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New Day

Hurricane Laura Slams into Gulf Coast with 150 MPH Winds. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 27, 2020 - 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.

[05:59:19]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is a special edition of NEW DAY. It's Thursday, August 27, 6 a.m. here in New York, and we do have major breaking news this morning.

One of the most powerful hurricanes to ever make landfall in the United States is tearing through the south as we speak. Hurricane Laura is the strongest storm to hit Louisiana in more than a century.

The Category 4 hurricane, it made landfall around 2 a.m. Eastern Time near Cameron, Louisiana. It had winds of 150 miles per hour. That is very nearly a Category 5 storm. Forecasters are warning of unsurvivable storm surge, as high as 20 feet or more.

We're getting some of our first pictures tracking the storm, tracking the surge. We're trying to connect to as many people as we can to get the best picture of the devastation as the sun and the light comes up.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Nearly 400,000 customers are without power in Texas and Louisiana. Interstate 10 is closed in some parts of Louisiana because of flooding concerns.

It was 15 years ago this week that Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana, killing more than 1,800 people. And the storm that is hitting right now is more powerful than that.

You may remember that 40 percent of people who died there in Katrina drowned in the floodwaters.

So we have reporters along the Gulf Coast covering this monster storm all morning for you. And we begin with Marty Savidge. He's live in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where the eye just went through.

So tell us the experience there, Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Yes, there was a brief respite, but it was extremely brief, and then we were hit again with the backside of this hurricane. And it continues to pummel this area. Lake Charles has been hammered like this now for hour after hour after

hour. We're actually not out in the storm. It's not possible on the windward side to even try to stand upright. The wind is still too fierce. We're inside what is a heavily reinforced cement parking deck. But even in here, there is destruction and damage.

Power is out throughout much of the area. You continue to hear things ripping apart in the darkness beyond what is generated live here. And we know that there is damage.

The problem is, no one can give you an exact amount, because some people saw bits and pieces here. Others saw a building go, and they were able to get out quickly when the eye went by.

So we are hearing of flooding, also in downtown Lake Charles. Amazingly, we thought this area would be flooded out. I don't want to jinx it. It hasn't happened so far.

But the storm outside, if I could take you, is just still roaring. The devastation when daylight comes up is no doubt going to be extensive -- Alisyn and John.

BERMAN: All right, Marty. I'll take it. Let's go straight to Gary Tuchman right now, who is also in Lake Charles.

Lake Charles, we should tell you, is a city of some 80,000 people, and it sits so precariously about 30 miles from the coast, up a channel, frankly, so in serious danger of inundation from water and floods.

Gary, tell us what you're seeing.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Alisyn, I'm in a different part of Lake Charles from Marty, and I've been out exploring a little bit.

This is an example of some of the devastation we're seeing. This truck tipped over on its side right now. You know, I've been covering hurricanes since the 1980s, and this one has been uniquely frightening.

For part of the hurricane, I was on the 12th floor of a hotel, and at times, it felt like being in the house that Dorothy Gale was in at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. You felt like it was going to fly away.

Indeed, it also felt like we were experiencing an earthquake with dozens of aftershocks. The room kept shaking. The bed kept squeaking. The curtains kept shaking. The water kept moving in.

And it sounded like a combination of a Boeing 747 going down a runway and a freight train going down the tracks. It was so loud for hours. I mean, 150-mile-per-hour winds. The winds here in Lake Charles were sustained at 125 miles per hour, for hours.

This is the strongest hurricane in 150 years in the Gulf of Mexico, and the strongest hurricane ever in the state of Louisiana. But it's still nighttime here. And what I keep thinking about right

now is how frightening this is for the families who didn't evacuate. It's really important to point out that a lot of people were scared about evacuating because of the pandemic. This is the first time in our modern meteorological history that we've had a pandemic during hurricane season. So people were frightened about leaving.

And I'm thinking right now, it's still dark outside here. People in their homes, some very small homes with their children, how scary this must be for the children here in this city.

