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American Morning
Hurricane Rita continues to make landfall on the Gulf coast; Flooding starting to become an issue
Aired September 24, 2005 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: I'm Miles O'Brien live in Lumberton, Texas on this morning after Rita. The assessment begins, the damage appears significant, even here 50 miles inland. What lies ahead for the people of Port Arthur and Lake Charles? We'll find out on this AMERICAN MORNING.
Good morning. Welcome to a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING this weekend edition. And the trail of hurricane Rita. Still a category two storm. The eye moving up. Still significant rainfall as a result. This storm has generated tremendous amounts of rain. As you take a look at the scene around me here in Lumberton, Texas, I'll show you another shot, a separate shot we have in front of the city hall and police department here, several trees down.
We've heard reports of many impassable roads here. That's just one location in one town 50 miles inland. As we heard from our reporters all throughout the coastal regions here, Lake Charles, Port Arthur, there's significant flooding there in the wake of this storm surge, of the storm, as we say now a category two. And now apparently going to stall overland and create more rain and more flooding for people.
For more on that aspect of the story we turn it over to CNN's Jacqui Jeras in the Weather Center. Jacqui, where is Rita now and what is Rita up to?
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, Rita is still holding strong, believe it or not. Category two strength, 100 mile-per-hour winds. In the center of circulation is somewhere near St. Augustine. It is just to the south of there. Here you are, Miles, over here in Lumberton and St. Augustine is right within this eye wall here and they're just getting smacked with some unbelievably strong winds.
We're just getting some damage reports from St. Augustine of some homes have been knocked off their foundations from this storm. I'm guessing, though, those are not very well-constructed homes as the max winds at this time are about 100 miles per hour. But it can cause some significant damage still.
It can basically blow apart a mobile home still at this strength. So this remains a very serious situation. Even though it's no longer a three and even though it is inland. We still have lots that we're going to have to contend with. We also have the threat of tornadoes. Those will be coming in across these feeder bands.
Most of those are across southeastern parts of Louisiana and extending on up into parts of Mississippi at this time. The storm is moving up to the north. It's expected to move about -- it's about 13 to 15 miles per hour right now but it's going to slow down gradually throughout the day today and then we think eventually it's going to be stalling out and possibly even kind of looping across the ArkLaTex Region. You can see the position locator.
This is early tomorrow morning. You can see where it's going to be on Sunday and Monday. It is just basically -- or Sunday and Monday, today is Sunday, isn't it? I got to think about my days these days. It's going to stall out about three to five days, we think, here.
And that is going to bring in extremely heavy rainfall. This is a computer animation, a forecast rainfall totals. The purple color here is what you really want to focus on where the heaviest of rain is expected to be. That's five plus inches. But five is a very low number. We think that eight to 12 is going to be common and there's going to be isolated amounts between one and two feet of rain. Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Jacqui, we've all been working a continuum of work. We will remind you and everybody else, it is Saturday morning.
JERAS: Yes, thank you.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, yes, it is. Let me ask you a couple things. And this is probably not an easy one. I can't remember a hurricane. Every hurricane I covered it was rain, dry, rain, dry. Sheets of rain intermittent. This one was solid. Why do some hurricane do this? What makes it more of a wet storm as opposed to a so-called dry storm?
JERAS: Well a lot of different factors are involved here. This storm in particular had a little bit of dry air that moved into it before it made landfall. And that helped weaken the storm a little bit. But it doesn't look like there's that much dry air in the system anymore. The more moisture there is surrounding this storm the more obviously gets into it and the weather that it is and the other factor that we are dealing with is that it's going to be slowing down so it's going to sit there and spin and feed in moisture continued from the Gulf of Mexico.
M. O'BRIEN: And Jacqui, how unusual is it for a storm to be, at this juncture, still category two?
JERAS: Not that unusual actually, Miles. It takes a while. This is a huge storm. It's extremely powerful. So will take some time to weaken significantly. It's only dropped down 20 miles per hour since landfall. I can't recall seeing it at hurricane strength 24 hours after the fact, which is which the Hurricane Center is forecasting. But we think it's going to be a tropical storm probably late tonight.
M. O'BRIEN: And just to compare to it recent memory as far as Katrina goes. Was this on the same order of size and magnitude roughly or a bigger storm?
JERAS: Well, size wise, storms are very comparable, 400 miles across right now for the tropical storm force sustained winds. Katrina was very close to that. But in terms of the intensity of the storm, when they made landfall, Katrina was much stronger. It was 140 when it made landfall. And this is 120. And that's a difference between categories. When you go up in categories, the damage also goes up exponentially.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, that -- obviously is very significant and a big factor in all of this. You know, we focus so much on Galveston and the possibility of a storm surge there of 20 or 25 feet. What do we know right now about what the storm surge was?
JERAS: I don't know that they got a whole heck of a lot of storm surge because they were on the good side of the storm. I know the waves were up a bit but I can't imagine it was much more than five, ten feet maybe.
M. O'BRIEN: I'm sorry. I meant just in general, though. On the -- let's say the Lake Charles side of this storm. Do you have any idea how dig the surge was there?
JERAS: We think between 10 and 20 feet. Surge is still a problem too by the way Miles. We are not over and done with, with the waves coming up, the worst of the storm surge is over and done with but we still have that on shore flow taking place. Surge across parts of the Texas and Louisiana coast still could be as high of five to ten feet throughout much of the day today.
