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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Strong winds descending upon Mobile, Alabama; Alabama braces for Hurricane Ivan; Mississippi preparing for Hurricane Ivan
Aired September 15, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening from Atlanta where we are watching yet another big storm as it marches onshore leaving who knows what in its wake. For more than a month we have seen the storms come and go, the death, destruction and misery left behind.
There is no natural disaster that comes with more advanced notice. Forecasters watch waves become depressions, tropical storms and then ultimately hurricanes and their names become familiar, Charley, Frances, now Ivan.
There was a time when the storms had no names and no advance billing of course. A hundred and four years ago this week, a hurricane roared into Galveston, Texas, 10,000 at least died, the worst disaster in U.S. history.
Tonight, we all have fair notice and that means lives will be saved but despite all our technology to watch and model and predict these storms, we are powerless to do little more than hunker down and hope for the best.
No hunkering down allowed if you are in the rain-soaked whip tonight, however, first to Anderson Cooper in Mobile, Alabama, a headline please Anderson.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, the winds have whipped up considerably here over the last half hour or so, in excess probably of 60 miles an hour. We can't get an accurate reading at this point. The residents here have hunkered down as well for what they anticipate is going to be a very long night indeed -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Anderson Cooper not far from Mobile.
Gary Tuchman is riding out the storm in Gulf Shores, Alabama. We'll get to Gary in just a few moments.
And 60 miles to the west of Mobile, still very much in harm's way, Biloxi, Mississippi, that's where Susan Candiotti is, a headline from you Susan.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Miles. Yes, here we are just starting to feel tropical storm force winds as people here prepare for what Ivan has to deliver and flooding is one thing for sure -- back to you.
O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you, Susan. Ninety miles farther to the west they're breathing a little easier in the Big Easy tonight where we find John Zarrella, a headline from you John.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF: Miles, in the Big Easy tonight, people are breathing a little bit easier with residents evacuated and tourists in their hotels. The streets here are virtually deserted.
O'BRIEN: And that's a headline for sure. John Zarrella in New Orleans.
And someone who is never all wet when it comes to hurricanes, watching it from her perch in CNN's Weather Center Orelon Sidney -- Orelon, a headline from you.
ORELON SIDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I guess you missed me in Frances because I was wet then for sure. This storm, however, is being covered by Rob Marciano on the ground and he's going to feel some 135 mile-an-hour winds before the night is out -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Orelon Sidney, more from you in a moment.
We begin on the ground at the place with the bulls eye on it tonight. Ivan the ferocious bearing down on the city of Mobile and not since Category 3 Frederick (ph) roared ashore 25 years ago have folks along Mobile Bay faced a more dangerous storm.
Ivan is a Category 4 hurricane and, as it closes in, there are big worries about sustained winds of 135 miles an hour, towering waves in excess of 50 feet high and a storm surge that could send Mobile Bay 16 feet over the sea walls.
CNN's Anderson Cooper is there in the thick of it -- Anderson.
COOPER: Miles, yes we are in Mobile and it is that storm surge that so many people here are really concerned about. Some have said it could be as high as 20 feet.
Max Mayfield at the National Hurricane Center said to anticipate ten to 15 feet of water flooding the downtown area here in Mobile, Alabama and that will cause a lot of problems indeed.
As you know, there have already been two deaths in Panama City Beach, Florida, not too far from here. The hope here though is that people have been prepared. They have evacuated or tonight they are hunkered down because this storm is coming and it is coming on fast.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER (voice-over): As night fell, anxieties were quick to rise. The winds and waves kicked up pounding beaches with heavy surf and rain and carrying something new in the air, uncertainty and fear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a very powerful, very dangerous and unfortunately will probably be a very deadly storm. COOPER: The force of Hurricane Ivan's outer bands are battering hundreds of miles of coastline in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and the Florida panhandle. Nearly two million coastal residents in four states have already fled to higher ground or are under evacuation orders.
GOV. BOB RILEY, ALABAMA: Move north. Get out of harm's way and we'll rebuild that area as soon as we can.
COOPER: With Ivan's course aiming at Alabama's Mobile Bay, the mayor of New Orleans is warning residents against complacency.
MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS, LA: We are still implementing our disaster plans, getting prepared and trying to evacuate as many people as possible out of the city.
COOPER: New Orleans has imposed a citywide curfew until the danger passes. Louisiana residents with special medical needs are weathering the storm at the Super Dome while others have filled up some 33 shelters across the state. Emergency officials are warning everyone don't take chances.
MARTY J. EVANS, PRESIDENT AND CEO, RED CROSS: This is no storm to fool around and think you can ride out. People need to evacuate. They need to go to the nearest shelter.
MICHAEL DOW, MAYOR: I'm trying to get everybody to pack up and get in your car and spend the night in your car if you have to. There's no excuse to endanger your family by staying here.
COOPER: Ivan is expected to cause significant damage no matter where it strikes. Monster waves are tugging at coastal homes on the panhandle. Florida officials, still reeling from the destruction of Hurricanes Charley and Frances, are bracing for the worst.
LT. GOV. TONI JENNINGS, FLORIDA: We can replant the trees and we can rebuild the homes but we can't replace the people, so that's what today's message is all about, safety.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: And the worst, of course, is still yet to come but, as I said Miles, minute after minute these winds are picking up. It's raining. It's getting bad. We're already starting to see flooding in some areas but I mean we are getting very significant gusts here.
Even during that piece it's almost difficult to stand at times. You really have to push yourself into the wind and I'm parallel to the wind. If I turn perpendicular at this point, I am not sure I could actually even stand up. It is getting very nasty out here very fast -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Anderson, I hope you can hear me all right.
COOPER: I hear you fine.
O'BRIEN: Right now are those winds, they're clearly in the hurricane realm right now, right?
COOPER: Yes. We have a wind meter but frankly it's not really working very well in these winds, a little ironic there. Rob Marciano, CNN Meteorologist, said he thought these winds were in excess of 60 miles per hour sustained.
At this point, though, we don't have an official count. We're waiting to hear on that but I mean it is really -- the wind is just whipping through the downtown area here and, of course, as you know the river is right over there just a couple blocks away.
There is concern about that storm surge coming. We're right about Water Street and we anticipate it will be literally Water Street. By tomorrow morning it will be covered.
But, as I said, these winds are really picking up. I have not seen anything like this certainly here today or in any of the last two hurricanes in Florida that I covered.
I mean we got some strong winds, as you well know, because you rode out the storm with me, Miles. We got some strong winds with Frances but this is like nothing I've seen and we are anticipating even over the course of the next two hours during this special edition of NEWSNIGHT, we're going to be seeing a lot worse and we'll be here covering it.
O'BRIEN: Well, clearly these next two hours are critical. I'm curious. Where you are, Anderson, if there is a 16-foot storm surge as has been predicted for Mobile Bay, are you going to be under water where you're standing right now?
COOPER: Yes, I certainly hope that. That's not my objective. Well, I'll tell you where we are. We're in a hotel right basically on the river front but we're on the fourth floor of the hotel.
There's a sort of a -- whoa, hello. There's like a deck area but we're four stories above the ground floor. Now the ground floor is 12 feet above sea level, so if Max Mayfield is right, ten to 15 storm surge, the ground floor of this hotel is likely to be flooded.
We should be fine on the fourth floor. We're already seeing though, I mean there is some concern that some of the windows on this floor will blow out. We've sort of set up an office but we're ready to move inside the building and more to the interior of the building if, in fact, those windows do blow out.
But we're not anticipating actually being flooded out. The problem though is our truck, our satellite truck is down on the ground. It's about 12 feet off sea level.
So if the storm surge gets deep we should be fine but if it gets up to 15 feet, 20 feet, we may be off the air because our truck literally may go under water and may have to try to move to higher ground.
So, we're going to try to stay on the air and upright as much as possible or as long as possible and we'll see. You know, as you can tell it's blowing a little bit more now.
O'BRIEN: Yes. All right, Anderson, I'm going to let you go. We're going to come back to you in just a little bit. Obviously, Ivan is really bearing its brunt or beginning to do just that in Mobile and we'll be staying in close contact with Anderson.
As we all probably know by now, hurricanes churn around in a counter clockwise rotation and, as a result, it subjects the swath of land to the right of the eye to the worst beating.
CNN's Gary Tuchman is in Gulf Shores, Alabama, 50 miles to the right of Mobile Bay and the path of the eye. He joins us now via videophone. What's the situation there, Gary? You're also a little bit to the south, so you might be feeling the effects even more there right now.
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via videophone): That's right. We're to the southeast of Anderson, about 50 miles as you said, Miles, in Gulf Shores. This is a low-lying beach town and we can tell you that this town is completely evacuated.
We've walked up and down the main street in the beach town. We could not find one civilian who was there. I have never seen such compliance for any hurricane than this one.
People were scared and they got out and they were smart because five hours ago the beach town, the main street along the beach started flooding. The water was up to their shins and that was around 6:00 Eastern time.
The rain hasn't stopped and they're going to have a severe flooding problem. They haven't had a major hurricane hit in this area for 25 years since Hurricane Frederick. It's actually a quarter century ago this week when Hurricane Frederick came. They've never had a Category 4 hurricane (UNINTELLIGIBLE) but it's hitting right now.
Police were the only ones who were in the town. They actually left the intercoastal waterway crossing the bridge that crosses onto the Barrier Islands about two hours ago feeling it was unsafe.
So anyone who would want to go to that Barrier Islands now has the freedom to do so. The police aren't guarding it anymore but no one has gone over to the island because of the dangers involved.
In the streets right now there is wood floating around. There's a fence along the beach. The fence has actually blown over from the beach and is in the streets floating around right now.
And, to this point, we have not seen the trees and the power lines go down. Interesting, the winds here at this point, even though we're to the southeast of Anderson, don't seem to be as intense as in the city of Mobile right now, so we haven't seen the trees go down.
We've seen the transformers blow up already, not something we've seen during the last two hurricanes in Florida. We're just standing there and you hear a boom and you look behind you and you see a power line blow up. The power is still on in much of this area.
When we were in Fort Pierce for Hurricane Frances the other week, the power went out very quickly. So, far the power is on. We don't anticipate it staying on for very long but as of now it still is.
But we can tell you that people have truly evacuated. Interstate 65, the major north/south road from Mobile to the northern part of Alabama they put all the lanes in the northerly direction. They told everyone to get on their way.
They even advised people, this was such unusual information for people to go three hours north and if they have nowhere to stay sleep in their cars to get away from this -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Gary, let's talk a little bit. Is it high tide there now? Is that a concern that that would exacerbate the storm surge as Ivan comes ashore?
TUCHMAN: They're very concerned about that. High tide isn't for a few hours from now so they're anticipating rough timing of when the eye crosses and high tide to coincide, so they're certainly concerned about that.
But I will tell you that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) started even before the rain started coming down heavily. They're going to have a major problem. There's no question about it. It's not a big surprise and that's why people got out of there.
