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CNN Newsroom

Further Coverqage of Hurricane Gustav

Aired September 01, 2008 - 09:00   ET

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

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, everyone. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Tony Harris.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins.

See events come into the NEWSROOM live on September 1st, Labor Day, and what a Labor Day it is.

Hurricane Gustav ripping into Louisiana this hour, winds now howling at 115 miles an hour along the coast.

HARRIS: The big question today -- will New Orleans reinforced levees stand up to Gustav's storm surge?

COLLINS: 2 million people flee, but critical care patients riding out the storm in hospitals. Nonstop hurricane coverage, in the NEWSROOM.

Hurricane Gustav, where is it? Where is it going? And what can we expect?

We have the very latest information as it streams into our Extreme Weather Center and to face to face with Gustav. Funneling into the newsroom, the latest video from our viewers and affiliates all along the Gulf Coast. That hub, the CNN hurricane desk. We'll bring you all the latest and all the best of our firsthand accounts.

CNN crews have fanned out across the region to bring you the view from the storm's edge -- the landfall and the fallout. We'll be checking in with our Anderson Cooper in just a few minutes.

And our resources don't stop here. We also have live video coming in to us via broadband from our producers and reporters in the field. You see Rob Marciano there on the right-hand side of the screen. And also, take a look at this, you are watching live cams at some of the levees around the New Orleans area. CNN has a team monitoring these cameras as well for all the latest developments.

HARRIS: Before we check in with our crews in the field, let's get you up to the minute. Hurricane Gustav spinning out of the gulf and ripping into Louisiana. This hour, the top sustained wind, 115 miles per hour, landfall minutes away south of New Orleans.

Two million people -- imagine that -- have fled. Entire towns are empty and entire region is on edge.

COLLINS: All right. Let's begin and go ahead and get the very latest from CNN meteorologist Chad Myers. He's, obviously, over here with me in the Extreme Weather Center, and we've got about, what, 105 miles per hour wind now?

CHAR MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, we're at 105 at Grand Isle That's where Ali Velshi is.

COLLINS: Yes.

MYERS: That's measured 105. Now the hurricane hunter aircraft found 110.

COLLINS: OK.

MYERS: So that's what they lowered it to. We just said 115 but this is now -- the update is coming out every hour. So we're 110, not 115, which is some help. But you know, can you tell the difference between 110 and 115?

COLLINS: Absolutely not.

MYERS: No. And shingles can't either. They'll be gone.

We're talking about places not so much about New Orleans, in the French Quarter. We're talking about Houma, we're talking about New Iberia, we're talking about Morgan City.

COLLINS: Exactly.

MYERS: All those towns along the 90 -- the Highway 90 corridor there, they're going to get pounded. And we hope everybody is out of there because not much is going to be left.

COLLINS: Absolutely. But we should also make it clear this is -- has not made landfall yet.

MYERS: That is correct. It is going to be near Port Fourchon, which is where a lot of the oil comes in and out of that port. 90 percent of the oil that comes off these offshore oil rigs...

COLLINS: Yes.

MYERS: ... these deep water rigs has to go through there. My boss said yesterday, we're in a little bit of jest -- if the gasoline that you put in your car has to change planes at Port Fourchon. And that's the problem. We're going to have this oil cutoff for a long time.

Now imports, the only thing, 15 percent of the imports, foreign imports, so the big ships come in but not too many of them. So that's something. But there is going to be some oil disruption, for sure.

COLLINS: OK. So when we talk landfall, if we had to predict, we'd be talking about how much longer?

MYERS: We're going to talk swamp fall.

COLLINS: OK.

MYERS: OK? That's the difference. COLLINS: Yes.

MYERS: There's not a lot -- we're -- even though there's a line on the map that says this is where the swamp begins, that's just breathes in the saltwater, basically. It's kind of a freshwater marsh and so landfall is going to be a relative term.

We're not going to see city fall for at least two more hours. No one is really going to get in the way around cutoff and New Iberia for another couple of hours. But the swamp fall will happen probably within the hour.

COLLINS: But -- it's scary and upsetting because it doesn't really lose speed or strength when it goes over the swamp.

MYERS: It does not lose speed. A swamp is not land. It's -- maybe it could gain speed because that is a warm water swamp.

COLLINS: Wow. All right. Important to point that out.

Chad, of course, will stick around and I'll talk more with you coming up here in just a moment.

MYERS: Sure.

COLLINS: Tony, back to you over now.

HARRIS: OK. Thanks, Heidi. Thanks, Chad.

Orleans, French Quarter, normally bustling, normally bawdy, today the tourism center is virtually deserted.

CNN's Anderson Cooper is there and has been there throughout the night, this morning, as well.

And Anderson, if you would, I think we can all see that deteriorating conditions where you are right now.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, that's to put it mildly. It is definitely deteriorating pretty rapidly. This is without a doubt the worse we have seen thus far of the storm. We're anticipating over the course of the next two hours to really -- to get the worst of it that we will be seeing here in the French Quarter.

At least that's what we've been told so far. Maybe later on we can check with Chad Myers to see exactly how things are going to happen here, how it's going to play, out at least in the French Quarter.

As you know, Tony, about 10,000 people, they believe, remain in the city of New Orleans, perhaps as many as 100,000 or 90,000 or 100,000 in all of coastal southeastern Louisiana but they don't have an exact number. That may be a concern if rescue operations need to be undertaken.

But right now, you do not see any people out on the street other than police officers, occasionally some National Guard. But we are basically just hunkered down here trying to ride out the storm as best we can, trying to stay on the air to just describe the conditions as best we can.

The wind has really just started to pick up over the last five or 10 minutes, I would say. And as you know, there are no shelters of last resort for people here. So at this point, anyone who is in town is just hunkered down wherever they are. There is no Convention Hall Center. There's no Superdome for people to stay.

So police and fire officials have been marshalling at the convention center, but there's been no shelter inside the city itself. And you can see the wind is really just picking up. And it's whipping down in this direction here (INAUDIBLE) the French Quarter. (INAUDIBLE) and stuff. But as far as any...

HARRIS: Wow.

COOPER: It has not been as bad all morning as we anticipated. We kind of thought it would be worse earlier. But really in the last five or 10 minutes we have started to see some of the stronger bands...

