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Nancy Grace
Hurricane Sandy Aftermath
Aired October 31, 2012 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sandy flooded the Jersey shore, New York subway tunnels and LaGuardia Airport.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Runways are flooded.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There`s nobody around. I don`t know where to go. You`re trying to get out of a window. You know, you`re up to your neck in water.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The black smoke`s coming out of the ground.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The fire crew is on the scene.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The beach is gone. The parking`s gone. The road`s gone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I saw the garage on fire!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People were coming out with all kind of stuff, everything, whatever you could think of from juices, sodas, waters, cigarettes, TVs!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The wind brought down scaffolding, toppled trees and cut power.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s no power as of now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We could easily have been killed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VINNIE POLITAN, GUEST HOST: Good evening. I`m Vinnie Politan, host of HLN`s "MAKING IT IN AMERICA," in for Nancy Grace tonight.
And we have some breaking news. As the death toll rises in the wake of superstorm Sandy. Sandy wreaking havoc on the Northeast corridor, millions are still struggling without power, some without homes, massive flooding, homes under water and burned to the ground, some towns even battling snow. And now there are reports of looting.
I want to go straight to HLN anchor Mike Galanos, who joins us live from Toms River, New Jersey, across the bay from Seaside Heights. Mike, you`re in the heart of some of the worst devastation. What can you tell us tonight?
MIKE GALANOS, HLN ANCHOR: Vinnie, right now, I`m in Toms River, New Jersey. Straight to my left here, that`s Seaside Heights. I spent most of the day today just outside of Long Beach Island -- LBI, as it`s known. We were able to get over the bridge. We thought we were going to get in, but authorities ended up turning us away because of ruptured gas lines, downed power lines. It is just too dangerous, so we had to leave.
And as we left, Vinnie, we came into a community -- you may be familiar with it, Beachside West. It`s very near Long Beach Island. And as we drove up, it was car after car, people coming together because they wanted to get into their homes, homes flooded out, three, four, five feet of water, and they couldn`t get in. Again, too dangerous, ruptured gas lines.
But it was people coming together, exchanging phone numbers, any pictures they had of their neighborhood, just trying to make sense of what had happened and pick up the pieces. It`s just terrible here. But the one thing that`s heartening is people really coming together.
POLITAN: Mike Brooks, this morning I was watching fires breaking out on some of those barrier islands in New Jersey. What is the ultimate danger here? Because they`re keeping people off the islands, right? Mike Galanos not permitted with his cameras onto Long Beach Island. What is the danger?
MIKE BROOKS, HLN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, one of the main problems, Vinnie -- and those fires are being caused by and fed by gas lines. Now, we`re not talking, you know, the big gas pipelines, we`re talking about gas lines that may have been ruptured from the flood waters.
And also, you know, people`s homes, if water comes in, it floods somebody`s homes, it puts the pilot lights out. That`s why anybody say they smell gas, a very strong odor of gas, that`s why they`re not letting anybody in because just a little spark could ignite another conflagration like we saw out on Breezy Point.
POLITAN: Mike Galanos, I want to ask you about the folks, right, the people who are out of their homes, people who have lost possessions, people who are looking to get back to some semblance of life. How would you describe their optimism? Did it exist today?
GALANOS: It did. It starts with, you know, a play-by-play, so to speak, of how they got through the storm. I talked to one woman who actually stayed just in their -- Beach Haven West, and she just didn`t think it was going to be that high. She`s a nurse. She had to work. She went to work in her rain boots.
But she came back home, thought she was going to ride it out, and her thought -- and so many people said this to me, Vinnie, was it`s surreal. They just -- This happened to me. You`ve seen it on television. You`ve seen it in other storms like Katrina. Now it happened to them.
How are they going to get through it? What`s the resilience look like? People exchanging phone numbers, people coming together, helping each other out.
As I was talking to you, I think, earlier in the day, this group of five, six guys in a truck with an American flag on the back came driving through a neighborhood to make sure everybody is OK, anybody who rode out the storm, that they`re still doing OK, an American flag hung over a fence. I mean, one guy even said to me it`s time to restore the shore. That`s already a term that`s been coined out here.
POLITAN: You know, there are a lot of miracles taking place and there is good news out there. And what I want you to realize is that there are people who have their own families who are in harm`s way, their own homes that are under water, but they`re going to work and they`re helping people.
