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American Morning

Florida Getting Hit by Tropical Storm Alberto; Star QB in Crash

Aired June 13, 2006 - 08:32   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Tropical Storm Alberto not going to become a hurricane, but certainly has our attention this morning. The Florida Gulf getting hit right now by that tropical storm. We have reporters all up and down the coastline. CNN's Rob Marciano is in Cedar Key. That's about 130 miles north of Tampa.
Good morning, Rob. What do you see there now?

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST; Another squall just came through, Miles. Winds continue to be out of the south at about 30 or 35 miles an hour. Behind me you can see the surf. It's slowly backing off just a little bit, but still above where the normal high tide would be. Palm tree underwater, that's not typical. And then you can see the pier with some boat slips out there. Owners of those boat slips before the storm came out and they removed every other plank so that the water could go through. Still, there was one or two of those slips that actually broke through, broke free.

Over here you can see there are some boats out there that are moored in, and you can kind of see the flow of the ocean coming in with that south wind. Beyond that, over there, Cedar Key is kind of a resort town, and they've got hotels right on the water. And typically the water wouldn't be lapping up against some of the beach front suites there. But sure enough that's what's happening this morning. Tried to stay -- or to inquire if we could stay in that hotel last night, and they weren't taking anybody well for that reason. And that's probably a good thing. But, Miles, the storm surge could have been worse. We had flooding downtown that's still happening, but likely will begin to recede as we go on through the later morning and early afternoon, but these squalls will continue to come through. We'll get spits of rain, and some gusty winds until this thing finally makes landfall up the coastline there across the Big Bend area of Florida.

Miles, that's the latest from here. Back up to you.

All right, Rob Marciano is in cedar key. Let's move a little farther north along the coast.

AMERICAN MORNING's Dan Lothian is in Steinhatchee.

What's going on there, Dan?

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles. Well, we saw something that we haven't seen all morning, the sun just peaked out through the clouds right in front of me, above me here. It is now covered again, but that's kind of what we've been seeing all morning long, where you have heavy clouds, some heavy downpours, strong winds, and then it lightens up a bit, and people are taking advantage of that.

Behind me, there's a man on this pier who is fishing this morning. I don't know if it's a local or not, but emergency management officials putting out the warning to folks who live in this area, some 2,000 people in the low-lying area, that they should not return if they have left, because there's still some concern about storm surge and. They had some problems last year during Dennis, where some homes had about two feet of water in them, so they don't think it's safe yet for folks to return. In their words, we're not out of the woods just yet. As a motorcycle lights up its engine right next to me here, emergency management officials had some teams going out in Taylor County, which is where we were at, just trying to assess the damage, and the latest word is that they've had some scattered power outages, and also some trees down, but nothing major -- Miles.

All right, I guess Alberto is not stopping the hog rider there. Dan Lothian in Steinhatchee, thank you very much.

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Tropical Storm Alberto may be passing over northern Florida, but even further south there are big storm worries, especially around Lake Okeechobee. The dike there is leaking. If i a big hurricane hits there, the consequences could be disastrous.

CNN's John Zarrella has our report this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Rebecca Gooden and Angela McCall work at Papa Jimmy's Catfish Diner in Pahoke (ph), Florida. It's pretty laid back here most of the time, but not when hurricanes are out there.

REBECCA GOODEN, POPPA JIMMY'S EMPLOYEE: If I knew it was a category-four or five, I know that's, you know, time to go.

ZARRELLA But just like in New Orleans, it's not easy for everyone here to get out.

ANGELA MCCALL, POPPA JIMMY'S EMPLOYEE: A lot of people don't have the funds, transportation or the means to evacuate.

ZARRELLA: And many are nervous because like New Orleans they are protected only by a manmade structure. This one, the Herbert Hoover Dike, surrounds Lake Okeechobee. When the lake water is high, the dike leaks.

LES BROMWELL, STUDY ENGINEER: It's not safe. It's definitely not safe. It needs to be fixed.

ZARRELLA: Engineer Les Bromwell was part of a team that studied the Hoover Dike, finding it posed a grave and imminent danger to the people and the environment. Bromwell's team believes that if the lake reaches 18 or more feet, from the kind of rainfall a hurricane can bring, the dike would likely fail.

BROMWELL: If a piping breach occurs, that is that the water from the reservoir is in direct -- can directly flow through without any pressure loss, carrying material with it, that that breach would likely be on the order of 750 feet wide, and it would flood a very wide area within a matter of days.

ZARRELLA: Following the report, Governor Jeb Bush called on the Army Corps of Engineers to move quickly on repairs to the 140-mile dike, but work on a massive $300 million project to shore up the dike has been stopped. Materials being used to construct a barrier around the dike were not working. Despite the setback, the Army Corps insists its constant inspections will find any leaks and prevent a catastrophe.

(on camera): You don't see the potential for major catastrophic failures?

GEORGE COOPER, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Well, there's always the potential for anything, but I would say that I'm not concerned about the integrity of Herbert Hoover Dike.