HARRIS: OK. We're in and out and intermittent with Anderson's signal there. Hard to imagine what the people were doing as you saw Anderson giving us his report. People walking behind him there, reminded of what we've heard all weekend long, which is, essentially, if you're still in New Orleans, you're essentially on your own.

We will be checking back, obviously, with Anderson Cooper throughout the morning.

Heidi, back to you.

COLLINS: Yes. And it's likely, too, that you're going to see some spotty coverage here and there because of the obvious reasons of this very powerful storm. One of the people who is riding it out, if you will, is our Ali Velshi. He's in Grand Isle, Louisiana.

It's a small town but it is a huge hub for the oil and fishing industries. It is getting smacked by Gustav right now.

Let's go ahead and check in with him.

Ali, can you hear me?

ALI VELSHI, CNN SENIOR BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I can hear you, Heidi. I've just -- I've just come inside for a moment. You're looking at our camera shot of Grand Isle, which is a sliver of a barrier island between the Gulf Coast and Barataria Bay.

There is no land here at the moment. We are looking at some of the houses in the area. You're seeing very heavy winds. These are the heaviest gusts we've seen so far this morning. They started -- we knocked our power out at about 4:30 Eastern.

Just down the road, for me, by the way -- just one of the things around -- that happens around here is fishing and shrimping. The other thing is this is a big base for offshore oil operations just down the road from me. Port Fourchon which we're hearing is getting hit pretty badly, too.

We could see landfall around there. That is where 56 percent of the country's imported oil is shipped into before being distributed and it's the service center for all offshore oil facilities.

Now the fact is we haven't seen much of a reaction in oil prices which suggest that people don't think the damage in the Gulf of Mexico has been that big. Of course we won't know about that for a couple of days.

But, for now Grand Isle is largely evacuated but for the people in our house right now and a couple other locations. We hope they're quite safe. Most people in southern Louisiana, southeastern Louisiana, particularly these coastal low lying parts have left.

We're looking at about five or six feet of water right now. It stopped rising. It's rising very rapidly, it has stopped. But you see those gusts. You can even see them on the BGAN, these digital transmissions that we're using which keeps us very nimble and very flexible.

It doesn't always give you the best shot, but you can probably determine there's a lot of wind coming through here right now. The rain has let up a bit, but, boy, there's a lot of wind.

COLLINS: Yes, Ali, I was just talking to Chad about that and he said you are probably experiencing around 105 miles per hour where you are right now.

Tell me how you're feeling, Ali? I mean, you know, you're normally our money guy, you're our business guy. What do you think about all of this?

VELSHI: We actually came down here because we thought there would be a very important business story to show how these oil workers are evacuating. This town has a lot of shrimping. We are actually at the home of the man who takes the shrimp from the shrimp boats and processes and distributes them.

So we were here for that story. We really didn't think we'd be as close to where this thing is making landfall. So we're in a very strong house. But what you're looking at right now -- if you'd looked a couple of hours ago, you would have seen a garage overhang. That blew out.

We're also here with the fire department captain who's waiting it out on the island, and he's very highly trained. So when I am up there in front of the camera now he's got me roped off so that we don't blow away.

COLLINS: Right.

VELSHI: I got to tell you, Heidi, we're feeling good about things. We appreciate everybody's concerns about our safety and we're not taking any unnecessary risks here. We just happen to be in the middle of this thing.

COLLINS: OK. Very good. I wanted to point that out, because, just in case, you know, people are wondering what on earth you're doing there. I know there's only about 10 people left on the barrier island. So I want to make sue that they understood why you're there and what exactly the situation is.

Ali Velshi, we'll be checking back in with you. Of course, stay safe.

HARRIS: I think we saw Chris Lawrence just a moment ago. We'll get to Chris in just a couple of moments.

The evacuation story for southern Louisiana has been absolutely amazing to watch it proceed over the weekend. People in New Orleans largely heed the calls to evacuate, notwithstanding the people that you saw just a couple months ago in Anderson Cooper's shot.

Our Rob Marciano was live in the French Quarter this morning. Last check he was on the roof of the Omni Hotel getting buffeted by the winds.

Rob, if you could, give us the latest on your condition and how you're holding on there.

I'm not even sure Rob can hear us.

OK, as Heidi mentioned just a moment ago, we're going to have moments of difficulty getting to these some of these shots from our correspondents because of the severe storm that is rolling into southern Louisiana right now.

The levees in and around New Orleans, that's a real concern. The first line of defense against the deadly flooding. And today the greatest source of concern. Many not fully repaired since Hurricane Katrina. Their failure then blamed for the floodwaters that swallowed some 80 percent of New Orleans.

COLLINS: And we're going to take a minute now, Tony, to get over to Sean Callebs. He is in Jefferson Parish. That's just west of New Orleans. Want to find out more about what he is seeing -- looks like he's pointing thumbs down, which to me says that that shot just is not able to come through, through our transmission.

You can see it there for yourselves. Look at that rain. It's just like a big sheet across that parking lot where he is. Once again, Sean Callebs in Jefferson Parish.

Instead, we're going to try a different correspondent. You got to bear with us, everybody, because they're all over the map and right in the middle of this thing. So want to check in with Chris Lawrence now.

Chris, tell us a little bit about what you are seeing from where you stand. CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're in a neighborhood called Central City, which is just a little bit west of downtown. And I can understand why they're having problems out where Sean is and like that, because you get these gusts that come by for a couple of minutes, then it clears up.

You think you're OK, but then the gusts kick up again. It's like this lull and then this just sweeping amount of wind. You can see where we are. Already the wind is starting to tear off some of the wood and the things that people were used to kind of shore up their windows and their doors.

We've seen a lot of that starting to blow off. And that is a big issue right here where we are now. There's a lot of debris just kind of blowing through the streets. If you look down that way, straight down the street is downtown. Completely empty.

We're right down the street from the police station here. But the police right now have decided to hunker down. They have gone to the convention center, with the National Guard, to hunker down. They will not be rescuing anybody. They will not be coming out.

But they want to be in prime position because when this storm blows through, we know that there are people down in these neighborhoods that did decide to stay. And they may have gotten themselves in a little over their head. The police want to be in position so that when the storm does blow through they're in prime position to get right back out in these neighborhoods and perhaps give those folks a hand -- Heidi?

