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New Day

Hurricane Michael Strengthens as It Barrels Toward Florida; Nikki Haley Resigns as U.N. Ambassador. Aired 6-6:29a ET

Aired October 10, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[05:59:16] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, October 10. I'm John Berman live in Panama City Beach, Florida. Alisyn Camerota is in New York. This is our special live coverage of Hurricane Michael.

And if you went to sleep eight hours ago, thinking the storm was bad, you are waking up to find out it is catastrophic. It has been upgraded to a Category 4 storm. Maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour right now; expected to be 145 miles per hour when it makes landfall later today.

The storm surge, which is the deadliest factor in any hurricane, will also be horrible, up to nine feet where I am right now. I will not be able to stand here several hours from now. It will be 13 feet or higher east of me. It could devastate some of these coastal communities.

A Category 4 storm has never hit the Florida Panhandle. This is history. Very, very dangerous history. We've been getting new updates all night from the Hurricane Center, and continuing to get worse as the storm moves out over the very warm water over the Gulf. We are charting every twist and turn as this storm inches closer to land here.

Some two million people in Florida live in counties where there have been evacuations. Several million more are in the path of this storm as it moves past the Panhandle into Georgia and into the Carolinas. This will have a major impact over the next few days.

Let's get right to Chad Myers in the Weather Center for the very latest on the forecast -- Chad.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: John, Hurricane Center now putting out updates every hour on the hour, and we went with the 140 miles per hour. Last hour, they kept it at that, 140, although the pressure did get lower, which means the storm is still getting stronger. It's still in the warm water, and it still has more time to pick up that speed, as you said, up to 145.

New tornado watch was just issued, though. That includes Tallahassee, Apalachicola and where you are, as well. All of the storms that roll on shore here will have some twists to them. Many of them could come onshore with -- we call it a water spout, but it turns into a tornado, actually, when it hits land. Probably EF-1, EF-2. That's not really the main thread here. It's this eye that's now on radar. It's the core of the storm. At 140 miles per hour, or 145 miles per hour, think of it this way.

It's an EF-2 to an EF-3 tornado over that rea. But instead of lasting 30 seconds, it lasts for one hour. So there's the main area of concern, as the middle of the line here -- we don't have much to go here.

We're not going to get too many lefts or rights here from this storm at this point in time. Panama City right through here. Panama City Beach right on down to Port St. Joe, down toward the Windmark area here, Apalachicola. All the water moving into St. Mark's. St Mark's likely gets flooding worse than they've ever seen before. I was there in Dennis when the water got pushed up into St. Mark's. Boats were everywhere. Grocery stores were destroyed. Bowlings (ph) was just a mess out there. This entire area, all the way towards the Steinhatchee River will, again, be in the realm of that 13-foot storm surge.

Also the wind. The wind is going to be a big deal, 100 miles per hour or stronger for a very long time. And not just for the coast. This isn't going to die five miles inland. Tallahassee in big-time danger today as it moves inland. A hundred miles per hour in Tallahassee. Trees are going to be falling everywhere.

A lot of students have been moved into better housing and into stronger places, especially the off-campus housing, moving them into stronger places on that campus, taking care of the students there.

But then we get back over here into the Carolinas, and trees will begin to fall again, with only a 55- or 45-mile-per-hour wind, because they're already in saturated ground.

So John, big hurricane warning here for us all the way up, even into parts of Georgia. There will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, without power for a very long time. Power lines, power poles down across a lot of the area. This is an area that hasn't -- it hasn't taken a hit, so things haven't fallen down. Now they will fall down, and the trucks are already on the way to put them back up, but weeks maybe, maybe months without power for some people.

BERMAN: Chad, thanks very much. We've already been warned to expect much worse power outages from this storm, from Hurricane Michael than they saw from Hurricane Florence just a few weeks ago.

I do want to note, it is raining here now. We're expecting rainfall of 10 inches over the next day, but that's not even the worst of it. It's the water level behind me that they're most concerned about. The ocean right now, about 20 yards, 25 yards out back there.