And I want to talk about one of those stories right now because we have a new mom who is joining us. Her name is Margaret Chu. Newborn baby, Margaret -- you`re in NYU hospital, and then you need to be evacuated? What happened?
MARGARET CHU, MOTHER OF NEWBORN EVACUATED FROM NYU HOSPITAL (via telephone): Yes, we went into labor at about 6:00 in the morning that Monday. Unbeknownst to us, our son was going to come, you know, three weeks early. And we rushed to the hospital. We paged my doctor. And thank goodness, Doctor Breena Maldonado (ph) -- she had the foresight to stay in the city just in case something like this happened. So she was actually very accessible.
She met us at the hospital. Six hours later, we gave birth to our second son, Cole Prata (ph). And we were -- after we gave birth, we were put upstairs to recover, and we knew that it was kind of a tenuous situation with everything that was going on with the weather and everything that was going on, on the news.
The hospital itself had shut down. The emergency room had shut down pretty much all functions except for labor and delivery and maternity and pediatrics, you know, basically, so that women, you know, that went into labor -- you can`t control when you go into labor -- would at least have someplace to go in the hospital in this situation.
So we were there recovering, and about eight hours later, 8:00 PM, the nurses came around and said, you know, Just so you know, Con Ed called and said the power may go out. If the power goes out, there are subgenerators at NYU Hospital, and we`re going to, you know, try to ride it out here. We put you on the safe side of the building facing west, not east, so we weren`t getting the strong winds off the East River, and we were really just hoping to just ride it out until the next morning.
But sure enough, the power went out, you know, about a half hour, hour later. The generators kicked in, and so the emergency lights came on, and we thought, OK, so we`re OK. The nurses are here. The doctors are here. This is the best place we can be with a newborn child. And shortly after that, about a half hour after that, the backup generators went out.
POLITAN: Oh, my!
CHU: So then we were plunged in the dark. At this time, you know, you could hear all the winds howling. You`re pretty far up in the building. You can hear, you know, the tarps in nearby construction sites flapping around. And it got a little scary, got a little hairy, but we felt really comfortable.
You know, with a baby that`s just a few hours old having all this medical staff around, they did the best that they could. They were really great. They kept everyone informed. Everyone was using their iPhones, their Blackberries as lights. The nurses went around and got flashlights. They were scrambling to get batteries. They were doing everything they could to try to just kind of reassure us that we were at least in a safe building. Nothing was -- no windows were flying of or anything like that.
But at about 11:00 o`clock, 11:30, we started noticing the water was gone because there was no longer any pressure in the pipes because the electric was out. And that`s when we knew that we could no longer stay there.
And they said -- you know, they were coming around again and telling us that there`s an evacuation plan in place, that we would be evacuated to another hospital that had full power in the city, and that the plan was starting to kind of materialize, and that within the next two hours, so by about 2:00 AM, we would know exactly where we were going.
POLITAN: Would you consider this an easy delivery or a difficult delivery, Margaret?
CHU: The delivery itself was -- I don`t think anybody...
POLITAN: It was probably easier than what took place afterwards, right? Unbelievable.
CHU: The delivery itself wasn`t that bad. I think we were actually one of the lucky ones because we delivered while we still had full power, which means that there are fetal heart monitors going on, so that, you know, the doctors can see how the baby`s heart is doing while you`re having labor.
Unfortunately, there were women that came into the hospital, one of which I think was one of my doctor`s patients, who had to be delivered with flashlights.
POLITAN: Wow!
CHU: That`s like kind of delivering in the dark ages here, literally.
POLITAN: Absolutely. Cole looks so beautiful, by the way. Congratulations. I want to bring in Dr. Jake Deutsch. Dr. Deutsch, let`s talk about delivering a child in the dark.
DR. JAKE DEUTSCH, HACKENSACK MEDICAL CENTER: That`s a tough one, but in these situations we have to be prepared for anything. And at the hospital that I worked at, we did have a delivery that was in the ambulance bay because you never know what`s going to come in.
And we saw a lot of respiratory problems, a lot of patients that had issues with their medication. The sickest patients generally have to suffer the most, dialysis patients. Anybody that needed to have respiratory treatment really became a big problem for us.
