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American Morning

Rita: Category 5; Scare in the Air

Aired September 22, 2005 - 08:59   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 potentially catastrophic hurricane bearing down on Texas. Rita bringing 170-mile-an-hour winds.
In coastal areas, massive traffic jams. This is I-45 in the Houston area. We're watching that evacuation unfold. And we're watching the forecast, as well.

In New Orleans, tropical storm winds are a possibility. It could rain for days. Can those levees, shored up by no more than sandbags, hold up to another storm? We're live in New Orleans as well.

And as Rita crosses the Gulf of Mexico, oil platforms, refineries, all in the path. And experts say the price of a gallon of gas could reach five bucks. The outlook on this AMERICAN MORNING.

ANNOUNCER: From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody.

We are closely following Hurricane Rita this morning. One of the strongest storms ever recorded. And when you consider that we say that right in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation that that storm brought, that is pretty incredible.

Rita currently is bringing maximum winds of 170 miles an hour. It's down from 175. So not really slowing.

M. O'BRIEN: As if that makes much of a difference. It's a Category 5 storm, still. And that means if you're anywhere in that region that is affected, that is part of that tropical storm or hurricane watch, you've got to make some preparations and do it now. So we will get you up to date right now, just stay with us throughout the entire morning. We are your hurricane headquarters.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, as we have been saying over the last several days, we are. We've got the very latest on what's happening.

Let's get right to our severe weather expert, Chad Myers. He's at the Weather Center. He has been tracking this storm now for days. But of course it's really the critical time now, Chad, as it looks like it's going to plow right into the Gulf Cost of Texas.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Certainly I don't see how it misses. Somewhere from Corpus Christi all the way over into parts of Louisiana. Going to do a little low-tech forecasting here with a little piece of tape that I put on my weather board. We did this with Katrina, because we saw Katrina leave the straight line and make a big hard right turn into New Orleans.

Now, the line is a straight line where it was going yesterday into the Corpus Christi, south of Galveston area. That, obviously, now has left the line a little bit, but nothing like how it turned so hard to the right to New Orleans.

But that also now takes the track that you might have been seeing yesterday and that moves it a little bit to the north. It turns it to the right just a little bit. And there's no other way to look around it, as that the storm now is going to be closer to Galveston and Houston, with the potential to even being into Louisiana, if that turn continues.

It is still, if you look, it is still not west of New Orleans. I'm not forecasting a landfall in New Orleans. But if this turns hard to the right and continues to move on up here, it's into Lafayette, into New Iberia, maybe even as far west as Houston. There's going to be this large area of damage, whether it's, well, hurricane wind damage or storm surge damage or whatever it might be.

But all of the models now are very close to Houston and Galveston. That will fill up Galveston Bay and that will make damage in places in Houston that were not expecting it. That's why everybody is trying to get out of that city.

Look at this high temperature for today. Houston, you're sitting in a school bus, you're sitting in line going two miles an hour in a traffic jam and the weather outside is 99 degrees this afternoon.

Back to you guys.

S. O'BRIEN: Of course, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, so many lessons were learned, meaning you don't wait around with the elderly.

MYERS: Can not.

S. O'BRIEN: You get them out early.

MYERS: Correct.

S. O'BRIEN: But there are always concerns that when you evacuate a nursing home you put people at risk. You save their lives by evacuating them, maybe, but of course that is a tough, that is a tough and hot commute. It could really put lives at risk in different ways.

MYERS: Now -- and -- correct.

S. O'BRIEN: I want to show some pictures of the...

MYERS: But I'm not saying don't evacuate...

S. O'BRIEN: Gosh, no. MYERS: ... because it's hot, no.

S. O'BRIEN: No, no, no, you...

MYERS: But make sure you take water with you in the car if you're going to be going and, you know, on the bus, but...

S. O'BRIEN: It is definitely tough either way.

MYERS: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: I want to show this computer model, Chad. We showed it earlier. It shows the flooding. I mean this is what could happen in the storm. You could see it just Galveston just kind of disappears.

MYERS: It really does.

