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CNN Live At Daybreak

Wilma: Category Three

Aired October 24, 2005 - 05:30   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: From the Time Warner Center in New York, this is DAYBREAK with Carol Costello and Chad Myers.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Landfall is now imminent. Hurricane Wilma only an hour or two away from becoming the seventh hurricane to hit Florida in 14 months. CNN is your hurricane headquarters all night and through the day as Wilma bears down on Florida.

Let's go back -- well let's go back out into the elements now.

Jeanne Meserve has been watching Wilma's approach from a beach in Naples, Florida, where it's pretty darn nasty.

Hello -- Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol.

You know people here were waiting and waiting and waiting for Wilma. Well, here she is. And, boy, she's something. We've really been getting whipped around out there.

One piece of evidence of it, if you look over here, you may be able to make out these incredible waves. I mean there are white caps right behind me. What makes this so amazing is that this an inland here that goes into a marina. This is nothing like the open ocean. It's probably maybe 30 feet wide here, and it is just being ripped into a froth by this wind.

Fortunately, the wind is heading outward. It's heading away from land. And so that storm surge that they had been so worried about just hasn't made an appearance here. But the wind, as you can see, and the rain, as you can see, certainly have arrived here. And it is causing some problems.

There have been power blackouts. This condominium complex behind me went dark about a half an hour ago. Marco Island is dark. There's another township that's dark. There's sporadic outages all over the place.

And the conditions have become dangerous enough with the falling debris that the sheriff has pulled his deputies off the road. They aren't responding to any calls right now. They aren't saying when they'll be able to put them back on, because of course it's all dependent on this storm and what she's doing in the next hour or two.

So pretty wild here, Carol, back to you. COSTELLO: I can see that in the next hour or two, if you're wondering how conditions will be, Jeanne, and I'm sure people across the country are interested as well.

Let's head to Chad to find out.

Good morning.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning.

Well the closest approach, we call it the perpendicular line. We kind of draw in a big X here, a big cross the way this storm is moving, and then the perpendicular. And then when you get this storm as close to the perpendicular as you can, that's when you get the biggest winds. And we're still not there yet, Carol. There's still more wind for the entire -- really, the entire crew, except maybe for Gary Tuchman. Gary may be actually coming down a little bit, but all of our other reporters the wind speeds still going up.

COSTELLO: Jeanne, I want to talk to you about the psyche of the people in Florida, because you had Charley in 2004, then you had Frances, Ivan and Jeanne. And this year you had Dennis, Katrina and Rita and now Wilma.

MESERVE: That's right, it's been a heavy load, as some people have suffered from what they call hurricane fatigue because there have been so many.

But the situation here in Naples is a little bit different than it is elsewhere. They have not been smacked by a major hurricane here since 1960. That was Hurricane Donna. You know Charley last year hit to the north. Katrina didn't affect them in a big (INAUDIBLE) few people living here who actually remember what it's like to go through a hurricane like (INAUDIBLE) understand when the professionals kept saying get out of the way, get out of the way, get out of the way.

Of course many of them had seen the pictures of Katrina. They took some caution from that and left town. But there's nothing like a 100 percent evacuation from the mandatory evacuation zone here in Naples -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Jeanne Meserve reporting live from Naples.

Of course the Florida Keys are getting pushed around by Hurricane Wilma's high winds, but it seems to be, well, a little bit calmer right now.

CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman is in Key West to bring us up to date.

Hello -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Carol, hello to you.

And Chad is right, things seem to be improving a little bit. We talked to you a half an hour ago, and I mentioned we thought it was improving. But indeed it's gotten even better over the next half- hour. That doesn't mean we're not going to discover some awful things, basically, when it gets light out, because we're hearing there is a lot of flooding here in Key West and a lot of concern about the people who decided to stick it out.

And we know a lot of people did decide to stick it out. Of the 28,000 people, it's estimated that close to 80 percent of the residents of this city decided to stay in their homes and ride it out.

Now if you lived in a place that had the highest elevation, a foot and a half above sea level, and only had one way in and one way out, and you heard that a hurricane, possibly a (INAUDIBLE) headed your way, you might think, particularly after Katrina, that you'd want to leave. But so many people here decided that it wasn't worth it, that they've experienced it before, they have survived it before, that they didn't want to drive the great distance, which is a great distance, 150 miles, to the nearest shelter, and that's why a lot of people are here.

But we have been told that a nearby apartment complex, people on the first floor have had to go up to the second floor because the waters have gotten very high. And the storm surge still a big question, because it's still dark out, we don't know how extensive it is.