But right now, this hurricane is not over. This is the back half of it. And when it becomes daylight, we'll get a good look, and we'll see what has happened to this city of Lake Charles, which is the largest city in southwestern Louisiana, the fifth largest in the state.

John, Alisyn, back to you.

BERMAN: Hey, Gary, listen. I know the winds are fierce there and not over yet, but one of the big concerns in Lake Charles is the storm surge. What sign, if any, or what are you hearing about the water situation there?

TUCHMAN: Right. So we're very close to the river right here. And it's the Calcasieu River. This is Calcasieu Parish. The parish is the Louisiana equivalent of a county.

This river, there is great expectation that the beach that is here on this river will be gone. There's a man-made beach. We're not able to see it right now. It's just too dark. But I can tell you when I was just walking through that parking lot where that truck is, the water was up to my -- just below my shins.

[06:05:10]

So we just don't know, and we won't know until daytime. We've talked to officials here, and they're just not sure how much water damage there is.

There was great -- One thing I must stress, and we don't want to overly scare people, so this is a very important point. There was talk that there could be a storm surge this far north. And we're about 30 miles as the crow flies north of the Gulf of Mexico. There is fear there would be a storm surge of up to 20 feet.

I don't see that anywhere I've gone so far, and I haven't heard that from emergency officials yet. So that's the one piece of good news I can tell you.

But there's a lot of damage. This hotel I was telling you about is a well-built casino hotel with lots of slot machines and gambling equipment. They want to protect that. So it's the most -- probably the most well-built building in the city. And there is lots of damage to the hotel.

Refuse was just flying all over the place during the heart of the beginning of the hurricane. Then the eye came through, and now we're in the back of the hurricane. The winds are coming from the opposite direction, and we'll see what happens with these winds.

CAMEROTA: Gary, wow. Your description is so vivid, and it really helps us understand why it is so frightening there right now. Thank you very much. Stay safe. Obviously, we'll check back with you throughout the program.

We want to get to Chad Myers right now. I know you've been listening as well, Chad. And what about that storm surge and everything you've just heard from our reporters?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: The water is still going up for Lake Charles. Now, the water didn't go up overnight, because the winds were from the east. Now that the eye has gone by, the winds have changed a little bit to be out of the south. That's going to try to push that water. We know there's water in Cameron. That's going to try to push that water up the river. And we've gone from about 1 foot to 4 1/2 feet in the past two hours.

Does it keep going? I don't know yet. We're going to have to see that wind direction. We know that the eastern part, or east of the eyewall, is where most of that water pushed into the bayous, pushed over the land.

And I've been getting a lot of questions here. Does Lake Charles look like Mexico Beach with Matthew? No, it doesn't. Because Lake Charles had a wind event. The winds in Lake Charles were over 120 miles per hour gusting for over one hour. That's an EF-2 tornado on the ground over your house for one solid hour.

Now, that doesn't make the damage that we saw in Mexico Beach. The damage we saw in Mexico Beach was the water damage. It was the storm surge. So Cameron, Holly Beach, those are the areas that look like what we saw in Matthew.

What we're seeing here is the wind event as we push you in a little bit closer, and now it's getting very close to Fort Polk. A very populated area up there. A lot of buildings up there.

And the wind is going to continue at about 100 miles per hour. We're down to a Category 2 right now. But Fort Polk right there, you're on the worst part of the eyewall. The winds are going to continue to increase for the next 20 minutes and then finally go away.

Three hundred thousand people already without power here. And the power lines are going to be down for a very long time. This is going to be a storm system that knocked down so many trees and so many power lines that power line systems are going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up, because in some spots where the water was, nothing is left.

Now, we haven't seen the 20-foot storm surge yet. The biggest one I've seen is 11 feet, and that was down in Cameron. Whether we get some more buoys and some more measurements, I don't know, but for now, that was where it was. And this is what we were talking about, where we thought the water

would get all the way to I-10. So far, it doesn't appear like it did. So far, so good on that. But water still getting blown in that direction.