COLLINS: Boy, we sure hope that's the case and we sure hope it's as few people as possible that have decided to stay through this. We know nearly 2 million evacuated from the area.

So CNN's Chris Lawrence for us there, embedded with the New Orleans Police Department.

Chris, thank you.

Want to take a moment now to get back over to Chad Myers. He is standing directly behind me here in the Hurricane Center -- Extreme Weather Center talking more about what is going on at this very moment, because a lot of people, obviously, very curious about where it's going to come in and then what will happen from there.

Which direction it's going to go, east or west?

MYERS: You know, we're 15 minutes into the show, so let's spread it around because there are other people in other states that are being affected...

COLLINS: Exactly.

MYERS: ... and other cities as well.

There is the eye. We focused on that for -- enough. I mean, basically, there's your Grand Isle right there and I can switch to a shot of Grand Isle. That's the spit of land that Ali is on right now. You know you get a bridge, you get a little causeway, and then you have to drive back up towards New Orleans.

So let's widen our view and figure out what else is going on. This thing still is moving to the northwest at about 15 miles per hour or so. Winds are down to 110 miles per hour. Widen the view.

What just happened in New Orleans? This big band of yellow just rolled through the city. That is one of the probably the biggest bands that you will see in New Orleans for the rest of this storm.

COLLINS: Wow.

MYERS: But New Orleans still isn't close yet to the direct path of where the eye would be. Once the eye gets about 30 miles northwest of here that will be its closest approach, Heidi, to New Orleans.

So that right there, we may get another band come through here and blast New Orleans even with, maybe, 10 miles per hour more wind than we just saw right now.

There are other things going on farther to the east as well. Near Escambia County, we've had tornado warnings going on all morning long. And this is because these big cells will roll onshore. Some of them will be spinning. Some of them have waterspouts.

But if we don't have waterspouts they can have a tornado on the ground here. And so that's what's going on there. Widen the view again, we will see what's going on for the rest of the day. It's going to continue to move to the northwest down to a category 2 right now and then sliding off to the north into the northwest.

So, you know, I'm going to do my best here for you. I'm going to talk about everybody that I can focusing on what's worse, obviously.

COLLINS: Right. Of course. OK. Good. That's a nice picture to have of the whole area. Appreciate that.

Chad, we'll check back a little bit later on -- Tony?

HARRIS: And, Heidi, we want to get to our Sean Callebs now. He is in Jefferson Parish. That is just west of New Orleans. And a lot of our focus today is going to be on Jefferson Parish because, as you can see from the storm track, that is an area of real concern.

Sean Callebs is there. As you can see, conditions deteriorating where he is.

Sean, give us the very latest.

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a couple of things. First, I got to point out what really goes wrong here very rapidly with all this rain, our wireless microphone, our interrupt we can hear you with, both went out the past couple of minutes. But this wind, this rain has been like this for about an hour and a half. And the significance here, we're about eight miles from where Anderson and Rob are.

Now, Jeff Parish was not -- didn't have the catastrophic flooding that New Orleans proper had during Katrina, but this time they may not be spared. It's not just here to the west. A major concern as this city goes down getting that crescent city name, as the river goes down is an area called the West Bank. The part about that, Gretna area is in there.

The concern is where Ali is, all that water from the bay is being pushed up this way by these winds from Gustav. And they're concerned it's going to come roaring in there. There's bayous, the water from the bay. And these are levees at some flood walls that really haven't been tested in some cases.

We saw a piece by Drew Griffin last night that there are huge gaps in the flood wall down there. So if this water comes pouring up through there with nothing to stop it. What you're going to do is you're going to see a repeat of what happened in St. Bernard Parish.

Everybody remembers that from three years ago. And that could simply be catastrophic. But right now, we have to focus on this wind and really the entire area.

Tony, there are 350 miles of levee that protect New Orleans -- the only thing that really keeps the water from going into the city. I got to think back living here, and all those people we talked to over the past three years, all the work they have done to try and rebuild their homes, rebuild their lives, and right now a lot of these people, the 2 million basically who fled this area probably watching from a distance, wondering what their home is like right now. And your heart has to go out to those people -- Tony.

HARRIS: Boy, that's for sure.

Sean, stand by just a second because Chad wants to speak with you.

Chad, go ahead.

MYERS: Sean, you know, I want you to be safe out there. I know we want great pictures but when you see things starting to come apart, I need you to get in a safe place. All right? I mean this is all about our lives as well.

Reporting from where you are, do you see any structural damage yet or are things still being held together?

CALLEBS: Yes. That -- one thing. Hey, Eric, come here one second please. I have to get my producer out here. Let me show you one thing. You may have seen me go like this a couple of times. Hold the microphone for just a minute. I'll show you.

MYERS: Yes, that's exactly what we're talking about right there, you know. HARRIS: Yes. Yes. Yes.

MYERS: You don't get hit -- you don't get hit by wind...

CALLEBS: So I was watching out of the corner of my eye.

MYERS: But a 50-mile-per-hour (INAUDIBLE) is going to do some damage there. I need you to be safe out there, Sean.

CALLEBS: Chad -- in my defense, I've covered a lot of these and I've never been hurt and I'm not going to do anything to risk myself. But it's a great point. Well taken.

MYERS: Very good.

HARRIS: Yes.

MYERS: You know what, we always -- Tony, we always kind of get ourselves in a little bit of a wind shadow as well sometimes. We try to get ourselves -- and I've done enough of these things. You get a building where you know if something is going to get blown it's going to miss you because that's where the main wind is.

I mean you can literally stand here and talk and then five feet away you can't even breathe the wind is so hard.

HARRIS: Yes.

MYERS: So that's how we position our crews and we make sure days in advance that they have a very safe place.

HARRIS: Boy, you really took the thought right out of my head there because, as I'm watching Sean give that report, I'm thinking that wind is blowing so hard it wouldn't take much of anything -- a lose impediment of any kind...

MYERS: Yes.

HARRIS: ... to cause some real damage there. And I hope you're right and I know that we do the best that we can in protecting our people and our people are really smart out there, as well.

MYERS: We're going to back to Rob Marciano now...

HARRIS: Great.

MYERS: ... on top of the Omni Hotel because, I think, from what the radar should have been showing you -- Rob, that your wind should have been down a little bit from where you were last time but looking at that tree, I'm not so sure.