ZARRELLA: State and local officials aren't that confident. They're working on new, more extensive evacuation plans to be used until the dike is fully repaired, which will take years. For now, the 40,000 people living around the lake can only wonder what would be left if the dike fails? At Papa Jimmy's Diner, the regulars fear there wouldn't be much.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If the dike -- if something were to happen to it, I think that (INAUDIBLE) wouldn't exist anymore.

ZARRELLA: It's hard not to think the worst when you live in the shadow of the Hoover Dike.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: That was John Zarrella reporting. John's report first aired on "ANDERSON COOPER 360". You can catch that weeknights at 10:00 p.m. Eastern.

And as always, CNN is your hurricane headquarters, with the very latest forecasts and information about storms. Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come on the program, Say it ain't so, Ben Roethlisberger. You wouldn't go on the football field helmetless, would you? So why would you ride your motorcycle without one? We'll update the Steeler hero's condition following yesterday's crash.

S. O'BRIEN: And later, in "House Call," some scary news for pregnant women. Do blood pressure medicines cause birth defects? Elizabeth Cohen takes a look at that, ahead this morning. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: A bit if good news for the White House this morning: we learned a short time ago that Karl Rove, the president's senior advisor, will not be indicted in the CIA leaks case.

Ken Mehlman is the chairman of the Republican National Committee. He joins us this morning.

Nice to see you. How are you?

KEN MEHLMAN, RNC CHAIRMAN: Good morning. Thanks for having me -- appreciate it.

S. O'BRIEN: You're most welcome. Good news for the White House. Also -- maybe more importantly to you -- very good news for Republicans, who, as they face the midterm elections, had a lot hanging over them. Give me a sense of what kind of relief this brings to Republican candidates.

MEHLMAN: Well, I think what's interesting about this is, if you look at the facts, it's pretty clear that Karl Rove not only did nothing wrong, but he did everything right, in terms of cooperating with this investigation. And what's so incredible to me is, that the folks on the other side of the aisle -- people like Howard Dean, people like Harry Reid and others -- they owe Karl Rove an apology. They took this good man and they prejudged him. They said we're going to presume he's guilty --

S. O'BRIEN: I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's not going to happen. What I want to know is, what's going to happen with the Republican candidates? I mean, what kind of relief does this really bring them?

MEHLMAN: Again, I think what this is, though, is a clear indication of what you're going to see from both sides of the aisle. What people like me said during this whole investigation was, Let's not presume his guilt or his innocence, let's let the facts get out there. And what you saw from the Democrats was a rush to judgment for political gain. And I think on lots of different issues this year, you're seeing Democrats playing politics, as opposed to letting the facts bear out.

I think that, whether it's this issue, whether it's the war in Iraq -- that's another example, where, in '04, for instance, people said, I'm not comfortable with the commander-in-chief, who's for it, before he's against it. I think you're going to see a lot of examples where the American people look and they say, Do I want people whose first answer to everything is always politics?

S. O'BRIEN: A guy named Chris Wolf, who is an attorney, as you well know, for the Wilsons -- Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson -- he says, Okay, Karl Rove is not going to have to answer in criminal court, is the way he puts it in a statement he just released. He says, "That's not going to end the matter." He specifically said, "The day may still come when Mr. Rove and others are called to account in a court of law for their attacks on the Wilsons." What do you make of that statement?

MEHLMAN: I'm not sure that Karl Rove was attacking the Wilsons. I think, again, the facts that have come out in the public so far have been that what Karl Rove did was right, which was to say to reporters, Some of the information that Mr. Wilson was saying, in fact, was wrong, which in fact it turned out to be.

And so, again, I think what you're seeing, unfortunately, from the Wilsons is more politics. The fact is, it has been thoroughly investigated -- for three-and-a-half years, it has been. What we ought to do is, now that it's complete, move forward, and the people that presumed guilt when there was no guilt, if anything, ought to be apologizing and not threatening more legal action.

S. O'BRIEN: Not really complete yet. Nobody really has a full picture of what happened. The prosecutor's work is not done.

Let's move on to a poll -- and this has got to be a poll that's disturbing, especially for your job -- which is, "If elections for Congress were held today" -- and this is a poll that was taken June 9- 11, which is after al-Zarqawi was killed -- "how would you vote?" Democrat, 51 percent; Republican, 39 percent. You see a poll like that -- and don't tell me you don't follow polls or read polls -- what's the strategy?

MEHLMAN: A couple different thoughts: one is, there's not one vote for Congress; there are individual votes for Congress. For instance, the vote last week in the 50th District in California turned on the issue of taxes and the issue of whether you believe, as the Democrats said, that illegal immigrants ought to be able to vote illegally, or the Republicans said, We need border security.

I'm not sure that, if you take a generic ballot question, it's as relevant as when you look at Candidate A versus Candidate B. I'm confident that, when we look around the country at Candidate A versus Candidate B, we're going to be successful, because I think we've got good candidates, I think we've got -- in a good position, and I don't think the Democrats are in a position to take back the House of Representatives.

S. O'BRIEN: When you look at the polls, though, that show support, or lack thereof, of the war in Iraq, the numbers really haven't moved very much.