POLITAN: You know, right now as we speak, 700 patients being evacuated in New York from Bellevue Hospital. That`s taking place tonight. I saw earlier tonight the ambulances lining up -- there they are -- getting ready to move these patients.
Dr. Deutsch, how about that process of trying to relocate 700 patients in the midst of what is going on in New York City?
DEUTSCH: That is about as tough as it gets. And these are the situations that we, as a hospital, as an emergency department are skilled at dealing with. We actually had about 60 patients that were transferred from a hospital nearby because of issues related to the storm.
And luckily, we have the process prepared for and people that are expert in dealing with this. So there were large buses that transported a number of patients. There`s a triage process in place so that we know who`s really sick, who needs to be re-evaluated.
And what was really great is the nurses that were the patients` nurses at the original hospitals came with them and they were able to be moved immediately to their floor. So it wasn`t too taxing on the emergency department, which was getting other patients coming in.
But as you can imagine, the difference between 60 and 700 patients is astronomical. So that is going to be a difficult task. You don`t only have the risk of dealing with the patients and their already existing medical problems, but new developing problems, such as infections, exposure, dealing with the mechanical equipment that we have, the respirators, the pumps. I mean, this is -- this is medical heroism at its best, if I`ve ever seen it.
POLITAN: And you see them right there. They`ve called in the National Guard for this one, Mike Brooks, the National Guard helping get those 700 patients out of Bellevue and relocate them to some hospital that actually has power tonight.
BROOKS: Right. And apparently, they`ve taken the more critical ones, they evacuated them earlier, Vinnie. So we`re probably going to see a line of ambulances outside of the hospital, outside of Bellevue for the next couple days as the National Guard helps get them out of there, get them loaded up, because they`re probably going to have to bring them downstairs.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) Now I got nothing of my husband, my son. No nothing (INAUDIBLE) passed away. It`s all ruined down there, every ounce of it ruined!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The further you go down, the houses are engulfed completely. Completely.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everything`s gone!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t know where to go. I don`t know what to do. And I don`t feel safe in my house!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`m devastated over this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course you are.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`m devastated!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
POLITAN: I`m Vinnie Politan, in for Nancy Grace tonight. There you saw New Jersey governor Chris Christie speaking with some of the folks who have lost so much -- the anguish, the devastation of what Sandy has done to New Jersey.
You`re talking about two million people -- no power. Imagine that, no power! You`re looking at homes that were first washed away by the storm surge, then burning to the ground because fires are breaking out.
I want to go to Rita Cosby, investigative journalist, who joins us from New Jersey, not the Jersey shore but north Jersey, Hudson County, Hoboken, New Jersey, where I saw pictures of the National Guard coming in, rescuing people from their homes.
RITA COSBY, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Yes. In fact, Vinnie, we just came back from there, and it`s a pretty dramatic sight. Part of Hoboken actually looks a bit like Venice, Italy. You know, we felt like we were sort of going and floating on top of the water. We went with the National Guard.
And the situation here, Vinnie, is pretty dire. I talked to the mayor here. I spent a long time with her here today, Dawn Zimmer. And she was very desperate. I mean, she clearly said, We are in big-time trouble. They need food. They need water. They need fuel to continue operating some of these National Guard vehicles.
And everybody pretty much, they would say about 90 percent -- think about this -- 90 percent of the 50,000 residents here in Hoboken do not have power. That means they do not have hot water. They do not have heat. And it`s a pretty cold night here.
And as we were touring around, Vinnie, just to give you a sense -- I mean, we could see -- you know, it was coming up, the water. They`re worried about a little bit of high tide. They have receded the water by using some pumps. Here are some of the -- you can see right now, these are some of the vehicles coming by with the National Guard going out and doing some rescues.
But they are particularly worried about elderly people and those with medical emergencies. And as I mentioned, we just got back about half an hour ago, and we saw an elderly woman who needed dialysis desperately, and her family was literally standing outside, begging. And they were just crying and so happy when we pulled up and were so happy that at least there were some folks coming to the rescue.
