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Floridians wake to survey damage; Schools Focus on Four Rs, Includes Recovery and Repair; How New Orleans Averted Widespread Disease; Retirement Planning: Selling Your Home

Aired October 25, 2005 - 08:30   ET

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

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: ...in the region that are out of electricity, a lot of them won't be able to watch this morning.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: That's right. That's right. At least it won't be sweltering because the temperatures are such that this morning, you know I think the wind chill this morning might have been down in the 40s.

As a matter of fact, Jacqui Jeras, why don't you explain that to us. The hurricane comes through, behind it is this cold front. Kind of unusual, isn't it?

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, yes. You get a cold front to drop through back behind it, yes, that doesn't always happen all of the time. Your temperatures, we don't know exactly, Miles, because the weather observing sites have all been blown away. So we're not getting any observations out of there but we're expecting you're probably maybe down into the 50s, and looking for highs in the upper 60s to lower 70s.

More damage expected, partly as a result of Wilma. Now, moisture is going to get caught up a little bit here. The storms won't merge together but some of the tropical moisture moving into the Northeast. And that is going to bring heavy rain, along with a chance of flash flooding. We may see power outages across the Northeast because of the strong winds and because some of this heavy snow is going to be a very wet, heavy snow.

Some of the trees still have their leaves on them, so that's going to collect up and that is going to cause some of those branches to come off. That could also result in power outages.

In Pittsburgh, one of the cities starting to get some of that snow, beginning to come down. Though, we think that will change to rain later on into the afternoon hours.

Some of the wind gusts being reported, 26 miles per hour in Portland; 44 in Boston; 45 in New York City. When you start to get wind gusts around 40, 50 miles per hour, that starts to cause delays at the airports.

That's exactly what is happening in New York City, LaGuardia, three and a half hours already, Newark at two hours. And we have delays out of Philadelphia, nearly two hours there, and we're expecting Washington, D.C. to get in on the action later on today -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, Jacqui Jeras. Let's check some other headlines. Carol Costello is here with that.

Carol, I understand you got something happening in part of the world where I am this morning?

COSTELLO: You're talking about damage in Florida. We're going to talk about a fire, it is happening now in south Boca Raton. The blaze is in Tierra Del Ray Estates. Dozens of firefighters now on the scene.

Look at that fire. It's huge! There is damage, obviously. No word on any injuries. Don't know what caused this fire yet. We will keep an eye on it for you.

The United Nations says it's received less than a third of the $300 million it needs for earthquake relief in Pakistan. More than 3 million people are homeless after the October 8 quake. With the first snowfall days away, officials say 800,000 have no shelter at all.

President Bush says he hopes Syria will cooperate with the United Nations. Less than two hours from now, the U.N. Security Council will be briefed on an investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Harari. The U.N. says both Syrian and Lebanese officials were involved in that attack. Syria officials call the report, baseless.

A suspected drug lord, with ties to the Taliban, is being extradited to face federal charges in the United States. The DEA says the man is the most wanted, most powerful and the most dangerous drug kingpin. He is accused of selling millions of dollars worth of heroin to help finance an American jihad under the Taliban. If convicted here in the States he could face life in prison.

The U.S. consulate in Mexico working to get hundreds of flights for tourists stranded by Hurricane Wilma. Some 20,000 people spent another yet another night sleeping on the floor, or in rooms without electricity or running water. Officials say they're planning to rent buses to move those tourists from Cancun to Cozumel, to the nearest city with a working airport. Of course, all of that could take days. And Miles, many of those tourists are Americans and they just cannot get home!

O'BRIEN: I imagine that's a little more vacation than they bargained for?

COSTELLO: And the wrong kind of vacation, too.

O'BRIEN: Yes. They have a story to tell, at least. At least they are able to tell it. Let's put it in that perspective, at least.

In any case, Carol, let me tell you what is going on here, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. This is the worst damage to hit this city since 1950. Imagine what Ft. Lauderdale looked like in 1950 compared to today. So you get a sense of how much more susceptible it is. I don't even know where this folding chair came from. There is stuff from buildings -- or a dolly. The Boundaries Department, where ever that is.

Come on over here past this police line here. I'll let you get under there, Dave, if you can get under. Take a look at what you got along here. It's really actually pretty dangerous stuff.

Here's what I was talking about, this hurricane film in a lot of ways did its job by keeping these really bad shards of glass from falling. In this case, it obviously didn't work because it came down to the sidewalk. The idea is to keep it from flying the way it is.

As you can see along here, some of the stuff was shatter-proof glass and some wasn't. There is all kinds of dangerous projectiles. I think the fact that nobody that hurt or killed in Ft. Lauderdale is truly amazing, given what was flying around here.

