEN: Wow, she really didn't cave at all for a long time. She kept consistently saying...
M. O'BRIEN: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: ...that she didn't do it, even when all the evidence was sort of pointing the other direction.
M. O'BRIEN: The fickle finger of fate pointed at her for sure on that one.
Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, hurricane evacuees don't have to actually go to their homes to size up the damage. Of course, in many cases, that's not possible. Find out how some people are seeing the destruction with the click of a mouse.
S. O'BRIEN: And they made it through the evacuation in New Orleans, but the biggest challenge has been trying to reunite these little survivors with their mothers. We'll tell you what's being done to help them, ahead, as we continue on this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TIME STAMP: 0846:06
M. O'BRIEN: For hurricane evacuees or anyone else who's interested, if you have access to a computer, you can see aerial images of the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast, even right down to individual properties. It's a tremendous amount of capability. Really not too long ago, something you could only do say at the CIA. Well, various Web sites are offering these images to the public. Technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg live now from the CNN Center in Atlanta to tell us all about them.
Daniel, you know, not too long ago, it was just the Iraq invasion. CNN paid tens of thousands of dollars to have this capability. And now it's available free to anybody. It's amazing, isn't it?
DANIEL SIEBERG, TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: It is amazing. Google Earth is what we're talking about here, software you can get on your computer. It is free for personal use.
I will say you will need a fairly new computer, not just anybody can use it. And you do need a broadband connection. It's a fairly powerful program.
We can show you what it looks like right now. As we go into New Orleans, it uses satellite images as well as aerial photos to put all this together. But again, anybody can get it online and put it on your computer.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, you know what's interesting, too, is it's kind of open source. If you have an image, you can sort of just add it to their database.
SIEBERG: Exactly, yes, they can update it that way. It is very open. And we're going to go into somewhere that'll probably illustrate the power of this and really what happened after Katrina as well.
The Superdome, which a lot of people know suffered some damage, a lot of people were there as well, this is obviously a before picture of what happened.
Now we're going to do something called put in a transparency. And you can see there...
M. O'BRIEN: Wow.
SIEBERG: ...the after picture. And we can actually do sort of a very slow before and after. You can see the before and the after. The roof of the Superdome. So that really illustrates what's happened just in that one part.
M. O'BRIEN: You know, and also, you can see down there, you can see the flooded regions right in there as well if you look more closely, too. And of course, the roof is quite obvious.
SIEBERG: Right.
M. O'BRIEN: All right, now let's say you have an individual house. You can actually type -- you're curious about either your house or a friend's house or a relative's house.
SIEBERG: Yes, type here. M. O'BRIEN: Type in an address. Now we have our executive producer Kim Bondy...
SIEBERG: Yes.
M. O'BRIEN: ...lost her house. Let's type in her address.
SIEBERG: All right, we've pre-programmed it in there for Kim Bondy's house. It's just a little bit to the northeast, I would say, of the Superdome there. And we're going to go into it. And it's going to come up here.
I'm going to -- we actually put in here that this could be your house. I'm just going to show you where it is. And this is actually Kim Bondy's house, but you can see here with the overlay that comes on here all the water that's in the area.
M. O'BRIEN: OK, so we're right there. Can we get down any closer than that?
SIEBERG: Yes.
M. O'BRIEN: You can actually really see almost precisely how much water is there and almost get a sense of how high it is if you kind of tilt eight little bit, which is interesting.
But that's so, for her, and we can check to see how recent this is. We don't know when this particular shot was taken, or do you?
SIEBERG: Right. I mean, these - well these images were obviously taken after Katrina, but we don't know exactly when. We're assuming that they tried to get them on there as quickly as possible. So some of the resolution and the color obviously won't be there because they tried to get them out as quickly as possible so people could see them.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes. Just to make clear, all that dark area, that's water.
SIEBERG: Yes, exactly.
M. O'BRIEN: And so you have a very clear sense.
SIEBERG: You can really see some of the rooftops there in water.
M. O'BRIEN: It's basically up to her - it's certainly her first floor is covered over.
Meanwhile, the government, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which does aerial surveys and mapping, and that sort of stuff, they've been flying assessment citation over this region almost nonstop. Thousands of images that had been compiled. Is that helpful, too?
SIEBERG: Yes. This is the NOAA Web site. And you can see here at noaa.gov. They've got a section on Katrina. You can see the path that Katrina took right over parts of Louisiana and Mississippi.
And we're going show you Biloxi, Mississippi, if we pull that up there. Now this is a little bit different because you don't have quite as much control. You can't zoom in and out in the same way you can with Google Earth.
But we can show you some of the pictures that are on here. All these different squares are another picture that you can bring up. Now this is going to take just a second to load up, so you can get a better idea of what you're looking at here.
M. O'BRIEN: And the key here, what's worth pointing out here, these are -- because these are aerials, you're probably going to get a little better resolution than the satellite imaging.
SIEBERG: Right . If you can hang on...
M. O'BRIEN: Yes.
SIEBERG: ...just for one second, this is going to pull up. And you'd be quite amazed at the level of detail that these types of pictures do have.
