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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Hurricane Rita Watch; Fleeing Citizens Flood Texas Highways; Preparations End, Waiting Begins
Aired September 22, 2005 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: But tonight is the literal calm before the storm.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: It certainly is. And let's hope we can stay on the air, at least here from Galveston, as long as possible during the storm. Galveston is a city standing in the path of Hurricane Rita right now. It is a ghost town tonight. Most people here are taking no chances. They saw what Katrina did to New Orleans. They saw the foul-ups. They saw the flooding. And they're also well aware of their own history, how a storm leveled this place a century ago, Aaron.
BROWN: Well, the good news tonight, if there is any good news -- and we'd put it on quotation marks -- is that Rita is no longer the third strongest Atlantic hurricane on record. It did weaken a bit today from category five to category four. But as Max Mayfield said a couple of weeks ago, the difference there is a bit like being hit by a freight train or a semi, not very much.
The winds are down to 145 miles an hour. Though keep in mind when Katrina made landfall, its winds were 140 miles an hour. So Rita is every bit as strong as Katrina was, Anderson.
COOPER: Yes, it certainly is. Precisely where Rita is going to strike is still the question at this hour. Folks all along the coast are trying to get to a safer place, but none are getting there fast. As we've been showing you, they have been stuck in traffic all day. We'll show you all of that ahead in this hour. We're also going to get the latest on Rita. First, here's a look at what's happening right now at this moment. Let's take a look.
Rita, which was a category five hurricane this morning, as Aaron mentioned, has been downgraded to a Category four, not much comfort in that, though. Winds as high as 145 miles an hour. The storm surge could tower 20 feet in some places. Landfall expected early Saturday morning somewhere between this city, Galveston, and the Texas/Louisiana border.
In Houston, officials have turned I-45 into an entirely northbound highway, all lanes, all of them, for nearly 100 miles. Even so, hundreds of thousands of people have spent hours in bumper to bumper traffic. One former mayor says the city's evacuation plans are, well, quote, "insufficient."
And then those trying to fly out of Houston are having a hard time as well. George Bush and Hobby Airports are a mess right now, likely will close down entirely by 1 p.m. tomorrow. Meantime, let's go over to Louisiana. Governor Kathleen Blanco today urged those living on the coast of her state to just flee north. Blanco says she has mobilized more than 800 buses to aid in evacuations. And she's asked for 15,000 more National Guard troops to assist in search and rescue operations.
Right now, things here in Galveston are rather calm, no sign that a monster storm is coming this way. The waves are increasing. We're going to show you them up close in a moment. But unlike the people who perished here a century ago, we know what's coming here. We know what's going to hit. And the government here is preparing and doing what we can.
We know that by this time tomorrow this is going to be a very different place. And it may be impossible to stand in this spot tomorrow. Let's get the latest on the storm now from CNN's severe weather expert, meteorologist, Chad Myers.
Chad?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: You know what, Anderson? I talked to you a little bit ago about maybe this possible left turn in this storm. And that puts Houston, maybe Galveston back into the eye. And you're really going to have to wake up tomorrow morning to see if this is really happening. It takes a while for a wobble to turn into a turn because it could just go left and then come back right again.
But it has certainly moved off the line in the past couple of hours. And those frames now are very important on whether the storm actually stays left and still stays in the cone for sure or does it actually do something else. Does it go left and then come back right again?
Right behind me here, the Gulf of Mexico. There's Florida. There's Louisiana, New Orleans, all the way back into Texas, Mexico and Cancun. The water from the Caribbean comes out of this area, comes past Cozumel, comes past Cancun.
Yesterday at this time, the winds were well up in the 175 range. But in the morning hours, they were only about 105. Notice the colors in here, the blue, cool water, the red, very warm and very deep water. So by yesterday morning, seven o'clock, the winds were about 115. But late in the day, the winds were all the way up to 173, 175 as it passed over that very, very warm water.
Overnight last night into tonight into this morning, things cooled off a little. It moved away from what we call the loop current. Katrina stayed in it. This now has cooled and slowed our storm actually, in fact, down to about 140. We are right there. The storm is right there, that dot right there. And it's turning left -- if it's turning left, it's turning into a very warm -- another warm eddy vortex right through here. So the storm could, in fact, gain some strength in the overnight hours before it gets back into cool water and looses some strength before landfall.
It's all a matter of warm and cold and left and right and highs and lows. And you know what? Because nobody really lives out here, we don't have very many observations from out there, no weather balloons go up from the Gulf of Mexico. So it's impossible to know if the forecasts are perfect or not. Port O'Connor all the way to Morgan City, all you need to know, hurricane warning for you right now. Back to you.