But the water already two and a half feet higher, high tides at about 1 p.m., when the eye of this storm could be hitting. That is not a good thing at all.

I want to go now east to Apalachicola. That is where Derek van Dam is. That is where we could see some of the worst of the storm surge.

Derek, what are you seeing?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, I'm on Highway 98. Looking over to my right, this is one of the two exit routes or entrances into Apalachicola. Now pan to the left: this is where the water is coming from.

Virtually a deserted city of 2,000 people, hoping that number is closer to zero, with the majority of the people leaving and heeding the evacuation orders.

We just got word that the sewage system has been turned off in the city of Apalachicola. The water is still running. Storm surge here projected at 9 to 13 feet. This is unprecedented for this area.

This is incredible. I came across this statistic. There have been over 215 landfalling hurricanes since 1951. This is a Category 4 storm. Only 10 percent of those hurricanes have made it as a Category 4 storm. This one will surely be on the top end, Category 4, maybe a Category 5.

While we're talking about mandatory evacuations. That started late last night. We have seen emergency vehicles rolling up and down these streets. They've been knocking on people's doors to make sure that no one is home. And it looks as if the majority of the people have left.

The concern here going forward, of course, well, the power outages and not being able to navigate the roads across this area, because we expect the trees that are surrounding this region -- we're actually surrounded by a national forest -- to close and clutter up the roadways well after Hurricane Michael passes through the region. So that's obviously one of the major concerns here on top of the storm surge, on top of the heavy rain, and on top of the 140-mile-per-hour potential winds -- John.

BERMAN: All right. Derek van Dam over in Apalachicola, Derek, thanks so much. I think we have a live radar -- we can take a look -- which will show you that some of the outer bands are starting to cover the Florida coast and drop the rain that you're seeing around me right now. Not raining too hard, but it is raining.

And around where I am, which is Panama City Beach, the roads are already covered with a little bit of water. This is very, very flat. Water pools very easily here. So any water creates a little bit of flooding, the type of water we are going to see could be a major, major problem.

I want to go west now, because this storm is having a wide, wide impact. Over to Destin, Florida. Such a beautiful vacation location here for so many people. Our George Howell is there -- George.

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, yes, so on the western side of that zone that will certainly feel the impact of this storm, we just heard about the strong winds -- that's right -- will knock trees down for sure. Power lines will be coming down. The rain, we've seen it off and on, certainly, for the last 3 1/2

hours here in Destin. That can cause substantial flooding. But what I want to talk about is the storm surge. The storm surge is something to watch.

We've been keeping watch here, just at this pier. This is going to be critical, because in storm surge throughout this zone, nine to 13 feet. Again, this is an area that I won't be able to stand in in the coming hours, because the storm surge could be quite significant. It is a historic storm, Category 4 storm.

Here's the thing. Some people chose to evacuate. Great idea. Some people chose to stay. They're going to ride this out. This part of the country hasn't seen anything like this, John, in quite some time.

BERMAN: All right. George Howell for us over in Destin. George, thanks very much.

Joining me here now on the beach is the city manager of Panama City Beach, Mario Gisbert.

Mario, you were with us yesterday, so helpful in understanding what this storm will do. What is your area of biggest concern as we stand here in the rain this morning?

MARIO GISBERT, CITY MANAGER, PANAMA CITY BEACH: The storm surge has been our biggest concern. Some of the good things that have happened is that the storm has changed its route, and now that it's coming in at midday, it's actually going to help us out some, because our high tide is at 9 p.m. tonight.

And again, as long as it stays on track with us or a little bit east, it's going to benefit us on the storm surge. So right now, with a nine-foot storm surge, most of the beach should be OK.

We've got a great evacuation on Front Beach Road and just north of it, so a lot of people left yesterday and the day before. So right now, if you ride up and down Front Beach Road, it's pretty much a ghost town. We have probably 50 percent of the locals that stayed but very few people on Front Beach Road.