There are houses, dozens of houses, Miles, in this town on stilts right on the beach, not across the street from the beach, not two blocks from the beach, on the beach and on stilts. They're very concerned about those homes.
O'BRIEN: And, Gary, where you are right now are you on fairly high ground?
TUCHMAN: We're -- I would say fairly we're on moderately high ground. We're not as low as we were when we were on the Barrier Islands but we are in a safe place. We are standing by a hotel solidly built. We have production. We know how to take care of ourselves in order to give our viewers the information about what's happening outside.
O'BRIEN: All right, Gary Tuchman who is in Gulf Shores, Alabama watching the storm from there. That's a little taste of what it feels like on the ground with Ivan approaching.
Let's gain a little altitude now. We'll check in with Orelon Sidney in the Weather Center where they're using a full array of technology to track the storm for us -- Orelon, give us the latest.
SIDNEY: OK. Here's what we're looking at right now. This is the very latest information. We're still looking at the storm about 80 miles south of the Alabama coast. It's about 116 miles south of Mobile. The winds are still holding at 135 miles an hour. At 130, that's the breakpoint between Category 3 and Category 4 and we're looking at our pressure at about 931 millibars moving to the north at about 12 miles an hour.
Now, here's a couple of things I want to point out. We do have a little pool of warm water. It's just off the coast here and it looks like that's what's been helping the storm over the past few hours.
However, there is a little bit of cool water just off the coast and I think -- I don't think that's going to weaken the storm at all but I think it will probably keep it from strengthening very much more.
I don't think we're going to see a Category 5 landfall certainly but it's still going to be a dangerous, huge storm and I wouldn't be surprised to see this tick up a little bit as far as the wind speeds are concerned.
Let's take a look at the next graphic that I have for you. My producer, Mike Grogan (ph), helping me out tonight. This is what it looks like on the radar picture. You can see the eye very well to the south of Mobile. Here is Mobile Bay.
Extending back now we go to the west and there is New Orleans and, of course, off to the east here's Panama City. You can see that the entire Gulf Coast getting affected by this storm as these thunderstorms roll in.
We also had quite a bit or tornadic (ph) activity a little bit earlier today that I'll point out to you a little bit later. I think we may also have some buoy data now to show you what's going on as far as the wave action.
We did get some waves around 50 feet a little bit earlier just to the north of the eye and then as you went to the northwest we had waves about 21 feet. It looks like those waves, of course, will be continuing to work their way into the coast as we go on through the afternoon. So, those dangerous battering waves on top of the storm surge a real problem.
This now shows us the accumulated rainfall and some of these dark oranges and reds here are as much as eight inches but you can see up around Mobile so far three inches, five inches as you head down to the Barrier Islands and then you get a little bit heavier, of course, as you go on down southward towards the center of the storm.
In addition to that, we have had numerous tornado warnings. There is a tornado watch that's in effect until 2:00 a.m. This is way down from what we saw earlier. We had as much as eleven counties under tornado warnings. Now there are three.
We did, Miles, have two confirmed fatalities near Panama City, hopefully not seeing any more of those tonight -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Orelon, generally is there any pattern in those tornadoes when you see a hurricane? Do they generate out of a certain part of a hurricane or are they just random?
SIDNEY: Yes, they sure do. Generally, you'll see those in the right front quadrant of the storm and I don't know, Mike, if you can get me back to the radar quickly. I can show you what that looks like.
The center of the storm, of course, is down to the south. If you take it, cut it in half here and then cut it in half again, you get the right front quadrant of the storm. That's where your greatest storm surge will be. That's where your strongest winds will generally be and that's where you're also going to find most of your tornadoes.
And you can see we've got these little, these little indicators here showing where we show rotation in thunderstorms. Notice it's in the right front quadrant.
As this storm system then works its way on in, every location in this right front quadrant has the potential for tornadoes. This watch box is in effect until 2:00 a.m. Central time. You will see another one.
As soon as this expires, they're probably going to issue one a little bit further to the north and northeast in places like Valdosta, Georgia, Macon, Atlanta, perhaps Birmingham and Huntsville, depending on the track. We'll probably see a chance for tornadoes tonight and tomorrow morning -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Orelon, a word on the waves we've heard reported. Max Mayfield was talking about buoys out in the Gulf registering 50-foot waves.
SIDNEY: Right.
O'BRIEN: And I started thinking about 50-foot waves coming in on places like Mobile and that's not a good thing.
SIDNEY: That's bad news.
O'BRIEN: Do those waves dissipate at all as they come closer to shore or do they...
SIDNEY: No. No, they don't.
O'BRIEN: They don't.
SIDNEY: In fact, the waves get taller because the way a wave works is when you get into the shoreline when the depth of the water is about half the amount of the wave height, that's when the wave breaks.
And, of course, you're going to get into shallower and shallower water as you go towards the coast. So, what it's going to actually do is make the waves stand up even more than that.
And so, you've got your, what we call the wave set up, the sea level has been going up the past couple of days in these areas, and then you get the battering waves on top of that, as well as that bulge of water that's going to come in here with the eye of the storm.
This is going to be probably a near record storm surge I think in some areas. I think Camille's storm surge in 1969 was something about 25, 22 feet. This one's probably not going to be as much but it's definitely going to be one of the higher ones that you've seen along the Gulf Coast.
O'BRIEN: All right, Camille, there's a storm they still talk about in that part of the world. Orelon Sidney, thank you very much. Obviously, stay close. We'll be back with you quite a bit throughout the next few hours and actually throughout the night.
With Ivan bearing down on some 300 miles of Gulf Coastline, major evacuations began in earnest yesterday. Nearly two million people in four states have been told in no uncertain terms to get out of the way.
Here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Winds increasing on bridges leading to Biloxi and Gulfport beaches. Streets deserted except for a few trying to make it home past a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
Across the street from a floating casino, its owner spending the night with a few employees at his now evacuated hotel. Are you worried about the safety of your employees and you who are sticking around?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. We've got very few people here actually and everybody is sticking together. We're all in areas of the hotel that are what I would consider very safe.
CANDIOTTI: Earlier, we found others who decided against evacuating. Mary Katherine Adams is riding out Ivan with her husband and 90-year-old mother in this stately two-story home on the National Historic Registry.
(on camera): There's the Gulf and that's Highway 90 that runs along it and this is how close the water is to the Adams family home, yet they insist they will be safe from the storm surge. Let's hope so.
(voice-over): The family plans to hunker down on the second floor. Do you feel just a little bit nervous as the storm approaches now?
MARY KATHERINE ADAMS, RESIDENT: I'm a little too tired to be nervous. I may get nervous as soon as the wind starts picking up. And when darkness comes it's usually frightful because you hear sounds.
CANDIOTTI: Lieutenant Greg Federico, not thrilled with her decision to stay, but no one's being forced out. Farther down on the bayou he checks on Henderson Point where the water is already rising. There's a family that won't change its mind about staying put.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unfortunately if the water comes up we will not be able to get back in to get you all out, so you all are aware of all that? We wish you all a lot of luck and be safe.
CANDIOTTI: But, as he leaves, Lieutenant Federico calls it an officer's nightmare.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a tough decision that they've made. I just hope that they ride it out safely.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CANDIOTTI: Now these people that you've seen want to make it clear they're not trying to thumb their nose at authority by defying an evacuation order. They honestly think that they'll be all right.
They say, "We've got supplies. We've got food. We've got candles. We've got batteries." And because they have been, some of them, through hurricanes before, they think that they'll be able to get through this one too.
For example, the last man that you saw in the story that particular house made it through Hurricane Camille back in 1969. He wasn't living there at the time but he feels pretty confident about it.
And speaking of that, disaster planners here, Miles, are feeling a little less worried because now they seem slightly more confident that they are going to be on the weaker side of the storm here.
So far we have measured tropical storm wind gusts of maybe 36 miles an hour but quite frankly we're in a bit of a low-lying area right now and are buffered from the wind by a building on one side, the hotel where we're staying, and the interstate is a bit up on a rise over in that direction.
But it certainly will be a long night ahead. They are expecting a storm surge of ten to 15 feet and flooding is certain because they also have not only the Gulf Coast but they've got the back bay here to deal with -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: It sure is a study in contrast compared to what Gary is contending with on the right side of the eye, Susan. It seems to me, however, you know people always go back to these benchmark storms, what they've experienced, in this case Camille in 1969. It seems like that could be a very dangerous trap.
CANDIOTTI: It could be, of course, and that's why authorities are very clear. You can't mess around with these projections. It's very difficult, as we all know, to say exactly where the storm will make landfall and it could still jog a little bit one way or the other.
That's why it's so important for people to pay attention to disaster planners and what they are suggesting, the advice that they give. But they know here, for example, they had Hurricane George (ph) most recently in 1998.
We were here covering that storm and they had flooding then. They're going to get flooding now. It's a matter of how high the winds are going to be in addition to that. Obviously, for everyone involved up and down this coast, the panhandle, it's going to be a long night.
O'BRIEN: Clearly, CNN's Susan Candiotti in Biloxi who will be with us all throughout this long night watching the storm from there.
We're going to take a break. When we come back we'll check back in with Anderson Cooper who is in the spot where the bulls eye is, Mobile, Alabama. He's able to stand up OK for now. It's not so easy right now as hurricane force winds bear down there.
Also, we'll hear from the bunker in Alabama. Four states have declared emergencies but, of course, Alabama may face the worst devastation. We'll talk with the head of emergency services for that state after a break.
NEWSNIGHT from Atlanta continues in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: The eye of Hurricane Ivan, Category 4 storm, is now a little more than 100 miles away from Mobile, Alabama. Anderson Cooper is in that city beside Mobile Bay and he's already feeling the effects of hurricane force winds there.
Anderson, what's the latest?
COOPER: Yes, you might say that started feeling the effects. That's an understatement I think. I've actually come up with a solution for the high winds.
I've actually employed the much bigger, stronger CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano to block the wind for me, so I'm actually getting a little bit of a respite here from the wind, though sadly I don't think Rob is doing very well.
Rob, how strong are these winds and how strong is it going to get?
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, according to this little doohickey they're over 65 miles an hour. Believe it or not at the airport the official reading is still not gusting over 50.
Now, I mean we are in a bit of a wind tunnel in that we have some buildings surrounding us so certainly they whip around a little bit faster but I've been saying all night it often feels a lot worse than it actually is.
COOPER: Now, we hear 135 mile-an-hour winds. That doesn't necessarily mean 135 mile-an-hour winds are going to hit right here.
MARCIANO: No. That's a really secluded section of the storm, the northeast quadrant of the storm and typically when they say those are sustained winds of the storm coming in, I mean very rarely do they verify in more than one spot. So, it will be very select places that are actually getting winds of over 110, 120 miles an hour.
COOPER: My plan of having you upwind from me is not working out too well because I actually can't even really see you in this storm. It's really amazing. The wind is blowing so hard and the rain coming so horizontal. I mean you can't even look into it. It just hits right in your eyes feeling like a knife in here.