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Not sure what you said, Chad, but it's definitely getting a little bit blustery, to say the least. We are about six stories above the French Quarter right now and the winds have shifted a little bit. They certainly have strengthened in the last couple of hours. And to say the least, the rain is blowing sideways.

Now that we have light and now that the winds have turned just away from the quarter a little bit, we can show you what it looks like. Obviously, some palm trees up here on this roof. As we look a little bit to the east, you see that we have an unobstructed view of the rooftops of the French Quarter.

And it really is an eerie sight. You know with these centuries-old buildings, some cases well over 200 years old, it almost it feels like you're on the city walls of some an ancient city looking at -- at the rooftops as the wind continues to buffer the structures.

In some cases we have seen -- you can see Jackson Square. In some cases we have seen roof tiles...

MYERS: Not today.

MARCIANO: ... and other sort of structures off flying about town. But more so we've seen it at some of the higher structures of downtown. We'll swing it around now.

We feel fairly safe at this spot because even though the winds from this morning were blowing off the French Quarter, obviously, we're pretty much at one of the higher spots. Now we go to downtown where -- you know, it's just a tale of two cities almost.

Modern buildings, skyscrapers being buffered by this wind and this rain as well. Not sure if the power is out there. It's certainly been out in most of the French Quarter today.

Now the wind is in our face, which shows us that the center of the storm is that way. But the problem that Sean Callebs has been talking about and pretty much all the reporters when it comes to the canal and the infrastructure, is what does this wind do when it piles up the water?

There is the Mississippi. The Mississippi is supposed to flow that way. And I hope you can see it. But there are white caps that are flowing against the flow of the river, which, wants to get itself to the Gulf of Mexico. And right now it's being pushed against its will north and west.

Winds we've measured gusts as high as 60 miles an hour, sustained lower than that. But certainly enough to do some damage. Transformers have been blowing out. And the concern south and west of town are certainly square on the levees that have not been damaged or destroyed by Katrina and they're worried as well is Gustav going to get it, because Gustav is heading a little bit south and west.

You know, Chad, or Tony, as these storms make landfall oftentimes the back side, even if you're in the southwestern quadrant, you can be the worst as far as the winds go and the folks who live in New Orleans certainly hope that that's not the case later on today once landfall happens.

We have definitely seen the wind switch. And that tells us that this storm, at least the center of it, feels like, Chad and Tony, may very well be due south or even west of us. Certainly would bode well getting away from a direct hit -- guys?

MYERS: Hey, Rob, can you hear us? I'm going to take that as a no.

HARRIS: Yes.

MYERS: Thank you, Rob. Be safe out there. He still can't hear me.

We've talked about this. I've heard it be compared to Katrina but, in fact, this is almost the opposite, Tony, of Katrina. Katrina went over here. The winds were from the north pushing that water from Lake Pontchartrain into New Orleans.

This time the winds are going this way, the opposite direction pushing all this water into the bayous here on the south side. So we're not talking about here, the north side of New Orleans, but over the river.

I know they call it East Bank, West Bank but really, it's the south side of New Orleans that we're most concerned about with flooding this time because of the piling up of the water, the same water that came this way last time that's coming from the south this time, and were going to flood, possibly, the other side of New Orleans, the area that really didn't get fixed because it didn't have damage the first time -- Tony.

HARRIS: About all of that, Chad. Boy, look at that -- look at that radar behind you. Look at that image. It is just amazing.

OK, we're going to take a quick break. We'll come back with an updated report on everything that's happening -- the southern coast of Louisiana. We'll head over to our hurricane desk and give you a look at more of the resources we're deploying. And we're also asking for iReports, CNNireports.com.

We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Good morning once again, everybody. Heidi Collins and Chad Myers over here in the Severe Weather Center.

We have to something to get out to the people right away, because in about 15 minutes, they could be seeing some activity they are not going to want to see.

MYERS: Yes, this pink box, we're going to see these all day long. This is tornado warning now. In fact, it's from near Waveland just to the west of Bay St. Louis. And this storm -- this tornado is moving to the west at 80 miles per hour.

COLLINS: Wow.

MYERS: Don't go out and look at it. Don't be an iReporter. Get inside and stay away form it. This thing here -- I'm going to switch this. There's Bay St. Louis. We're talking about Waveland all the way up part toward Covington. I'm going to switch to a different view and it's kind of odd but you're kind of -- you'll get the idea.

Bay St. Louis here. Here is the circulation of the storm. Now the Doppler indicates -- this is the Doppler wind now. Doppler means that when you hear a motorcycle coming, it's a different pitch when it comes to you compared to when it goes the other way, right?

Doppler Radar can hear the same thing. It can hear the rain moving in different directions, so the circulation, the wind going this way here, the wind going this way here, so this potentially, potentially a tornado on the way there for possibly Covington, for north of Waveland, moving up probably north of Slidell.

COLLINS: Well, and boy oh boy, we heard Waveland mentioned three years ago quite a bit, that area just decimated so we're going to keep our eye close on this.

Chad, thank you very much.

MYERS: All right.

COLLINS: Want to take a moment now to get back to New Orleans. Our Anderson Cooper is standing by with the latest from there.

Anderson, what are you seeing now around you? Obviously, very, very windy.

COOPER: Well, you know, it's one of those strange situations where the rain has all but stopped. A second ago we had very strong rain. Right now the wind has picked up significantly. But, yet, this is really not nearly as bad as we had anticipated or we have been told to expect.

We're already, in fact, starting to see some people kind of peeking their head outside of their homes, kind of taking a walking around. We actually saw a couple of like drunk 20-year-olds who are walking around just kind of -- I don't know, they just decided to walk around, I guess, after spending the night inside their apartments.

So actually kind of a very strange atmosphere. People aren't really sure if the worst is over here in the French Quarter area or if the worst is yet to come. But if the worst is over, it certainly has not been nearly as bad in this area.

The danger, and, of course, the concern is the surge in more inland areas and also along the Harvey Canal over by the West Bank in New Orleans. And we may not know anything about that for several more hours, even into later this evening. It may take that long to really examine all the levee areas and, also, for the full effect of the surge to be felt.

But at this point in the French Quarter, I can tell you now that daylight has fully come, it is -- it's kind of a calming down situation where we have some strong wind. And we may -- the rain may pick up. There may be another band of the storm coming that we don't know about but we're basically just waiting to see what happens -- Heidi.