S. O'BRIEN: And as you pointed out, it's a huge problem. How far inland are they worried about here?

MYERS: Well, you'd have to be concerned all the way into Houston itself, because there are parts of Galveston Bay that snake all the way in to Houston and the shipping channels there. And if it does fill up like this, you're talking about 14, 15, 16 feet into places like La Porte and Texas City, especially along the coast. Places that you know you're not even on the ocean, you're only on the bay, but the water is going to come up into that bay one way or the other.

And there you see La Porte. And there you see that little river that's kind of going up toward Pasadena, that's the river that does run all the way into Houston itself. So there could be 15 feet of water coming up that river, all of the way in to the city of Houston itself, right through downtown.

S. O'BRIEN: And it's hard to imagine.

MYERS: And there are so many chemical plants. There are so many refineries that will be completely underwater if that happens.

S. O'BRIEN: It is a bad scenario. We're watching it. You're watching it for us, Chad. We'll check back in with you. Thanks.

MYERS: OK. You're welcome.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: We almost sound apocalyptic, but we're just telling it like it is, unfortunately, folks.

All through the night, residents have been streaming out of the Galveston area. Huge traffic jams on Interstate 45. Expect it again today. We're told in just an hour's time they're going to switch it to that so-called contra flow, which means Interstate 45 will just be outbound or north bound from Galveston up to higher and safer ground. And this all fits into the big picture of lessons learned post Katrina. Everybody we've spoken with is vowing they have done everything to learn from those mistakes and be prepared for it.

We have reporters stationed at the outer edges of the Texas hurricane watch and warning box, Galveston to Corpus Christi, David Mattingly in Galveston and Bob Franken in Corpus Christi.

Let's start with David in Galveston.

David, so far, so good on the evacuation? People paying attention. Those who have special needs being attended to, right?

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, everyone was treating this as a worse case scenario when they first saw this storm enter the Gulf. People have been paying attention to the evacuation warnings, which went out at 6:00 p.m. local time yesterday. The streets have appeared to be part of a ghost town ever since then.

We're standing down on the beachfront here in Galveston, getting a little wetter than we expected to, by the way. This is the seawall, the most dominant feature on this beach. There's not much of a beach here. There is a lot of stones, boulders that have been put in, slabs of concrete. And then, this 17-foot seawall is absolutely massive when you stand next to it. It has served this city well for the last century.

It has been built up here since 1900 after that catastrophic hurricane that took the lives of thousands of people here. But this wall will not be big and tall enough to handle a storm surge of the size of the one we see coming right now. In fact, the current predictions have that it will go to the top of this wall and there will be waves and a storm surge 15 feet higher than the top of this wall -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Wow, that really -- it puts it in perspective, seeing you standing there, David, and to think that the surge could overtop those walls by as much as 15 feet. I assume you know they've withstood a lot of battering over the past century or so. And I assume they've been built up over time. But is there some concern that they might fail?

MATTINGLY: It's not a matter of failure, it's a matter of the storm, the surge being too high for what's here. Parts of this island are not covered by this. There's only seven miles of this seawall. Toward the west end, where there's a lot of construction going on right now, there is no seawall in that area. They are expecting a tidal surge, along with waves, up to 30 feet.

Now you see how the waves are coming in right now. This is just regular everyday high tide. And I would be getting far, far wetter. In fact, it would be a much more dangerous situation the closer we get to this storm, if I chose to continue to stand here.

M. O'BRIEN: David Mattingly, who is in Galveston. One hundred and five years ago they had a storm that is still the biggest killer storm ever in the United States, and that's why you see that seawall there. In Corpus Christi, they don't have that kind of history. And I suspect they don't have a seawall quite like that. Bob Franken is there.

Bob, what are they doing there?

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they are also providing for mandatory evacuations. This is the first time in Texas history that there has been such an order. Here they're using Interstate 37 to get people out of here toward Houston, towards San Antonio. One of the problems is there's construction going on so they can't make all the lanes going in one direction.

But a similar perspective at this very serene Emerald Beach this morning, right by Corpus Christi, the water, in the past, when they've had severe storms, has gone from where it is now, it is rushed over. It has gone up this seawall and it has ended up as high as that second floor balcony in this hotel.