And, again, we keep talking about that storm surge. We can't see the water from where we're at but last I heard Max Mayfield was saying ten to 15 feet. Do you think that still holds true?
MARCIANO: I think so. The only thing that would save us, I mean in the last hour and a half you've been watching the satellite pictures, it took a little bit of a jog to the east. If it continues on that track maybe jogs a little bit more east, we'll be on the west side of that storm and that's key.
That's key to getting less of a storm surge, so we're going to get the winds obviously no matter what but the storm surge is definitely dependent on the track of this thing.
And if it continues up the gut, we're getting them at ten to 15, maybe even as high as 18 feet storm surge overnight tonight and tomorrow morning. If it jogs a little bit to the right, we're pretty much in the clear.
COOPER: So, how fast is this storm moving right now and you said it jogged a little bit to the east? I mean do we have a good sense of exactly when it's going to make landfall or is it still kind of unpredictable?
MARCIANO: Well, it's still on track, a northerly movement at 12 miles an hour. That slowed two miles an hour, so when you do the math, you know, it's about 100 miles just south of us, less than 100 miles offshore at 12 miles an hour.
You know it's going to be here in five or six hours. But, obviously, the effects out ahead of that thing we're going to feel them from now until the eye wall comes through.
COOPER: We're going to be around this for a while a think.
O'BRIEN: Anderson. Hey, Anderson.
COOPER: Yes, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Can Rob hear me? I don't know if he can hear me but I'm curious. I remember and I know you remember it how slow Frances was to move in. This storm is moving much faster. How does that affect its strength one way or another?
COOPER: All right, let me ask Rob. How does the speed of the storm affect its strength? I mean Frances was much slower. This is moving, you know, 12, 15 miles. How does that change things? How does it compare to Frances?
MARCIANO: Well, holy smokes (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Well, Frances was a slow mover so in the right quadrant that's where you're going to see the strongest winds. You see that because you've got added, you've got added velocity as far as how fast the thing is moving.
The fact that this is moving faster than Frances, that adds another 10 miles an hour on the right side of the storm. Plus, it is much stronger. It's a Category 4 at this point, as opposed to Cat 2, which was Frances.
COOPER: I have no idea what he said because, frankly, I can't hear a thing you're saying.
O'BRIEN: Don't worry. We heard it here.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: I hope he answered your question.
O'BRIEN: We heard it here, Anderson.
COOPER: Good.
O'BRIEN: Hey, you guys, are you on the eastern side of Mobile Bay? Is that where you are?
COOPER: Yes. We're right in downtown Mobile. And we were afraid that we were going to be getting the northeast quadrant of the storm. But as Rob was saying, we may now be a little bit west of it, which would certainly be some good news, though, in these high winds, it is hard to imagine it getting much worse, but we know it is going to.
O'BRIEN: And I assume that is going to make a tremendous difference. All right, tell us just quickly if you've seen -- I know you're -- right now, you're under...
COOPER: I got all the time in the world, Miles.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
MARCIANO: Miles, I want to say one thing.
O'BRIEN: Yes, go ahead.
MARCIANO: I have spent my entire career as a meteorologist telling people not to go out in these things. And this knucklehead is dragging me out into the teeth of this storm. We'll be here all night.
O'BRIEN: All right. All right. We'll check back in with you guys in a little bit. And, by all means, please be safe out here.
And a lot of people ask us about that. And they do take tremendous precautions. And while it looks like they're very much in harm's way, they do a lot of things to protect themselves in these situations. What they're trying to do more than anything is illustrate a point for all of us and help us understand the power of these storms.
The governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana all declared states of emergency earlier this week, as it became clear that Ivan was aiming for their coastlines. Now of course it appears that Alabama will bear the full brunt of all this as Ivan comes to land.
Joining us now from Clinton, Alabama, is Bruce Baughman, who is the director of the Alabama Emergency Management Association.
Mr. Baughman, good to have you with us.
BRUCE BAUGHMAN, DIRECTOR, ALABAMA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION: How are you doing tonight, Miles?
O'BRIEN: Bring us up to date on the number of people evacuated, the number of people in shelters right now.
BAUGHMAN: We've got probably a couple hundred thousand people that are evacuated. Right now, we have about somewhere in the neighborhood of about 15,000, 16,000 personnel in shelters.
We've got 85 shelters opened statewide. We expect more shelterees, of people continuing to evacuate the area.
O'BRIEN: You expect more evacuations even now? Would you advise that or should people stay where they are?
(CROSSTALK)
BAUGHMAN: That's correct. Everybody thinks about the coastal counties. Right now, there are some of the inland counties that expect the winds. And people just now are starting to move out of the area.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's be clear, though, just in case people are watching and trying to make decisions. Who should stay right now and who should move out? Is there a line?
BAUGHMAN: Right now, if you're in coastal counties right now, you're starting to get hurricane force winds. You should remain in shelter right now or any place that you deem safe.
Or if you're in the inland areas that have not had gale force winds, you need to move to shelter in those areas that we expect hurricane force winds. And we have broadcast that out to the public today. O'BRIEN: So, essentially, the word to the wise is, as long as the winds are sort of below that hurricane threshold, move and move quickly?
BAUGHMAN: That's correct. If they're on the low side of tropical storm force winds, which are 35 to 79 miles an hour, you should try and evacuate, because, if you're in the area that expects hurricane force winds, obviously, if it gets up to 65, 70 miles an hour, which is still tropical storm force winds, you might want to stay where you are if you feel that you have a safe haven.
O'BRIEN: A lot of people have made decisions there based on the benchmark storm that they recall. In many cases, it's 25 years ago this past week, Hurricane Frederick, which was of course a Category 3 storm which went right into Mobile Bay as well. Is that a mistake? The power of this storm is much greater, isn't it?
BAUGHMAN: Yes, it is. This is somewhere in between Hurricane Frederick and Hurricane Camille. And I think a lot of people have taken it serious. We have had evacuation from the area. As you probably heard earlier, the coastal counties are pretty much vacant right now of personnel.
O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much. We wish you well as you ride out the storm there, Mr. Baughman. And we wish your state well as you endure this terrible Category 4 storm.
Bruce Baughman is director of the Alabama Emergency Management Association. And we'll try to check back in with you later. Hopefully, we'll be able to do that.
We are going to take a break. When we return, we'll check in with CNN's David Mattingly. He's well off the center of the storm in Panama City, but it is not too far from there that we reported the first deaths associated Hurricane Ivan in the United States, at least a couple of people as a result of some tornadoes that touched down.
And then we're going to look ahead a little bit with somebody who has been through all of this many years ago. We'll talk with one woman who survived Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It wasn't an easy story. It wasn't an easy comeback. She'll have some words to the wise for those who have to endure this terrible hurricane season of 2004.
Back with more NEWSNIGHT in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Hurricane Ivan now just hours from making land as it -- as big as Frances and as strong as Charley and bearing down on Mobile, Alabama. Forecasters say Ivan is showing no signs of weakening. It's the most dangerous storm Mobile has faced in 25 years, maybe longer. Ivan's winds and the resulting waves are causing great concern tonight, all hoping that Mobile's seawalls will be able to handle the storm surge that's sure to follow.
Now, as if 135-mile-an-hour winds, torrential rain and massive waves were not enough, hurricanes also routinely spin off powerful tornadoes. And there are reports a tornado or two touched down in Georgia and Florida's Panhandle, leaving a trail of death and destruction.
CNN's David Mattingly joining us live from Panama City, where a twister was reported earlier.
David, the latest from you.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, we're about 150 miles from Mobile Bay. But you can see we're obviously seeing the effects of this storm already with this flooded beach.
Earlier today, though, people started to feel just a little sense of relief as they watched that storm move off to the west. But now, with that band of showers, that band of severe weather that came through dropping those tornadoes, they're wondering if they're going to make it through this storm OK.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY (voice-over): The winds were only gusting in Panama City Beach when a late afternoon band of violent weather turned deadly. Two people were killed after tornadoes touched down and produced extensive damage in different areas of Dade County.
LES SULLIVAN, MAYOR OF PANAMA CITY BEACH: Probably the worst thing that has occurred as a result of the storm, at least on the beach, the north end of the county, we have had a fatality at the north end of the county as a result, a confirmed fatality as a result of a tornado. We've had some extensive damage off the beach in the residential area on the east side of the bridge. We expect this to be the beginning of a long night.
MATTINGLY: Both hurricane and tornado warnings had been in effect. But just the threat of dangerous conditions wasn't enough to stop local residents from venturing out.
Just hours before the first killer tornado, six members of the O'Brien family thought it was a good time to hit the beach.
KELLY O'BRIEN, PANAMA CITY BEACH RESIDENT: When you live here and there's tourists everywhere all the time, it is kind of nice to have the beach quiet.
MATTINGLY: With Ivan apparently steering to the west, carloads of sight-seers lined the road near local piers to take in the thundering surf. At Dusty's oyster bar, longtime residents fighting boredom were treated to a happy hour that lasted all day.
JOHN HICKS, BUSINESS OWNER: We were coming down, you know, just to bunker up and get everything ready for the winds and everything else. And we started getting phone calls. And, as you can see behind us, most of these people are all local people. And they said, we need a place to go.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY: Where they need to go right now, if they haven't already, is home. A curfew is in effect and will be in effect until tomorrow morning.
And while you look at this flooded beach and these floodwaters that are coming in here right now, this tidal surge, if the winds pick up to 55 miles an hour, all three bridges linking this beach area to the mainland will be closed. And if you're on this beach, you'll have to stay here for the duration, according to local officials -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: David, have you seen anybody out there besides the crew?
MATTINGLY: Since the tornadoes went through, we've not seen anybody on the streets. There is a curfew in effect. Everybody is paying attention to that.
They're sitting at home right now wondering what they're going to see in the morning when they come out to look at this beach, because this is where this town makes its money, this white sand beach. There is supposed to be about 300 yards of it behind me. As you can see right now, it is already flooded. They're seeing a lot more storm surge already than they expected to. So they're keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that their beach will survive the night.
O'BRIEN: Storms can really do a number on those beaches. Can you tell right now one way or the other whether the sand is being washed out or is it too early to tell for sure?
MATTINGLY: It feels like it's being washed out from under me right now. The water keeps getting a little bit deeper by the hour. We haven't seen high tide here yet. So far, the wind has been coming off of the land area, so it's been knocking the waves down.
That's going to change later when the circulation comes around this way. And, of course, we haven't seen high tide. So the worst is definitely yet to come. And the winds are just now picking up here. So we haven't seen the worst of this storm by far yet.
O'BRIEN: David Mattingly is in Panama City, Florida. We'll be checking back with him all throughout the night as well.
When Hurricane Ivan finally dissipates -- hard to imagine that right now, but it will eventually -- thousands will need help rebuilding their lives, of course. And they'll need that help for quite a long time. It is a tough road coming back from this kind of disaster.