This is the road sign. This is where we are, Southeast Third Avenue and Sixth. Not only are the lights out, the lights are actually gone here. So this is the beginning of a long road. It's going to be several weeks before the power comes back on.

This is not a Katrina level storm. That set a whole new level for hurricanes. But nonetheless, this is a serious storm and has caused a big swath of damage west to east coast in Florida.

Meanwhile, we've been following, of course, what is going on in the wake of Katrina and Rita with a big focus on the city of New Orleans, which still has so much to do before that city can come anywhere close to any level of normalcy. I mean, at least these people aren't worried about draining out a city. They need to get the power back on, they need to get the water going. But they're not worried about draining out whole neighborhoods.

What we were talking about in the midst of all that with that standing water, that fetid water we saw there, there was a lot of concern about the spread of disease. But, now, health officials in New Orleans are kind of backing off of that.

Dr. Kevin Stephens is our guest now. He is with the New Orleans Public Health Department. He's among those who are little bit surprised there wasn't more of a spread of contagious diseases with all that went on in the wake of New Orleans.

Dr. Stephens, good to have you with us. Do we know why there wasn't more disease as a result of what happened with Katrina in New Orleans?

DR. KEVIN STEPHENS, DIR., NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC HEALTH: Yes, well, you know, I think that what we have done is that we set up a surveillance tool to where we can look at disease outbreaks. We had every hospital in the metropolitan area online and we had all the outpatient sites online.

So, what happened, every day we saw every admission, every complaint and the resolution of those complaints. What happened with that is that we ended up -- we saw anything that was an outbreak, we would be able to catch it early so we can put some kind of appropriate public health intervention.

The second thing is we never left the city. The physicians and my staff, the nurses and so forth, we were there through the Superdome, we were there, after the city (sic) as soon as we were able to, we set up clinics. So that when people came in, they had a place to seek medical care. I think that's very important because with good appropriate medical care you can prevent public outbreaks of infectious diseases and those type of things.

O'BRIEN: Let me ask you about the Superdome, Dr. Stephens. Because as we look at the tremendous mess that was created there. The garbage and of course the unsanitary conditions, human excrement, all of the things that became a huge problem there. It was almost an assumption, that many people made, that that would lead to the spread of disease.

It's hard to imagine that it didn't. But, you know, I guess as lay people, we don't fully understand how these things work. Why don't you help us understand?

STEPHENS: Well, you know, we were -- we had in the Superdome a host of doctors and nurses and paraprofessionals to take care of the patients and people inside the Superdome and with that, as soon as someone had an illness or some complaint, we had medical attention there that they could get appropriate medical attention.

I think that's the take-home message. With proper medical care, we can prevent a lot of problems. And so in this case, we were able to treat people, if they need isolations, we were able to isolate them. Again, we had very well-trained professionals in the Dome and even after the Dome.

So, now in post-Katrina, our professionals are still here. In fact, we have a whole host of volunteers from all across the country to come in and render aid to the New Orleans Health Department and to the New Orleans health infrastructure so we can render good care to people as they come back and forth into the city.

O'BRIEN: Dr. Stephens, let's talk about long-term effects for a moment. You dodged a bullet on the short-term effects we were talking about but the people of New Orleans have endured tremendous stress, in many cases they are still displaced. Those that are returning are finding all kinds of obstacles.

What are your long-term concerns about the overall health as this population just deals with this -- in many cases, unprecedented stress of evacuating and perhaps never coming home?

STEPHENS: Well, I mean, you bring up a very important point. The mental health component of this is very tremendous. I mean, when you look at your whole life savings and your home and all of the things that we all collect and relish, some of them have lost everything they have owned. So that's very important when you look at reentry and the whole mental health component of that.

The second thing, if you look at the health consequences. I mean, the sediment and the environment, there are some toxins we have identified in the environment and we are working very closely with the EPA, DEQ, and the city and state health departments to make sure we can make this a very safe environment for people to come into.

In fact, the mayor, that is one of the things that he really highlighted was that he wanted to make sure we had a very safe environment while citizens are returning and to work. And we're working very hard with all of the agencies to make us sure that this environment is a safe place for all to live and work.

O'BRIEN: Is it safe now in New Orleans do you think? I mean, you still don't have anything that approaches the hospital capacity that you had prior to Katrina. It's going to be a long time before you can really say it is a city with a full fledged 21st century healthcare system.

STEPHENS: Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, we have very rudimentary healthcare infrastructure here and it will take some time for us to rebuild. But you know the important thing here is that we need outside assistance, namely from the federal government. The HHS, CDC, and other agencies they need to come in, help us to rebuild our infrastructure.