M. O'BRIEN: So there's still -- we say it's the aftermath of Rita. We're still living Rita, of course. As we assess the damage it is still, I guess, the term would be rather dynamic and things are changing even as we speak.
Jacqui Jeras, thank you very much. Back to you, Soledad.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: All right, Miles, thanks. Let's take a look at how it looks right now in Beaumont, Texas. These are the first daylight pictures that we are getting there. We have heard reports of the structural damage and actually in one area all the windows, first and second floor, blowing out we heard from our reporter, affiliate reporter there talking about the damage, not only to some of the businesses but the residences as well.
These pictures coming to us by the way from affiliate KOKI as Beaumont, Texas, really getting the brunt of the storm in the wee hours; 3:30 in the morning is when this storm came on shore. We want to get to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. She's standing by for us. You've been watching these pictures, I'm sure anticipating as we all have, as the sun came up, really getting a sense of how bad it is. You're getting feed back from your people. How bad are you hearing that it is?
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, TEXAS: Well, Soledad, I've talked to the mayor of Galveston this morning. I talked to the mayor of Beaumont and the county Judge Griffith who covers Beaumont and Port Arthur. Clearly the worse damage is in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area. They are concerned about flooding in Port Arthur. The wind damage has really been terrific in Beaumont and Port Arthur. Roofs off. Some people stranded. The flooding is the real issue now, I think, for the refineries in Port Arthur. We think that the refinery in Beaumont is all right. That should help us get back up to speed so that gasoline prices won't take a spike, hopefully. But we're very short on fuel and people are not able to get out and as the flooding mounts in east Texas this could be our next big problem.
S. O'BRIEN: How big a problem and how tough is it going to be for you to bounce back from this?
HUTCHISON: They are estimating the damage at $8 million. Probably it could have been worse if there had been more loss of life. We've had instances of loss of life, like the bus that blew up in Dallas. But I think the evacuation, as tough as it was and even some mistakes probably made, did although make a difference in people not being caught in houses because the flooding could have really brought us deaths that I think we have been able to save.
S. O'BRIEN: The numbers that they guess, 2.7 million people evacuated, and including a major city. Pretty remarkable but you must have learned some lessons, too, as you watched some of the frustrations of these evacuees or people who are trying to be evacuees stuck on the side of the highway.
HUTCHINSON: Yes. The fact that they didn't change the lanes maybe as soon as maybe we would do next time, caused people to run out of gas and a number of people have been stranded in east Texas, still don't have the gasoline. And they're looking at heavy; heavy rains for a suspended period. It's moving slowly. So they're looking at flooding in east Texas that we really have to watch for and we need to try to get the gasoline to those people so they can go farther north.
The mayor of Houston does not want people to come back. The mayor of Galveston where woman I talked this morning does not want people to come back for a day or two because power is out in Galveston. It's out in part of Houston. And they want to make sure that we can clean up the roads, get the gasoline back in the service stations, get food on the shelves of the grocery stores before people start coming back.
S. O'BRIEN: We heard from the acting director of FEMA this morning talking about the resources that have been pre-positioned before Rita hit. Have you been pleased with the way those resources have been placed and, I guess, the way that they're actually being sent out this morning?
HUTCHINSON: Yes, I talked to him as well. And I think they were very well positioned. They started focusing on Jefferson County two days ago to try to make sure they had medical teams of evacuation teams, help, and I think that is working. The local people are very pleased with the federal response and the state response, working with the local official officials. I think the communication has worked, even when there was a glitch a couple days ago in Jefferson County, where people were sick and they did not have the ability to get them out. We called the White House. The White House jumped right on it. There were planes in there. And thousands were evacuated who were elderly and, also, sick. They totally evacuated the hospitals in Galveston and that's a medical school. So that is looking very good.
And so I think the federal government working with the local and state officials, it was a team effort. Everybody kept their cool. And there are the evacuation problems still, but in the main we're not going to lose lives because of mistakes.
S. O'BRIEN: Lots of lessons learned, clearly, in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
HUTCHINSON: For sure. We really did learn, unfortunately, from Katrina. But having these two major hurricanes within a two-week period on our Gulf Coast is going to have lasting damage. That's for sure.
S. O'BRIEN: Lasting damage to the economy as well. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison joining us this morning. Nice to see you, thank you for talking with us.
HUTCHINSON: Thank you, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Let's get back to Miles. He's in Lumberton, this morning, where flooding in the parking lot there pretty remarkable. Miles, I know earlier you said you were surprised at how much water actually ended up there.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, it was a sheet of water it just kept coming down. It actually has receded a little bit. So that is some good news here. We got a little piece of debris there that I'm going to clear out of here in just a moment. But the assessment is under way even as the wind and the rain continues. More on hurricane Rita on AMERICAN MORNING after a brief break. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: Good morning, Galveston, Texas. And all things considered, it is a good morning in Galveston, given the fact that there were tremendous concerns about hurricane Rita and what it might mean for that city and whether a storm surge might top over its seawall built there after the city was virtually wiped off the map in 1900. Today there are white cap there's in the Gulf of Mexico. That means there's a lot of wind of course. The palm trees are blowing but generally speaking that city dodged a bullet.