But they`re literally going house to house, knocking on doors saying, Are you OK? Do you have food? Do you have water? And also telling people not to get in the water because the water that is standing around is contaminated, very dangerous.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re getting our first clear look at the devastation caused when Hurricane Sandy blew ashore and turned into a superstorm.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At the height of the storm, all you saw was transformer explosions and sections of New York City just going black.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I never thought it would be this bad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I came all the way to the top of the house.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`m standing here. I`m (INAUDIBLE) my home (INAUDIBLE) my car. But I`m alive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
POLITAN: Floods, fires, destruction, people homeless, people looking for help. The president visiting New Jersey today, trying to comfort some of the folks, saying that FEMA will help, Governor Chris Christie saying people -- the government will help. The National Guard is out helping folks. But you can see the despair, and it`s all because of superstorm Sandy.
Tom Sater, meteorologist, I`m calling it superstorm Sandy. Is she still super?
TOM SATER, METEOROLOGIST: She`ll be super in the history books and the textbooks. I can`t believe it. It`s a shell of a storm herself, but Sandy is still up in Canada, but look how large this is. Unlike landfall with the strongest winds, with the storm surge in Jersey and New York, the last 24 hours have been in the Great Lakes, causing fits for them. They`re getting seas coming off Lake Erie into Cleveland. They`ve got flooding right now in the metro area, the Cuyahoga River. In D.C., they`ve got flooding on the Potomac. In fact, old town Alexandria is seeing a couple of feet of water there.
Look at West Virginia. Finally, blizzard conditions are lightening up and the snowfall, too, up to three feet for them and western Maryland. If nothing happened east of there -- and we could only wish nothing happened there, but if this was the only story in town, this would have led every newscast in the country.
Look at all the states -- Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, all with one to two feet. They had snow in parts of Michigan, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, flurries in North Georgia, for crying out loud.
And now the concern, Vinnie, is the cold. There was sunshine today over the devastation spots in Jersey and New York, but that means the clear skies allow the temperature to drop. Notice the temperature right now, 47 degrees. Those that lost power, any warmth that was in their home is long gone. So it feels like 47 inside their home if they`re there without power. It`s only protecting them from the winds.
But I got to show you the trend because it`s going to get worse with the low temperatures, and I think this may be conservative. We`re looking at the drop in New York to go from 44 to 40 to 39, and it could drop from then on.
The other concern, Vinnie, is those strong winds in the Great Lakes could slide underneath what`s left of Sandy in Canada and move into the areas of concern with the power outages this weekend. That could give fits to power crews trying to restore the lines. If the winds are strong enough to keep them from getting these lines up, that means a delay by a day, maybe two, to get restoration for those that need power.
So it`s an unending story,. And I`ve got to tell you, the computer models that we use to forecast this -- one computer model, that was 12 days ago, that hinted at this, and it came true -- the same computer model -- I don`t want to, you know, alarm anyone too much -- is hinting at another storm. Now, again, it`s more possible that this will not happen. But if I join you again, Vinnie, I`ll show that model with you and let you know when that may occur.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sandy flooded the Jersey shore, New York subway tunnels and LaGuardia Airport.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Runways are flooded.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There`s nobody around. I don`t know where to go. You`re trying to get out of a window. You know, you`re up to your neck in water.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The black smoke`s coming out of the ground.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The fire crew is on the scene.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The beach is gone. The parking`s gone. The road`s gone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I saw the garage on fire!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People were coming out with all kind of stuff, everything, whatever you could think of from juices, sodas, waters, cigarettes, TVs!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The wind brought down scaffolding, toppled trees and cut power.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s no power as of now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We could easily have been killed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
POLITAN: I`m Vinnie Politan in for Nancy Grace tonight. We`re taking your phone calls. We`re talking about, of course, the superstorm Sandy leveling so much destruction. We talk a lot about what happened in New Jersey. We`re talking about what happened in New York, but that`s not all of it. There is snow in West Virginia, feet of snow.
I want to go to Cindy, who is calling us from West Virginia tonight.
Cindy, what is the situation where you live?
CINDY, CALLER FROM WEST VIRGINIA: Well, I live in a small town, Ranale, and our nearest big city either way is 30 miles to Louisburg, 55 to Beckley, West Virginia, and our town is probably about a mile long, a half a mile wide, and we`re completely circled in the mountains, and we often get a lot of snow. It hits the top of the mountains and dumps on us. We`re just locked in.
Our power has been off and on and off and on, not completely out. But today the wind had subsided and that was, you know, good on the people because the wind was so strong on Monday and yesterday. Today has been an accumulation of snow and misty rain. But we probably had three feet, easily three feet of snow around, and they have been able to clear. And I did venture out from my little apartment today and I heard chainsaws going, so --
POLITAN: The trees must be down. The snow is heavy, knocks down the trees.