Now, the problem is is that that's about 10 to 15 feet higher than the roadway just by here, by the parking lot. So it is not unreasonable to believe that if we would have that kind of storm, it would reach that kind of height, it would certainly flood that roadway, which is one of the ways out of here, and would keep going.

Corpus Christi is not as low lying as some, so they would not expect the devastating damage. But there is such a danger from the wind, such a danger from the proximity to the Gulf that the mayor has said get out of town. That's an order. And the people seem to be following it.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Bob Franken, who is in Corpus Christi watching things for us, thanks much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, a ton of the silver lining, if there is one, of Katrina, is that finally people listen when there's an evacuation order, they get out, because they've seen the damage a Category 4 or Category Five can do.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes. It's a horrible way to learn a lesson, but at least people are learning a lesson.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. That's true.

Well Hurricane Rita, as we've been telling you all morning, truly a monster of a storm. Tropical winds extending 370 miles. So even if it makes landfall in Texas, as expected, the effects will likely be felt hundreds of miles away. It has New Orleans very worried, because of the rebuilding efforts there.

Carol Costello is in Jefferson Parish. She's right on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

Hey, Carol, good morning again.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Morning, Soledad. I'm standing and Lake Pontchartrain is actually over that way. We were on the other side of this floodgate just a short time ago. And of course they closed the floodgate just about 25 minutes ago. This is the floodgate. We were on the wrong side, so we wanted to move on to this side.

Now the floodgate looks really low to me. And I just asked a gentleman, I can't believe that this survived Katrina. Because if you look into Jefferson Parish, this neighborhood is pretty much dry, so the floodgate and levees surrounding this part in the area of New Orleans worked.

Which is really ironic, because just a mile down the way is this 17th Street levee with the huge gigantic breach blocks and blocks long. And on the east side of the Mississippi River, that's where all the water came in to the neighborhoods and went eight feet high.

Now what the Army Corps of Engineers have been doing, and they've been working feverishly for days and days, are putting giant sandbags into that breach and then they're putting tons of gravel and then tons of sand on top of it. And they've also erected these huge, giant steel-like beams. And they're going to put corrugated steel over them, forming a steel curtain, to try to stop the storm surge from coming over.

That will handle a three to six-foot storm surge. Anything higher than that, then they could be in a little bit of trouble. But they're doing everything they can to stop the floodwaters from coming in this time. Soledad, of course, if Rita hits this part of Louisiana seriously, which we don't think it will, everybody is keeping their fingers crossed.

S. O'BRIEN: Right, but even if it is not a direct hit, which it doesn't look like it will be, certainly there could be complications. And with the weakened levees, as you pointed out all morning, Carol, that could be really disastrous. Thanks, we'll check in with you again -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. In a moment, we're going to go live to the National Hurricane Center. We're going to check in and see what they say about the storm, where it's headed, is it weakening, strengthening, all those kinds of things. They have the best information for us.

S. O'BRIEN: Also, we'll have the very latest on the military's preparations for this storm. Learning some lessons in Katrina's aftermath, as we all have. We'll take a look at that. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Back to our top story this morning. Hurricane Rita, a strong Category 5 hurricane now. Wind speeds around 170 miles an hour. The storm barreling toward the Texas coast.

Brings us right to Ed Rapport, he is the Deputy Director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Ed, good morning, nice to talk to you, as always. We mentioned not too long ago that the wind speed dropped from 175 miles an hour to 170. It doesn't sound significant. Is it?

ED RAPPAPORT, DEPUTY DIR., NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: Not really. Perhaps the good news, though, is that we think there will be some further reduction in the wind speed. But we're still expecting landfall of a Category 3 or 4 hurricane.

And I want to emphasize, too, I know there's been a great deal of focus on the upper Texas coast, and there needs to be, but southwestern Louisiana is going to experience this hurricane perhaps just as hard as the upper Texas coast. In the areas all the way over the Lake Charles, Louisiana, will be seeing very strong winds, most likely, and storm surge, just like the upper Texas coast.