Also pretty much the same story for the city of Houston, Texas. That's the fourth largest city in the country. Just yesterday we are talking about the largest evacuation we have ever witnessed from any city in excess of two million people. Perhaps upwards of three million people in total that evacuated from the city of Houston in advance of hurricane Rita. That in and of itself causing all kinds of problems as people ran out of gas on their way to high ground and safety. CNN's Bob Franken has been at the Emergency Operation Center there in Houston. They just had a briefing a little while ago. And all in all the city faired fairly well, right, Bob?
BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They indeed, they had prepared for the worse, as you point out, but they got much, much less. Winds that sustained 40 to 60 miles per hour. Very little flooding thus far although they worry if the storm hovers there could be more in a city that has a lot of low-lying areas. The biggest problem they've had has been power outages, fallen trees, that type of thing affecting power for about 575,000 homes and businesses in this area. Remember as you pointed out, more than four million people who live here.
The biggest problem is we all now know is the evacuation problem. That is one that was outgoing, was a horrendous mess as we found out. We were told that plans to bring people back and to provide for gasoline are still, quote, in the planning stages. As for fires there were very few of them here. The fire department as a matter of fact had enough excess staffing they were able to send unit to help out with the fire in Galveston.
One other problem while I was here at the Emergency Operation Center. They have a control room which I can only describe as looking like a huge sports bar with screens and monitors all over the place, including large screens which typically for this kind of operation, tuned into news televisions to see what the media are reporting. Well, the screens are dark. Cable TV failed. The cable company we're told promised to send somebody by to fix it. Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Bob, let's talk about this, I guess, de-evacuation if that's a term. Returning everybody, one of the things that might have worked better potentially is a phase evacuation by zip codes or something. Are they going to try to do something like that to make it to we don't have the reverse kind of clogged highways that we saw just a day or two ago?
FRANKEN: Well, that's precisely what they're discussing among the considerations for instance, delaying the beginning of school next week so there won't be this crush of people trying to get their children back into schools. Coming up with something along those lines, perhaps having different cities, allowing people to come back, all of that as I said is in the planning stages. They point out here that this is not a municipal consideration. This is something that will be done at the state and probably involve federal people, too. That planning is going on in Austin and here.
M. O'BRIEN: Well you know it's interesting because I think a great lesson was learned in all of that. Each of these storms is giving us all kinds of tough lessons that we probably would prefer not to learn. But never the less, telling everybody to do one thing at the same time in a city of that size is just not a good idea. And I assume officials have gotten that message.
FRANKEN: You know, it's interesting Miles. Remember what was the original intent for the interstate highway system. It was originally conceived as part of the National Defense Highway Act. The whole idea was it would provide safe routes out of urban areas in case of a nuclear attack. It didn't work as we saw on September 11th.
They are still trying to learn their lessons. We saw with Katrina when decisions were made too late. There's a feeling here that maybe some of the decisions were made too hastily and to early here. This is still a learning process that has still not been completed starting in the 1950s.
M. O'BRIEN: You know, it's really interesting because it's just like so many things. The devil really is in the details. I ran into several who were drivers stranded along the way. They said that the police officers weren't letting them make what would normally be an illegal median cross to get into the other side of the lanes for that so-called contra flow which seems, you know, ridiculous given the fact that they were trying to evacuate everybody, that the police officers say, no you can't make that improper lane change over into the opposing direction. So clearly a lot of those little details that you might not think about are so important.
FRANKEN: Well, it was an interesting experience for us. We were in Corpus Christi; we were trying to get into Houston. What we ran into repeatedly was a blockade where the police would decide to shut down a highway in our incoming direction to accommodate outgoing. What we were able to do in effect is take advantage of those mistakes that you're pointing out and weave our way in. Quite frankly, we shouldn't have been able to get in so easily.
M. O'BRIEN: Interesting. Bob Franken in Houston where, once again, in the wake of a storm lots of lessons, lots of rejiggering the plans, lots of creating new plans, all on the horizon for local, state and federal officials.
All those evacuees had to go somewhere. And we saw them on their way to Dallas. We saw them on their way to San Antonio. And in many cases they went to Lufkin, Texas as well. College town, lots of housing there in the offing. But the story in Lufkin was there wasn't much room at the inn. Too many people showed up and it was difficult to house everybody. CNN's Ed Lavandera is there with a report on how people there, how the evacuees weathered the storm and whether they got the shelter they were looking for. Ed.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, as you are correct, yesterday afternoon and the 24 hours preceding leading up to the storm was a chaotic scene here in Lufkin. You can see over my shoulder this is Highway 69. This is the route coming this way, brings you out of Beaumont. These roads yesterday were stacked and stacked with cars. Many people running out of gas in this town.
So the concern was that as the storm approaches and we are starting to feel some of the toughest parts of this storm this morning now that many people were going to be stranded on the roads. We are at the Devon Avenue Baptist Church, which is a shelter prepared to handle 250 people. All of these people showed up here. This is essentially one of the first things you see when you drive in to Lufkin from the south.
This church took in 650 people into this shelter. Way more than they were prepared to handle. That's the way it's been all over town. They opened up the rodeo arena in town and stuck about 700 people there. The incredible news is that city officials were able to clear the roadways. So there might have been a few people sleeping in their cars and in parking lots or in car washes and this sort of thing. But the major reports that perhaps thousands of people might be stranded along the roadsides and waiting out this storm didn't materialize.