CINDY: It`s very heavy.
POLITAN: Yes.
CINDY: I was born and raised in Mississippi so I can sympathize with the people in New York, New Jersey, through many hurricanes and tornados and devastation. But I`ve lived for a little over 20 years here in West Virginia, and this is the wettest snow I`ve -- the wettest, heaviest snow I`ve ever seen.
POLITAN: Well, Cindy, stay warm and stay safe tonight. Thank you so much for calling.
I want to go to George Nicholas, CNN iReporter in Jersey City, New Jersey.
How are things tonight, George?
GEORGE NICHOLAS, CNN IREPORTER: It`s eerie out there. I mean we`re lucky that this building has a backup generator, that`s why we`re able to communicate. But to put it in perspective, it`s Halloween right now, and it is against the law to go outside. There`s martial law going on right now. And we`ve been told that if we go outside, they -- you can get arrested.
POLITAN: Let`s go to Mike Brooks on that.
Mike, you know, you`ve got a situation where you`ve got to keep people safe. And when it gets dark and there`s no power, it`s really dark. We`ve had reports of looting taking place. How important is it for people to stay indoors?
BROOKS: If there`s a curfew, I would heed the advice of the authorities and stay inside.
I was just reading on my Twitter account that Yonkers put a curfew in effect for tonight, too. Vinnie, I tell you, with the looting going on, we had some initial looting going on on Coney Island. Our affiliate WABC said that basically has stopped. They put a lot more cops over there with some of those light towers so -- you know, they`ve got that under control right now because they were on -- they were on Neptune and Mermaid Avenue yesterday, but, you know, and wreaked havoc, but NYPD, they`re on the job tonight.
Some of the lights are going off back down around the World Trade Center site, Vinnie, so eventually as the lights start to come on, I think that threat will lessen greatly. But if there`s a curfew, stay inside. Don`t get locked up.
POLITAN: Next to Jersey City is Hoboken, New Jersey. That`s where investigative reporter Rita Cosby is tonight.
Rita, what are you seeing on the streets tonight. I mean I see some people walking behind you right now.
RITA COSBY, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, AUTHOR OF "QUIET HERO": Yes. In fact, I just pointed that out because I was kind of surprised to see them. We haven`t seen too many people in this area and there is a curfew. You were just talking with Mike about people going out and about. The mayor pleaded and said, look, after 7:00, I would hope everybody gets off the roadways, because it makes the search and rescue efforts so difficult for them if there are people out there that are capable. They`re looking for people who are on emergency need.
The other thing -- one thing that was so startling, Vinnie, that I found really surprising, I mean, you and I have covered a lot of stories over the years, the chief of police here in Hoboken was telling me, you`re not going to believe this, in the emergency operations center, they have got state, federal, local here helping them, they have one hard line.
A lot of their cell phones are not working. And in the police station they have two hard lines. They are communicating bypassing notes, almost like the civil war era, it almost seems. That`s how archaic but that is how disabled this city is. And they`re saying that power will probably not come back on because two substations were flooded here, absolutely flooded. So there really is a blackout.
You`re seeing lights because we`ve got our generator, we`ve got the lights from the truck, but it is pitch black and it`s also full of water, so it`s pretty scary. And they are not expecting electricity. The mayor has told probably seven to 10 days. That`s a long time, especially for anybody who`s elderly, sick, no food, again, no heat, no hot water. That`s a long time.
POLITAN: I want to go to HLN anchor Mike Galanos who is also outside in Toms River, New Jersey, across the bay from Seaside Heights, New Jersey.
Mike, are you seeing anyone out tonight?
GALANOS: No, it`s pretty eerie because a lot of the lights I see, I see some police vehicles here. They`re flashing their lights, some TV crews with their lights, but if those all went out, it would be eerie dark here right now.
And yes, there`s not a lot of activity, Vinnie, because just to my left here that`s pretty much the roadblock. You can`t get into Seaside Heights from here.
POLITAN: Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from New York.