S. O'BRIEN: When are you predicting landfall for this hurricane now?

RAPPAPORT: Landfall is likely to be late Friday into early Saturday. However, because this is such a large storm, the tropical storm force winds, which are out ahead of the hurricane force winds, will be arriving during the day tomorrow, on Friday. And at that point, the preparedness activities, especially those outside, will need to come to an end, because it becomes too dangerous to be out at that time.

S. O'BRIEN: That's essentially the point where you're kind of just stuck.

Let's bring in Chad Myers, because I know, Ed, he's got some questions for you, as well -- Chad.

MYERS: Ed, I'm a little concerned about the Houston ship channel and how that water may be pushed into Galveston Bay and actually pushed back into Houston. And then I'm also concerned about how this storm, in your forecast, basically stops over Arkansas for 48 hours with a lot of inland flooding that people never count on.

RAPPAPORT: That's right, we really have two major issues besides the wind. Everybody thinks of the wind with hurricanes, but usually it's the water that gets people. Most of the lives lost are due to either the storm surge along the coast or the rainfall inland.

And right now preliminary projections are, this is for the upper Texas coast and for Louisiana. This is our storm surge graphic. We're talking about surge values probably between 15 and 20 feet near and to the right of where the center comes ashore. And again, not only for the upper Texas coast, but southwestern Louisiana is very vulnerable to that.

Then, you're correct, further down the road when the hurricane was inland, even when the winds decrease, there are indications of it slowing in its forward speed, and that's going to compound the problem for rainfall. So we'll have rainfall inland, flooding there. And that on top of storm surge in some of the rivers. S. O'BRIEN: Ed, let me ask you another question. You know we've been showing this model of potential flooding, and I know that's what you and Chad have been talking about. It's devastating. How close is this model where Galveston is essentially wiped off the map to what you predict could actually happen in the wake of this storm?

RAPPAPORT: If the center of the hurricane comes ashore south of Galveston, say within 30 miles or so, then that would put the highest storm surge into -- near the Galveston area and farther north of the ship channels and so forth. And then we're talking about 15 or 20 feet and that would flood most of that area. So the details are going to be very important in terms of the track.

At this point, we can't tell you specifically whether which county and which town is going to have the worst of the weather. That's why there's a broader area that's under a hurricane watch now. In about an hour, we'll be upgrading, likely, to hurricane warnings over a portion of the coast there. And then we will be able to start focusing in some more.

S. O'BRIEN: Gosh, looks like it could be really terrible. Ed Rappaport, of course we'll continue to check in with you, in addition to Chad, too, throughout the day, because CNN is your hurricane headquarters -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come in the program last night's emergency landing in Los Angeles. Did you see this thing? Man, looks actually a lot worse than it is. But look at that, they kept it right on the center line. You know every pilot wants to land on the center line. These guys did it with the nose wheel that was completely cockeyed.

S. O'BRIEN: And on fire.

M. O'BRIEN: And on fire. That, too. We'll talk to one of the lucky survivors ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: You know what they say, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Well there is universal praise this morning for the pilot and the flight crew of a JetBlue passenger plane after a fiery emergency landing at LAX last night.

Thelma Gutierrez now on the anxious moments in the air before the dramatic touchdown.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 3:17 Pacific Time, JetBlue Flight 292 takes off from Burbank Airport in California, headed for JFK in New York. On board, 140 passengers and six crewmembers.

Shortly after takeoff, a warning light turns on. There's a problem with the front landing gear. The pilot flies by an air control tower so the ground crew can make a visual inspection. The front landing gear is turned sideways at a 90-degree angle and cannot retract into the plane. That means landing with broken landing gear. On board, passengers begin to watch live coverage of what is happening to them.

ALEXANDRA JACOBS, JETBLUE PASSENGER: We couldn't believe the irony that we might be watching our own demise on television.

DAVE REINETZ, JETBLUE PASSENGER: About 10 minutes before we landed, they cut it all off. That was the scariest part was when they cut it off, because I thought if there's something going on, they're not telling us.

GUTIERREZ: Since the plane is loaded with enough fuel for a cross-country trip, it's too heavy to land quickly, so the airbus and its 140 passengers circle above Los Angeles for more than three hours to burn fuel and lighten the load.