We have talked to the mayor of this city. There are no casualties, major casualties of any kind at this time. One injury, and we happened to see it (INAUDIBLE). These people house by house (ph), she was brought by a fire engine to the hotel we're standing next to right now, which is kind of a makeshift medical facility, because all the hospitals in the Keys have been shut down.

And that's one thing you have to keep in mind, there's a mandatory evacuation order, but that doesn't mean they grab you and put you in jail or force you to leave. They don't do that. What they say is if you don't leave, we can't guarantee you'll get the services you need. There are no hospitals, there is no 911 service and we're only going to come out, police or fire officials, if there is a huge emergency. And indeed we have seen the fire officials deliver that woman here and the police deliver a family whose house was being flooded also to this hotel for safe keeping this evening, so.

MYERS: Gary.

TUCHMAN: Yes -- Chad.

MYERS: Are you on Duval Street right now?

TUCHMAN: I am standing in the middle of Duval Street. And normally, Chad, I mean the power has been out now for five hours. This street would be lighted up, there'd still be people walking around partying and drinking, but it's right now very quiet. We have had some stragglers, even when the winds were over 100 miles per hour. I will tell you that most of them were not sober while they were out here with us. MYERS: For most of the night your wind should have been coming from the Atlantic Ocean, from the Florida Straits to the Gulf of Mexico. Now it appears that the Doppler is showing us that the winds are actually going from west to east, or almost that way, down U.S. 1, down Simonton (ph), rather than the other direction. Are you seeing that change in direction as well?

TUCHMAN: Precisely right. We had the winds coming from the south for most of the evening. Now they're coming from the west towards us. So they have switched, yes.

MYERS: All right, there you go. That means it's getting better from here -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Well, Chad, I know you got married in Key West and actually you go there a lot.

MYERS: I do.

COSTELLO: But describe the structures. Maybe Gary could do that. Describe the homes here, because a lot of these homes are older homes.

MYERS: Yes. Well built with good wood, before they cut down all the good wood and didn't have any more good wood left, a lot of cypress, a lot of the old yellow pine, the very tight pine.

But, Gary, most of these homes are wooden structures, right?

TUCHMAN: Right. And you brought up a good point earlier, Chad, that because they haven't had a major hurricane hit this city of Key West in 86 years we don't know how the structures will hold up. And it's really not clear. Because it's so dark out right now, we can't tell.

I can tell you that the La Concha Hotel that we're standing outside of right now, it's a landmark here. It was built in the Roaring '20s in 1926. And right now they're having serious leaking inside and some flooding inside the hotel. The water is just dripping through the ceilings on the various floors. It's a great structure. And we haven't seen any major damage to the structure. And we're glad about that, because we're using it to protect ourselves, but there's a lot of leaking inside the hotel right now.

COSTELLO: Easy to understand when it's been raining for, what,...

MYERS: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: ... seven hours now?

MYERS: Yes.

COSTELLO: Gary Tuchman, we're going to get back to you, as well as you, Chad. We want to check in with the Everglades City mayor, because Everglades City is in the path of Hurricane Wilma. It's just three feet above sea level. And a serious storm surge is expected there this morning. The city's mayor, Sammy Hamilton, did not evacuate. He joins us now live from his very vulnerable city.

Good morning -- Mr. Mayor.

MAYOR SAMMY HAMILTON, EVERGLADES CITY, FLORIDA: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Tell me about conditions there now.

HAMILTON: Well it's dark and the electric is out and it's hard to tell, but I kind of looked out the window there as much as I could, it's raining real hard. And it sounded like it's blowing pretty good too.

COSTELLO: Tell me what kind of structure you're in.

HAMILTON: Well this house was built. I had it built about two years ago and right on the edge of the water here. But it was built pounds down into the rock, down to the rock and concrete and steel poured the foundation. And we built it by blocks all the way up so high and then the rest of it is real strong wood. We went by the code. But really the guy that built the house when we went by the new code, but he doubled it. So we're inside of this house right now. It's dark and you wouldn't even know if a storm was going on, really, I mean.

COSTELLO: So you're in a house, mayor, on the beach?

HAMILTON: I'm right on the water of Everglades City of the Bearing (ph) River.

COSTELLO: I don't know, I'd be scared if I were you. How many of your fellow citizens have stayed?

HAMILTON: Well I've been working for about a week on that on a little TV channel that shows our little area only, and I got just about 90 -- I believe I've probably got 95 percent of the people out of here.

COSTELLO: That's terrific.

HAMILTON: Yes, I worked real hard on that. We got the motorhomes out and the people out of the lower areas of the trailer parks and stuff. And I'm very happy that we got at least 95 percent out. We brought buses in this morning, and we stopped running the buses around 12:00, for people that didn't have transportation and elderly people and I called all the churches. And I think we done great, I really do, for getting people out.