They were able to bring in gas and get people fueled up and off farther north and to the west to avoid the worse of this storm. But this town was prepared to handle 10,000 evacuees; it handled many, many more than that. But the vast majority of the people they were able to get out of here, which is the good news and really salvaged what could have been a very ugly situation here. Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: So generally what happened, Ed, people who couldn't be accommodated they got them fuel and told them to go on to the next local, the next location, is that how it worked?
Ed Lavandera are you there? I think we lost Ed. We'll get back with him when we can. The city of Lufkin is one of the places that has been dealing with the evacuee issue. This is a town that created some evacuees and right now this morning what we're seeing are the first assessment under way. Police cars going back making an assessment. Finding out where the power lines are down. Where the trees are down. And getting a full -- trying to get their hands around the damage, which so far, Soledad, a little more than they expected here. Back to you.
S. O'BRIEN: A little more than they expected but not really catastrophic which I think many people were also fearing. Miles thanks. We're going to take a short break. We'll get back with you and all our reporters who are stationed along the Gulf Coast in just a little bit. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: It is daybreak in Lumberton, Texas, a little before 8:30 in the morning Central Time, local time here. And this is the scene in front of a police department here. Trees down. In just one small snapshot of what is the scene repeated all through out this city of about 8,700 this morning, the police are out right now patrolling.
The chief let his 14 officers go first of all, released them to go check on their personal property. And in so doing also checking on their town and getting a sense of the damage. I'm looking at the City Hall above me here. And it's got just -- they're going to need a whole new roof there, pieces of roof were flying off all last night.
That is when I decided to get some cover. Some pieces of the siding. The Homecoming Parade which was going to be in about a half an hour from now, not going to be happening today as you can see what's going on here on the Main Street is just one of desolation and destruction. Lots of flooding here. This flooding all caused by the driving rainfall.
This storm was a big storm, a long storm and a wet one. It's just continued to rain sheet upon sheet of rain all night long as Rita came through here. The net result here has been lots of trees down. There are trees down on houses. As a matter of fact, there is a family waiting for a rescue this morning. They're trying to cut their way in to them.
And they're OK but they still would like to get out of there. As the police chief told me, he doesn't understand why anybody would want to ride out these things. As we heard from John King a little while ago some people who have ridden these things out in the end say they wish they had not.
CNN's Rob Marciano, one of our weather experts is in Beaumont and rode out the storm in Beaumont last night. That's 15 miles south of where I stand right now. Rob, how are things looking there now?
ROB MARCIANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A lot more calm than they were this time yesterday or at least a few hours ago last night. We rode out the storm after 1:00 a.m. We went to the Emergency Command Shelter, which is the Entergy Building. It's probably the most secure building or at least one of them here in town. It's where all the emergency managers were.
It is where the Entergy officials were, the mayor, the police. The police of fire and rescue troop. Now they are beginning to mobilize. They got a number of calls in last night. They obviously couldn't go out to them. And so that's the first thing on their list, the fire and rescue crews are going to go bob and weave through the downed power lines and the trees that are down in the streets, and make their way to the list of calls that they got last night from people who didn't evacuate, like you were mentioning up there in Lumberton.
There were several down here in Beaumont as well that placed calls (INAUDIBLE) fire department and police to get them to come out and help, and that's the first thing they're going to do today, and then, of course, assess some damage.
Damage, we have. We have some of that here in Beaumont, obviously. A lot of these live-oak trees, we mentioned last night, these magnificent, old hardwood trees, very sturdy, we saw a number of these in Biloxi that -- where the trunks were standing, but the leaves were completely gone. Obviously, some of that trunk was split.
The other concern was going to be the storm surge. This is the Neches River here. We showed you this yesterday. We were concerned that we could see 20 feet -- a 20-foot storm surge here, if the center of the storm came up to the west of Beaumont. Turns out, it came up on the east around Seville (ph) Pass, across southwest Louisiana. So this river stayed put.
But what we're seeing now, actually, now that the winds have changed, the winds are actually blowing upriver. And remember the technical discussions out of the Weather Service as saying, you know, if it's -- if you do have a storm surge, it likely is not going to recede as fast as the storm surge would normally, because now we have the winds continuing to push out of the southwest. So we're seeing the current try to go this way, but the wind waves (INAUDIBLE) small surge up there. But it could have been a lot worse here, certainly, Miles. I fear it was worse over there in Lake Charles. I'm curious to see what kind of pictures we're going to bring out of Lake Charles over there in Calcashoe (ph) Parish later on today.
But it's still kind of breezy. As you know, it's still a category 2 storm, Miles, so a still dangerous situation in much of eastern Texas and western Louisiana.
Back up to you.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, Rob, we're still feeling the wind here too, although it certainly has died down, as you report. You know, the difference between where you are now and Lake Charles is apt to be very stark, because -- and it's worth reminding people that the eye is what separates the two cities, and Lake Charles would have been on the less-favorable -- I think the term is sometimes used, the dirty side of the storm, or the not-easy side of the storm.
Are -- we really don't have any additional indications yet as to what happened there, do we?
MARCIANO: I don't. I've been trying to get in touch with Rick Sanchez to see what, you know, what kind of damage there. I -- from last I checked last night, he was reporting some structural damage. That would be, you know, that would be a, you know, the line up with 120-mile winds.