I used this earlier, and I hate to use it so many times, but if you take your cup of coffee that you're holding right now and you blow on the coffee to get it cool, you see the little waves that your breath makes. Those waves are pushing to the other side of the coffee cup. Those waves are still pushing water onto and over the dunes and the beaches here across parts of southern Louisiana. So it continues to do its damage.

Eventually that damage will get to Shreveport. There'll be trees down in Little Rock. Winds are going to be 60 or 65 there. And so that's going to be enough to make wind damage and trees down. When you spread out the damage like we're going to do, all the power companies just can't focus in one spot.

Look at the purple area here. That's 110 miles per hour or more. And we know that that happened. We know it happened. Alexandria, probably in about an hour, you're going to be 79. Monroe, you're going to be 55 and continuing to go up. Little Rock, your winds are going to be 67 miles per hour later today. That's enough to bring down trees and power.

BERMAN: Hey, Chad, the highest wind gust recorded in Lake Charles, we understand, was 137 miles per hour, which is very powerful.

MYERS: Sure.

BERMAN: Obviously, it's still dark there. What are you looking for as the light comes up? What answers do you want over the next few minutes and hours?

MYERS: I've seen some disturbing pictures from storm chasers, because I have them on my Twitter feed. I know who they are. I follow them on purpose.

And there are buildings without windows. There are high rises without structure. There are just things flying around: foam blocks that must be the roof off of something. There is so much wind damage out there, that it does truly look like a tornado hit Lake Charles, when, in fact, a hurricane hit with tornado-like winds.

[06:10:17]

So that's what I'm going to look for. We're going to look for the power outages to be long-lived. These are going to be here for a month or more.

Think about how long it took just to pick up the pieces from Isaias. This is a much wider storm, many more power lines, above-ground power lines, because you can't bury power in the bayou. So all of those poles that are down are going to have to be rebuilt with new poles, because they are broken. The trees. It may take days to cut their way into Cameron, because

they have to use so many power -- chainsaws and power equipment to get into that town. Or if you're stuck somewhere, you're going to have to take power lines and chainsaws to get out of there. And at this point in time, we know there's a lot of people without power, but some of those power lines could still be live. So, there's the rub on both sides.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chad, thank you very much for all of that. Obviously, you'll be standing by throughout NEW DAY.

So joining us now is retired lieutenant general, Russel Honore. He was the commander of the joint task force responsible for coordinating military relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina, which of course, devastated Louisiana 15 years ago this week.

And General Honore, three years ago this week, I remember when we were together in Houston, after Harvey, and there was so much flooding. And we went out with the Cajun Navy, and we were doing those rescues in condos of people who were -- were trapped. And so you have so much experience with this. What are you seeing this time around?

LT. GEN. RUSSEL HONORE (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Well, I went into Cameron about six hours after landfall, got there around noon, in Hurricane Rita. So I can only visualize what might little be left in Cameron.

As Chad was saying, we may have gotten a break on the projected surge, but I would suspect much of Cameron is pretty bad torn up, particularly all the reconstruction that had happened since Hurricane Rita. And I feel so sorry for them.

The good news is, Alisyn, this time, they got most of the cattle out. During Hurricane Rita, about 5,000 cows died, and then we spent another four days after we arrived in Cameron Parish helping them recover the remainder of the cattle.

So in Lake Charles, I can't imagine what it must look like, because Hurricane Rita, which was a -- not nearly as strong a storm, really tore all the trees up in Lake Charles, which made it almost impossible for the first few days to be able to do the search and rescue, even.

And my other concern is, I don't have a good feeling that we had a full evacuation of Lake Charles. As a matter of fact, I know we didn't. And I'm just hoping for the best, because those sustained winds with those homes in Lake Charles, a lot of people could be hurt.