The city just doesn't have the resources required to rebuild and to get back the resources and we need abridging. It's so early. We can't really tell the long-term consequences and the quality (ph) from Katrina. We have to bridge, rebuild the infrastructure. As it develops, we will have the appropriate resources to monitor and to do like we did in Katrina early.

Earlier, we monitored every hospital, we monitored -- we had a very good surveillance system and we need to continue that system. We need to tweak it and change it a little bit because as it progresses it is a very fluid process and there are other things that are coming into play. And we need to keep our eyes open and can't fall asleep at the switch.

I can tell you, the Department and the mayor, we are not sleeping at the switch. We are really ready to engage our community and our professionals to take care of our community.

O'BRIEN: Dr. Kevin Stephens with the New Orleans Health Department. Thanks for your time this morning.

Back to you, Zain.

VERJEE: Miles, you're back tomorrow, right?

O'BRIEN: Yes. I will be back in New York tomorrow.

VERJEE: I'm a bit of a pain, I have to warn you. Thanks.

O'BRIEN: Looking forward to seeing you. VERJEE: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, Wal-Mart backs a raise for its employees at Uncle Sam's expense. Andy is "Minding your Business" on that.

And is selling your home now a good idea for a secure future? We're going to take a look at that ahead on AMERICAN MORNING>

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERJEE: This morning, we begin a series looking really at how Americans are planning for retirement. Gerri Willis, CNN's personal finance editor joins us now.

Gerri, Good morning. Great color.

GERRI WILLIS, CNN PERSONAL FINANCE EDITOR: Good morning, Zain.

Thank you very much! I try to please. Good to see you.

With the average U.S. home price up more than 50 percent over the last five years, soon-to-be retirees are wondering should I cash out, use the gains to pay for retirement? One New Jersey family said, yes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GINNY HALLBERG, PREPARING FOR RETIREMENT: The transition is tough, there is no question about it, but I think any transition in your life is tough.

WILLIS (voice over): Jenny and Lee Hallberg just sold their house in Little Falls, New Jersey where they lived for the past 32 years.

HALLBERG: It was a tough decision to sell the house because we did live there so long and raised these four kids in this house. Personally, I mean, I just adored it.

WILLIS: But the healthy housing market helped them to transition at a condominium nearby, renting there until they are ready to retire to Florida.

LEIGH HALLBERG, PREPARING FOR RETIREMENT: We feel that we kind of like were in the right place at the right time and that things are working on you for us and that we will be able to achieve our plan and be able to retire within the next three years, hopefully.

WILLIS: For the Hallbergs and many other Americans, selling a home can be the key to cashing in on a dream retirement.

HALLBERG: This summer, it hit me that I can do this and I want to do this. I really started thinking about the finances and all that and how much fun we had ahead of us and I said, I'm going to do it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIS: Locking in your gain can take months and maybe trickier than it looks. Selling a home can take a long period of time. In the interim, you could see your local housing boom go bust. Now, for that reason, you'll want to do some research before you put your castle on the market, Zain.

VERJEE: What are some of the things then that people need to take into consideration if they're planning to sell?

WILLIS: The good news is if you're over 45, the likelihood you've owned your home over 11 years is very high, indeed. So you don't really have to worry about the vicissitudes of the market but you do want to consider prices if you want to lock in the biggest gain possible.

Prices across the country, up 53 percent over of the last five years. If your market has risen faster than that, you got to be concerned. Also consider inventory. How many houses are on the market? That's an important question that a real estate agent can help you with. They look on days-on market. Any reputable agent can tell you whether days-on market, that is the number of days the average house stays on the market has doubled in the last year. If that's the case, you could be in trouble.

Finally, consider where are you moving to? If prices are rising rapidly in that market you might want to lock in that price now.

VERJEE: What about pitfalls? What could they be?

WILLIS: I think people worry about not getting all of the gains they possibly can. If I sell now, am I not getting the gains over the next couple of years? Don't worry about this at this point. The market is probably pretty rich. These aren't stocks worth selling, these are homes. They could take months to sell.

VERJEE: Gerri Willis, good to see you.

WILLIS: Good to see you, Zain.

VERJEE: Good to be here. The couch is comfortable!

WILLIS: That's good news.

VERJEE: I might not move to over there. Thank you.

Tomorrow, in our Part II of our week-long series we're going to see how people are aging, adapting their homes to make them safer as they get older.

Still to come here on AMERICAN MORNING reports that Wal-Mart may be considering a change for health benefits for employees. Andy is "Minding Your Business" ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERJEE: Welcome back. I'm Zain Verjee in for Soledad O'Brien this week.