COLLINS: Yes, absolutely, Anderson. And, obviously, the only bad news about that if it's not coming directly where you are, it's certainly going to go somewhere else. And that, of course, what we are trying to warn everybody about here today.

Thanks so much, Anderson Cooper for us right there in the French Quarter -- Tony?

HARRIS: Hey, Heidi, I wanted to bring everyone over to what is essentially our hurricane desk here. And we have tried to compartmentalize this as best we can. And you see the flags here for our live shots, in which we're trying to coordinate as best we can with all of our correspondents -- Anderson Cooper, Susan Roesgen, Rob Marciano on top of the Omni Hotel, Sean Callebs as well in Jefferson Parish, which is an area we're going to pay close attention to on the West Bank throughout the day.

We're using our APJs, our all-platform journalists as well. And they're using BlackBerrys that are rigged so that they can bring us the sights and the sounds of this storm as it rolls into southern Louisiana.

And our Victor Hernandez is here. Just let everybody take a look at you, Victor, because I'll be on your case throughout the morning here. Victor is attempting to manage all of this. Good luck with that. We have an emergency desk over here as well. And as you can imagine, we're getting all kinds of information from the National Guard, from law enforcement and we're trying to sort through all of that information as best we can.

I don't know if you're going to be able to do this. Good job, Robert, as you sort of navigate the NEWSROOM here. I want to get you here eventually to our interactive board. And Michelle is here as well. Michelle is going to help me because I'm not as versed on all this as a number of people -- I'm thinking of Josh Levs as an example.

And Michelle, help me here, what we're seeing now is we're seeing the Web site of one of our affiliate stations. We're using affiliates from New Orleans and Baton Rouge as well. We're using their Web cams to show you as many views of the city as we possibly can. And this is WWL-TV, and that's in New Orleans. And we're taking a look at their Web sites right now and their capabilities right now.

And Michelle, we're seeing some of their Web cams, the West Bank and this is kind of a wide view of the city right now. Something else that we're using here. We're using hurricane -- do we want to go to hurricanetrack.com. Hurricanetrack.com has set up a number of levee cams. And we'll be going to those levee cams throughout the morning and afternoon as well, and we'll try to give you in real time a view of these levees to give you a sense of how the storm is impacting those levees, all-important levees. And then iReports. Very quickly here. We want to encourage you to send along your iReports. And this is an iReport that's already been submitted to us. This is I-10, the famous I-10. As you can see here, it is shut down right now. Not open to any traffic. We understand it's been closed.

And again, if you're still in the City of New Orleans, you are essentially on your own. We want to encourage you to send along those iReports, cnn.com/ireports. Again, maybe if you're in a hotel, in a safe location, what you can do is maybe give us a bit of narrative into your cell phone and send it to us. Again, at ireport.com. And we will share those with everyone watching the coverage today. That's where we are right now in the middle of the NEWSROOM.

Heidi, back to you.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Just want to sort of set things up once again for everybody in case you are just joining us. Hurricane Gustav blasting the Louisiana coast this hour. Landfall at any moment south of New Orleans. Winds are now topping about 110 miles per hour. It has weakened a bit and was downgraded now to a Category 2 storm just a few minutes ago. Some live pictures for you there. I believe that is the French Quarter.

The big fear, though, this morning, flooding. Many levees are still incomplete. We've been talking a lot about the Harvey Canal. That is one that it could really help out, but unfortunately, as we've been reporting, our Drew Griffin has done some special pieces on that, it is just not complete. Again, three years to the week after Hurricane Katrina.

Too weak and too sick to get out. Some of the youngest patients at New Orleans' Children's Hospital are riding out the storm inside the city. Our Susan Roesgen is with them now at the hospital.

Hi there, Susan.

SUSAN ROESGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Heidi. Earlier this morning, we had a power outage out here in Uptown, New Orleans. That's to the west of the French Quarter. Briefly, the hospital lost power. But then the backup generators kicked in. And that's what they're working on now. We have our own light.

The storm has kicked up quite a bit out here. Very windy. Kind of rough to be outside but some of the doctors and nurses, Heidi, have come out and some of the parents of some of the young patients here have come out to just get a feel of what it's like outside. They've been cooped up inside with boards on the windows and really not getting a sense of what's going on here. But the good news is they are all safe inside. Here's a look at what you'll find inside New Orleans' Children's Hospital.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRACY BAYLEY, PATIENT'S MOTHER: Can you smile? ROESGEN (voice-over): Tracy Bayley can't bear to tell her son Cameron about the hurricane that's on the way. 4-year-old Cameron had heart surgery just 10 days ago.

BAYLEY: He knows that there's a little storm coming but as long as I'm here he's happy. He's calm.

ROESGEN: In 50 years, New Orleans Children's Hospital has locked its doors only once and that was when Hurricane Katrina forced them to. This time the hospital plans to stay open no matter what.

BRIAN LANDRY, CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL NEW ORLEANS: It's one of those situations for us. If every time when a hurricane came to the community or the threat of one, we moved all our patients, I think we would find that some of our patients wouldn't survive.

ROESGEN: When the hospital staff knew a storm was coming, they were ready. The hospital has food and water and generators to keep the power going for three weeks. And a backup plan, just in case.

(on camera): Now, if worse comes to worst and the hospital has to evacuate, here's something it didn't have in Hurricane Katrina -- a helicopter landing pad.

(voice-over): But the doctors and nurses here who volunteered to stay have no intention of evacuating the patients or themselves. There are 80 young children here now, more than half in critical care.

You don't want to leave them.

CRYSTAL MAYEAUX, NURSE, CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: No, no. We're attached to a lot of the babies here, so it's important to us, too.

ROESGEN: Claire Trahan's son Jude was born prematurely with a heart problem. For the duration of the storm, parents are allowed to stay at the hospital with their children and that's a comfort to Claire and her husband.

MICHAEL TRAHAN, PATIENT'S FATHER: He's been through a lot of stuff, and this is just going to be another chapter in the book of his life, you know. So it does give us some strength and some comfort.

ROESGEN: A chapter with an uncertain ending.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROESGEN: Now, there's one more thing that they didn't have in Hurricane Katrina which forced this hospital to close after only a couple of days after the storm, and that's because they lost air conditioning. The water supply was cut off here and they couldn't keep the compressors going to keep the air conditioning going.