The bigger concern I have, Miles, is the storm surge. The officials there were concerned with flooding or storm surge coming up the Calcashoe Lake, or Big Lake, as the locals call it up in (INAUDIBLE) Lake and in through Lake Charles, and then overflowing the city. And I'm curious to see if that actually happened.
Hopefully those predictions didn't come true, but we'll see, I suppose.
Soledad, back to you.
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, we absolutely will be watching that. All right, Rob, thanks.
Let's check in with Elaine Quijano. She's in Colorado Springs, traveling with the president. Elaine, good morning.
ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Soledad.
At this hour, President Bush is taking part in a briefing on Hurricane Rita. As you mentioned, he is here in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which is home to U.S. Northern Command.
Now, the president, stung by criticism over the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, is anxious to show that he is on top of the situation, to show that he is actively engaged in the response to Hurricane Rita. Now, last night the president met with Admiral Timothy Keating, who heads up U.S. NorthCom. The men and women of U.S. Northern Command are second responders, meant to be brought in when state and local officials are overwhelmed.
The White House, though, is looking closely at the role that the U.S. military can play. That's part of the reason why the president is here, officials say.
Now, one of the lessons they learned from Katrina was to have military assets pre-positioned ahead of the storm instead of just mobilizing after the fact. The president looking at all of that today, while he is here at NorthCom.
Now, after this, the president will be heading to Texas, where he actually was to have stopped yesterday. That trip, though, was canceled after FEMA moved its first responders closer to the path of the storm.
Later today, though, President Bush will be in Austin, where he will visit an emergency operations center before moving on to San Antonio. Unclear yet, Soledad, what events he might have there, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Well, we'll continue to monitor the president's schedule, as you obviously are doing as well. Elaine Quijano, traveling with the president. Thanks, Elaine.
Now, we're going to take a short break, as we leave you with this picture and satellite (INAUDIBLE) of Hurricane Rita as it came on shore around 3:30 in the morning, really slamming into Lake Charles. And. as we know, right now, it looks like that, in fact, is the hardest-hit area. We're trying to get assessments from the scene about how bad the damage is there. Flooding, debris, some structural damage reported all up and down certain parts of the Gulf Coast.
We have reporters all over the Gulf Coast region, and they are filing with us and updating us on the situations. We'll check in with them this morning as well, as we continue right here on a Saturday edition of AMERICAN MORNING.
Short break. We're back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.
You're looking at some new video we're getting out of Houston, our affiliate KTRK there in Houston, showing us some pictures clearly before the sun rose of just some of the damage in Houston. You can also see it looks as if the power in some parts of Houston was unaffected, and that is very good news, maybe Houston n to getting as badly hit as they had thought they might, with some of those predictions that were coming in overnight and the days before Hurricane Rita hit.
Let's get right back to Jacqui Jeras. She's got an update on Rita and Rita's path this morning. Hey, Jacqui, good morning again.
JERAS: Hey, good morning, Soledad.
Storm is weakening pretty rapidly, and that's good. At last check, that was 8:00 Eastern Time, 7:00 Central, still packing winds around 100 miles per hour sustained. But we think it's probably down a little bit from that now, as the storm will continue to weaken, probably down to a category 1 after the noon hour.
The threat of tornadoes will be ongoing, especially across parts of Louisiana into Mississippi, as these outer feeder bands move in. And you can see the direction of the storms here very clearly. They're still coming in well out of the south. And that means we still have that onshore flow, and we still have that threat of storm surge. So that's not over with yet, especially for Louisiana, including the New Orleans area.
Five- to 10 storm -- foot storm surge along the coast, and we could still see them running a good three to four, maybe even five, feet above normal along Lake Pontchartrain. So that concern still (INAUDIBLE) for tonight.
The storm is still moving at a pretty good pace, between 10 and 15 miles per hour. But it's slowly going to be stalling out, unfortunately. There you can see the overnight position here. This is 2:00 in the morning. Tomorrow, down to a tropical storm status. And then down to a tropical depression late on Sunday night. But the storm will be moving very little by that time, so it's really the ArkLaTex region here that we're most concerned about for that threat of inland flooding later down into the forecast period.
And this is what we call a QPF model, quantitative precipitation forecast. And you can see 24 1/2 inches over the next five days in this blue area, and that's where we're going to be seeing the greatest concern. On average, we'll see about eight to 12 inches-plus within the path. And then when it stalls out, we'll see those heavier amounts, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: OK, thanks.
Let's get right back to Miles in Lumberton.
Miles, good morning again.
M. O'BRIEN: Good morning again, Soledad.
We're back behind the police station. This was an outbuilding, a storage facility. And in this building were some dogs that had to be saved or evacuated. And I think there is a dog in here. We're going to go in and check out. Dana Garrett is our producer. She's going to help me out here.
Oh, there is a puppy in there. Come here, little puppy. Come here, sweetie. Oh. (INAUDIBLE) -- this building just came down around him. And he -- fortunately, he was here in this kennel. Let's get him out of here. Oh, he's all wet. Let's get him out of here.
There we go. There he is. (INAUDIBLE), don't let him go, don't let him go. He's OK. He's just scared and wet. I mean, this is just one of the kinds of scenes you see. You remember the scenes in New Orleans.
He's scared, but I think he's going to be OK. That kennel actually saved him, because there was a big hunk of a stud on top of him, and then all these -- all this conduit.
