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American Morning

Hurricane Rita, a Category-Five, Aiming Straight for Texas Coast

Aired September 22, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Miles O'Brien. Hurricane Rita already one for the record books, a category five, 175 mile-an-hour winds, aiming straight for the Texas coast, the third most intense Atlantic hurricane in history. At this hour, Texas gridlock as hundreds of thousands flee the area. We're live with the VERY latest on evacuations and we're tracking Rita's path.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien. In New Orleans, they're keeping a close eye on Rita. The storm is so large it still could post a threat there. Authorities raced to shore up the city's already-damaged levees. We're live in New Orleans, where they are desperately trying to stay dry.

M. O'BRIEN: And it could be deja vu at the gas pump. Oil rigs and refineries in Rita's path. New predictions say gas could reach $5. That's right, $5 a gallon. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

S. O'BRIEN: Good morning. Welcome being everybody. What is happening in the Gulf of Mexico is simply stunning, really. This storm is so large, and it is going to hit with such force. It's going to be devastating wherever it ends up and makes landfall.

M. O'BRIEN: And to come on the heels of Katrina, Huricane Rita, an incredible storm, 175 miles an hour, huge, huge size, hundreds of miles across, hurricane force winds extending 70 miles in every direction of the eye. It is a force to be reckoned with.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: All through the night, residents have been streaming out of the Galveston area, huge traffic jams on Interstate 45 are under way as we speak. Residents not taking any chances, of course. It appears lessons have been learned since Katrina.

David Mattingly is in Galveston this morning, Bob Franken, 260 miles down the coast in Corpus Christi.

David, let's begin with you. Good morning.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles.

Mandatory evacuations went into effect here at 6:00 yesterday afternoon. By that time, the streets of Galveston already largely deserted, people paying attention to the warnings, getting in those massive traffic snarls on the mainland. There was nothing but bumper- to-bumper traffic all the way to Houston and beyond yesterday. A very familiar sight that we've become familiar with during this hurricane season, gas stations running out of gasoline, cars stalling, pulling off to the side, a really bad traffic snarl for miles and miles and miles, journeys that normally take minutes, turning into hours.

But officials are telling people, please, do not look at these lines and be deterred from getting out of here. They say that anyone who stays behind here could be making a very, very big mistake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MYR. LYDA ANN THOMAS, GALVESTON, TEXAS: Driving around town today, the town is emptying out, which is a good thing. Those who are here are going to do like some of us in government. They're going to have to hunker down, as Mr. LeBlanc says, in their, homes and just pray that they survive the storm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. O'BRIEN: One of the lessons learned from Katrina, as city officials were watching what happened in New Orleans, before this storm even came into the Gulf of Mexico this time, they were making plans to identify the special needs residents here, the sick, the elderly people who did not have the way out on their own. For the first time ever, the city was providing public transportation for people to get out. A couple thousand people did go.

But I have to point out to you, Miles, I'm standing on top of the city's seawall. It is 17 feet tall. The predictions right now, if this storm comes here as it's looking like it might, there will be waves 15 feet high from where I'm standing over the top of the seawall -- Miles.

David Mattingly in Galveston, thank you. Mandatory evacuations ordered for a quarter-million residents in the Corpus Christi area. Bob Franken is there.

Good morning, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. The first time ever for mandatory evacuations in Texas. They call this area the Coastal Bend, and the truth of the matter is that right now in this region, coastal anything means you're in harm's way. But as David pointed out, so many lessons have been learned from Katrina, the tragic lessons of Katrina. Some of the things they're doing here, they're actually using their bus system to take people to collection points, if they need buses. They're also allowing people to take their pets. The big problem, of course, in the earlier storm was the insistence on so many people that they would not abandon the pets that they love. This time they're going to do it differently.

When people leave, they're told, bring photo I.D., so there's a systematic way that when they come back whatever there is to survey, they will have proof that they should be here. What is so striking also is the preparation this time by federal and state officials.

Just on the outskirts, the periphery, you have people in place, military people, people with supplies of food and water, ready to come in immediately. None of the delays that have caused such criticism after Katrina.