You know, Heidi, when this is over, when this passes us, we're going to go back to 90-degree weather here in New Orleans. It's too hot to be any place without air conditioning. This year they do have this backup plan. They have dug a well, so they've got their own water supply. And, again, they're on generator power right now because we've lost power in this part of New Orleans. But they're doing OK.

Heidi?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Susan, I'll pick it up here. This is Chad. I just want to tell you that was a great story. Great human interest out there. And there are other things going on, too, because we talk about this eye so much. But I also want to talk about a tornado that has been spotted near the Stennis Space Center up here now north -- 11 miles north of Slidell.

We're going to talk about Abita Springs or may be the next area, out here toward Covington will be the next area as well. We do know that this storm now exists. The first, you knew, it was a Doppler radar indicated, but now we have it and spotted on the ground.

I do not want you to be an iReporter. Stay inside. Just stay inside with this. Stay away from the windows as well. The winds are obviously 60 to 70 miles per hour and greater than that in that tornado. CNN NEWSROOM returns right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALI VELSHI, CNN SENIOR BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: And I think we're going to have to get off this right now. We're going to wrap it up. We're going to wrap it up. Back to you. Let's go.

MYERS: You are in it now. This storm is just here southwest. You are on what's called the Outer Eyewall. We actually have two eyewalls here. And sometimes that will happen. You're all kind of on the back side of the inside of the eyewall, so we'll call it the second wall.

This is 100 miles almost from New Orleans we're talking about here. And you can see the winds in New Orleans. You can see the winds here. And so everywhere in between, Heidi, from Houma to New Iberia, to Cut- Off, you're all seeing winds like this. And now we have our first threat of storm surge. And we just got this in.

COLLINS: Yes. This is the one you were talking about just a little while ago.

MYERS: Yes. 7.2 feet at Shell Beach. The water is up 7.2 feet at Shell Beach. Shell Beach is not that far from New Orleans. It's kind of on the -- I guess what we call -- we're calling it the South Bank, but we know east and west. It's the south side, the south side of the water there. So almost an inverse flood of what we had in Katrina.

Our Anderson Cooper is live in New Orleans as well. Anderson, what are you seeing right now?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chad, you know, we're seeing some strong winds but nothing really like we expected. As you know, I know the storm has been downgraded to a Category 2. We're actually starting to see some folks get in their cars and kind of drive around the French Quarter, some people even walking around. A lot of them are coming up to us and asking us is the worst of this over. I'm not sure how to answer them. I don't know if you can tell me in terms of what the folks in French Quarter and this area of New Orleans are going to experience -- is the worst over?

MYERS: Well, for you, Anderson, no, because you are right in between two bands, outer bands. And this is how it kind of happens for a hurricane. You get a band and that brings in, and it brings down the wind from the upper levels of the atmosphere. You've missed the one band now. You're in between. But another one is forming down here not that far from Clear Beach that you will get pounded with probably in the next 15 minutes.

It's going to be like this. It's going to be pounding, a little bit of a break, pounding, a little bit of a break, at least for the next three hours for you. And the winds are going to shift directions on you, rather not just from the east. They'll eventually going to get all the way from the south. And that may affect your satellite dish, that may affect your transmission. So continue to monitor that. You may have to move your truck a little bit to get it in the wind shadow of a building or two.

Anderson?

COOPER: Yes. I want to show you exactly where our truck is right now. Basically, we have the satellite truck here and originally the wind was going -- right now it's OK for the direction that the wind is going. But if the wind shifts, we're going to maybe try to move it over to this side of the street. But, again, that's just going to be, you know -- just going to have to wait and see which direction the wind shifts in.

You always want with the satellite truck, because that satellite is up, it's been elevated. If the wind shifts, the wind can actually pick it up. It can blow it over using that satellite dish like a sail almost and that can flip a satellite truck as Chad well knows in some of the storms he has covered.

So, actually, you know, it's interesting, Chad, you said about that band coming in. We may be feeling it right now because now we're starting to get some rain, which we haven't had of the last five or ten minutes. And some of the folks we have seen driving around looks like they are taking shelter as well. So, at this point, you know, it's kind of on again, off again here in the French Quarter. And it's kind of disconcerting.

I know there are a lot of people of the 10,000 or so people believed to have still been in New Orleans overnight during the storm. There's a lot of people I know who would like to get out of their houses, get out of the places they've been staying and just kind of take a look around.

I'm sure officials would want those people to stay indoors as long as possible to wait this thing out -- listen to the televisions, listen to the radio if they still have power and see where this thing is going because it's very deceiving when suddenly the wind stops and the rain stops and you kind of think, well, it's over. But I'm glad, Chad, you told us it's not. We know what to expect at least in the next couple of hours. MYERS: Yes. Again, coming and going of the wind every maybe 15 or 20 minutes, it will pick up every time you get another band heading your way. Here's the one that I'm talking about forming now. The big one is now over. The one that you had about a half an hour ago, it's now over the lake, headed up towards Slidell and Covington, Picayune. This all is going to be sliding up into Hammond, and eventually Baton Rouge. You're going to get your worst winds of the storm so far. The eye still well down to the south. Still circulating the winds and the rain bands.

Anderson, as you think about what's happening here, this is the exact opposite way the winds were blowing in Katrina for New Orleans, which means the surge is coming up from the different direction. What do you know about the other side the river? Are people prepared over there? Are they all evacuated? Are they all gone?

COOPER: You know, folks have evacuated. I mean, there are 90 percent, 95 percent of the people in all of southeastern Louisiana, coastal region, they believe are gone. But no doubt there are going to be some holdouts in those areas.

I understand, though, that the Army Corps of Engineers has actually shut the gates on the Harvey Canal and that's significant because that's the area which really did not flood during Hurricane Katrina. Those are the levees which are untested and in some cases unimproved.

And so, we're wondering, of course, that's the area we're really going to be looking at. And once it's safe enough to kind of go out and look around, we'll probably be sending crews out to that region. So, we want to move out of the street to make sure we're not in the way of the police.

We've been seeing police patrolling all night long, all morning long as well. We have been told, Chad, that during the worst of the storm they may just stop. But I don't think the storm ever got to the point, at least in this area, where the police felt they needed to stop their patrols.