And we might have a mascot here, Soledad. But this is all part of the assessment. He's shaking. Poor guy. He's going to be OK, though.
Just to bring you up to date on what's going on right now, the police say they're getting inundated with phone calls here, relatives of people who rode this storm out. How's my father, mother, brother, sister? They say they can't respond to all of them.
They did get a call about an elderly man on oxygen who is running short on oxygen. They're trying to get to him right now. He's trapped inside his home because of a tree.
I told you a little while ago about a family that was trapped they couldn't get to. That family was able to crawl out of their house, get into a neighbor's house. They're safe and sound.
So what they're doing is a situation of assessment here, and prioritizing those who have some real needs here, those who tried to ride it out.
And taking care of the puppy. The puppy seems to be OK, though, right? OK. Back to you, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: He looks OK. But, hey, Miles, and give us a shot of this little dog again. My question for you is, now, why would you put a dog in an outbuilding during a hurricane?
M. O'BRIEN: Well, that's a very good question. I'm going to ask the chief that later. But I think they just didn't have a place to put them. And these were people who had evacuated. They couldn't evacuate with their animals, and so they put them in the kennels inside the building. And some of them must have gotten out. I don't know what happened.
But this one got left behind. He's going to be OK, though. He is just a sweetie. And I think it's a case where they, you know, they couldn't have anticipated this whole building coming down. You know, it's not the sturdiest, but nevertheless.
S. O'BRIEN: Did you see evidence of other animals there? I mean, is he the only one? Or is there -- could there be other dogs or other pets in there?
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, well, it's interesting. See, it's interesting. There's a kennel here. Look at this one over here. It looks like the cage got bent, and so I think he probably got out. I wonder if he's loose.
I don't know what happened with this one. This -- I bet that one was empty.
I think they were able to get some of the dogs out, actually, is what happened, after it went down. And I think he just might have been overlooked in the darkness and the rain, and because he wasn't making a lot of noise.
But I think -- I'm going to -- you know, after we say good-bye here, I'm going to go double-check through here to make sure there's not another one in here.
S. O'BRIEN: How did you know he was there? Could you hear him? Was he yelping?
M. O'BRIEN: Dana Garrett saw him. What, he was -- was he...
DANA GARRETT, CNN PRODUCER: I heard him.
M. O'BRIEN: What happened?
GARRETT: I heard -- well, I walked over here, and I heard him yelping and crying, and I couldn't believe that there was still a pet here. And so I saw him just shaking, and I ran inside to the police, and I said, you know, is there anybody that can come out and save this dog? And they said, you know, the guy at the phone said, I'm the only one here, there's nothing I can do. So I came and got you.
M. O'BRIEN: All right. Well, we will take care of the dog, I promise you that, one way or another. I'm sure that somebody knows who he belongs to, and we'll make sure that the dog gets back to his rightful owner, because I'm sure they'll be coming back before too long, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, well, good work, guys. Good work, Dana. Nicely done. Thanks, guys. Thanks. You know...
M. O'BRIEN: All right, (INAUDIBLE).
S. O'BRIEN: Oh, we want up to date you on what's going on with the oil refineries. We're getting word that oil refineries and chemical plants along Houston's channel now reporting no significant damage, which is very good news.
Of course, early on in the assessments, only been daylight for a couple hours now, and they were going to go out as soon as they possibly could to scope out how badly damaged the various parts of the refineries were.
You're looking at the Baytown refinery. And excellent news, certainly not only for the local economy, but the national economy as well, where some people were predicting that if, in fact, some of the refineries had been hit head-on and were taken out and offline for months at a time, that we could have some severe shortage guests (ph), shortage problems, and huge financial implications for the United States as a whole.
So a little bit of good news to report. Early on, though. We'll update you the situation as it changes and if it changes, just ahead.
Louisiana National Guard going out into the Rita strike zone this morning. They're going to be searching for any necessary search and rescue missions, removing debris in the way as well.
Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Thibodeaux is with the National Guard in Baton Rouge.
Good morning to you. Thank you for joining us. How does it look this morning?
LT. COL. JACQUES THIBODEAUX, NATIONAL GUARD, BATON ROUGE: Well, right now, we're currently in the process of just waiting on the assessment. We've had our communication crews in with the parish leadership all night. We're receiving reports of rising water all the way along the east side of the storm, which would be from Cameron Parish all of the way east to Terrebonne Parish.
So we're just in the process of right now just waiting to get our assessment teams in there. We prestaged about 4,000 soldiers right on the outskirts of the storm, and right now, we'll be moving in within the next few hours.
S. O'BRIEN: And it's looking like Lake Charles might be the hardest hit, from some of the early information we're getting. How many soldiers, how many troops do you have that are stationed with the ability to get in there quickly?
THIBODEAUX: We had about 4,000 soldiers that were in the Lafayette area, about 45 miles from Lake Charles. And they're going to be moving in this -- in the next couple hours to -- with primarily focus on search and rescue and clearing the roads, so that the emergency crews can save some lives and get in there quickly.
S. O'BRIEN: When do you think they're going to get -- be able to be mobilized? I can't really tell if it's still windy, or (INAUDIBLE) the weather's too inclement to really bring troops in. Or do you feel like they can mobilize right now?