For some insights, we turn again to Yolanda Ulrich in Miami. She survived Hurricane Andrew 12 years ago. It wasn't easy. A month ago, during Hurricane Charley, she offered us some very good advice. It was so good, we asked her back tonight to share some more with us.
Thanks again for being with us, Yolanda.
YOLANDA ULRICH, "SOUTH DADE NEWS LEADER": Thank you for asking me, Miles. I'm happy to be here.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: Well, what has it been like seeing these three storms, having lived through Andrew? Is it sort of a flashback after a flashback after a flashback?
ULRICH: Absolutely.
In fact, here in the studio watching your filming tonight, it was very unsettling. I've got to tell you, we all become NIMBies, I guess you would say, not in my backyard. And that's a rotten thing to say, but that's the truth. A couple days ago, when we started seriously tracking Ivan here in South Dade County, a couple of the computer models had that monster going right up US-1. And, frankly, a lot of us had more than one bad moment. It frightened us. It scared me to death, not so much the thought that I was going to actually die in a hurricane. I know I'm going to die, but somehow I don't think I'm going to die in a storm.
But the thought of the year or so after. I really -- at this point, I'm not sure that I could do it again.
O'BRIEN: And when you talk to people who have endured the same thing, do they give you the sort of same response, sort of this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, coming back from a storm like this?
ULRICH: Well, you know, that's what we've been promised. That's what we've been told. This only happens once in a lifetime.
But I have several close friends who endured '26, '35, '38, all of the storms in the '40s and the '50s. So I'm not sure that this is a once-in-a-lifetime.
And I'll tell you, I'm not willing to take a chance. I listened to some of the people that your reporters have interviewed, folks who are going to stay in their homes and ride it out and hunker down. And they've got more guts than I do.
O'BRIEN: Did you ride the storm out, Andrew, in your home?
ULRICH: Yes, I did. I had my children and a young granddaughter with me. Very frankly, we did not think we were going to get the storm until just a few hours before.
We were under the impression that it was going to go to either North Broward or Palm Beach County, which would have put us on the southern part of the storm, and, therefore, all things being equal, the lesser, dangerous side of the storm. As it turned out, we were actually 14 miles north of the eye, which passed over Homestead, which is where I actually work.
O'BRIEN: What's the best advice you can give folks tonight? I'm not talking about folks necessarily in the path of Ivan, as I'm talking about the folks who are contending with the cleanup of Charley and Frances as well. ULRICH: Well, the best advice I can tell you is -- or tell them -- is to be patient.
We in my neighborhood -- and I'm not trying to play "Can you top this?" but we were without power probably for a couple of months. And then even after power was restored to our neighborhood, we couldn't have it in our house. Be patient. The electricity will come back. You won't have to boil the water forever. The neighborhood is going to get cleaned up. We're very fortunate in South Florida in that we do live in a tropical paradise. Give us a couple of years and our canopy will be back. Our plants and our trees will be back. And the building will take place.
What disturbs me is that I'm wondering because of Charley and then Frances and who knows what's left of the season -- we have until the end of November, actually -- I'm wondering about the time it's going to take to rebuild, getting the materials necessary to rebuild. That's going to be a problem, I think.
O'BRIEN: And that was a problem in the wake of Andrew, right, just getting contractors with enough plywood to do the job?
ULRICH: It was. You know, thinking back, we all learned valuable lessons. And hopefully we won't have to reapply those lessons.
But if we do, I'm not so sure that I would rush into rebuilding right away, because we were all working -- there were, what, 250,000 people down there trying to find the same contractor to rebuild their house. And I think that possibly, next time, if, God forbid, there is a next time, I think I would probably wait a while before trying to rush into rebuilding. My husband and I had to go -- out of the county, actually, to buy light fixtures.
And just, as a simple thing -- I know that doesn't sound important right now.
O'BRIEN: No, but, in the grand scheme of things, that kind of sums it up. Everything becomes difficult.
Tell me a final thought here.
ULRICH: Well...
O'BRIEN: Do you recall the first emotions you felt on that morning after when you realized the scope of the damage?
ULRICH: I didn't realize the scope of the damage. That was just it. First, I thought it was my house. And then I thought, well, it was my street. And after I finally made my way down to Homestead, I realized it was going to be pretty tough.
But it took me about two weeks and a ride in an Army helicopter, when I actually saw the damage, and I knew that this wasn't going to go away overnight. And so, frankly, I'm afraid I was naive. I thought, gee, this happened to me, and isn't that awful. I didn't realize for a couple of weeks. And all I can say is God bless those people and for them to be patient and hopefully just do what they're told and just stay the course. That's all I can say.
O'BRIEN: A little bit of work, a little bit of patience, paradise won't necessarily be lost.
Yolanda Ulrich from Miami, thanks again for your advice.
ULRICH: Thank you, Miles.
O'BRIEN: We appreciate you joining us.
ULRICH: Thanks.
O'BRIEN: Not everyone has heeded the warnings to get out of Ivan's way, of course. Some prefer to stay right where they are and ride the storm out at home, as Yolanda told you about. Others are too ill or too frail to move. And, of course, now the best advice is to stay put in many places.
In New Orleans, which dodged the bullet earlier, when Ivan shifted course a bit, those who didn't want to head north, had another option, heading up, literally, as in straight up. It's called vertical evacuation.
CNN's John Zarrella joining us from New Orleans to explain what this is all about.
Hello, John.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, I'll tell you, you know, what a difference a few miles makes.
Down east here, in eastern Louisiana, there's reports of heavy rain and some flooding, and of course, 50, 75 miles east of us, torrential rains and terrible winds. And here on Decatur Street, the corner of Decatur and St. Anne's, across the street, the famous Cafe du Monde, everything is absolutely deserted. The tourists are in their hotels. People evacuated yesterday. And those that didn't did what you just said. They vertically evacuated, because folks here, knowing what can happen to New Orleans, which is below sea level, if a big one hits, they took no chances.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA (voice-over): With their three dogs, sisters Randi and Armid (ph) de la Gueronniere took the advice of local officials. They checked into a hotel and got to higher ground.
RANDI DE LA GUERONNIERE, NEW ORLEANS RESIDENT: We should be in something really strong. These buildings have been here for 100 years, I imagine, or, you know, close to and they're a lot more secure than any of our homes.
ZARRELLA: The Astor Hotel was packed with New Orleans residents who didn't evacuate the city but chose instead to vertically evacuate. In this below-sea-level city, massive flooding from a major hurricane, 10 to 15 feet of it everywhere, stirs even greater fear than wind. Throughout the famed French Quarter, sandbags line storefronts, plywood covers windows and trucks were still unloading more of it.
Taking it all in, a group of conventioners from the National Safety Council. Thousands of them are here and stuck. With the airlines shut down, there is no way for them to get out.
LYNN STEBBRIS, CONFERENCE ATTENDEE: It looks like the people that are at the hotel are confident and they're kind of on top of things so -- and we have gone to the store and we've gotten our water and we have gotten some soup and things like that. So we should be OK for a couple of days.
ZARRELLA: And that's all it may be. Just a couple days. As Ivan turned it lessened the risk. Yet this city known as the Big Easy has for the past few days been anything but.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA: Now, a few hours ago we were down -- up on Lake Pontchartrain, went all the way up Canal Street to the lake. And the water was pouring in along the lake, over the lakefront.
But right up against the levee, that hurricane protection levee that surrounds the city, which is designed not to be overtopped unless a hurricane is a 3, 4, or 5, which, of course, we are not getting here anything like that tonight, just a little bit of wind, just a little bit of a drizzle. It is amazing, Miles, the difference that just a few miles makes.
And, you know, listening to your guest a few minutes ago certainly brought back memories for me from Hurricane Andrew. And one of the things when she was talking about the houses and everything being destroyed, after Andrew, there wasn't a leaf on a tree, a branch on a tree. There wasn't houses to -- people could not find their homes when they went back, because there were no markers left. People didn't even know what street they were on. It was horrible.
And building construction in Florida, all over Florida, is considerably and always was considerably better than in many of these coastal areas that are going to be impacted tonight. So, certainly, we could be seeing some terrible, terrible destruction as day breaks tomorrow -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Well, these storms do have a way of underscoring the point that not every builder builds to code.
Let's talk for just a moment about the worst-case scenario, which has been avoided in New Orleans. And that is the fact that this is a city largely below sea level. While it does have a system of levees and dikes to keep the water out, there's been concern over the years time and time again about the possibility of a direct hit there.
Did you talk to city officials much about that today? ZARRELLA: Horrible, horrible fears here of a direct hit. And that's why they evacuated people. That's why we saw the massive traffic jams, people leaving the city yesterday, because you've got Lake Pontchartrain. You've got the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River, the city below sea level, surrounded on all three sides.
If a major -- and recent studies they've just done, they thought they would be safe up to a high category to a mid-Category 3. Now they're not so sure. They think that if a major hurricane hits at just the right angle, that the levees might well be overtopped in a high 3, certainly a storm like Ivan.
And where I'm standing here, Jackson Square is just behind me over here. You could see right here in the French Quarter some 15 feet of water. And that would be covering the entire city. Second- story homes would be underwater. So it really underscores the fear they have here of water, more so even than wind, because the fear is that it would take 120 days to get the pumps running to get the water out of the city. And it might take up to five or six months to pump the water out. And they might have to blow holes in some parts of the levee to get some of the water out.
And they could have tens of thousands of deaths, because there are at least 100,000 people in this city, in the metropolitan area, 1.3 million, 100,000 who they fear would not get out or really have no way of getting out, many of them relying on public transportation. And with money and funds very, very tight, Miles, plans to build the wall, the levees higher, have been sort of put on hold for now. It would take many, many hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. And that kind of dollar is just not there -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Boy, that scenario you just paint should be enough to spur that kind of spending. But, naturally, that's a tough call, isn't it?
ZARRELLA: Yes, no question about it, because there are so many other national priorities and emergency managers have told us that.
Right now, it's a very difficult time. They have talked about plans. They have even, Miles, talked about a plan where they would build a Noah's ark, wall off a section of the city which would protect the French Quarter, the downtown business area. And what people could then do -- and it would run along one of the interstate highways, I- 10.
People outside of this wall could then come inside. And they would close those gates behind them. And it would literally become somewhat of a Noah's Ark, protecting some of the city from total destruction. And people say if they ever got this worst-case scenario and they didn't have protection, the real question is would they really ever rebuild New Orleans here where it sits, or would New Orleans have to be built somewhere else, up river a little bit further.
O'BRIEN: Wow.
ZARRELLA: That's how bad it could be here -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Sort of sounds like building a fort, almost an Alamo against the storm. Wow.
ZARRELLA: Yes. Exactly.
O'BRIEN: That's quite a scenario.
John Zarrella in the Crescent City or the Big Easy, whatever you like, New Orleans, thank you very much.
We're going to take a break.
When we come back, we're going to check in on some of those shelters. Many of them are full tonight, as folks heeded the calls -- and we're glad to report that -- heeded the calls and are getting out of the way of this very dangerous storm as it comes ever so close to shore, as you see, lower right portion of your screen.