BERMAN: Yes, I considered a second source for that. This place is completely empty. Very, very few hotels open, if at all. Nowhere to get food. All the shots are shops are completely closed. It felt very much like a ghost town, but you're saying that some of the locals have decided to stay.

GISBERT: Most definitely. And keep in mind, the hoteliers and the condominiums were very, very helpful in the plan. They went in door to door and were having people sign documents if they were going to stay and really advising people to leave. Some hotels and condos even turned off their elevators to expedite people leaving.

So again, everybody here locally that -- that was dealing with visitors was very helpful at helping them head back home. My own daughter is up in Montgomery, so I want to play it safe. BERMAN: We're talking about the storm surge. Where you are on the

beach right here, a nine-foot storm surge would absolutely come to where we're standing right here, in all likelihood. But the real cause of concern is the bay, St. Andrew's Bay, which wraps around Panama City Beach. That could be devastating.

GISBERT: Again, if it comes into the bay it has to go through a very narrow channel, which slows the process a little bit, and then once it gets into the bay, if you look at our bay, 80 to 90 percent of our bay does not have homes. We have a very unique bay, and it's not developed.

So the homes that are on the bay, and, you know, there's probably a couple thousand homes along the bay. Those are the ones that are in danger. Most of them are going to be up at elevation at least eight or nine, so they're right at the cusp of where that storm surge would have an effect on them.

[06:10:07] BERMAN: So when we went to sleep last night, I went to sleep. I'm not sure you got any sleep. You're the city manager here. It was a Category 3 storm.

A few hours before that, it was a Category 2. I woke up to Category 4 -- Category 4 storm and getting stronger. Can the buildings here withstand that? We're talking about 145-mile-per-hour winds?

GISBERT: Keep in mind, some of the older buildings that are here, including my old condo that was built in 1969, has endured every storm since 1969. So it's true and hard and based on that.

But all of the current building codes since about the '90s are going to be designed to 140- to 135-mile-an-hour winds, so it should be able to deal with this storm fairly well.

BERMAN: Let's hope. It's the upper limits of what they've been built to withstand, though.

GISBERT: Yes, but again, there's a factor of safety in everything that you do when you build a building so factors of safety are the best benefit.

The biggest thing that you really are concerned about are all the little loose items. You know, the signs that fall apart, the furniture that people leave out, and all those things fly and hit things.

And again, Florida has a great building code that protects against projectiles. So if those projectiles hit your window, they've got to be able to withstand that if they're built under the current code.

BERMAN: What's your message to the people who have chosen to stay and ride this out?

GISBERT: Again, find a good safe room within the house. Typically, it's a closet. It's a bathroom. It's a hallway. If you've got an area where you've got water rising, just play it safe. Try not to travel in that water, because you never known when an area is washed out. So stay at home, stay in a dry spot and just wear it out, weather it out right now. It's not the time to move.

BERMAN: What do people need to know about first responders in emergency facilities?

GISBERT: First responders are still staged here on the beach, and they will monitor as long as they can. They are not going to be able to go out and help people once the storm really hits. They've got to protect themselves and be here to protect the people that made it through the storm and to help safeguard people coming back into the storm.

So first responders are here. Police and fire are all staged. We're on 12- and 24-hour shifts. We have water and sewer personnel on 24- hour shifts. So everybody in the city is working right now but keeping everything operational and flowing and safeguarding.

But we can't rescue people at this point in time. So right now, we need everybody to just hunker down if they haven't already left. There's probably still another hour or so where they can leave, but if you're going to decide to stay, stay in a good, safe room and -- and just weather it out.

BERMAN: You're on your own, at least for now. Mario Gisbert, thanks so much for being with us. I have to say, you're exactly the kind of city manager Panama City Beach needs right now, a voice of calm, literally, in a storm, a very, very bad storm. Thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

All right, Alisyn, I'm going to go back to you. As you can see, it is starting to rain. It will rain. It's only going to get worse, and we are in for quite a 12 hours here.

