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Blizzard of 2015 Pounds New England, Life in Boston Frozen; Rhode Island Governor Gives Blizzard Update; Over 10 Inches of Snow in Rhode Island; De Blasio Criticized for Over Preparedness

Aired January 27, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The blizzard of 2015 just pounding New England right now. It will not let up until late tonight. More than a foot of snow, well over a foot of snow, already hit Boston. They could get more than another foot.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hurricane-force wind gusts have knocked out power to the entire town of Nantucket, the island off the coast of Cape Cod. There's coastal flooding which is expected to get worse as high tide hits. The good news is millions of people have heeded the warnings to stay home and off the roads. Nearly 8,000 flights have been canceled, mostly in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia at this point.

BERMAN: As we just said, this hour Massachusetts seems to be absorbing much of that storm's energy. Life around Boston frozen in place.

BOLDUAN: Brooke Baldwin is there, frozen in place, as well, or not so much.

(LAUGHTER)

Brooke, how is it looking? You have come across brave souls out in it with you.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I know. I do. I was up here in Boston for the weekend. They said stay in Boston. We hear about snow that's about to happen. I said, OK. So far, I was out here until 1:00 in the morning, same story, different day. Continues to come down. And just let me show you trudging through it a little bit, it is just below my knee. I'm 5'9". About 18 inches here in the city of Boston.

Yes, as you mentioned, Nantucket is the huge worry down the cape, coastal flooding. Pictures we've seen are tremendous. That's what we'll listen for when we hear from the governor, Charlie Baker, in half an hour. He'll update us.

The other part of the story -- hi, guys. I have Whitney, Grace and Dave with me. What Boston blizzard isn't complete without cross- country skiing? They live in the north end here in the harbor. You compared this to the blizzard just two years ago?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 2013, right. Very similar. The cross-country skiers and flag football players and otherwise just plows. This is why we live in New England.

BALDWIN: This is why you love New England.

Grace you were just saying no school today and?

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: No school today or tomorrow.

BALDWIN: What are you doing today while not in school?

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: Making a snow fort with my friends.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: This is wonderful. Everybody in Boston gets the snow. You were saying you all have been skiing on some of the streets and how have they looked that you've seen so far?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Think that they're doing a good job clearing the streets. It's not good for skiing but great for people who need access to their homes.

BALDWIN: Great.

Thank you all very much. Continue your skiing.

So Kate and Berman -- bye, you guys -- people here -- it's so quiet. It's very rare. I was just walking through and it's a ghost town.

But, again, I can't stress enough the issue. The cape, Nantucket, island of Nantucket, off the grid. We're talking 13,000 people without power. Roughly statewide, we hear about 35,000. That number continues to increase. So we'll watch for those numbers when we hear from the governor in just about 25 minutes from now.

Back to you guys in the nice warm studio.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: I want to watch you try to walk.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: I think we should give you 30 seconds of walking to show how much snow is on the ground there and how difficult it is to move around.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: It's incredible.

BERMAN: Go ahead. BALDWIN: No, it's just incredible, just waking up this morning and we were up late last night and it just continues. And Jennifer Gray, one of our meteorologists, was out here, she was saying it's been coming down multiple inches an hour. You know, when you think about a lot of people out here remembering the blizzard of 2003 and that was a huge 27 inches. Here in Boston, 18, but Framingham, 30 inches. That's half hour out of the city, 30 numbers.

BERMAN: Sure. Right down the pike. Head out the pike and they are getting 30 inches of snow. It's serious there.

Brooke Baldwin, thank you for braving the storm for us. Keep on walking. BOLDUAN: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Yeah.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next, we'll head from Boston and head up to Rhode Island, hard hit Rhode Island, where power outages. Look at these winds. Big part of the story. High winds are packing a punch this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love it. I love the snow. I love driving in it. I love everything to do with it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Roads are bad out here. A lot of snow. Not the temperature this time. It's the snow.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Welcome back. Let's head over to Rhode Island now where the governor, Gina Raimondo, is giving an update on storm conditions and how that state is faring. It began just moments ago.

GOV. GINA RAIMONDO, (D), RHODE ISLAND: Let me give you an update. First, I want to say thank you to all of the people of Rhode Island who have heeded our call to stay home. The travel ban has been extremely successful allowing folks to plow the roads. Very few accidents. No fatalities. Nothing serious. So thank you to the people of Rhode Island for hunkering down.

Let me give you a sense of what's happening and what we expect. I just got off of a plow. It is very bad. The roads are not safe. The snow is still coming down, several inches an hour. We still have wind gusts 40 miles an hour. Visibility is very poor. The snow will continue to fall heavily throughout the afternoon. We expect at least an additional five to six inches between now and 4:00 and 5:00. Heavier bands may pass but we anticipate additional snow throughout the evening and the strong winds, 40 to 50-mile-an-hour will continue throughout the afternoon. High winds until 4:00 or 5:00 tonight. Overall totals are about the same, about two feet around the state. It's going to be very cold tonight.