Stay with us as NEWSNIGHT continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired September 15, 2004 - 22:00 ET
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MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening from Atlanta where we are watching yet another big storm as it marches onshore leaving who knows what in its wake. For more than a month we have seen the storms come and go, the death, destruction and misery left behind.
There is no natural disaster that comes with more advanced notice. Forecasters watch waves become depressions, tropical storms and then ultimately hurricanes and their names become familiar, Charley, Frances, now Ivan.
There was a time when the storms had no names and no advance billing of course. A hundred and four years ago this week, a hurricane roared into Galveston, Texas, 10,000 at least died, the worst disaster in U.S. history.
Tonight, we all have fair notice and that means lives will be saved but despite all our technology to watch and model and predict these storms, we are powerless to do little more than hunker down and hope for the best.
No hunkering down allowed if you are in the rain-soaked whip tonight, however, first to Anderson Cooper in Mobile, Alabama, a headline please Anderson.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, the winds have whipped up considerably here over the last half hour or so, in excess probably of 60 miles an hour. We can't get an accurate reading at this point. The residents here have hunkered down as well for what they anticipate is going to be a very long night indeed -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Anderson Cooper not far from Mobile.
Gary Tuchman is riding out the storm in Gulf Shores, Alabama. We'll get to Gary in just a few moments.
And 60 miles to the west of Mobile, still very much in harm's way, Biloxi, Mississippi, that's where Susan Candiotti is, a headline from you Susan.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Miles. Yes, here we are just starting to feel tropical storm force winds as people here prepare for what Ivan has to deliver and flooding is one thing for sure -- back to you.
O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you, Susan. Ninety miles farther to the west they're breathing a little easier in the Big Easy tonight where we find John Zarrella, a headline from you John.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF: Miles, in the Big Easy tonight, people are breathing a little bit easier with residents evacuated and tourists in their hotels. The streets here are virtually deserted.
O'BRIEN: And that's a headline for sure. John Zarrella in New Orleans.
And someone who is never all wet when it comes to hurricanes, watching it from her perch in CNN's Weather Center Orelon Sidney -- Orelon, a headline from you.
ORELON SIDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I guess you missed me in Frances because I was wet then for sure. This storm, however, is being covered by Rob Marciano on the ground and he's going to feel some 135 mile-an-hour winds before the night is out -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Orelon Sidney, more from you in a moment.
We begin on the ground at the place with the bulls eye on it tonight. Ivan the ferocious bearing down on the city of Mobile and not since Category 3 Frederick (ph) roared ashore 25 years ago have folks along Mobile Bay faced a more dangerous storm.
Ivan is a Category 4 hurricane and, as it closes in, there are big worries about sustained winds of 135 miles an hour, towering waves in excess of 50 feet high and a storm surge that could send Mobile Bay 16 feet over the sea walls.
CNN's Anderson Cooper is there in the thick of it -- Anderson.
COOPER: Miles, yes we are in Mobile and it is that storm surge that so many people here are really concerned about. Some have said it could be as high as 20 feet.
Max Mayfield at the National Hurricane Center said to anticipate ten to 15 feet of water flooding the downtown area here in Mobile, Alabama and that will cause a lot of problems indeed.
As you know, there have already been two deaths in Panama City Beach, Florida, not too far from here. The hope here though is that people have been prepared. They have evacuated or tonight they are hunkered down because this storm is coming and it is coming on fast.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER (voice-over): As night fell, anxieties were quick to rise. The winds and waves kicked up pounding beaches with heavy surf and rain and carrying something new in the air, uncertainty and fear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a very powerful, very dangerous and unfortunately will probably be a very deadly storm. COOPER: The force of Hurricane Ivan's outer bands are battering hundreds of miles of coastline in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and the Florida panhandle. Nearly two million coastal residents in four states have already fled to higher ground or are under evacuation orders.
GOV. BOB RILEY, ALABAMA: Move north. Get out of harm's way and we'll rebuild that area as soon as we can.
COOPER: With Ivan's course aiming at Alabama's Mobile Bay, the mayor of New Orleans is warning residents against complacency.
MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS, LA: We are still implementing our disaster plans, getting prepared and trying to evacuate as many people as possible out of the city.
COOPER: New Orleans has imposed a citywide curfew until the danger passes. Louisiana residents with special medical needs are weathering the storm at the Super Dome while others have filled up some 33 shelters across the state. Emergency officials are warning everyone don't take chances.
MARTY J. EVANS, PRESIDENT AND CEO, RED CROSS: This is no storm to fool around and think you can ride out. People need to evacuate. They need to go to the nearest shelter.
MICHAEL DOW, MAYOR: I'm trying to get everybody to pack up and get in your car and spend the night in your car if you have to. There's no excuse to endanger your family by staying here.
COOPER: Ivan is expected to cause significant damage no matter where it strikes. Monster waves are tugging at coastal homes on the panhandle. Florida officials, still reeling from the destruction of Hurricanes Charley and Frances, are bracing for the worst.
LT. GOV. TONI JENNINGS, FLORIDA: We can replant the trees and we can rebuild the homes but we can't replace the people, so that's what today's message is all about, safety.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: And the worst, of course, is still yet to come but, as I said Miles, minute after minute these winds are picking up. It's raining. It's getting bad. We're already starting to see flooding in some areas but I mean we are getting very significant gusts here.
Even during that piece it's almost difficult to stand at times. You really have to push yourself into the wind and I'm parallel to the wind. If I turn perpendicular at this point, I am not sure I could actually even stand up. It is getting very nasty out here very fast -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Anderson, I hope you can hear me all right.
COOPER: I hear you fine.
O'BRIEN: Right now are those winds, they're clearly in the hurricane realm right now, right?
COOPER: Yes. We have a wind meter but frankly it's not really working very well in these winds, a little ironic there. Rob Marciano, CNN Meteorologist, said he thought these winds were in excess of 60 miles per hour sustained.
At this point, though, we don't have an official count. We're waiting to hear on that but I mean it is really -- the wind is just whipping through the downtown area here and, of course, as you know the river is right over there just a couple blocks away.
There is concern about that storm surge coming. We're right about Water Street and we anticipate it will be literally Water Street. By tomorrow morning it will be covered.
But, as I said, these winds are really picking up. I have not seen anything like this certainly here today or in any of the last two hurricanes in Florida that I covered.
I mean we got some strong winds, as you well know, because you rode out the storm with me, Miles. We got some strong winds with Frances but this is like nothing I've seen and we are anticipating even over the course of the next two hours during this special edition of NEWSNIGHT, we're going to be seeing a lot worse and we'll be here covering it.
O'BRIEN: Well, clearly these next two hours are critical. I'm curious. Where you are, Anderson, if there is a 16-foot storm surge as has been predicted for Mobile Bay, are you going to be under water where you're standing right now?
COOPER: Yes, I certainly hope that. That's not my objective. Well, I'll tell you where we are. We're in a hotel right basically on the river front but we're on the fourth floor of the hotel.
There's a sort of a -- whoa, hello. There's like a deck area but we're four stories above the ground floor. Now the ground floor is 12 feet above sea level, so if Max Mayfield is right, ten to 15 storm surge, the ground floor of this hotel is likely to be flooded.
We should be fine on the fourth floor. We're already seeing though, I mean there is some concern that some of the windows on this floor will blow out. We've sort of set up an office but we're ready to move inside the building and more to the interior of the building if, in fact, those windows do blow out.
But we're not anticipating actually being flooded out. The problem though is our truck, our satellite truck is down on the ground. It's about 12 feet off sea level.
So if the storm surge gets deep we should be fine but if it gets up to 15 feet, 20 feet, we may be off the air because our truck literally may go under water and may have to try to move to higher ground.
So, we're going to try to stay on the air and upright as much as possible or as long as possible and we'll see. You know, as you can tell it's blowing a little bit more now.
O'BRIEN: Yes. All right, Anderson, I'm going to let you go. We're going to come back to you in just a little bit. Obviously, Ivan is really bearing its brunt or beginning to do just that in Mobile and we'll be staying in close contact with Anderson.
As we all probably know by now, hurricanes churn around in a counter clockwise rotation and, as a result, it subjects the swath of land to the right of the eye to the worst beating.
CNN's Gary Tuchman is in Gulf Shores, Alabama, 50 miles to the right of Mobile Bay and the path of the eye. He joins us now via videophone. What's the situation there, Gary? You're also a little bit to the south, so you might be feeling the effects even more there right now.
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via videophone): That's right. We're to the southeast of Anderson, about 50 miles as you said, Miles, in Gulf Shores. This is a low-lying beach town and we can tell you that this town is completely evacuated.
We've walked up and down the main street in the beach town. We could not find one civilian who was there. I have never seen such compliance for any hurricane than this one.
People were scared and they got out and they were smart because five hours ago the beach town, the main street along the beach started flooding. The water was up to their shins and that was around 6:00 Eastern time.
The rain hasn't stopped and they're going to have a severe flooding problem. They haven't had a major hurricane hit in this area for 25 years since Hurricane Frederick. It's actually a quarter century ago this week when Hurricane Frederick came. They've never had a Category 4 hurricane (UNINTELLIGIBLE) but it's hitting right now.
Police were the only ones who were in the town. They actually left the intercoastal waterway crossing the bridge that crosses onto the Barrier Islands about two hours ago feeling it was unsafe.
So anyone who would want to go to that Barrier Islands now has the freedom to do so. The police aren't guarding it anymore but no one has gone over to the island because of the dangers involved.
In the streets right now there is wood floating around. There's a fence along the beach. The fence has actually blown over from the beach and is in the streets floating around right now.
And, to this point, we have not seen the trees and the power lines go down. Interesting, the winds here at this point, even though we're to the southeast of Anderson, don't seem to be as intense as in the city of Mobile right now, so we haven't seen the trees go down.
We've seen the transformers blow up already, not something we've seen during the last two hurricanes in Florida. We're just standing there and you hear a boom and you look behind you and you see a power line blow up. The power is still on in much of this area.
When we were in Fort Pierce for Hurricane Frances the other week, the power went out very quickly. So, far the power is on. We don't anticipate it staying on for very long but as of now it still is.
But we can tell you that people have truly evacuated. Interstate 65, the major north/south road from Mobile to the northern part of Alabama they put all the lanes in the northerly direction. They told everyone to get on their way.
They even advised people, this was such unusual information for people to go three hours north and if they have nowhere to stay sleep in their cars to get away from this -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Gary, let's talk a little bit. Is it high tide there now? Is that a concern that that would exacerbate the storm surge as Ivan comes ashore?
TUCHMAN: They're very concerned about that. High tide isn't for a few hours from now so they're anticipating rough timing of when the eye crosses and high tide to coincide, so they're certainly concerned about that.
But I will tell you that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) started even before the rain started coming down heavily. They're going to have a major problem. There's no question about it. It's not a big surprise and that's why people got out of there.
There are houses, dozens of houses, Miles, in this town on stilts right on the beach, not across the street from the beach, not two blocks from the beach, on the beach and on stilts. They're very concerned about those homes.