And as you go further north into Beauregard Parish and up toward Fort Polk, a lot of folks live up there in mobile homes. And I only fear, knowing that Cameron was fully evacuated, a big effort in Calcasieu and Lake Charles to get people evacuated, I hope the same was done further north. Because this could be a very devastating swath (ph) up through Louisiana and places that -- where people don't live in very sturdy homes. That is my biggest concern.

BERMAN: We have some what -- what do we have? We have radar of Cameron to get a -- zoomed-in radar of Cameron to get a sense of what that looked like when it hit.

General Honore, obviously, during a hurricane like this, during a storm, there's the before, the during, and the after. I want to make one thing clear. We're very much in the during at this moment. We are in the now. This storm is hitting now. So what needs to be happening now?

HONORE: Right now, the -- getting assessments as best as you can. And the best thing is, until the wind die down, is everybody hunker down. And get what intelligence -- what weather intelligence you can, and talking to people where you can.

But right now, it's -- you can't get helicopters up. We were fortunate enough in Hurricane Rita, we maneuvered two ships from Hurricane Katrina that followed Rita in. And it was just fortunate that they were already in the area, because we had used them in Katrina. And they picked people up on Pecan Island, which is between Vermillion and Cameron Parish. People that we thought had evacuated hadn't evacuated.

And the United States Navy under Admiral Kilkenny and Brigadier General O'Dell with 1,200 Marines followed that storm in and went into Cameron Parish. And the good news is the lower part of Cameron Parish had been evacuated.

But you're going to look for total devastation of structures, is what I think we're going to see, Chad. I'm sorry.

BERMAN: It's all right. I'll answer anything. It's John Berman here along with Alisyn. We are tracking this storm all morning long. General Honore, we're going to need your help, so please stand by.

We are going to reach as many people as we can in the path of this hurricane, as it moves up through Louisiana, Lake Charles, and head north. We're going to speak to a storm chaser who has been out in the hurricane all night. We have some brand-new images of the destruction. That's next.

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[06:20:08]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: If you are just joining us, let us bring you up to speed on what has happened with Hurricane Laura overnight. It made landfall in Cameron, Louisiana, as a Category 4, which means 150-mile-per-hour winds. They are still in the thick of it.

The big concern is storm surge. Luckily, that hasn't happened yet, but we are just at the beginning of this morning. And you can see how hard it's hitting Lake Charles, Louisiana, this morning. Look at those winds and all of the rain.

Of course, this storm is also hitting Texas. And that's where we find Derek Van Dam. He's in Beaumont, Texas.

So what's the situation there, Derek?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, good morning, Alisyn.

You know, this is all about a game of miles here when we're talking about hurricane chasing. We got battered in Beaumont, Texas, but just to our east in Lake Charles, they got absolutely crushed last night. And -- and we recognize that.

We were on the outer fringes of the strongest part of major Hurricane Laura. Regardless, just as soon as we thought we were out of the woods, we thought that the storm had well passed, a strong band came through, knocked out our power at the location that we're located, and now we join the hundreds of thousands of people without power.

And speaking to one of the Beaumont police officers yesterday, she described previous hurricanes knocking out some of the electricity in the rural parts of southeast Texas and Louisiana for weeks. So people need to be prepared for that.

Now, listening to some of those harrowing accounts from Martin Savidge and Gary Tuchman in Lake Charles, just about the noises, the familiar noises during the peak of a hurricane, that whistling, the train sound. Just imagine riding out a hurricane of that force if you're bunkered, taking shelter and in place at your own home. I mean, this has been a terrifying overnight period for the people who decided not to evacuate, unfortunately.

There are lots of resources ready to be dispersed. We were at a national incident command center yesterday set up by FEMA. They've got ambulances. They have swift water rescue boats, all ready to be deported -- or placed and ready to move out to some of the worst- impacted communities, especially when that sun rises this morning at 6:51 local time. We'll get a full idea and the scope on just how bad the damage actually is, especially just east of the Beaumont, Texas, region.

Back to you.

BERMAN: All right. Derek Van Dam, please stay safe. Keep us posted.