COSTELLO: Yes, you know because in Key West, 80 percent of the people stayed. You must have incredible powers of persuasion.

HAMILTON: Well they trust me. I was born and raised here. And I've run unopposed several times for mayor. And they know I've been through Hurricane Donna and all and I don't take anything lightly at all. And because we're right at sea level, and I'm telling you, you know, it can be bad. It could be real bad.

COSTELLO: What kind of damage are you expecting at Everglades City?

HAMILTON: Well, really, if the water doesn't come too high, we'll be all right with the wind. It's the water what kills us. If the water comes down like they say, it's going to destroy a lot of things, a lot of houses.

COSTELLO: Peg (ph), is Chad around?

MYERS: Mayor Hamilton, I -- hey, Carol, hi.

I just want you to know that you are now in the most dangerous part of the storm. The most dangerous part of that bubble, that storm surge bubble -- Mr. Mayor.

HAMILTON: Right.

MYERS: The Everglades City, right here, you're talking about the heavy rain. You are now in the eyewall. Your winds are probably gusting to a hundred. And you sound amazingly calm for that. But this is where the bubble of water is going to come up.

HAMILTON: Right.

MYERS: And literally in the next 20 minutes your water could come up six feet.

HAMILTON: Right.

MYERS: If that happens, what happens to your home?

HAMILTON: Well if the water comes up six feet, I'll be OK on this house. It's built up real high.

COSTELLO: My goodness. You know, mayor, I was talking to Kathleen Koch over the weekend, and she covered Hurricane Katrina.

HAMILTON: Right.

COSTELLO: And she said that mayors of these small cities who lost citizens were still reeling from the pain and were having trouble getting over that.

HAMILTON: I understand. That's the reason I worked very, very hard to see this wouldn't happen to our people in Everglades City. And I mean we worked hard. And the sheriff's department helped us and county emergency people helped us. And, like I say, much again our little local channel TV goes around in the city and the little small surrounding areas, like Chokoloskee, Plantation Island and Lee, Cypress, we always take care of them, even though that's county, but they're right in on top of us. And I worked real hard. And I'm so happy that I believe that I got 95 percent of our people out of here.

COSTELLO: Now why would this...

HAMILTON: But I drove around -- well, I drove around all day just before dark and checking everything, and all the trailer parks looked empty, boarded up and gone. I didn't see any cars. Didn't see any cars hardly in Everglades City.

COSTELLO: Great. Why did you decide that it was important for you to stay?

HAMILTON: Well, you know several things. This might be dumb, but you know I kind of knew what this house could take and I'm the mayor and I should, you know, stay here. I want to be here. And when daylight breaks I'll, and the wind dies a little bit, I'll be out looking around and taking pictures and checking things.

COSTELLO: All right. Sort of like the captain of the ship.

HAMILTON: That's right. I'm going down with the ship.

COSTELLO: Well we hope not.

HAMILTON: Captain though, no. Captain does go down with the ship, but this ship is going to stay up.

MYERS: Mr. Mayor, be very careful in the next half-hour, because this is now your most dangerous time.

HAMILTON: Right. So how much longer do you think it will be that, another half-hour for dangerous point?

MYERS: I think your bubble, the highest part of your bubble is 30 minutes to one hour away.

HAMILTON: Right.

MYERS: And then it goes down. But you know what, if you see the water coming up, I need you to have some place to go.

HAMILTON: Well I've got a three-story house. And I -- this is the first story I'm sitting in the living room now and water is not even nowheres right up to the steps or nothing.

MYERS: All right, so that's better (ph).

HAMILTON: So I can go down and up.

COSTELLO: OK, Mayor Sammy Hamilton, you did a great job with the evacuations. You be safe. Thank you for joining us.

HAMILTON: I'm proud of it. Thank you, ma'am. Bye now.

COSTELLO: All right. Mayor Sammy Hamilton joining us live from Everglades City.

We're looking...

MYERS: That man saved some lives today.

COSTELLO: You're not kidding.

MYERS: I think he really did getting all those people out.

COSTELLO: What a great guy. And he's just staying there to make sure his city is OK. And then when people come back, he's there to help them.

MYERS: There you go.

COSTELLO: Can't ask for a better mayor than that. We hope he stays safe, though.

We're looking for citizen journalists. Send us your photos and video of Hurricane Wilma. Log on to CNN.com/hurricane. But we don't want you to be crazy. I mean this isn't that important. But if you happen to be out and you're in the safer parts of Florida, send us your photos. Log on to CNN.com/hurricane.