O'BRIEN: And, Gary, where you are right now are you on fairly high ground?
TUCHMAN: We're -- I would say fairly we're on moderately high ground. We're not as low as we were when we were on the Barrier Islands but we are in a safe place. We are standing by a hotel solidly built. We have production. We know how to take care of ourselves in order to give our viewers the information about what's happening outside.
O'BRIEN: All right, Gary Tuchman who is in Gulf Shores, Alabama watching the storm from there. That's a little taste of what it feels like on the ground with Ivan approaching.
Let's gain a little altitude now. We'll check in with Orelon Sidney in the Weather Center where they're using a full array of technology to track the storm for us -- Orelon, give us the latest.
SIDNEY: OK. Here's what we're looking at right now. This is the very latest information. We're still looking at the storm about 80 miles south of the Alabama coast. It's about 116 miles south of Mobile. The winds are still holding at 135 miles an hour. At 130, that's the breakpoint between Category 3 and Category 4 and we're looking at our pressure at about 931 millibars moving to the north at about 12 miles an hour.
Now, here's a couple of things I want to point out. We do have a little pool of warm water. It's just off the coast here and it looks like that's what's been helping the storm over the past few hours.
However, there is a little bit of cool water just off the coast and I think -- I don't think that's going to weaken the storm at all but I think it will probably keep it from strengthening very much more.
I don't think we're going to see a Category 5 landfall certainly but it's still going to be a dangerous, huge storm and I wouldn't be surprised to see this tick up a little bit as far as the wind speeds are concerned.
Let's take a look at the next graphic that I have for you. My producer, Mike Grogan (ph), helping me out tonight. This is what it looks like on the radar picture. You can see the eye very well to the south of Mobile. Here is Mobile Bay.
Extending back now we go to the west and there is New Orleans and, of course, off to the east here's Panama City. You can see that the entire Gulf Coast getting affected by this storm as these thunderstorms roll in.
We also had quite a bit or tornadic (ph) activity a little bit earlier today that I'll point out to you a little bit later. I think we may also have some buoy data now to show you what's going on as far as the wave action.
We did get some waves around 50 feet a little bit earlier just to the north of the eye and then as you went to the northwest we had waves about 21 feet. It looks like those waves, of course, will be continuing to work their way into the coast as we go on through the afternoon. So, those dangerous battering waves on top of the storm surge a real problem.
This now shows us the accumulated rainfall and some of these dark oranges and reds here are as much as eight inches but you can see up around Mobile so far three inches, five inches as you head down to the Barrier Islands and then you get a little bit heavier, of course, as you go on down southward towards the center of the storm.
In addition to that, we have had numerous tornado warnings. There is a tornado watch that's in effect until 2:00 a.m. This is way down from what we saw earlier. We had as much as eleven counties under tornado warnings. Now there are three.
We did, Miles, have two confirmed fatalities near Panama City, hopefully not seeing any more of those tonight -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Orelon, generally is there any pattern in those tornadoes when you see a hurricane? Do they generate out of a certain part of a hurricane or are they just random?
SIDNEY: Yes, they sure do. Generally, you'll see those in the right front quadrant of the storm and I don't know, Mike, if you can get me back to the radar quickly. I can show you what that looks like.
The center of the storm, of course, is down to the south. If you take it, cut it in half here and then cut it in half again, you get the right front quadrant of the storm. That's where your greatest storm surge will be. That's where your strongest winds will generally be and that's where you're also going to find most of your tornadoes.
And you can see we've got these little, these little indicators here showing where we show rotation in thunderstorms. Notice it's in the right front quadrant.
As this storm system then works its way on in, every location in this right front quadrant has the potential for tornadoes. This watch box is in effect until 2:00 a.m. Central time. You will see another one.
As soon as this expires, they're probably going to issue one a little bit further to the north and northeast in places like Valdosta, Georgia, Macon, Atlanta, perhaps Birmingham and Huntsville, depending on the track. We'll probably see a chance for tornadoes tonight and tomorrow morning -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Orelon, a word on the waves we've heard reported. Max Mayfield was talking about buoys out in the Gulf registering 50-foot waves.
SIDNEY: Right.
O'BRIEN: And I started thinking about 50-foot waves coming in on places like Mobile and that's not a good thing.
SIDNEY: That's bad news.
O'BRIEN: Do those waves dissipate at all as they come closer to shore or do they...
SIDNEY: No. No, they don't.
O'BRIEN: They don't.
SIDNEY: In fact, the waves get taller because the way a wave works is when you get into the shoreline when the depth of the water is about half the amount of the wave height, that's when the wave breaks.
And, of course, you're going to get into shallower and shallower water as you go towards the coast. So, what it's going to actually do is make the waves stand up even more than that.
And so, you've got your, what we call the wave set up, the sea level has been going up the past couple of days in these areas, and then you get the battering waves on top of that, as well as that bulge of water that's going to come in here with the eye of the storm.
This is going to be probably a near record storm surge I think in some areas. I think Camille's storm surge in 1969 was something about 25, 22 feet. This one's probably not going to be as much but it's definitely going to be one of the higher ones that you've seen along the Gulf Coast.
O'BRIEN: All right, Camille, there's a storm they still talk about in that part of the world. Orelon Sidney, thank you very much. Obviously, stay close. We'll be back with you quite a bit throughout the next few hours and actually throughout the night.
With Ivan bearing down on some 300 miles of Gulf Coastline, major evacuations began in earnest yesterday. Nearly two million people in four states have been told in no uncertain terms to get out of the way.
Here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Winds increasing on bridges leading to Biloxi and Gulfport beaches. Streets deserted except for a few trying to make it home past a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
Across the street from a floating casino, its owner spending the night with a few employees at his now evacuated hotel. Are you worried about the safety of your employees and you who are sticking around?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. We've got very few people here actually and everybody is sticking together. We're all in areas of the hotel that are what I would consider very safe.
CANDIOTTI: Earlier, we found others who decided against evacuating. Mary Katherine Adams is riding out Ivan with her husband and 90-year-old mother in this stately two-story home on the National Historic Registry.
(on camera): There's the Gulf and that's Highway 90 that runs along it and this is how close the water is to the Adams family home, yet they insist they will be safe from the storm surge. Let's hope so.
(voice-over): The family plans to hunker down on the second floor. Do you feel just a little bit nervous as the storm approaches now?
MARY KATHERINE ADAMS, RESIDENT: I'm a little too tired to be nervous. I may get nervous as soon as the wind starts picking up. And when darkness comes it's usually frightful because you hear sounds.
CANDIOTTI: Lieutenant Greg Federico, not thrilled with her decision to stay, but no one's being forced out. Farther down on the bayou he checks on Henderson Point where the water is already rising. There's a family that won't change its mind about staying put.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unfortunately if the water comes up we will not be able to get back in to get you all out, so you all are aware of all that? We wish you all a lot of luck and be safe.
CANDIOTTI: But, as he leaves, Lieutenant Federico calls it an officer's nightmare.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a tough decision that they've made. I just hope that they ride it out safely.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CANDIOTTI: Now these people that you've seen want to make it clear they're not trying to thumb their nose at authority by defying an evacuation order. They honestly think that they'll be all right.
They say, "We've got supplies. We've got food. We've got candles. We've got batteries." And because they have been, some of them, through hurricanes before, they think that they'll be able to get through this one too.
For example, the last man that you saw in the story that particular house made it through Hurricane Camille back in 1969. He wasn't living there at the time but he feels pretty confident about it.
And speaking of that, disaster planners here, Miles, are feeling a little less worried because now they seem slightly more confident that they are going to be on the weaker side of the storm here.
So far we have measured tropical storm wind gusts of maybe 36 miles an hour but quite frankly we're in a bit of a low-lying area right now and are buffered from the wind by a building on one side, the hotel where we're staying, and the interstate is a bit up on a rise over in that direction.
But it certainly will be a long night ahead. They are expecting a storm surge of ten to 15 feet and flooding is certain because they also have not only the Gulf Coast but they've got the back bay here to deal with -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: It sure is a study in contrast compared to what Gary is contending with on the right side of the eye, Susan. It seems to me, however, you know people always go back to these benchmark storms, what they've experienced, in this case Camille in 1969. It seems like that could be a very dangerous trap.
CANDIOTTI: It could be, of course, and that's why authorities are very clear. You can't mess around with these projections. It's very difficult, as we all know, to say exactly where the storm will make landfall and it could still jog a little bit one way or the other.
That's why it's so important for people to pay attention to disaster planners and what they are suggesting, the advice that they give. But they know here, for example, they had Hurricane George (ph) most recently in 1998.
We were here covering that storm and they had flooding then. They're going to get flooding now. It's a matter of how high the winds are going to be in addition to that. Obviously, for everyone involved up and down this coast, the panhandle, it's going to be a long night.
O'BRIEN: Clearly, CNN's Susan Candiotti in Biloxi who will be with us all throughout this long night watching the storm from there.
We're going to take a break. When we come back we'll check back in with Anderson Cooper who is in the spot where the bulls eye is, Mobile, Alabama. He's able to stand up OK for now. It's not so easy right now as hurricane force winds bear down there.
Also, we'll hear from the bunker in Alabama. Four states have declared emergencies but, of course, Alabama may face the worst devastation. We'll talk with the head of emergency services for that state after a break.
NEWSNIGHT from Atlanta continues in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: The eye of Hurricane Ivan, Category 4 storm, is now a little more than 100 miles away from Mobile, Alabama. Anderson Cooper is in that city beside Mobile Bay and he's already feeling the effects of hurricane force winds there.
Anderson, what's the latest?
COOPER: Yes, you might say that started feeling the effects. That's an understatement I think. I've actually come up with a solution for the high winds.
I've actually employed the much bigger, stronger CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano to block the wind for me, so I'm actually getting a little bit of a respite here from the wind, though sadly I don't think Rob is doing very well.
Rob, how strong are these winds and how strong is it going to get?
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, according to this little doohickey they're over 65 miles an hour. Believe it or not at the airport the official reading is still not gusting over 50.
Now, I mean we are in a bit of a wind tunnel in that we have some buildings surrounding us so certainly they whip around a little bit faster but I've been saying all night it often feels a lot worse than it actually is.
COOPER: Now, we hear 135 mile-an-hour winds. That doesn't necessarily mean 135 mile-an-hour winds are going to hit right here.
MARCIANO: No. That's a really secluded section of the storm, the northeast quadrant of the storm and typically when they say those are sustained winds of the storm coming in, I mean very rarely do they verify in more than one spot. So, it will be very select places that are actually getting winds of over 110, 120 miles an hour.
COOPER: My plan of having you upwind from me is not working out too well because I actually can't even really see you in this storm. It's really amazing. The wind is blowing so hard and the rain coming so horizontal. I mean you can't even look into it. It just hits right in your eyes feeling like a knife in here.
And, again, we keep talking about that storm surge. We can't see the water from where we're at but last I heard Max Mayfield was saying ten to 15 feet. Do you think that still holds true?