And what is so striking, Miles, is the contrast here. Here we are on Corpus Christi Bay, this beautiful area, just past the Barrier Islands and the Gulf of Mexico, the possible deadly pandemonium of Rita -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Bob Franken in Corpus Christi, definitely the calm before the storm there. Thank you very much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, Hurricane Rita not only powerful, it is huge. Tropical winds extend 370 miles. So even if Rita makes landfall in Texas, its effect will be felt hundreds of miles away, and that of course as people in New Orleans very worried. Carol Costello is in Jefferson Parish, where Lake Pontchartrain meets the 17th Street Canal.

Carol, I know it was raining a little bit earlier where you are. How does it look now?

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the wind is picking up. You know, Soledad, there's been a terrible heatwave, and usually you pray for rain to break that heatwave, but right now people are not praying for rain. It was raining like cats and dogs just a short time ago. It tempered off to a drizzle, and now just the wind is picking up.

I am standing at Lake Pontchartrain, where it leads to 17th Street Canal. It's dark now, but if you could see a mile down the way, you would see the levee that breached on 17th Street, and of course that breach blocks long. Take a look at it right after the storm, and look at all of the damage in these pictures.

Engineers have scrambled ever since to try to fix the problem. And right now -- and they're working out there right now because we just drove past that. They're filling the huge breach in that levee with giant sandbags that weigh thousands of pounds. On top of that they're pouring, like, loads and loads of gravel and sand. And in addition to that, they're erecting these huge, giant pylons on either side of each canal throughout the city, and they're going to put up a huge steel curtain, and that supposedly will keep a huge storm surge from coming into the neighborhoods once again. That's a three to six- foot form surge. If the storm is larger than, who knows what will happen.

You know, on the other side, where the floodwaters were most deep, the neighborhoods that were really flooded, they're completely dry right now. So it would be a real shame if those levees were breached once again, or the water came into the neighborhoods, because, you know, they pumped out three-quarters of a trillion gallons of water into Lake Pontchartrain behind me.

So this is sort of a dress rehearsal for them, and they're hoping they're temporary measures prove successful.

S. O'BRIEN: Gosh, let's hope so, Carol, what an absolute mess that could be, potentially, if, indeed, the storm surge is anything like the dire predictions that some people have. Carol Costello reporting for us. Of course we'll check in with her throughout the morning.

Carol, thanks.

All this of course brings us right to business news. Rita's already pushing up the price of oil. We talked a little bit about that yesterday. Andy's "Minding Your Business."

Really, you're talking about an area that's in the bull's eye, so to speak, that is far more important, to a large degree, than New Orleans.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: That's right, Soledad, some oil experts are saying this is the wrong storm at the wrong time, because it's really heading right into that zone where there are so many refineries. And we already have 5 percent of the nation's oil refineries off line because of Katrina, still.

Here's a map of the Houston, Galveston area, 13 percent of the nation's oil refineries are there, 26 percent in the greater Texas area. Now just to give you the very latest. Six are already shutdown as the industry is battening down the hatches, two more in the process of being closed. That means now, 14 percent of the nation's oil refineries are off line at this point.

Naturally, the price up. Oil is up this morning $1 to $67.82. Remember the all-time high $70.80, almost $71. Natural gas prices up 75 percent, Soledad, since July, and that is going to mean some bad news for people this winter.

Now as far as gas prices, that's the thing that's going to be affected very quickly here. Futures, gas prices at the wholesale level, I should say, are already up. You're not seeing them at the pump already. And some experts are wondering if we won't see $5 a gallon gasoline, which, of course, would be huge compared to the $3 gasoline we saw in the wake of Katrina, and a devastating blow to the economy as well.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, absolutely.

All right, Andy, thanks. We're obviously going to talk more about that ahead.

M. O'BRIEN: More on our top story in a moment. Hurricane Rita is now a category-five storm, and closing in on the Texas coast. We'll get an update from the National Hurricane Center in Miami in just a bit.

S. O'BRIEN: Also we're going to talk to the mayor of Galveston Texas about the situation there. The city could get a direct hit from Hurricane Rita.