Now, we have to worry about wind chills. Minus 15 degrees with wind chills this evening. DOT, Department of Transportation, has over 400 vehicles out. They've been working through the night. Again, roads are still not passable but we have 411 vehicles out there doing their job. The side roads and the onramps and off-ramps and intersections are particularly dangerous.

I see all of the reporters nodding. You know what I'm talking about.

Take this seriously. Those side roads and intersections are very bad. DOT is holding its own, I would say. Holding it's own, but it continues to snow.

National Grid is working very hard. We started the morning this morning with just over 1,000 power outages. We are now down to about 570 power outages. I just got off the phone with Tim Moran from National Grid --

BERMAN: That's the new governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, speaking there about the conditions in Rhode Island. She says it's bad right now. It's not safe to be out. It is still snowing. They expect five to six more inches of snow and wind gusts 35 miles an hour or greater. She wants people to stay at home.

It's interesting. In Rhode Island, Massachusetts, you have people who just became governor, just sworn in a few weeks ago, this is trial by fire.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: You have to really do the job very, very quickly. It's interesting to see.

BOLDUAN: It's a real test. So far, she thanked residents for heeding warnings and staying off the roads for very few accidents, but looking to tonight. It's not over for a lot of New England. The storm is slow moving. It's still kind of sitting there and wind chill is going to be a huge problem in Rhode Island tonight. Negative 15, she says. They are concerned about that and they'll look into that.

Let's go to Rhode Island. We have our correspondents on the ground. Sara Ganim is in Providence, Rhode Island, where they've been at more than 10 inches of snow have fallen where you are with several more coming throughout the afternoon and even into tonight.

Sara, what are you seeing?

SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's actually pretty remarkable that they've had so few problems here in Providence, Rhode Island. I just interviewed the mayor. He said aside from a gas line fire, they've been very lucky. They felt prepared for this and have not seen many problems.

To give you an example, since the travel ban last night at midnight, there have been zero car accidents in this town. This road is completely snow covered. The snow is still falling. It's still very windy. Still feeling strong wind gusts up against our faces as we stand out here. It is truly remarkable that they've had so few problems.

Another example, they have only about 90 customers without power in Providence right now. The kind of snow that's falling is light and dry.

Also the mayor says they were very prepared for this. And people have been heeding the warning not to come out on the streets. Only in the last maybe hour or so have we been seeing people actually coming out and braving this weather. They've been listening, whereas, in other towns, people go out in the streets and play in the snow. That's not the case here. It's very much a ghost town in Providence, Rhode Island -- Kate?

BERMAN: Sara, two amazing things you just said there. One, you are standing in the middle of the road. We'll have to take your word for it because I see no evidence of that.

BOLDUAN: I know. It looks beautiful but we keep saying it's dangerous. Are you in the road or on the sidewalk?

GANIM: We are right in the middle of the road. I know it's whiteout conditions but that's actually a traffic light right there. This is the main square in Providence, Rhode Island. This is Kennedy Plaza. This would normally be bustling with commerce and tourists and people going to work. I'm right in the middle of the road. This is a park that's frequented by people. An ice rink over there that, at times this morning, we could barely see it. We were just a few feet away from it. That's how windy it's been. Gusts are tropical-storm force gusts. It's very apparent if you are standing out here that it's very windy and very cold.

BERMAN: A car did just drive by. There is a road there. All right.

All right, Sara Ganim, for us.

(LAUGHTER)

BOLDUAN: He doesn't trust you for some reason, Sara.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: The good news is only a few dozen people without power in the Providence area. That is remarkable.

Whether you are in the middle of what's happening right now in the northeast or you're on the outside but you want to help, you can do so. Logon to CNN.com/impact. We'll have the latest updates from government agencies, good information on how to stay safe through the worst of this very big storm that is not over. The address is CNN.com/impact.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next for us, being warned and being prepared for a monster storm. We'll take you inside the intense coordination discussions, probably a lot of debate, between states and the federal government about how to handle a blizzard. When is the right time to pull the trigger, if you will, on closures and on states of emergency? All of that ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Pretty empty out here. It's funny for the streets of Boston to be so empty. People seem like they are staying inside.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's pretty nuts out here.

(LAUGHTER)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: This is a live picture of New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio. Believe it or not, he has been criticized for overreacting because the storm didn't hit too badly in New York City. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL DE BLASIO, (D), NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: -- 10 inches. Six, seven, eight inches has been more typical in most parts of the city. Still some snow happening today. We might pick up a few more inches. But obviously the worst is past. So put simply, we got about half as much as what a lot of the projections had been or even under half as much.

But, again, if you look at eastern Queens, where I was this morning, some parts of eastern Queens got 10 inches of snow. Just literally 18 miles to the east, in Ronkonkoma, there were 20 inches of snow. So literally, a distance of 18 miles, twice as much snow in that part of Long Island. Farther out, in Suffolk, 25 inches already. So there's no question how serious this is, how serious it was projected to be and the kind of precautions that we had to take.