CAMEROTA: John, things have really changed since you left the studio yesterday. I mean, it's only gotten more dangerous. Obviously, we didn't know that it was going to be a Category 4 as it is now.

And so can you just give us a little color? I mean, tell us about your odyssey of getting there and where you spent the night, et cetera.

BERMAN: Well, where we are right now, this location where we are right now initially, we had intended to do the whole storm here, do the whole storm coverage here, but it's just not safe in the type of storm we're seeing.

I'm not going to be able to stand anywhere near where I'm standing right now in five or six hours. After NEW DAY, I've got to get out of here and go a little bit inland, about two miles inland because of the surge. The water will be up to where we're standing, and the structure -- and you're not going to be able to see the building, but the structure that we had planned.

It's not safe enough. We don't think it's safe enough to stay in in a Category 4 storm. So we're moving about a mile inland somewhere safer. We drove through the streets here. I -- completely deserted. You heard Mario. City managers say that about half of the local residents have decided to stay. I didn't see any of them. They weren't out. They'd already been stuck inside their houses. You know, no food. Really, no lodging.

When we flew into Panama City Beach, this is something I'd seen before in Hurricane Florence, there were no rental cars. All the SUVs had already been taken by the National Guard and first responders who arrived early to stage. So they're ready for after the storm comes, but the people here have to endure the next 12 hours firs, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: John, I think it will really comfort our viewers to hear that you're hightailing it out of there one second after the show while you still can and you have an escape route already planned.

So John, thank you for being there. Obviously, we will be with you throughout the show and watch as conditions there worsen. So we'll be right back with you.

Coming up on NEW DAY, we will talk with the director of the National Hurricane Center, Ken Graham. And we will also have Senator Bill Nelson about how all of Florida is bracing for Hurricane Michael -- John.

BERMAN: All right. And when we come back, Alisyn, we're going to have a couple that did decide to ride out the storm here in Panama City Beach. We're going to ask them what their plans are and how they plan to make it through. It's our special live coverage of Hurricane Michael, back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:18:46] BERMAN: All right. I'm John Berman live in Panama City Beach, Florida. You can see the rain falling. These are the outer bands of Hurricane Michael, which is just now making its way toward the Florida coast.

The eyewall expected to make landfall sometime early this afternoon. And the breaking news, if you went to bed thinking this was a bad storm, again, you're waking up to find out it's catastrophic. It has strengthened as we speak.

It is a Category 4 storm. That is known as a catastrophic storm by NOAA standards. The maximum wind speeds are at 140 miles per hour right now, and it seems to be getting stronger. That's our latest update from Chad Myers a little while ago.

No Category 4 storm has ever hit the Florida Panhandle, so this will be historic. And this is why so many people along the coast here have been told to evacuate. More than 2 million people live in counties under evacuation orders. Still, some people have chosen to stay.

And joining me now, Jessica Ayers and Don Hogue. They live a little bit from where I'm standing over in Panama City. They have decided to stay at home and ride out the storm.

Guys, if you can hear me, Jessica, you first. Why did you decide to stay?

[06:20:05] JESSICA AYERS, STAYING IN PANAMA CITY DURING HURRICANE: We just wanted to be in our home, and we were not in an evacuation zone, so we felt like our home was going to be a safe place to stay.

BERMAN: And Don, tell me what are the precautions you've taken and what are the plans you've made to make it through the next 12 to 28 hours?

DON HOGUE, STAYING IN PANAMA CITY DURING HURRICANE: We first knew the storm was coming up. We did the usual things. We boarded up the house. We gassed up the vehicles. We stocked the pantry, a lot of nonperishable food items. And did everything possible to get -- get our home ready and be able to have at least a few days of food and supplies if anything did -- did go wrong.

BERMAN: Yes, peanut butter, Pringles and beef jerky, they are your friends during a hurricane. I understand, Jessica, you have a 4-year- old son who will be here with you through this. What does he think of what he might see?