M. O'BRIEN: And the latest on New Orleans' recovery efforts. Are the city's emergency services ready for whatever Rita may bring? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: The U.S. mainland has never been hit by both a category four and a category five in the same season. Katrina at one point became a cat-five storm, weakened slightly category four, just before coming to shore. Will Rita do the same?

Ed Rappaport is the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Good morning, Ed.

I suppose when you talk about Rita, whether it's cat-five or cat- four, as far as people listening to this right now who might be in the affected regions, that shouldn't change their course of action at all, should it?

ED RAPPAPORT, DEP. DIR., NATL. HURRICANE CENTER: You're right, that's a very good point. The preparedness that need to be taken for category four or five are almost identical, and the impacts are going to be almost identical. We're talking about the difference between maybe a 20 or 25-foot storm surge, or a 25 or 30-foot storm surge. Either way, very devastation. As we said, potentially catastrophic at landfall.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, tell us what we know right now about Rita and path.

RAPPAPORT: The path of Rita now is toward the west-northwest, about nine miles per hour, and that means that during the day to day, it's going to pass about 300 miles south of the New Orleans area, so certainly good news for them. There are going to be some fringe effects over southeastern Louisiana, possibly tropical storm conditions beginning later today, then we have a track that shows the hurricane turning more to the northwest. If we look more in the details here...

M. O'BRIEN: Ed, can I interrupt you real quick. You said southeastern Louisiana where tropical storm, but you mean southwestern.

RAPPAPORT: No, southeastern Louisiana, because it's closer to the storm this morning, and this afternoon will have some possibility of tropical storm-force winds during the day. Southwestern Louisiana is going to be at a greater risk for a tropical storm, and then later hurricane-force winds. That's coming tomorrow, and then on Saturday.

M. O'BRIEN: Because the reason I mentioned that, of course, is in southeastern Louisiana with the levees compromised as they are, do you have any sense of the kind of rainfall that they might see there?

RAPPAPORT: In terms of rainfall, there's a possibility of several inches of rain, particularly the farther west and south you go from New Orleans, but there is a risk in New Orleans and eastwards of upwards to about three inches of rain. At least that's three the current projection.

M. O'BRIEN: Three inches of rain could be a big problem there, as we well know. All right, let's talk a little bit more about where it's headed. Is it still pretty much aiming for Galveston?

RAPPAPORT: Well, again, this is not just a point. The forecast is up in this area. We've a large area that's at risk. So, in fact, there's a potential for hurricane-force winds all the way from intracoastal city Louisiana, which is about middle of the coast, down around through most of the Texas coast.

At the moment, the forecast has the greatest risk for the center coming ashore somewhere from the Galveston area, up to the Louisiana border. But again, it's a large hurricane, and so there's going to be a big impact, particularly near and then to the right of where the center comes ashore, because the winds will be strongest and be driving the storm surge across the shoreline.

M. O'BRIEN: Is it still strengthening?

RAPPAPORT: No. It looks like Rita probably has peaked in its intensity. In fact, the pressure has come up, which means that there may have been just a slight weakening. We are -- we do think that there will be a gradual weakening before landfall, still landfall as a major hurricane, at least category three. Right now we're projecting category four.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, well, maybe there's a shred of good news in this there. Let's hope. Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, thanks very much.

RAPPAPORT: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Scary landing for some passengers on a JetBlue flight. It was Airbus A320. The plane's front landing gear malfunctioned on takeoff, and I don't know if you can see there in the foreground, that landing gear, that forward landing gear there, let's clear that out, is sideways. And as it landed, as you might expect, burned a little bit of rubber, some planes created. But the pilots, look at that, they never left the centerline of the runway, using the rudder, their rudder pedals, to steer the aircraft. They were able to get it right down the centerline of the runway. The passengers, who had the opportunity to watch a good chunk of this on their on-board televisions with live capability, able to see CNN, up until the last 10 minutes, were shaken, but nevertheless, all lived to tell the tale.

Let's listen to what some of them had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEXANDRA JACOBS, FLIGHT 292 PASSENGER: We couldn't believe the irony that we might be watching our own demise on television. That seemed a little bit, you know, post-postmodern, if you will.