COOPER: Chad, thanks very much for that. I just want to show you we are now right at the bottom of the seawall here in Galveston, Texas. This is the beach, which today was basically -- you could kind of hang out on the beach. The waves have really started to come in now. And the beach basically, I mean, it only exists for a short amount of time. The waves coming in -- they also have these big dunes. By tomorrow it's likely these dunes are going to be gone.
As you can see, the water comes in, and you actually have to end up going up the steps. I don't know, Neil, if you can just pan down just showing this. The water is already now coming up a good way up these steps. By tomorrow within a hours -- and this is changing hour by hour -- within a few hours, we're going to be seeing waves crashing over this seawall. And, of course, the seawall doesn't run all the way down Galveston. It is only parts of Galveston that are protected by this wall.
Again, this water is just coming up. You know, when we started this program, the water was maybe at the first step. It's now, you know, three or four steps up. We're going to continue to watch this throughout the hour. Just a small sign of how this storm is coming because you really don't get a sense of it during the days here, the last two days in Galveston. You know, the skies have been more or less clear. And it's really only the water that gives an indication of what is to come, this storm, this killer storm that is out there and heading right this way.
Let's check in with Rob Marciano who is in Texas as well in the field.
Rob, what's the situation where you are?
ROB MARCIANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, behind me one of the largest petro-chemical plants, or at least oil refineries in the country could be effected. We're in the northern tip of Galveston Bay. And the storm surge up here could be devastating, not only to the people that live here who haven't evacuated, but also the oil refinery industry.
Houston, a huge city, fourth largest in the country. You know, New Orleans was criticized for not evacuating soon enough. Houston may very well be criticized for evacuating too soon or without a good plan. Gridlock is an understatement. Forty-five from Houston to Dallas, an absolute parking lot. They didn't start contra-flow or meaning putting both lanes in the same direction out of town until later on this afternoon. That was too late.
People started running out of gas. Temperatures here approaching 100 degrees. Some folks were describing it as the same situation as the Super Dome except strewn out across north Houston. Folks running out of gas, gas lines at the pumps that did have gas, a dire situation for the folks trying to get out of town. If you tried to get out by airplane, there were delays at the airport. Some said not enough TSA workers showed up to work because they were actually evacuating themselves.
Continental, canceling flights as of noon tomorrow. American canceling all fights into Intercontinental. And Southwest canceling all flights to Intercontinental and Hobby Airport as of noontime tomorrow.
All right, let's talk a little bit about this storm and the storm surge. Galveston certainly a target. I talked to one of my good friends and colleagues at the local TV station here who said he looked at the swells, and they're eerily similar to the way Isaac Kline described them back in 1900, the great Galveston hurricane of 1900. Smooth, slick, Maui-like swells rolling in. For folks who live in Southwest Louisiana, 1957, Hurricane Audrey, their big one, a category four that took hundreds of lives as well. Will it be Hurricane Audrey that strikes Southwest Louisiana? Will it be a Galveston hurricane of 1900? Either situation, Anderson, is not a good one. We'll find out tomorrow night and Saturday. Back to you.
COOPER: Yes, Rob, certainly that is true. And the seawall -- that hurricane of 1990, the seawall was built because of that hurricane. It was started in 1903, completed in 1905. And again, the water just keeps coming in.
Earlier I was speaking to the mayor of Galveston. She actually told me there's a lot of trash in this water. She was saying that in the last couple of days they've seen a lot of trash, of debris, of shoes, of people's possessions. And she says a lot of that is coming actually from Louisiana as the water there is receding. They're seeing a lot of just garbage and personal possessions of people washing up on the shores here on Galveston, a reminder of Katrina, of what happened here just some three weeks ago.
I want to show you part of my conversation with the mayor of Galveston just a short time ago here.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LYDA ANN THOMAS, MAYOR OF GALVESTON: We just don't know. Cooper, I'm going to guess maybe 4,000, maybe less. There's no way to tell.
COOPER: Out of a population of normally...
THOMAS: Sixty.
COOPER: Sixty?
THOMAS: The town is dead right now, so I know a lot of people have gone. But I can't count them.
COOPER: You know, I know you've been asked this question a million times. What did you learn from Katrina? But there are specific things that you saw happen with Katrina that you didn't want to happen here. What were they?
THOMAS: Well, first of all, to save lives and get people out of here, we instituted with the state the opportunity for people to take their pets. Number two, I instituted a citizens response team, which actually went into the neighborhoods and said, "Do you need public transportation? Give me your name, your address, special needs. We will pick you up, and we will put you on the bus and send you to safety."
COOPER: You also had an incentive for bus drivers because that was a big problem in New Orleans.