MARCIANO: I think so. The only thing that would save us, I mean in the last hour and a half you've been watching the satellite pictures, it took a little bit of a jog to the east. If it continues on that track maybe jogs a little bit more east, we'll be on the west side of that storm and that's key.
That's key to getting less of a storm surge, so we're going to get the winds obviously no matter what but the storm surge is definitely dependent on the track of this thing.
And if it continues up the gut, we're getting them at ten to 15, maybe even as high as 18 feet storm surge overnight tonight and tomorrow morning. If it jogs a little bit to the right, we're pretty much in the clear.
COOPER: So, how fast is this storm moving right now and you said it jogged a little bit to the east? I mean do we have a good sense of exactly when it's going to make landfall or is it still kind of unpredictable?
MARCIANO: Well, it's still on track, a northerly movement at 12 miles an hour. That slowed two miles an hour, so when you do the math, you know, it's about 100 miles just south of us, less than 100 miles offshore at 12 miles an hour.
You know it's going to be here in five or six hours. But, obviously, the effects out ahead of that thing we're going to feel them from now until the eye wall comes through.
COOPER: We're going to be around this for a while a think.
O'BRIEN: Anderson. Hey, Anderson.
COOPER: Yes, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Can Rob hear me? I don't know if he can hear me but I'm curious. I remember and I know you remember it how slow Frances was to move in. This storm is moving much faster. How does that affect its strength one way or another?
COOPER: All right, let me ask Rob. How does the speed of the storm affect its strength? I mean Frances was much slower. This is moving, you know, 12, 15 miles. How does that change things? How does it compare to Frances?
MARCIANO: Well, holy smokes (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Well, Frances was a slow mover so in the right quadrant that's where you're going to see the strongest winds. You see that because you've got added, you've got added velocity as far as how fast the thing is moving.
The fact that this is moving faster than Frances, that adds another 10 miles an hour on the right side of the storm. Plus, it is much stronger. It's a Category 4 at this point, as opposed to Cat 2, which was Frances.
COOPER: I have no idea what he said because, frankly, I can't hear a thing you're saying.
O'BRIEN: Don't worry. We heard it here.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: I hope he answered your question.
O'BRIEN: We heard it here, Anderson.
COOPER: Good.
O'BRIEN: Hey, you guys, are you on the eastern side of Mobile Bay? Is that where you are?
COOPER: Yes. We're right in downtown Mobile. And we were afraid that we were going to be getting the northeast quadrant of the storm. But as Rob was saying, we may now be a little bit west of it, which would certainly be some good news, though, in these high winds, it is hard to imagine it getting much worse, but we know it is going to.
O'BRIEN: And I assume that is going to make a tremendous difference. All right, tell us just quickly if you've seen -- I know you're -- right now, you're under...
COOPER: I got all the time in the world, Miles.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
MARCIANO: Miles, I want to say one thing.
O'BRIEN: Yes, go ahead.
MARCIANO: I have spent my entire career as a meteorologist telling people not to go out in these things. And this knucklehead is dragging me out into the teeth of this storm. We'll be here all night.
O'BRIEN: All right. All right. We'll check back in with you guys in a little bit. And, by all means, please be safe out here.
And a lot of people ask us about that. And they do take tremendous precautions. And while it looks like they're very much in harm's way, they do a lot of things to protect themselves in these situations. What they're trying to do more than anything is illustrate a point for all of us and help us understand the power of these storms.
The governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana all declared states of emergency earlier this week, as it became clear that Ivan was aiming for their coastlines. Now of course it appears that Alabama will bear the full brunt of all this as Ivan comes to land.
Joining us now from Clinton, Alabama, is Bruce Baughman, who is the director of the Alabama Emergency Management Association.
Mr. Baughman, good to have you with us.
BRUCE BAUGHMAN, DIRECTOR, ALABAMA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION: How are you doing tonight, Miles?
O'BRIEN: Bring us up to date on the number of people evacuated, the number of people in shelters right now.
BAUGHMAN: We've got probably a couple hundred thousand people that are evacuated. Right now, we have about somewhere in the neighborhood of about 15,000, 16,000 personnel in shelters.
We've got 85 shelters opened statewide. We expect more shelterees, of people continuing to evacuate the area.
O'BRIEN: You expect more evacuations even now? Would you advise that or should people stay where they are?
(CROSSTALK)
BAUGHMAN: That's correct. Everybody thinks about the coastal counties. Right now, there are some of the inland counties that expect the winds. And people just now are starting to move out of the area.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's be clear, though, just in case people are watching and trying to make decisions. Who should stay right now and who should move out? Is there a line?
BAUGHMAN: Right now, if you're in coastal counties right now, you're starting to get hurricane force winds. You should remain in shelter right now or any place that you deem safe.
Or if you're in the inland areas that have not had gale force winds, you need to move to shelter in those areas that we expect hurricane force winds. And we have broadcast that out to the public today. O'BRIEN: So, essentially, the word to the wise is, as long as the winds are sort of below that hurricane threshold, move and move quickly?
BAUGHMAN: That's correct. If they're on the low side of tropical storm force winds, which are 35 to 79 miles an hour, you should try and evacuate, because, if you're in the area that expects hurricane force winds, obviously, if it gets up to 65, 70 miles an hour, which is still tropical storm force winds, you might want to stay where you are if you feel that you have a safe haven.
O'BRIEN: A lot of people have made decisions there based on the benchmark storm that they recall. In many cases, it's 25 years ago this past week, Hurricane Frederick, which was of course a Category 3 storm which went right into Mobile Bay as well. Is that a mistake? The power of this storm is much greater, isn't it?
BAUGHMAN: Yes, it is. This is somewhere in between Hurricane Frederick and Hurricane Camille. And I think a lot of people have taken it serious. We have had evacuation from the area. As you probably heard earlier, the coastal counties are pretty much vacant right now of personnel.
O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much. We wish you well as you ride out the storm there, Mr. Baughman. And we wish your state well as you endure this terrible Category 4 storm.
Bruce Baughman is director of the Alabama Emergency Management Association. And we'll try to check back in with you later. Hopefully, we'll be able to do that.
We are going to take a break. When we return, we'll check in with CNN's David Mattingly. He's well off the center of the storm in Panama City, but it is not too far from there that we reported the first deaths associated Hurricane Ivan in the United States, at least a couple of people as a result of some tornadoes that touched down.
And then we're going to look ahead a little bit with somebody who has been through all of this many years ago. We'll talk with one woman who survived Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It wasn't an easy story. It wasn't an easy comeback. She'll have some words to the wise for those who have to endure this terrible hurricane season of 2004.
Back with more NEWSNIGHT in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Hurricane Ivan now just hours from making land as it -- as big as Frances and as strong as Charley and bearing down on Mobile, Alabama. Forecasters say Ivan is showing no signs of weakening. It's the most dangerous storm Mobile has faced in 25 years, maybe longer. Ivan's winds and the resulting waves are causing great concern tonight, all hoping that Mobile's seawalls will be able to handle the storm surge that's sure to follow.
Now, as if 135-mile-an-hour winds, torrential rain and massive waves were not enough, hurricanes also routinely spin off powerful tornadoes. And there are reports a tornado or two touched down in Georgia and Florida's Panhandle, leaving a trail of death and destruction.
CNN's David Mattingly joining us live from Panama City, where a twister was reported earlier.
David, the latest from you.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, we're about 150 miles from Mobile Bay. But you can see we're obviously seeing the effects of this storm already with this flooded beach.
Earlier today, though, people started to feel just a little sense of relief as they watched that storm move off to the west. But now, with that band of showers, that band of severe weather that came through dropping those tornadoes, they're wondering if they're going to make it through this storm OK.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY (voice-over): The winds were only gusting in Panama City Beach when a late afternoon band of violent weather turned deadly. Two people were killed after tornadoes touched down and produced extensive damage in different areas of Dade County.
LES SULLIVAN, MAYOR OF PANAMA CITY BEACH: Probably the worst thing that has occurred as a result of the storm, at least on the beach, the north end of the county, we have had a fatality at the north end of the county as a result, a confirmed fatality as a result of a tornado. We've had some extensive damage off the beach in the residential area on the east side of the bridge. We expect this to be the beginning of a long night.
MATTINGLY: Both hurricane and tornado warnings had been in effect. But just the threat of dangerous conditions wasn't enough to stop local residents from venturing out.
Just hours before the first killer tornado, six members of the O'Brien family thought it was a good time to hit the beach.
KELLY O'BRIEN, PANAMA CITY BEACH RESIDENT: When you live here and there's tourists everywhere all the time, it is kind of nice to have the beach quiet.
MATTINGLY: With Ivan apparently steering to the west, carloads of sight-seers lined the road near local piers to take in the thundering surf. At Dusty's oyster bar, longtime residents fighting boredom were treated to a happy hour that lasted all day.
JOHN HICKS, BUSINESS OWNER: We were coming down, you know, just to bunker up and get everything ready for the winds and everything else. And we started getting phone calls. And, as you can see behind us, most of these people are all local people. And they said, we need a place to go.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY: Where they need to go right now, if they haven't already, is home. A curfew is in effect and will be in effect until tomorrow morning.
And while you look at this flooded beach and these floodwaters that are coming in here right now, this tidal surge, if the winds pick up to 55 miles an hour, all three bridges linking this beach area to the mainland will be closed. And if you're on this beach, you'll have to stay here for the duration, according to local officials -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: David, have you seen anybody out there besides the crew?
MATTINGLY: Since the tornadoes went through, we've not seen anybody on the streets. There is a curfew in effect. Everybody is paying attention to that.
They're sitting at home right now wondering what they're going to see in the morning when they come out to look at this beach, because this is where this town makes its money, this white sand beach. There is supposed to be about 300 yards of it behind me. As you can see right now, it is already flooded. They're seeing a lot more storm surge already than they expected to. So they're keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that their beach will survive the night.
O'BRIEN: Storms can really do a number on those beaches. Can you tell right now one way or the other whether the sand is being washed out or is it too early to tell for sure?
MATTINGLY: It feels like it's being washed out from under me right now. The water keeps getting a little bit deeper by the hour. We haven't seen high tide here yet. So far, the wind has been coming off of the land area, so it's been knocking the waves down.
That's going to change later when the circulation comes around this way. And, of course, we haven't seen high tide. So the worst is definitely yet to come. And the winds are just now picking up here. So we haven't seen the worst of this storm by far yet.
O'BRIEN: David Mattingly is in Panama City, Florida. We'll be checking back with him all throughout the night as well.
When Hurricane Ivan finally dissipates -- hard to imagine that right now, but it will eventually -- thousands will need help rebuilding their lives, of course. And they'll need that help for quite a long time. It is a tough road coming back from this kind of disaster.
For some insights, we turn again to Yolanda Ulrich in Miami. She survived Hurricane Andrew 12 years ago. It wasn't easy. A month ago, during Hurricane Charley, she offered us some very good advice. It was so good, we asked her back tonight to share some more with us.