Dr. Gupta, I want to ask you about what is happening at Bellevue right now. We`re talking about 700 patients that need to be relocated from that hospital. How tenuous is that? How difficult is that? How dangerous is that?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it`s a real challenge, and I`ll tell you, you know, I`ve not seen anything quite of this scale before. I covered a lot of storms and a lot of hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina. This is -- this is the oldest continuously running hospital in the country. A lot of patients, as you mentioned, serves a real need in this part of the community.
And you know what happened -- what happened was that they sort of realized that today the pumps, the oil pumps that were providing fuel for the generators simply were more damaged than they thought. They were sort of keeping it going by literally creating this bucket brigade up 12 flights of stairs, people handing bucket off the person up, up, up, 12 flights of stairs to keep the generator fueled with oil, 40 gallons of oil an hour. But when they realized the pumps weren`t just going to come back online, they realized they had to evacuate.
It`s tenuous, as you mentioned. They`ve got to take patients all over the city. They called hospitals to see what kind of space they have. Patients aren`t always in their own rooms or even rooms per se, they`re sometimes in recovery rooms or the operating room, so it`s an ongoing process. It`s still ongoing behind me. It`s been going on all day.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wish we had taken the warning seriously.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The water came in like a river.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We tried to stop it. We just -- we put towels down. We had the sandbags down. It just -- it was rushing in.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They saved our lives. They truly saved our lives.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We couldn`t tell if the fire was 100 yards or it was a mile away. It was just so bright, we thought we were going to have to go jump in the water. It was terrible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
POLITAN: I`m Vinnie Politan in for Nancy Grace tonight. Devastation. I mean that`s the word that you have to use when you talk about what this superstorm has done to so many in so many different states. We`re talking about power out in 15 different states. Fifty-four people so far that they found have lost their lives in the United States as a result of Sandy.
I want to go to New York City at Bellevue Hospital right now, evacuations under way for 700 patients inside that hospital.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us.
Sanjay, when it`s time to evacuate a hospital, 700 people, how do you decide who goes first, who goes second and who`s going to get out of there last?
GUPTA: Well, you know, it`s basic medical triage, Vinnie. You know, you can take care of the sickest patients first. And even yesterday, and somewhat anticipating this, they started to get rid of the patients from the ICU, meaning they transferred them to other hospitals around the city. And then you go further and further down the line.
One thing I can point out to you, I don`t think you`re going to be able to see this right now, Vinnie, but behind me there was about 50 ambulances lined up just about throughout the entire day. Just more recently they started to park some of these buses over here.
Vinnie, again, I don`t know if you can see that, but these buses, they`re not ambulances, they`re larger buses that are going to be able to take care of many patients at once, obviously patients who aren`t as sick and not requiring as much care.
POLITAN: Unbelievable situation. And Sanjay, how about the doctors? Because these folks who were working, the doctors and the nurses, and the rest of the staff, at home, their houses may be under water, their families may be in trouble. How do you get the important work done that they do knowing that your own world may be in trouble?
GUPTA: I`m really glad you asked that. I mean so many doctors, you know, have come up to me today and talked about their own personal stories, and it`s exactly as you described. I mean they`re dealing with their own -- their own impact of the storm on their lives, but many of them have not left since the storm occurred.
You know, they have been here, they have been sleeping here without power. It`s obviously dark at night. It`s cold. They don`t have enough food and water in many of these places. So it`s quite remarkable. And I`ve seen this over and over again. I think it really galvanizes people to take care of these patients.
Like all of the patients from Langone Hospital which is down the road over here, to Mt. Mount Sinai, a little baby, the two-pound baby who was transferred in the middle of the night on Monday night and the doctors and the nurses stayed with that baby for the entire journey.
So you`re absolutely right, Vinnie, they just keep at it.
POLITAN: Gregory Prata is a proud new father. Little baby Cole was born at NYU hospital, but that hospital had to be evacuated.
Gregory joins me now.
Gregory, first of all, congratulations. Beautiful, beautiful baby. What was it like and what would you like to say to the folks at that hospital who helped you, your wife Margaret, and your baby Cole?
GREGORY PRATA, FATHER OF NEWBORN BABY EVACUATED FROM NYU HOSPITAL: Well, Vinnie, thank you. It was just an amazing experience to be a new father again. And then it`s just crazy to go through what we went through two nights ago. And the professionals, medical professionals that were there did an amazing job. Many of them were on triple shifts. They were tired themselves. They wanted to go home, as you were just saying.