Wal-Mart is taking on critics of some of its business practices. Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business: and he has more on that -- Andy

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Good morning, Zain.

Wal-Mart seems to be getting warm and fuzzy. That is seems to be going on this morning. Critics asking some questions, though.

CEO Lee Scott announcing support for an increase in the minimum wage. This from the company that prides itself as keeping costs low, low, low.

Currently, Wal-Mart pays just under $10 an hour on average for its employees. That's above the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. And 1.3 million Americans work at this company.

Why would they want to do this, Zain? A couple of reasons why. First of all, some are suggesting it puts pressure on their competitors because their competitors pay less. The other thing is it puts more money in their customers' pockets. In other words, the customer is only making $5 and now making $6.50 an hour, they have more money to spend at Wal-Mart.

VERJEE: Planning on expanding healthcare coverage to workers?

SERWER: That's right. Another critical area for this company, been criticized for years about not offering generous healthcare packages. Apparently expanding it $23 a month would be the cost of this new plan introduced by Lee Scott. That is $17 less than the previous one.

Also, you get three visits to a doctor and three generic prescriptions per year before the $1,000 deductible kicks in. Critics say it's just a revamping of a bad plan so there's going to be more back and forth on this.

Finally, another note. Wal-Mart rolling out new environmentally friendly standards as well. They say they want to raise the fuel efficiency of their truck fleet, which is obviously one of the biggest in the country, by about 25 percent. Also reduce greenhouse gases. So, you know, they really look like they're getting religion here, pardon the expression,

VERJEE: Andy Serwer, thank you.

SERWER: Thank you.

VERJEE: Let's go back to Ft. Lauderdale and to Miles.

Miles?

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much. You're looking at the 14-story Kathleen C. Wright Administration Center for the Broward County Schools. Awful lot wrong at the Wright Center this morning. Let's take a walk inside.

Look at this insulation that's come out here. Just about every glass window on the west side of the building down. You can see what happens when they come crashing down. Fortunately, this is tempered, shatter-proof glass, there are not a lot of bad shards here. I'm not too worried about walking through it.

This lobby doesn't look so good right now. Here is the superintendent, Frank Till.

Frank, the scene here, at least on the surface, looks kind of grim. I want to show our viewers what happens when you go in through the doors.

FRANK TILL, SUPERINTENDENT, BROWARD CO. SCHOOLS: Please.

O'BRIEN: Come with me. The attorney general is here well -- as well. The attorney general is worried about some other things, like people price gouging.

Take a look at what happens when you go inside this conference room.

Frank, you can come in here with us. It's almost unscathed. This is a scene that is repeated throughout the building?

TILL: Throughout the building, if you look at the damage -- and we've had structural engineers go through -- I want to assure my people if you're not on the outside, on the west outside in general, your office is intact and your memorabilia and whatever you left here is intact.

O'BRIEN: OK, so west facing frontage you might have a problem. But once you get past that first layer?

TILL: Once you get past the outside offices, they're all intact.

O'BRIEN: What does this mean to students on a day-to-day basis? This doesn't affect when schools will open necessarily, right?

TILL: No, our priority is to get the schools open. We had meetings late into the night about readjusting our schedules. We will are technologically very sound. So we will be able to run the system as soon as we get the power up, we will be ready to go.

O'BRIEN: All right. That will probably take a little bit of time to get the power going. I'm told by Florida Power and Light, could take three, four weeks for some people. But here in downtown, I suspect you get power on sooner.

Do you have any estimate on how soon you'd be anywhere close to back to normal here? I know this is your first day to really look at the damage.

TILL: The real key is I appreciate what you're doing to get back to normal. I have to assure my people that their offices are OK. We will be ready to go. I truly believe that the schools took the hit, but we're not damaged to a great extent and we hope in a couple of days they would be ready to go and waiting for the power.

O'BRIEN: Dr. Frank Till, who is the superintendent of Broward County Schools. Good luck.

Take a look back out here one more time. This room looks fine. Out you come into hurricane land again. Welcome back to Wilma. And look at the scene here. This big atrium entry way. They call this place the Crystal Palace. It was an old office building that was converted to the administration building for the Broward County Schools.

A little controversy over that, this fancy glass structure. Now they've got a big repair job on their hands here. But as the superintendent just told us, looks might be a little bit deceiving. It's probably not as bad as it seems on first blush here in the heart of Ft. Lauderdale. I guess the three R's are reading, writing and recovery.

TILL: Repair.

O'BRIEN: And repair. There you go. That would be the four R's. We just added an R. The doctor added an R for us. Take a break. Back with more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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