We did just obtain brand-new video -- You can see this here -- that shows how strong the wind is. Just blowing over that RV.

CAMEROTA: That's exactly what General Honore said that he was worried about. That there are so many structures and homes that people may be in right now, like mobile homes, that would not be able to withstand these winds.

BERMAN: Hurricane chaser Brandon Clement shot this video. He joins us now on the phone from Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Brandon, give us a sense of what this was like as the storm passed over.

BRANDON CLEMENT, HURRICANE CHASER (via phone): Well, believe it or not, this was actually early in the storm, just as the eyewall was approaching, so it got a lot worse after this.

But that first big gust inside the eyewall, you can actually hear it coming. I was in an open parking lot with trees on the other side of the parking lot, and I could actually hear it coming. I even told the (UNINTELLIGIBLE), here comes a big gust. And of course, I could see it racing across the parking lot. I mean, as soon as it hit the RV, it just went.

BERMAN: And how long? You said this was in the very beginning, before the wind got even more fierce. How fierce was it and for how long at the worst of it?

CLEMENT: Luckily, it was move -- the storm is moving pretty quick, so it wasn't like I was in Hurricane Harvey, in the eyewall of it for four hours, in the most intense winds when it just stalled and sat there. And that was right along the coast.

Luckily with this one, it wasn't like that, but the intensity of the winds, it just cranked up very quickly. We went from tropical-storm- force to hurricane-force to Cat-3-force within a matter of maybe hour and a half. It was very, very fast, very sudden.

The eye actually passed right over us, but it was shrinking in size as it passed over us. So when -- when it got on top of us, we could actually see the clear skies, almost see, like, a stadium effect in the clouds, just seeing them race around us, with the calm winds over us. But it didn't last very long.

So the eye big looked on radar, but when it actually passed over us, it was quite small. Luckily, the south side of the eyewall has not been nearly as strong as the north side. Some dry air was getting wrapping in, had a little break in it. But still getting some intense winds and some heavy rain right now.

BERMAN: Obviously, we're waiting for the sun to come up or the light to come up, at least, in that area to get a sense of the extent of the damage. We don't have that just yet, but you were out moving around in it. So how much did you see?

[06:25:06]

CLEMENT: I've got some really bright lights in my car, made specifically for this, so I got to see a good bit. And I have a feeling once the light does come up in Lake Charles, everybody is going to want to turn it right back off. It's not going to be pretty.

Lots of damage, a lot of trees down, lot of power lines, roofs to well-built homes are removed. I haven't been able to go around a whole lot of the city yet, but what I have seen is similar to EF-2, weak EF- 3-type tornado damage, but just over a huge area.

BERMAN: Brandon, any sense of the water? Because the storm surge was the thing that forecasters were most concerned about. Unsurvivable storm surge is what the National Hurricane Center were warning about. What signs have you seen yet, if any, of rising waters? CLEMENT: I haven't seen any. I was expecting some to mount (ph), along

with everybody else. Luckily, the hurricane took a little bit more northerly path coming in. If this thing had been 15, 20 miles to the west of our location, we'd have had southerly winds right up the bayou into the lake and caused, you know, catastrophic storm surge into Lake Charles.

Now, along the Louisiana coast, nobody has had highs out there yet. I'm sure when we do, the area of Cameron, Holly Beach-Cameron to the east is going to be catastrophic.

BERMAN: All right. Brandon Clement for us in Lake Charles on the phone, out there all night long, sending us back these remarkable pictures to get a sense of just how powerful Hurricane Laura was and really still is, as it moves up Louisiana into the south.

CAMEROTA: It's hitting Lake Charles as we speak. You can see on the radar right now. So they are really in the thick of it. We've heard the highest winds there, 137 miles per hour. This is very scary stuff.

We just heard from General Honore that he fears that a lot of people were not able to evacuate or did not. So we have our reporters staged all along the Gulf Coast, and we will be bringing you all of this live hurricane coverage throughout the morning. Stick with us.

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