And yet when those lights went off, when those power generators went off, they went into auto pilot mode themselves and knew that they had to get a job done, which was to get all the patients safely out of the hospital, and they did so. It was organized chaos, but they did it.
POLITAN: Gregory, how about the story you`re going to tell to little Cole when he gets a little older?
PRATA: He`s going to be a popular kid in school.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: One transit official says the New York subway system has, quote, "never, never faced a disaster as devastating as this."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For the first time we`re able to see the floodwaters and the destruction.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: There are trees down, there are some power lines down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please be careful with any wires you see on the ground, assume they are live. Take no chances.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
POLITAN: I`m Vinnie Politan in for Nancy Grace tonight.
Danger. Another word. When you talk about this superstorm. The danger as you waited for it, the danger as she came and now the danger in the aftermath.
Jack Nacmias joins me. He rode out the storm in Breezy Point as his house flooded, despite the warnings from everyone.
Jack, thanks so much for joining us. I know you`re in Brooklyn tonight. I know you`re safe and sound, but I want to know what you were thinking about you and your family as you stayed in your home as this ferocious storm rode in to town.
JACK NACMIAS, HOUSE FLOODED, CHOSE NOT TO EVACUATE IN BREEZY POINT: Oh, boy. I should have listened. It was -- it just came very, very quickly, and the water came up very fast. The last evacuation we had was a -- like, a water balloon fight. So no one really took this -- and I didn`t take it --
POLITAN: You didn`t take it seriously, Jack?
NACMIAS: I didn`t take it seriously, and what I want to do is save the house and by me staying, even though I watched the water come up to the first floor, all of my neighbors` houses were literally destroyed and I was able to save my house with a generator and my son, James, helping me.
I have a 96-year-old mother-in-law who was with us. And we rode out the storm. And we`re all fine. And the Coast Guard came and evacuated us. And that`s what should have been done. When you got an evacuation, the Coast Guard should come and when you have to leave, you have to leave. There`s no staying behind. And -- but we made it. The house is OK. It`s just a little wet.
We got about eight feet in the basement of water. The windows broke. The water came gushing in. It was like the movie the "Titanic" where all the water just came right in and just the pumps couldn`t handle it, so I had to disconnect it from the generator, but I kept the rest of the house powered up. The refrigerator and all the lights and we were able to basically save the house.
We lost a few cars and a jet ski floated away, but we`re all alive and well, and thank god that no one got hurt. And no one got hurt and no one in Breezy Point got hurt. We lost 110 homes. It`s a very tight-knit community. And each neighbor looks out for the next. My next-door neighbor had a boat in his living room, so it was pretty bad and the water came pretty fast. The Atlantic meant Jamaica Bay, we were literally under water.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
POLITAN: I`m Vinnie Politan in for Nancy Grace tonight. The great thing about the folks who watch this show, who watch Nancy`s show, is that they have big hearts and they want to help.
I want to go to Steve Bayer, national spokesman for the Red Cross.
Steve, people have big hearts. They`re watching this devastation. They want to help. What can they do?
STEVE BAYER, NATIONAL SPOKESMAN, RED CROSS: Well, we`re not a government- funded agency. The thing that we ask people to do is to contribute to the American Red Cross. You can go to www.redcross.org. You can go to 1-800- REDCROSS or you can even text a $10 donation to Red Cross 90999. It`s really appreciated. This is going to be an extremely expensive disaster.
The other thing people should do is to download the Red Cross (INAUDIBLE) app for their smartphones. You can go to either the Google store or the Apple store and download the app which will give you what to do before, during, and after a storm.
POLITAN: Great idea, Steve.
(CROSSTALK)
POLITAN: I want to go to Rita Cosby, quickly, in Hoboken, New Jersey. She`s outside.
How would you describe the emotion in that town where so many people are being rescued?
COSBY: You know what, I can tell you, tears of joy and glee when they see the National Guard, but a lot of people are very concerned especially when they heard today, the mayor did a press conference, when you hear seven to 10 days, it`s rough last night, it`s rough tonight. It`s cold. Imagine what it`s going to be like seven to 10 days from now. No food, no water. It`s going to get pretty desperate here if they don`t get the help they need.
POLITAN: Absolutely. All right. Thanks to everyone. Next, more coverage of the aftermath of superstorm sandy with Dr. Drew.
(END)