Still to come on DAYBREAK, updates from our severe weather expert Chad Myers. And what about that other storm Alpha? We'll check on that record-breaking 22nd storm this season. CNN your hurricane headquarters.

ANNOUNCER: You're watching CNN your hurricane headquarters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Some of the islands along Florida's southwest coast extremely vulnerable as Hurricane Wilma comes ashore.

Our CNN chief national correspondent John King is live in Marco Island. We're having trouble with his signal. And the winds are so strong they have finally blown his signal off the map. So he's joining us now by phone.

Hello -- John.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Carol.

We're finally resting the satellite dish, we might say. We were taking a lot of hits because of the positions. And it's remarkable all of our crews and intenedos (ph) here doing a great job keeping us up all night. And they are trying to take it down, just for safety sake, for a little bit and also taking all those hits, as you saw.

But I can tell you here on Marco Island, the fire chief told us a short time ago that some of the winds have registered upwards of 80 miles an hour. So we certainly have some good gusts, heavy gusts, at the moment.

I'm looking out at the beach and the tide is high. We're at just about high tide now. And the waves are up pretty high on the beach.

But they're getting a better deal, and it's pretty harsh here right now, so it seems odd to say that, but they're getting a better deal than they expected, at least as of now. And that is because at this time yesterday, and certainly at midmorning yesterday, they thought the storm was coming straight at Marco Island, perhaps a little bit to the north. It now appears that it will pass to the south. And from a storm surge and flooding perspective, that makes a mound of difference.

And so while the power is out here and there -- certainly we have seen some debris flying in the coastal area where we are and there will definitely be some water damage and there's definitely more to come and you can hear the winds intensifying. So far anyway, this has gone as well as they could have expected, given where they thought they were yesterday morning. And they have the added benefit, Carol, as, unlike Key West and some of the other areas, all but about 2,000 of the 20 people who were here have evacuated.

COSTELLO: And that is good news.

I want to bring Chad in right now. So Marco Island I guess we could call it better news.

MYERS: Yes. You can see that -- it's hard to even tell that. But just to the south of that yellow and orange is where Marco, that little word Marco. If we shrink it down a couple of times, there it is, Marco Island, the Marco Island area here. As this last band, the -- actually the eyewall itself moved on by.

Now, John, I don't know if you've ever been inside an eyewall before, but you are today. I think you were down in Katrina or Rita, were you not?

KING: We hit Port Arthur during Rita.

MYERS: Yes.

KING: We were outside when lovely Rita roared through.

MYERS: You're two for two, my friend.

KING: I don't know if that's good or bad?

MYERS: It's not good. Be careful out there.

KING: Yes.

COSTELLO: All right.

John King reporting live from Marco Island this morning.

And of course you know there's that other storm out there, Tropical Storm Alpha. We haven't talked much about that this morning, but that is the 22nd named storm this hurricane season. And of course... MYERS: It is so gone, Carol, gone.

COSTELLO: I'm so glad.

MYERS: This, you know, I mean the hurricane is this big and Alpha is like -- just like two dots left on the map, absolutely history.

I'm going to walk over here while we show these pictures here. And I'm going to turn on a satellite. And I will show you what the remnants of Alpha looked like. The A-L-P-H-A. That would be the first Greek name. What I assume they are probably seeing here pictures from Cancun or from Cozumel. Here is the satellite. Here is the hurricane. That, that right there, that's what's left of Alpha. Done.

COSTELLO: That's...

MYERS: It's going to actually get absorbed by the bigger hurricane. Just kind of get all taken up and taken out into the north Atlantic. It could, though, not so much Alpha, but the hurricane itself, could affect Atlantic Canada, maybe Cape Code, the Jersey shore with some very big waves and some damaging, battering waves later in the week.

COSTELLO: And you know hurricane season lasts through November.

MYERS: Are you telling me?

COSTELLO: No, I'm just marveling.

MYERS: Well I know that.

COSTELLO: I know.

MYERS: All right.

COSTELLO: All right, thank you -- Chad.

MYERS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Still to come on DAYBREAK, the situation report from Broward County, Florida. CNN your hurricane headquarters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: CNN your hurricane headquarters all night and through the day as Wilma bears down on Florida. Wilma is still a Category 3 hurricane. The Emergency Operation Center in Broward County, Florida is fully activated. As a result, this morning residents and businesses have been advised to hunker down in preparation for the hurricane.

Carl Fowler is with the Broward County Emergency Management Agency. He joins us now live.

Good morning -- Carl.

CARL FOWLER, PIO BROWARD COUNTY EMA: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Tell us the situation. Where exactly are you in Broward County?