(END VIDEO CLIP) M. O'BRIEN: Postmodern, indeed. We're going to check in with Alexandra Jacobs, who you just saw there on tape, a little later in the program. She's pregnant, and her first thought was, oh, my gosh, my husband's watching this on TV. How awful would that be? She'll be here with us in about an hour and a half, in the 9:00 Eastern hour.

Still to come on the program, we'll go live to Galveston, Texas. Residents there are scrambling to get out of the way of Hurricane Rita's path. You know, traffic in Houston on a good day can look like this. Imagine what it's going to be like all throughout the course of today as people head north. We'll ask the mayor whether her city is ready for the storm.

Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: By the hundreds of thousands, people are fleeing parts of coastal Texas today, and for a very good reason. Take a look at what the experts say could happen if a hurricane the size of Rita, in fact, hits Galveston dead on. Look at that. You'll see Galveston just utterly flooded by the storm surge, and then the damage goes on and on for miles inland.

Galveston's Mayor is Lyda Ann Thomas, and she joins us this morning.

Madame Mayor, thank you for being with us. We've seen the pictures of some of the traffic jams out of Galveston. How is the evacuation going?

THOMAS: It went very well as far as the island is concerned. I don't know about the rest of the county. The town is fairly well emptied by now. I don't have a count, but it's very, very quiet, very little traffic.

S. O'BRIEN: You don't have a count. Do you have a percentage? Would you say 90 percent of the people are out? Ninety-five percent?

THOMAS: Maybe 75 percent to 80 percent of the people still out. Do you expect that that remaining 25 to 20 percent will eventually evacuate, or are they going to stick around and ride the storm out?

S. O'BRIEN: Well, we hope that whoever do you expect that that remaining 25 percent to 20 percent will eventually evacuate, or are they going to stick around and ride the storm out?

THOMAS: Well, we hope that whoever is left here, except for the skeleton crew at the hospital and here in the city, we hope the majority of the citizens will move on out today and we will be having our patrol cars go through the neighborhoods. Particularly on the west end of the island, which is not protected by the seawall, we'll have our police forces down there with loud speakers, reminding people that they need to leave today, because tomorrow will be too late. The roads to the west end will be flooded sometime tomorrow. S. O'BRIEN: Anyone who's thinking about evacuating really needs to get going. You've seen this flood model. It's really just devastating. We're going to show it again. You can see Galveston there, and then the aftermath of a storm the size of Rita really hitting on the map we're looking at essentially it's wiped away. Is there anything that you can do to prepare, or protect outside of just getting people out of Galveston?

THOMAS: Well, of course, the houses, the stores are all boarded up. Stores are closed, but basically people need to get off the island. That's the best protection that we can offer at the moment.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about some of the lessons learned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Some people have said if there is any silver lining in Hurricane Katrina, it is that now when an evacuation is called, people take it seriously, and they pack up their stuff and go. Would you agree?

THOMAS: I wholeheartedly agree.

S. O'BRIEN: Go ahead. I'm sorry for interrupting you. Go ahead.

THOMAS: Well, what we learned in Galveston was, number one, and we made the arrangements for this, people, the majority of people who did not leave New Orleans did not leave because of their pets. Our buses, who took around 2,400 people and probably more out of here yesterday, were allowed to take their pets. The Red Cross shelters further up in the state have provisions for those pets, and that was one lesson learned that people will not leave their pets. The other lesson had to do with the city of Galveston now, it has plans to exist without outside help at all for at least three days, because New Orleans was cut off for so long.

And the third is communications, and we think we have some communication arrangements set up so that when the cellphones go and the power goes all over through our Internet, that we will have some outside communication.

S. O'BRIEN: Hopefully you are well prepared, and hopefully you will dodge a bullet in this case, Mayor Lyda.

THOMAS: We sure hope so.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, we hope with you, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas joining us. She's the mayor of Galveston, Texas. Thank you very much.

THOMAS: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

Our complete coverage of Hurricane Rita continues in just a few moments. The category-five storm is now moving closer and closer to the Texas coast. Experts say it could be worse than Hurricane Katrina, when it does indeed hit. The latest on Rita's path is just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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