And again, Noaa has -- incidentally, although you need a new computer for Google Earth that we were talking about a second ago, there's Google maps out there, which is maps.google.com. And that's a little less wieldy. And you can actually take that on your computer...
M. O'BRIEN: Well, fewer bells and whistles, but it still gives you that before and after.
SIEBERG: Yes. It does. Yes.
M. O'BRIEN: All right, very interesting stuff. And an amazing amount of capability really for people who have computer access. Now final point, yesterday we were talking about scams.
SIEBERG: Yes.
M. O'BRIEN: And these people who send out e-mails trying to solicit donations. It turns out they're just stealing your money. It's an awful thing.
SIEBERG: It is.
M. O'BRIEN: And you had received some information about what you thought was a bogus site for the Red Cross. Turns out we got a little bit twisted on this. Tell us what happened.
SIEBERG: Right. It's very easy to get confused by some of the Web sites that are out there. Some of them are fake that are asking for donations.
Turns out CNN got a little confused as well. A Web site that we had thought was actually bogus turns out to be legit. Perhaps we can illustrate that by pulling up a graphic here.
This site, if you come across this site, we should say, is a partner with the Red Cross. If you see this page when you donate money at the Red Cross, it is a legitimate Web site. Your money will go to the Red Cross.
It's a very long story, Miles, as to how all of this happened. But basically, if you do see that Web site come up, it's a legitimate page. It's a partner with the Red Cross.
And we need to point out, too, companies and charities like the Red Cross do not send out unsolicited e-mails looking for donations. In other words, spam.
M. O'BRIEN: All right.
SIEBERG: If you're part of a service with them or you've subscribed to a news letter, sure, you might get an e-mail asking you to donate a bit more money, but not through spam.
M. O'BRIEN: All right.
SIEBERG: So it's important to remember.
M. O'BRIEN: That is probably the single most important thing to remember.
SIEBERG: Yes.
M. O'BRIEN: If you get unsolicited e-mail, it's not the real deal.
SIEBERG: Right. And by all means, donate if you wish to. Donate to whatever charity you wish to online. It's very easy, but be judicious when you do it.
M. O'BRIEN: Right.
SIEBERG: Just check into it.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, the last thing we want is people not to donate because of what we told them. Daniel, thank you for clarifying that.
SIEBERG: Sure.
M. O'BRIEN: And we understand how it's easy to confuse them, because unfortunately, these spammers are so good at replicating the real thing.
Back with more in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TIME STAMP: 0855:00
S. O'BRIEN: Many new mothers and fathers evacuated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina were sick with worry because they became separated from their newborn babies.
Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us from Baton Rouge this morning with an update on that situation. Elizabeth, good morning to you. How did they get separated and where did those babies go?
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Soledad, those babies went to Baton Rouge. They went to Texas. They went to Alabama. They got separated because sometimes there was no room on the helicopter for their parents. Sometimes the parents just weren't there at the hospital at the time that they were evacuated. So many times, their parents did not go with them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COHEN (voice-over): They sleep and eat and get plenty of love and attention, but not from their parents. That's because a week ago, they became temporary orphans.
29 newborn babies rescued from a downtown New Orleans hospital, most of them without their mothers. In all, six New Orleans hospitals evacuated 131 newborns. By helicopter, by boat, by anyway possible.
87 of these tiny survivors ended up here at Women's Hospital in Baton Rouge. Laurel Kiddo was one of the nurses here who scrambled in those critical hours.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You would have seen controlled chaos.
COHEN: Despite the conditions in New Orleans and the flight to Baton Rouge, doctors say all 131 babies came through surprisingly well. Even the premature.
STEVEN SPEDALE, DR., NEONATOLOGIST: Babies are very elastic. You have to bend them a lot to break them. And they've had very good care.
COHEN: But the evacuation wasn't the biggest hurdle.
SPEDALE: The biggest challenge we've had really besides the medical care, and that's really pretty much gone along the norm, has been reuniting babies with their families.
And when we first got that huge onslaught of patients, a lot of times we didn't know where the parents were.
COHEN: T.J. Dupris, just 9 hours old when Katrina hit, is one of the lucky ones. Separated from his mother and airlifted in his incubator, his mother Kimba found him the very next day, but it took his dad quite a bit longer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just those three days were like - felt like three years, you know. So it was really tough.
COHEN: Seven babies have yet to be reunited with their parents, who are still in shelters, but the staff has a message for them. LAUREL KITTO, RN, WOMEN'S HOSPITAL: I would want them to know that we've loved on them, we've held them, we've rocked them. The babies that were very sick and couldn't be held are rocked. We've put her hands on them and tried to comfort them and make them feel as comfortable as we can.
COHEN: Now those seven babies who have not yet been reunited with their parents, one will be reunited today. The other six in coming days. Those parents, Soledad, are as far away as Utah.
S. O'BRIEN: God, I can't even imagine. That must be the most horrific thing to have a newborn baby that you cannot get in touch with. That's horrible, but good news too that they're being reunited. Elizabeth Cohen, thanks -- Miles?
M. O'BRIEN: In a moment, we'll check today's top stories including the FEMA director Michael Brown taken off the frontlines of the Katrina disaster. We'll take you live to the White House for more on that. Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.
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