From what we could see, it looked like the patrols kept going all night. But back to the West Bank. That is really the area of most concern and the area we're going to watch. I heard one official saying on the radio, though, Chad -- you can maybe talk to this a little bit -- that they may not know if there's surge, if there's going to be flooding until even this evening, even tomorrow morning in some inland areas, that it can take hours for a surge to actually move through to inland areas and actually cause problems and cause flooding.

MYERS: That's right. It's not an instantaneous thing. It just doesn't come and then go, and as soon as we get low tide, it all flows back. This wind is from the same direction for hours and hours and hours. Think about your morning cup of coffee and it's too hot. You want to kind of blow the top off, kind of cool it off a little bit.

As you blow the wind, your breath over the cup of coffee, the water blows -- your coffee blows to the other side of the cup. You see the ripples blowing in your cup. The ripples are blowing up the river chain and on up this entire Bayou down in here. And the problem is going to be like South Algiers. In all the places down along here, not so much close to the river but down along the Bayou Swamps here where the water is blowing up from the south pushing that water up. We know now there's a beach right through here, and that's using the term kind of loosely. But the surge is already right there, 7.2 feet higher than it was before the storm.

Now, I don't know what those levees are going to hold but seven feet seems like a pretty good surge to me on levees that are unprotected. And for that matter, Anderson, talk about this. They weren't helped out. They didn't help us out at all. I mean, they didn't move any dirt or any more support to these southern levees. What they did is rebuilding. And they were rebuilding the northern levees, correct?

COOPER: That is correct. I mean, nothing has been done to those levees on the West Bank. And that's -- you know, that's a real concern. For years now they've been talking about it but they really haven't seen flooding from number of storms in that area. And so, it's all been just kind of talk.

MYERS: All right, stand by, Anderson. Stand by, we have Sean Callebs now. I don't know how long I'm going to have him so I'm going to have you get behind your truck into a little bit of a safety place there for a second. Let's go to Sean.

Sean?

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN GENERAL ASSIGNMENT CORRESPONDENT: Chad, I want to pick up what you're talking about, about the wetlands. I've lived here for the past three years and it's such a passionate issue with people in New Orleans. A couple of things.

During Katrina, we lost about 250 miles of marshland during that storm alone, about 30 miles a year every year since. Now, Governor Jindal just approved a measure for a billion dollars for wetlands restoration. You know, it's significant but it's not like you plant a seed and it sprouts up the next day.

Secondly, all of the canals, the channels that have been cut through there, especially one that goes basically through St. Bernard Parish called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet -- that's called Mr. Go. Locally, that's how it's known.

During Katrina when that counter-clockwise spin moved to the east of New Orleans, And Mr. Go is basically even with the heart of the city, water went roaring down that gulf outlet like completely unfettered, and it just came pouring in and it hit St. Bernard Parish just like a big round house.

So, we talked about levees a lot and we focused on levees for good reason. That's basically the only thing the corps has to keep the water out. But we know nature does a great job of it if we let nature operate the way it normally does. But they've moved the river so many times, affected wetland so many dramatic ways that really there's a very, very strong feeling in this state from everybody, from the governor down, that the more we improve the wetlands, the better chance we're going to have to stave off a catastrophic storm. Let alone one like one we're dealing with right now where you really don't know how strong it is until after it's come through and done its worst.

COOPER: And Sean, this is Anderson. I don't know if you can hear me from the French Quarter. One of the things about the levees that a lot of folks probably don't realize if you haven't live in this area, if you haven't been following developments over the last three years -- I mean, one thing is the height of the actual levee that's been rebuilt.

And in some places in the Lower Ninth Ward, we've seen levees that were 12 feet, now at 15 feet. But what really matters is what is underneath the levee, what's underground, how deep that wall goes and what kind of support the levee has.

Talk to us a little bit about, about what is happening underground on some of these levees.

CALLEBS: Anderson, that is a great point. There's two things that really go on underneath the surface that we can't see. Before all this massive renovation work was done, they basically put steel plates straight down in the dirt. Now, they're putting down what's called T- bars so it goes in more like this. So it's going to have better support when we have blaze coming down the various canals doing their worst against those flood walls.

Secondly, what caused the big problem is the 17th Street Canal. Everybody knows that one. That's the one we saw the pictures of the helicopters dropping sand bags on (INAUDIBLE). There, what happened was Lake Pontchartrain pushed water back down that canal and what happened was what (INAUDIBLE), in essence it was just very, very rapid, very violent erosion and it ate away at the bottom of that flood wall and just gave way.

Once that happened, (INAUDIBLE), instantly the city was at the same level as Lake Pontchartrain. (INAUDIBLE) for about a couple of weeks. A couple of things, Anderson. The Corps was supposed to put steel plates well down into the flood wall in the Lower Ninth area.

There are some speculation, there are some argument that they didn't do enough, so let's just hope that holds up, because we've done so many stories now (INAUDIBLE). Especially, it's not government leading this rebuilding in many ways. It's volunteers, it's people who come in and do the gutting of homes. And we've all done a lot of stories on Brad Pitt's effort to bring environmentally-friendly homes to the Lower Ninth Ward.

I can tell you I was down there recently. At about 15 of those homes are already up and they are in the shadow of that flood wall that gave way. So, it's going to be interesting to go down there later today or tomorrow and see how that area fared, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, Sean Callebs. Stand by, Sean, I want to keep you as long as we have you. Also, joining us now on the phone Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent who has been monitoring situations in the hospitals in town.

Sanjay, where are you now? What's the situation were you're at?

VOICE OF DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We're at East Jefferson General Hospital, Anderson. It is starting to pick up pretty considerably over here. The rain interestingly has lessened but the wind is much more than it was before. We lost our satellite which is why I'm talking to you by phone.

Also, this hospital is now on emergency power. It's something they anticipated. This is a lesson that they learned from Katrina, to have these generators at a higher level within the hospital so they are not subject to flooding, which there has been no flooding. They have lost power. The generators have kicked in. This is a hospital that's staying open, Anderson. There are a couple around the city.

We've got about 200 patients here, 60 physicians who are all planning on spending the night. We saw many of them come in with their air mattresses earlier. They've got lots of vehicles outside. Not your typical ambulances but very high vehicles that are designed to be able to get through the flood waters should any flooding occur. This hospital is on a little bit of higher ground so for the most it seems fairly safe. Although, just very windy. Everyone sort of hunkered down for now, Anderson.