JACOBS: The flight attendants were absolutely wonderful. They didn't have an alarmed look on their faces at all, and I think that was very reassuring.

GUTIERREZ: Some 150 firefighters lined the runway at Los Angeles International Airport, the airport with the longest and widest runways in the area. After three hours, the pilot makes his final approach, easing the plane down, keeping its nose gear in the air as long as possible.

Finally, the broken landing gear hits the runway, the tires burst into flames. It looks ominous from the outside, but inside the cabin there's calm.

JACOBS: The landing itself, I've got to say, was like the best landing I've ever had. People cheered, applauded, there were tears, euphoria, it was wonderful.

GUTIERREZ: Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: All right. She said it was the best landing she ever had. Let's talk to her a little bit more about this.

Alexander Jacobs, who, it was a coast-to-coast flight. It just ended up being the same coast, of course.

JACOBS: That's right.

M. O'BRIEN: Unfortunately, you spent three hours flying around there. I'm curious how you first became aware of the problem, did the captain come on and say, ladies and gentlemen, got a little problem, we're not going to quite get to the East Coast today?

JACOBS: Well, initially we weren't aware that the problem was quite so dire. As the first announcement was just that the landing gear would not retract, which didn't seem like that much of a problem if you were simply going to land and transfer to another airplane. I think most of us felt relieved that the landing gear was out and not that it was in and wouldn't come out again, which would have been much scarier.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, better of the two choices there...

JACOBS: Exactly.

M. O'BRIEN: Right?

JACOBS: It wasn't until later when it became clear that the problem was sort of more complicated. I would say there were sort of two stages of anxiety. One, when people started watching it on the news and it became clear that it was, you know, that it was being treated as a problem on the scale of, you know, poor Hurricane Rita. To be, you know, in the same crawl as that, was terrifying.

And then when we found out we were being diverted to LAX because they had better facilities there, that also sort of sealed the feeling of doom inside the cabin.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, so the -- well let me get this straight then, people actually found out first about really what was going on on TV or did -- had -- was the crew informing you or both?

JACOBS: Well, the pilot had made a couple of announcements. But I don't think the seriousness of what was going on was really grasped until we glimpsed our plane on it flying around and around on national television.

M. O'BRIEN: And that had to be positively surreal to see yourself.

JACOBS: It was insane. No words.

M. O'BRIEN: And what were your thoughts? What did you think? I mean...

JACOBS: My thoughts were, if it had only been local news covering us, I would have been less frightened. But I think the sight of the plane from the outside, it just aroused this feeling of, my god, we're going to be watching ourselves. You know we're going to be watching, possibly watching our demise on television. And that, you know, that was very scary.

M. O'BRIEN: And I assume the mood in the cabin sort of reflected this. Were people pretty panicked, they emotional?

JACOBS: The mood was amazingly varied. It was sort of like the proverbial box of chocolates. I mean, some people were laughing and others were crying. You -- there were some sort of road warrior types who were acting quite blase about the whole thing. And then there was a woman a couple of seats away from me who was absolutely abjectly weeping. And then, you know, there were calm. There was calm. And I think everyone sort of went up and down the scale of emotion a couple of times before we landed. M. O'BRIEN: All right. Final thought here, I know that they shifted people and baggage toward the back of the plane, you know, to change the center of gravity. By all accounts, the flight attendants were very calm and cool. Would you give the crew a general pretty high marks for what we're seeing there?

JACOBS: I have to say I already was a huge fan of JetBlue. I didn't get a chance to say this before, I cannot believe how professional, calm and wonderful the entire crew was, from the pilot to the flight attendants. They absolutely were key in making us feel like we were going to be, you know, probably OK, even in the tense moments. They were fantastic.

M. O'BRIEN: And you're hopping on a flight today?

JACOBS: I'm hopping on the same flight.

M. O'BRIEN: Alexandra Jacobs, I'm sure you will have a happy landing today.

JACOBS: Thank you. I hope so.

M. O'BRIEN: Thanks for sharing a few moments with us.

JACOBS: My pleasure.

M. O'BRIEN: Back with more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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