Thanks again for being with us, Yolanda.
YOLANDA ULRICH, "SOUTH DADE NEWS LEADER": Thank you for asking me, Miles. I'm happy to be here.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: Well, what has it been like seeing these three storms, having lived through Andrew? Is it sort of a flashback after a flashback after a flashback?
ULRICH: Absolutely.
In fact, here in the studio watching your filming tonight, it was very unsettling. I've got to tell you, we all become NIMBies, I guess you would say, not in my backyard. And that's a rotten thing to say, but that's the truth. A couple days ago, when we started seriously tracking Ivan here in South Dade County, a couple of the computer models had that monster going right up US-1. And, frankly, a lot of us had more than one bad moment. It frightened us. It scared me to death, not so much the thought that I was going to actually die in a hurricane. I know I'm going to die, but somehow I don't think I'm going to die in a storm.
But the thought of the year or so after. I really -- at this point, I'm not sure that I could do it again.
O'BRIEN: And when you talk to people who have endured the same thing, do they give you the sort of same response, sort of this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, coming back from a storm like this?
ULRICH: Well, you know, that's what we've been promised. That's what we've been told. This only happens once in a lifetime.
But I have several close friends who endured '26, '35, '38, all of the storms in the '40s and the '50s. So I'm not sure that this is a once-in-a-lifetime.
And I'll tell you, I'm not willing to take a chance. I listened to some of the people that your reporters have interviewed, folks who are going to stay in their homes and ride it out and hunker down. And they've got more guts than I do.
O'BRIEN: Did you ride the storm out, Andrew, in your home?
ULRICH: Yes, I did. I had my children and a young granddaughter with me. Very frankly, we did not think we were going to get the storm until just a few hours before.
We were under the impression that it was going to go to either North Broward or Palm Beach County, which would have put us on the southern part of the storm, and, therefore, all things being equal, the lesser, dangerous side of the storm. As it turned out, we were actually 14 miles north of the eye, which passed over Homestead, which is where I actually work.
O'BRIEN: What's the best advice you can give folks tonight? I'm not talking about folks necessarily in the path of Ivan, as I'm talking about the folks who are contending with the cleanup of Charley and Frances as well. ULRICH: Well, the best advice I can tell you is -- or tell them -- is to be patient.
We in my neighborhood -- and I'm not trying to play "Can you top this?" but we were without power probably for a couple of months. And then even after power was restored to our neighborhood, we couldn't have it in our house. Be patient. The electricity will come back. You won't have to boil the water forever. The neighborhood is going to get cleaned up. We're very fortunate in South Florida in that we do live in a tropical paradise. Give us a couple of years and our canopy will be back. Our plants and our trees will be back. And the building will take place.
What disturbs me is that I'm wondering because of Charley and then Frances and who knows what's left of the season -- we have until the end of November, actually -- I'm wondering about the time it's going to take to rebuild, getting the materials necessary to rebuild. That's going to be a problem, I think.
O'BRIEN: And that was a problem in the wake of Andrew, right, just getting contractors with enough plywood to do the job?
ULRICH: It was. You know, thinking back, we all learned valuable lessons. And hopefully we won't have to reapply those lessons.
But if we do, I'm not so sure that I would rush into rebuilding right away, because we were all working -- there were, what, 250,000 people down there trying to find the same contractor to rebuild their house. And I think that possibly, next time, if, God forbid, there is a next time, I think I would probably wait a while before trying to rush into rebuilding. My husband and I had to go -- out of the county, actually, to buy light fixtures.
And just, as a simple thing -- I know that doesn't sound important right now.
O'BRIEN: No, but, in the grand scheme of things, that kind of sums it up. Everything becomes difficult.
Tell me a final thought here.
ULRICH: Well...
O'BRIEN: Do you recall the first emotions you felt on that morning after when you realized the scope of the damage?
ULRICH: I didn't realize the scope of the damage. That was just it. First, I thought it was my house. And then I thought, well, it was my street. And after I finally made my way down to Homestead, I realized it was going to be pretty tough.
But it took me about two weeks and a ride in an Army helicopter, when I actually saw the damage, and I knew that this wasn't going to go away overnight. And so, frankly, I'm afraid I was naive. I thought, gee, this happened to me, and isn't that awful. I didn't realize for a couple of weeks. And all I can say is God bless those people and for them to be patient and hopefully just do what they're told and just stay the course. That's all I can say.
O'BRIEN: A little bit of work, a little bit of patience, paradise won't necessarily be lost.
Yolanda Ulrich from Miami, thanks again for your advice.
ULRICH: Thank you, Miles.
O'BRIEN: We appreciate you joining us.
ULRICH: Thanks.
O'BRIEN: Not everyone has heeded the warnings to get out of Ivan's way, of course. Some prefer to stay right where they are and ride the storm out at home, as Yolanda told you about. Others are too ill or too frail to move. And, of course, now the best advice is to stay put in many places.
In New Orleans, which dodged the bullet earlier, when Ivan shifted course a bit, those who didn't want to head north, had another option, heading up, literally, as in straight up. It's called vertical evacuation.
CNN's John Zarrella joining us from New Orleans to explain what this is all about.
Hello, John.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, I'll tell you, you know, what a difference a few miles makes.
Down east here, in eastern Louisiana, there's reports of heavy rain and some flooding, and of course, 50, 75 miles east of us, torrential rains and terrible winds. And here on Decatur Street, the corner of Decatur and St. Anne's, across the street, the famous Cafe du Monde, everything is absolutely deserted. The tourists are in their hotels. People evacuated yesterday. And those that didn't did what you just said. They vertically evacuated, because folks here, knowing what can happen to New Orleans, which is below sea level, if a big one hits, they took no chances.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA (voice-over): With their three dogs, sisters Randi and Armid (ph) de la Gueronniere took the advice of local officials. They checked into a hotel and got to higher ground.
RANDI DE LA GUERONNIERE, NEW ORLEANS RESIDENT: We should be in something really strong. These buildings have been here for 100 years, I imagine, or, you know, close to and they're a lot more secure than any of our homes.
ZARRELLA: The Astor Hotel was packed with New Orleans residents who didn't evacuate the city but chose instead to vertically evacuate. In this below-sea-level city, massive flooding from a major hurricane, 10 to 15 feet of it everywhere, stirs even greater fear than wind. Throughout the famed French Quarter, sandbags line storefronts, plywood covers windows and trucks were still unloading more of it.
Taking it all in, a group of conventioners from the National Safety Council. Thousands of them are here and stuck. With the airlines shut down, there is no way for them to get out.
LYNN STEBBRIS, CONFERENCE ATTENDEE: It looks like the people that are at the hotel are confident and they're kind of on top of things so -- and we have gone to the store and we've gotten our water and we have gotten some soup and things like that. So we should be OK for a couple of days.
ZARRELLA: And that's all it may be. Just a couple days. As Ivan turned it lessened the risk. Yet this city known as the Big Easy has for the past few days been anything but.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA: Now, a few hours ago we were down -- up on Lake Pontchartrain, went all the way up Canal Street to the lake. And the water was pouring in along the lake, over the lakefront.
But right up against the levee, that hurricane protection levee that surrounds the city, which is designed not to be overtopped unless a hurricane is a 3, 4, or 5, which, of course, we are not getting here anything like that tonight, just a little bit of wind, just a little bit of a drizzle. It is amazing, Miles, the difference that just a few miles makes.
And, you know, listening to your guest a few minutes ago certainly brought back memories for me from Hurricane Andrew. And one of the things when she was talking about the houses and everything being destroyed, after Andrew, there wasn't a leaf on a tree, a branch on a tree. There wasn't houses to -- people could not find their homes when they went back, because there were no markers left. People didn't even know what street they were on. It was horrible.
And building construction in Florida, all over Florida, is considerably and always was considerably better than in many of these coastal areas that are going to be impacted tonight. So, certainly, we could be seeing some terrible, terrible destruction as day breaks tomorrow -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Well, these storms do have a way of underscoring the point that not every builder builds to code.
Let's talk for just a moment about the worst-case scenario, which has been avoided in New Orleans. And that is the fact that this is a city largely below sea level. While it does have a system of levees and dikes to keep the water out, there's been concern over the years time and time again about the possibility of a direct hit there.
Did you talk to city officials much about that today? ZARRELLA: Horrible, horrible fears here of a direct hit. And that's why they evacuated people. That's why we saw the massive traffic jams, people leaving the city yesterday, because you've got Lake Pontchartrain. You've got the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River, the city below sea level, surrounded on all three sides.
If a major -- and recent studies they've just done, they thought they would be safe up to a high category to a mid-Category 3. Now they're not so sure. They think that if a major hurricane hits at just the right angle, that the levees might well be overtopped in a high 3, certainly a storm like Ivan.
And where I'm standing here, Jackson Square is just behind me over here. You could see right here in the French Quarter some 15 feet of water. And that would be covering the entire city. Second- story homes would be underwater. So it really underscores the fear they have here of water, more so even than wind, because the fear is that it would take 120 days to get the pumps running to get the water out of the city. And it might take up to five or six months to pump the water out. And they might have to blow holes in some parts of the levee to get some of the water out.
And they could have tens of thousands of deaths, because there are at least 100,000 people in this city, in the metropolitan area, 1.3 million, 100,000 who they fear would not get out or really have no way of getting out, many of them relying on public transportation. And with money and funds very, very tight, Miles, plans to build the wall, the levees higher, have been sort of put on hold for now. It would take many, many hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. And that kind of dollar is just not there -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Boy, that scenario you just paint should be enough to spur that kind of spending. But, naturally, that's a tough call, isn't it?
ZARRELLA: Yes, no question about it, because there are so many other national priorities and emergency managers have told us that.
Right now, it's a very difficult time. They have talked about plans. They have even, Miles, talked about a plan where they would build a Noah's ark, wall off a section of the city which would protect the French Quarter, the downtown business area. And what people could then do -- and it would run along one of the interstate highways, I- 10.
People outside of this wall could then come inside. And they would close those gates behind them. And it would literally become somewhat of a Noah's Ark, protecting some of the city from total destruction. And people say if they ever got this worst-case scenario and they didn't have protection, the real question is would they really ever rebuild New Orleans here where it sits, or would New Orleans have to be built somewhere else, up river a little bit further.
O'BRIEN: Wow.
ZARRELLA: That's how bad it could be here -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Sort of sounds like building a fort, almost an Alamo against the storm. Wow.
ZARRELLA: Yes. Exactly.
O'BRIEN: That's quite a scenario.
John Zarrella in the Crescent City or the Big Easy, whatever you like, New Orleans, thank you very much.
We're going to take a break.
When we come back, we're going to check in on some of those shelters. Many of them are full tonight, as folks heeded the calls -- and we're glad to report that -- heeded the calls and are getting out of the way of this very dangerous storm as it comes ever so close to shore, as you see, lower right portion of your screen.
Stay with us as NEWSNIGHT continues.
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