MEHLMAN: There was actually a Gallup poll this past week that came out that showed a 10 percent increase in public levels of support of whether they think we're going to prevail in Iraq. But I've always said from the beginning, Look, this is a very hard war. There are going to be up days and down days. And we can't allow the polls to dictate what we do.

If you think back 40 years ago, we --

S. O'BRIEN: But the polls could dictate how people will vote. And the question -- not "Will the U.S. prevail," but "Was it a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq" -- on that question, actually, 55 percent are saying yes, and about the same, 40 percent -- about the same from the last time the question was asked -- are saying no. And so, again, translating to how this affects Republicans in the midterm elections, if you follow the president's line of "stay the course" and you're a Republican candidate and the polls are show that the public is not supporting the war in Iraq, you could be in trouble.

MEHLMAN: I think what the public looks to now is the question of, given where we are in Iraq, what do we want to do? And I think the public does not agree what with the majority of Democrats in the House have said, what Jack Murtha, who's apparently now running for majority leader, has said, what John Kerry has said, which is, we ought to cut and run and set a timetable for withdrawal in Washington. That would be the worst thing we could do, because it would send a message of weakness to the terrorists, it would say to our Iraqi allies, We're not there to stand with you, and it would say to the enemy, All you need to do is wait these folks out and then you can prevail.

So I think what the American people are going to do is not look to the past in Iraq; they're going to look to the future. And they're going to say, who has a plan to make sure that we do bring our troops home, but we bring them home on a timetable that assures success and victory over the terrorists, not simply politics in Washington.

S. O'BRIEN: Ken Mehlman is the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Nice to see you.

MEHLMAN: Thank you. Good to see you.

S. O'BRIEN: Thanks for talking with us. Nice to see you in person.

MEHLMAN: Good to be with you in the set.

S. O'BRIEN: I know; that's kind of unusual for us.

MEHLMAN: That's right.

S. O'BRIEN: Appreciate that.

MEHLMAN: Thanks.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Superbowl quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is in serious but stable condition this morning at a Pittsburgh hospital. The Steelers superstar crashed his motorcycle into a car yesterday, putting his life -- much less his lucrative career -- at great risk.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID LETTERMAN: Now let me know if this hurts, for God's sake.

M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): That's Ben Roethlisberger on the Letterman show, fresh from his Super Bowl win. He shaved his lucky beard and the crowd went wild. On Monday another kind of close shave for the Steelers quarterback, one that could have cost him his life. Riding his motorcycle in downtown Pittsburgh without a helmet he crashed into a car.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was turning, and he was coming and he hit the side of her car, and like they said, his head hit the windshield, and he went up and, like, landed on his head.

LINDSAY BILSACK, WITNESS: WE turned left onto the 10th Street Bridge, and immediately after turning heard a really loud crash.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was on his bike. When I went over to him, and I looked on, and I said, are you OK? He didn't answer me, but he was looking at me. His eyes were kind of, like, glazed over.

M. O'BRIEN: Medics rushed Roethlisberger to the hospital.

DR. DANIEL PITUCH, MERCY HOSPITAL: Mr. Roethlisberger was evaluated by our trauma team and taken to the operating room, where he underwent surgery for multiple facial fractures. All of the fractures were successfully repaired. He was in surgery for approximately seven hours. His brain, spine, chest, and abdomen appear to be without serious injury, and there are no other confirmed injuries at this time.

M. O'BRIEN: Roethlisberger preferred riding his bike without a helmet, and that is perfectly legal in Pennsylvania, the helmet law repealed three years ago. But his coaches were none too happy about their first-string quarterback's risky habit, and his fans and friends are worried as well.

TERRY BRADSHAW, FMR. STEELERS QB: Ben, Ben, you're all the sudden, you're starting to make me think you're not that smart. Park the motorcycle. And in 14 years you'll be what 33, 34, ride the sucker all you want. Did you not see what the idiot did in Cleveland, and he might lose millions of dollars? Don't be stupid, son, park the motorcycle. You're cool enough without the Harley.

M. O'BRIEN: Terry Bradshaw is referring to Kellen Winslow Jr. The number-one draft choice for the Cleveland Browns for the Cleveland Browns tore up his knee and missed the entire 2005 NFL season following a motorcycle accident.

In 2003, the Chicago Bulls Jason Williams nearly died after crashing his motorcycle into a light pole. He's still attempting to come back from those devastating injuries. As for Roethlisberger, it appears his accident could have been worse.

TOM BRADY, PATRIOTS QB: Hopefully he recovers quickly. Hopefully he's doing -- hopefully he's OK. I'm sure everybody out here would feel the same.

You know, I know guys who ride motorcycles and it's scary stuff. You never know. I don't know why that accident was caused. But like I said, hopefully he's OK. (END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: We'll be back with more in just a moment. Andy Serwer playing Mr. Wizard today. What happens when you drop a Mento into a Diet Coke. Well, it's quite explosive, and it's an explosive marketing technique.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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S. O'BRIEN: Short break, and we are back in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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