COOPER: That's certainly good news there. Sean Callebs, if you're still with us, talk to me a little bit about what this storm is a test of. I mean, a couple of people we talked to yesterday were saying -- you know, what, this could be do or die for the City of New Orleans. And If New Orleans passes this test, if the levees that have been repaired hold, then people will want to reinvest in the city, will want to come back, but if they handle this wrong, if there's not the coordination that we think there has been thus far, if the storm surge is huge and the levees don't hold, then it's going to be that much harder for people to come back to the city, that much harder for businesses to want to reinvest.

How do you think at this point the city is doing and where are the most -- where are the danger points that we need to be looking at over the next 12 hours or so?

CALLEBS: I think that question (INAUDIBLE) we're going to look at, where the most work was done. I'm at the 17th Street Canal and you have to go back to the Lower Ninth, the Industrial Canal, that is the area along that flood wall that gave way. There are no flood gates there. There's nothing to stop that water from pushing one way or the other so you can get that very violent scouring again. And, clearly, people are going to be looking at an area that wasn't tested during Katrina, and that's just south of New Orleans proper, the West Bank. Areas like the Gretna. That's what people are going to be worrying about.

We know the flood gates of Harvey Canal were closed earlier today. We knew that was going to happen. No surprise. But we saw Drew Griffin's very graphic report on just how poorly the flood wall and levee construction has gone on down there. He talked about a one, basically half-mile stretch if you walk through that was just earthen levee and it had not been completely shored up, so really, there are 350 miles of levee protecting the New Orleans area. How can you guarantee that you're going to secure 350 miles? You simply can't do it.

Trying to keep the water out is going to be difficult. So, I think that we're going to have to see how the levees fare in those very problem areas where we've done so many reports over the months. You also talked about what's at stake.

Look, you know, I called your producers all the time and I'm very passionate about stories down here. I'm probably in pain trying to get them on so much, but when we look at these people with these stories with them, I think of a guy like Ricky Murray from Slidell, the McGees from Gentilie (ph), Antoinette Paige (ph) who was our security officer in the building where our bureau is.

All of these people gone through very emotional rebuilding. They've spent basically their life savings. They have nothing else. There's no net. So, if they lose their homes now, what do they do? How are they supposed to go back and rebuild?

And basically, what the government is telling these people, the government that has let these people down on every level over the past three years is saying, you know, trust us. We've learned our lesson. We're going to get it right. People here are very skeptical.

Well, the evacuation went really, really well. I think you heard to a person say, you know what? Mayor Nagin has his act together. Bobby Jindal has his act together. Finally, the Bush administration has its act together. So far, things have gone well.

So, if they get through this violent punch, this could be very great news for businesses. It could be great news for homeowners. It may make businesses want to come back here and set up shop. So this could be good.

I think about that line from NASA. Failure is not an option. You know, Anderson, if there's a catastrophic failure, even Mayor Nagin said, you know, the whole footprint could change in the city.

Anderson?

COOPER: Chad, want to bring in our severe weather expert Chad Myers back in the picture to this conversation. Chad, it's important to point out that, you know, when the picture you're seeing from me right now in the French Quarter tells one little small part of the story, but what is happening in the Lower Ninth, what is happening in Jefferson Parish, what's happening by the Harvey Canal -- all of those pieces we simply don't know and won't know for many more hours.

At what point do you think we will start to get a fuller picture of what really the impact of this storm has been?

MYERS: You know, I mean, sometimes it takes levees a day to fail. If that water stays up and we talk about the scouring that you were talking about there with Sean, that scouring can get under, it may take a long time for those levees to fail from the bottom up.

Also, one thing that we need to talk about is what's going on now? T he eye is now making landfall in southern Louisiana. There it goes. Kind of on the swampy area there near Port Buchan.

Another thing, a lot of tornado warnings have been popping up as you guys have been talking all the way from Escambia County to north of Mobile. Every little purple box you see here is a new tornado warning that's coming out. So not only stay away from the windows because of the wind but stay away from the windows because of the tornado possibilities as well.

Stennis Space Center by 9:05, Pearl River by 9:15. That is your rotation right now. That's the latest one off the presses. We'll have more from Anderson and Sean, and also here from the severe weather center.

The entire area here from the southeast to the northwest as the wind pushes up is going to fill up this basin. It's going to fill up the wetlands as Sean was talking about. And the problem with wetlands, we've lost it. We've lost a lot of the wetlands. And these wetlands are kind of like, like little ice cubes that could slow down the flow of the water. When you lose that little bit of swampiness, we probably lost it because of Katrina and also because of man-made purposes, when you lose that slowing down of the barrier, of the slow down buffers, then the water can make its way further to the north and rather quickly.

Anderson, what do you have?

COOPER: Chad, we want to check back with you in just a moment. Ali Velshi was on Grand Isle. (INAUDIBLE) over the last couple of hours is with us.

Ali, what's the situation on Grand Isle?

VELSHI: Well, the wind has just changed about 15 minutes ago and we can just see it from the surf because the waves have just sort of encompassed this island. There is no land visible on Grand Isle. They're headed southeast direction. We've been having easterly wind for about 12 hours and it's changed, and they're gusting very, very heavily.

There's not a whole lot of damage visible to us yet. We've seen some things happen. The carport of the home we're in has blown off, things like that. But, really, the devastation here seems to be flopping. We are at a low place which means everybody who was here would be stuck here. This place like many of these southern, southeastern Louisiana parachutes have evacuated in most cases fully.

We also have been seeing a reaction in the oil market. Oil prices are actually down. This is the headquarters of offshore oil and imported oil into the United States, and it seems like at least people are guessing that the intensity of this storm is such that it is not causing the damage that was expected. So, to some degree, people are breathing a sigh of relief here where we are but these winds are pretty serious, still. They're pretty severe and this is about as strong as we've seen them gusting, not continuing, but we're seeing some pretty heavy winds right now.

COOPER: Well, Ali, as you know, a lot of people are watching and listening to you, to the situation on Grand Isle, because it's kind of a harbinger of what may come inland in terms of storm surge. So, how much has the water risen on Grand Isle? Do you have a sense of that?

VELSHI: Yes, very, very good sense of it because it hasn't penetrated our ground floor yet.