The good news is the people of this city understood how serious the threat was. They took the travel ban seriously. They got off the roads after 11:00 p.m. and that allowed the Sanitation Department to do an extraordinary job. I spent this morning in different parts of the city. I was out in Bayside and Howard Beach, in Jamaica Center, I was out in Staten Island and Highland Boulevard and other parts of Staten Island. What you saw was an extraordinarily effective response by the Sanitation Department. That is in no small measure because people did a great job of getting out of the way and helping Sanitation to do what they do so well. They, of course, were out all night, nonstop. And they continue to work intensely to keep clearing the city up and getting us back to normal.

Recapping, at 7:30 a.m. today, in coordination with the state of New York, we lifted the travel ban. Staten Island ferry was back up immediately at that point. The subway system, the MTS, as you've heard, quickly coming back to life. It will not get the full weekday capacity today. It will be the equivalent of a Sunday schedule, which is basically about 60 percent of normal capacity.

Now, the clean-up again under way, going well. But it's going to take today and into tomorrow to continue that clean-up. So the reminder to people is, even though we didn't see the worst, it's still very cold out there. It's still very slippery. Driving around, you do need to take precautions. It will be slower. I saw a few accidents along the way as I was driving around this morning. People need to be careful. And the farther east you go in the city, the more careful you have to be, particularly eastern Queens, again, which bore the brunt of what the city experienced. Sanitation will be working nonstop --

BOLDUAN: That's the mayor of New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, talking about the storm, how the city has weathered the storm, if you will. He said the roads are still dangerous and slippery. But this city was largely spared.

It also has gotten him a little bit of criticism for maybe overdoing it, blowing it out of proportion, if you will. That brings up this discussion of, what's the balance between preparing for a storm or blowing it out of proportion?

Let's bring in someone who will know these discussions, Juliette Kayyam. Juliette is a former Homeland Security official.

Juliette, you worked in Boston. You've been involved in these discussions, the tug and pull of when to shut down travel, when not to. How do you think the mayor fared? Do you think he's deserves the flak he's getting for blowing this out of proportion since New York City didn't get hit so hard?

JULIETTE KAYYAM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Not at all. You have to be guided by science and what the meteorologists are telling you. All signs were that this was going to be very bad. For him to ignore it would have been complete negligence on his part. As the mayor, every single governor along New England followed suit, declaring emergencies. Look, predicting storms and their intensity is an art, not a science. Precipitation, weather, wind all play in and factor into the decisions that any mayor or governor is going to make and they make a judgment call. In this instance, simply because the snow wasn't as high as we anticipated in New York City doesn't mean that the precautions and preparedness were for naught. There were no lives lost. People have electricity. They will get moving again tomorrow.

And up here in Boston and Massachusetts, people are staying home because it is pretty bad. So give the guy a break, I say. I think that the criticisms are just somewhat ridiculous when we know what the weather services were forecasting just 24 hours ago.

BERMAN: Yeah, snowstorms and plowing and the like can be a no-win situation for mayors.

But, Juliette, just to be clear, there are trade-offs. Some people might say, why not shut down the schools and close everything down all the time? There are economic consequences here, consequences for family who have to deal with child care. You do give up a lot when you decide to do what Mayor de Blasio did?

KAYYAM: These decisions aren't made lightly. They are made often in Emergency Management command centers. What factors into them is, when is the snow hitting? If it hits overnight and you can plow early in the morning, get people moving. Everyone's incentive is to get commerce moving, kids moving to school, people into businesses. But the primary obligation of government is to ensure that people are safe and that they don't -- and aren't harmed. So you're constantly balancing that. And sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong. And that's sort of just the nature of the game. But in the end, it was the right judgment call across the entire eastern seaboard.

BOLDUAN: The mayor said it was a "better safe than sorry" scenario. I have to agree with him on that one.

Juliette, it's great to see you. Glad to see you hunkered down in Cambridge. We'll see you very soon.

BERMAN: Let's get to Rosa Flores right now. Rosa is in New London, Connecticut, that is coastal Connecticut, an area that has been hit very hard.

Rosa, I believe you have the mayor of that city with you?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're absolutely correct. This is Darrell Finizio, the mayor of this town.

Thank you so much, first of all, for keeping me updated.

He's been so gracious throughout this storm.

Now, you were telling me that one of the key things is power and access to roads. And that's what you have here. That's what saved the city.

DARRELL FINIZIO, MAYOR OF NEW LONDON, CONNECTICUT: That is what's very critical. We have full power in the city. We've maintained it throughout the storm. And we've been able to keep our main roads open, which will, when the storm abates, allow us to get to the side streets.

FLORES: Mayor, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

I'm going to toss it back to you.

BOLDUAN: All right, Rosa Flores in Connecticut for us. Thanks so much.

BERMAN: Our best of luck to you, to the mayor and all of you in the northeast still dealing with the storm for several more hours.

That is all for us. I'm John Berman.

BOLDUAN: And I'm Kate Bolduan.

"LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield is starting right now.