FOWLER: We're right in the middle of Broward County. It's a suburb called Plantation, which is about seven miles west of Fort Lauderdale.

COSTELLO: What are conditions like there?

FOWLER: Right now they're not too bad. We're getting pretty strong gusts. I think the sustained winds are anywhere from 30 to 40 miles per hour. But it is getting gusty. And I'm in a hardened facility. It's built to withstand a 200-mile-per-hour wind. But I can hear the wind outside.

COSTELLO: There are emergency shelters set up where you are. Are many people there?

FOWLER: Yes, we -- the latest count is we have 1,400 people in our general population shelters we have 6. And we also have a pet- friendly shelter that has several animals and a few owners. And we also have two special needs shelters, which has about 100 people.

COSTELLO: The pet-friendly shelter. It's interesting you say that, because of course that was such a big problem during Katrina because people didn't want to leave their pets behind. Is that why you have that?

FOWLER: That's correct. And it's the first time we tried it this year, and it seems to be successful. We have really gotten the word out to the population and they seem to be taking advantage of that. So we're very, very happy about that.

COSTELLO: And there seems to have been a huge effort to get people out of mobile home parks. Well of course we know why that is, but have you been successful?

FOWLER: Well, we're hoping so. Now the evacuation that we ordered yesterday was for -- was mandatory for mobile home residents. And so looking at the numbers, 1,400, it's not a huge amount because our population in mobile homes is about 30,000. So I can't say that it's been hugely successful. You know, obviously a lot of people are not taking advantage of it. But you are right, in this storm we're very, very concerned about the mobile home population and mobile homes are not going to do well in this type of storm.

COSTELLO: No, and not just because of the hurricane, but Chad has been giving out tornado warnings all morning long. So that has to be a big concern as well.

FOWLER: It definitely is. It definitely is. You know when this system interacts with the cold front, we do expect to have some tornado activity. And you're correct, we're very concerned about that.

COSTELLO: So what do you do? It's too late for people to evacuate right now.

FOWLER: That's...

COSTELLO: Or are you still letting them in?

FOWLER: Well if they can get to a shelter, they will be admitted. But now the mass transit service discontinued just after midnight, Broward County Mass Transit, which was our primary method of getting people to shelters. But if they can get there by some other means, then certainly we'll let them in.

COSTELLO: Now are you working in conjunction with the Red Cross?

FOWLER: Yes, we are. In fact, their representatives are here at our Emergency Operation Center. And we work very closely with them, because they staff the shelters, they operate the shelters. And all of our shelters are in Broward County schools. And so it's really a three-way partnership with our staff, Broward County schools and also the Red Cross.

COSTELLO: So all of that has been running smoothly, right?

FOWLER: Yes. Yes, we -- this is something that we all train for all year round here in south Florida. And so you know we know the drill very well. And from what I can see, it's gone very well, as far as preparation is concerned.

COSTELLO: I'm telling you, you must be getting tired of hurricanes.

FOWLER: Yes, we are. You know if you're in south Florida, it's something that you have to be accustomed to. But I think that the consensus is that after this year this has all been a bit much.

COSTELLO: Yes. I think that's pretty much the consensus everywhere, but I'm -- but especially for you.

Carl Fowler with the Broward County Emergency Management Agency joining us live this morning from Plantation, Florida.

We'll be right back.

ANNOUNCER: Keep watching CNN your hurricane headquarters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Want to check back with, Chad. What are you doing now?

MYERS: We're working on the computer, Carol. You see the back of my head. You see my bald spot.

I want you to see Key West. I want you to see the radar here. I want you to see all of the wind speeds that are coming in right now. We'll zoom in to a couple of spots. There is the circulation of the eye. Clearly Islamorada getting the worst of it now. Tavernier, just north of Key Colony Beach, in to Grassy Key, and for that matter, right on farther north into the Miami area.

I can do a couple of little searches here in Miami to see what the winds are like. Right there Miami International, gusting to 60 miles per hour right there. Up into Fort Lauderdale, Lauderdale-by- the-Sea, 51 miles per hour the wind gusts there.

On the other side of the state, on what we usually call the easy side, nothing easy about this, Naples gusting right now to 75 miles per hour and Cape Coral, Fort Myers up to 52 miles per hour. The winds have really picked up across southwestern parts of Florida now this morning. And they continue to go up in most of the areas east of the Everglades with wind gusts going to approach 120, possibly even in downtown Miami -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, thank you -- Chad.

MYERS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: And of course "AMERICAN MORNING" starts in about 10 seconds. Chad will be there. I'll be there. Miles O'Brien is there and also Zain Verjee. So be sure to join us. It starts soon.

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