THIBODEAUX: Well, we've got communication assets that are with the parish leadership in Calcashoe and Cameron Parishes that have informed us that they are -- (audio interrupt) ... we've got reports of 90-mile-an-hour winds in the Lafayette area. And so, you know, it's at the point where the storm is still moving. There's still a tremendous storm surge. So we hope to get in there within the next two to three hours with high-water vehicles, boats, and helicopters, maybe a little bit later, based on the wind gusts.
S. O'BRIEN: And I know it's kind of early to tell, but do you have a sense if you're going to be doing search and rescue, or it's really going to be a matter of focusing on debris and just, you know, making the roads and the passageways safe more than trying to pull people out?
THIBODEAUX: Oh, absolutely. Our priority is going to be on search and rescue, absolutely is going to be saving lives, you know, and getting our search and rescue elements in there and saving as many lives as we can in the affected area.
S. O'BRIEN: What happens with the efforts that you have going on right now with Hurricane Katrina? I mean, clearly, you're knee-deep in that as well. Are you pulling troops off? Are you leaving that now vulnerable?
THIBODEAUX: No, absolutely not. We had 16,000 National Guard troops in the state of Louisiana. We pulled about 4,000 over to the Hurricane Rita area. We left about 8,000 soldiers in the New Orleans metro area, as well as another 4,000 soldiers that basically can go either for Rita or Katrina.
We are being effective in both areas of support and saving lives.
S. O'BRIEN: The vehicles that you have in there, if indeed there's high water, there's lots of flooding, can you traverse those areas?
THIBODEAUX: Oh, yes, ma'am. You know, I'd like to point out, for Hurricane Katrina, that, you know, within four hours to six hours after the storm effects passed, we were in the high-water areas. These military vehicles are designed to drive in four or five, six feet of water. And in addition to that, we have helicopter assets as well as boats in a cooperative effort with the Wildlife and Fisheries.
S. O'BRIEN: Jacques Thibodeaux is a lieutenant colonel. I thank you for joining us with an update on your efforts. And I know they're really going to get underway in earnest probably within two or three hours, once the weather clears and you've got some good feedback from your folks who are on the ground. Thank you for talking with us.
Let's get right back to Miles. Miles is in Lumberton, Texas, this morning. Miles?
M. O'BRIEN: Thanks very much, Soledad.
No more pets in there, we've determined that, so we can move on from that. But that structure obviously took a real beating overnight. We saw it just fall down.
Here's an important thing. For those of you watching who are an evacuee, if you're in some of the outlying cities here, if you're up in Lufkin or wherever the case, and you left Beaumont, Jefferson County, Orange County, don't go back yet. Do not go back. The storm has, you know, is still -- the remnants are here. And we're still got some of Rita coming through.
But it is way too early and -- for you to safely return. The authorities are out right now beginning their assessment, where the power lines are down, where the trees are down, where the danger lies, and try to clear up those danger spots. And just as it was in the case of New Orleans, where people wanted to get in right afterwards, this is not a good time to do it.
So sit tight. Wait till you hear from the authorities. And we will report that the minute we hear it. And we will let you know the minute it is OK to do that.
CNN's Gary Tuchman rode out the storm in Beaumont, Texas, where they're doing just such an assessment right now. Gary doing his own assessment this morning as we have first light. Gary, what's the latest?
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Miles, our own unofficial assessment. And we did ride out the storm in a restaurant here in downtown Beaumont last night. It was a restaurant that was kept open by its proprietor for police or fire officials who needed help. And (INAUDIBLE) it was us from CNN who needed a little shelter.
Police and fire folks would come by, and we want to thank this gentleman very much for helping us out.
We do want to tell you, as we did this assessment last hour, we had some audio problems.
But we think it's very important to put this into context. There are big problems here in Beaumont, Texas, population 110,000. Just in this downtown area, we see buildings that have partially fallen into the ground, blocking roads. We see hundreds of windows that have been blown out. Behind me, you see the metal part of that building that is loose, has been making a lot of noise.
But -- and this is very important -- this is not Biloxi, Mississippi, or Gulfport, Mississippi, or certainly not New Orleans. There is not the flooding that they were concerned about here. The Neches River is over there about a half a mile away from here. They're very concerned that they could have 10, 12, 13 feet of water on the streets. I've driven all around, we don't see that kind of flooding in the city of Beaumont.
We also don't see the massive destruction that we see in Mississippi along the coast in Gulfport, and along the coast in Biloxi. We don't see that here. And that is certainly good news.
The power is out, the power's out to tens of thousands of customers in this area. As a matter of fact, if you go look over here, there's a clock that's right up there, and it tells you the exact time the power went out, 1:22 in the morning. So we're talking about a grand total now of about seven hours and 15 minutes that the power's been out.
And if Mississippi and Louisiana are any indication, it may be a long time before we see the power again.
But all in all, here in Beaumont, where they thought the eye was going to cross directly, they seem to have done very well. Of course, there will be many exceptions as people go back to their homes to find out what happened.
Miles, back to you.
M. O'BRIEN: You know, Gary, it's worth underscoring that point you just made, because in the wake of Katrina, everybody had feared a Katrina-like situation. Now, we haven't heard from Lake Charles yet. And we're hoping to get a hold of Rick Sanchez, who is there. But in the case of Beaumont right now, not nearly the kind of destruction we witnessed a few weeks ago in the wake of Katrina, right?