AYERS: He's just excited to be out of school and have his grandma and grandpa stay with us and have the dogs here. So that's all he really cares about.

BERMAN: Yes, it sounds like a 4-year-old with his priorities intact. He's just happy to be out of school.

Now, we understand, guys, this beach -- the beach which is beautiful, you actually got married on this beach three weeks ago. I have to believe it looked very different then.

HOGUE: Yes, it looked great. I mean, we had a little red tide that came in but other than that, the hurricane that we had our eye on went on the East Coast so it really didn't affect us at all. So it was a beautiful day and couldn't have been any better, really.

BERMAN: So Jessica, you've lived here for a long time. You've been through these storms, and some of them have been bad. But again, the news overnight that I think surprised us all is that this storm is historic. Governor Rick Scott calls it a monstrous storm. No Cat 4 storm has ever hit the Florida Panhandle. So does that make you nervous this morning?

AYERS: Absolutely. I think that we're kind of jaded here in the Panhandle when it comes to hurricanes, because it's always going to be really terrible. And then it always ends up being OK for us. I think we get lucky a lot, so I'm definitely getting a little bit more scared, I'd have to say.

BERMAN: Yes, no, I am sure. I think all of us when we woke up and saw the Category 4 storm and growing, that was a little bit of a shock. And I have to say, I have driven through the streets here, and they are empty.

I mean, people are not out. People are taking precautions. You know, still, how's your house? Do you have a room to stay safe?

HOGUE: Where we are, we'll have our interior bathroom. You know, we've already kind of mapped that out as being our one place that we can all fit in. We can all be safe. So I mean, that's -- if things go from bad to worse and see what this storm really does, that will be our one place to -- to hunker down.

BERMAN: Yes, and it may be that you're in there for a few hours as the eye of this storm hits and moves inland. It's going to come as a hurricane and be a powerful storm for a long time as it moves, it moves over. We're expecting power outages, maybe thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people without power, and that could be a long time.

What do you think the next few days are going to be like?

AYERS: Well, we got a little lucky from my parents coming to stay with us, because they have one generator. So we're looking to hopefully have a little bit of AC in the house and maybe have the refrigerator cold, but we'll see how that goes.

But you know, I was here for Hurricane Opal, and that was when I was in middle school. And we didn't have power for, I think it was like a week and a half. So we went through it then, and we were OK. We can survive through no power.

BERMAN: Jessica, Don, you have each other. Congratulations on your wedding. I don't anticipate this is how you plan to spend your newlywed weeks, but it will only bring you closer together, so we wish you the best of luck going forward.

AYERS: Thank you. Thank you so much.

BERMAN: You know, Alisyn, I'm going to go back to you. Everyone makes their own decision here. They're taking care of parents. They're taking care of kids. They don't live in an evacuation zone, per se, but this whole area, obviously, very, very threatened this morning.

CAMEROTA: Well, I certainly understand their impulse to want to stay in their home, and I certainly understand their feelings now of getting more nervous by the minute. They perhaps did not anticipate just how bad this storm would be as a Category 4.

But John, we'll check back with you very soon. There is some other news to get to, because there was this surprising resignation, Nikki Haley calling it quits as U.N. ambassador. President Trump says he has a dynamite replacement. Who will it be, and why is she quitting? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:29:29] CAMEROTA: Nikki Haley making a surprise announcement that she is leaving her post as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the end of the year.

She says it's because it's time for someone fresh to take over.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, OUTGOING U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: There's no personal reasons. I think that it's just very important for government officials to understand when it's time to step aside. And I have given everything I've got these last eight years and I do think that sometimes it's good to rotate in other people who can put that same energy and power into it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. Joining us now to discuss, we have CNN senior political analyst John Avlon and former White House communications director for the Obama administration and CNN political commentator, Jen Psaki. Great to have both of you.

So Jen, is -- there's all sorts of speculation about whether there's a back story here. Can it be as simple as she's just out of gas, and it's that easy?

JEN PSAKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, Alisyn, it sure does seem like something --