TUCHMAN: Definitely not, Miles. And I think what's most remarkable, and you probably have noticed this, too, people truly evacuated in huge numbers. I mean, I've been in two towns the last two days, Beaumont and Port Arthur, and we saw virtually nobody. It was different than the normal evacuation. People were literally, palpably fearful because of Katrina.
And they would come up to us with these wide-open eyes, go, Where should we go? What should we do? What should we do? And I've never seen that before in all these years. I've seen people evacuate because they thought it was the right thing to do, but not look so scared. And, you know, it was very pitiful in a lot of ways that people were so petrified.
It was great they evacuated, but we felt very badly that they were so scared. And we saw that on the highways, people running out of gas, they were so desperate to get out of there, and then there were, stuck on the highways. It's been a very difficult last 36 to 48 hours.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, it really has. And, you know, when you see that real raw panic, it's kind of hard to cope with. And you realize that people are having a hard time coping with their fears.
We are continuing that assessment all around here. And as we -- as Gary pointed out, Soledad, and it's worth underscoring for our viewers, what we have seen here does not come anywhere near Katrina. We have not seen, however, and we don't have a good assessment of what happened on the east side of this storm yet. So we should keep that in mind as we continue our coverage this morning, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: There are many people who, in fact, are saying that Lake Charles, Miles, might be the hardest-hit region. We just literally haven't had a chance to see a lot of pictures from there. We're trying to get those coming in.
Let's talk a little bit more about the evacuation process and how it went, and if there were any lessons learned in the wake of that, as Hurricane Rita approached the Gulf Coast.
Congressman Ted Poe, district includes Beaumont, Texas, and he joins us this morning.
Thank you for talking with us, Congressman. We certainly appreciate it.
Let's talk, first, about the evacuations. You heard Gary Tuchman talking about the sheer panic with which people were getting out of town. The good news is, lessons learned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The bad news is, the breakdowns, the running out of gas. A lot of people really didn't have a clue about what to do. What went wrong, what went right, in your mind?
REP. TED POE, TEXAS: Well, more people were evacuated than anyone expected. Most of us thought around a million would leave the southeast Texas area. It was probably 2.5 million, could be the largest evacuation in American history over such a short period of time.
And I think people were very orderly leaving the area. Of course, there were some issues, getting the freeways, all the lanes open going north, and all the lanes open going west. That took awhile, took longer than anybody wanted to. Gasoline was a problem that we didn't really expect that cars would not have access to gasoline.
So those are probably the two lessons.
Now, the reentry process, as y'all have been mentioning, we want people to make sure that they don't come back too soon. We got to have power, got to have the streets and the roads cleared before people should come back into the area.
S. O'BRIEN: We're showing some new pictures from Houston this morning, new video to CNN.
Your district includes some of the areas that appear to be, at this point, early on in the assessment, hardest hit. And I mentioned Beaumont as one of them. What word are you getting from your people on the ground about how bad it is there?
POE: Well, it's not as bad as we expected 12 hours ago. Port Arthur and Beaumont, very important for the petrochemical area and those refineries down on the coast, Port Arthur especially. You know, 27 percent of the nation's gasoline is refined in that area. So that was a big concern, how much damage would be done to those refineries? It's not as bad as we thought it would be. So that was -- that's the biggest issue, that was the biggest concern economically.
S. O'BRIEN: What about Houston? We saw some pictures earlier, really right before daybreak, were, in fact, some of these pictures. You could see that the power was on, which, of course, is really good news. Overall, how does Houston look?
POE: The western part of Houston looks good. The eastern part is not, it didn't fare as well. There was about three-quarters of a million people without power this morning throughout the area.
But Houston was spared the brunt. We were very concerned that if the eye of this hurricane had gone through downtown Houston, there would be some major damage, major economic damage as well.
Moved east. We all know that if you are west of the hurricane, you fared better than if you were east of the eye. So Houston and, really, Beaumont and Jefferson County fared better than expected. S. O'BRIEN: We're really all becoming hurricane experts to some degree with these storms of late.
Oil refinery and chemical plants, we heard some good news at Houston's channel. Apparently no significant damage. That's not only good news for Houston but, of course, for the nation.
POE: No question about it. Sixty percent of the nation's gasoline is refined from New Orleans to Corpus Christi in a very small area. The Port of Houston bringing in most of the cargo from -- in the Gulf of Mexico. A lot of concern about that whole area, that petrochemical, over 100 chemical plants are in the area. Most of them didn't suffer any damage. So that's very good news.
S. O'BRIEN: We heard from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison not long ago that the damage could be in the $8 million range. And again, I'll give you that it's a early on. It's only, you know, been daylight for a couple hours. Do you want federal aid in the cleanup, if that's the price tag, or if that's anywhere near the price tag?
POE: Well, of course, the first responsibility is local government, state government. And then, in some basic major infrastructure, we would expect and hope that the federal government would come in in the appropriate places. Don't expect the federal government to pay for all of the damage to Rita or Katrina. But there will be some requests from FEMA and federal government on some of the rebuilding efforts.
S. O'BRIEN: Representative Ted Poe is a Republican from Texas. Thanks for talking with us this morning.
POE: Certainly.
S. O'BRIEN: A short break. We're back with more on this special Saturday edition of AMERICAN MORNING in just a moment.
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