THOMAS: Well, we were very lucky because our bus drivers, both independent school drivers and the city of Galveston, committed to go because they could take their families. The most important part of this has to do with the fact that I made up my mind as well as my council that we would call for a voluntary evacuation 72 hours prior to any storm in the Gulf, no matter where we thought it was going. We started to educate the people and say, "Pack your bag. Get your medicines because you very well may have to leave tomorrow or the next day."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: (INAUDIBLE) with the mayor here in Galveston. And when you listen to that, Aaron, you know, it's so frustrating. They could have done that in New Orleans. They could have had a list of bus drivers. They could have offered bus drivers to let them take their families on the buses that they had. You know, so many what ifs, of course. But thankfully, it seems they were able to get a large number of people, at least here in Galveston, out, Aaron.
BROWN: It is hard, though, in fairness to sort of everybody to underestimate the impact that the failures of Katrina had on the officials, both federal officials, state and local in preparing for this one, whether they're in the state of Texas or in Washington. Everybody seems -- we'll know a lot more tomorrow and the day after -- did seem to learn a lesson. In any case, best estimates show that Rita will strike land early Saturday morning sometime after midnight eastern time, maybe very early, two o'clock in the morning or so, though the weather will deteriorate a lot throughout the night tomorrow.
Port Arthur, Texas appears to be in that area up to the Texas/Louisiana border where the hurricane will come ashore. Hurricane force winds will be felt up to 60 miles from Katrina's center and tropical storm winds up to 200 miles away. Best estimates are very bad news for a city like Beaumont, Texas, which is dead center in the hurricane's path tonight.
Reporting for us, CNN's Ed Lavandera.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Emergency teams are racing to move about 500 elderly patients in the Beaumont area out of Hurricane Rita's path. Ambulances that were supposed to do the job were diverted to other areas of the Texas Gulf coast. Military aircraft will take these people to Dallas. But officials in Beaumont say there are still several hundred more elderly people with special needs who need to be evacuated.
Beaumont residents who were able to do so headed out of town in anticipation of the hurricane headed their way. Rita is forecast to hit land as at least a category three with winds of up to 130 miles to hour.
GUY GOODSON, MAYOR OF BEAUMONT: We still have some medical needs, special needs people that we're getting to the Southeast Sections Regional Airport for air transport out to the Dallas metropolitan area. The problem is that our resources get stretched. And we had Katrina evacuees that we still had to get out of here.
LAVANDERA: Beaumont is part of the state's golden triangle with Port Arthur and Orange. It's home to oil and energy companies. And though Beaumont sits 30 miles in from the Gulf of Mexico, experts say a direct hit from a major storm could still prove catastrophic.
JIM GIBEAUT, PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS: It's not very high, so there won't be much breaking of the hurricane strength due to topography that one might get in other locations.
LAVANDERA: This town is no stranger to the destruction a hurricane can cause. In 1957, Hurricane Audrey slammed into the Texas/Louisiana coast leaving massive flooding in its wake. In 1961, it was Carla, a category four storm. This model created by the University of Texas at Austin shows the devastating effect Carla's storm surges had and could still have on Beaumont and the towns around it.
Flooding is a big problem for towns on the Texas Gulf coast. In 1986, Hurricane Bonny swept through dumping 10 to 15 inches of rain on the triangle. But flooding isn't the only problem. Hurricane Rita could slam into Beaumont with 100+ mile per hour winds creating a completely different set of problems.
GIBEAUT: Wind damage -- we can expect quite a bit of that if this storm retains its strength.
LAVANDERA: And so, the people of Beaumont, Texas have learned to respect an oncoming storm and took to the roads hoping one more time they'll have a place to come home to.
The streets here in Beaumont tonight are very quiet. The traffic on Interstate 10 heading eastbound is also pretty steady continuously as well. City officials say the evacuations by bus will continue for as long as they can possibly do them here (INAUDIBLE)...
BROWN: Well, we knew we were pushing our luck a little bit. We've been having audio problems in and out out of Beaumont. In any case, as Ed reports, the traffic continues, the bus service, to get people who need transportation out, continues. And they wait for what the next 24 hours will bring.
In a moment, we'll get a better feel for that, though perhaps not the definitive feel. Still a ways to go before the meteorologists can say precisely where Rita will hit. But we'll get the latest update from Max Mayfield at the National Hurricane Center in South Florida. And hospitals bracing for trouble, but the preparations are different than they were for Katrina. Or are they? A break first. This is State of Emergency.
(COMMERCIAL)
COOPER: Well, by now you've seen the pictures of those highways clogged with cars, people moving one mile an hour and taking hours and hours to get anywhere and really, many of them not getting anywhere at all. For another view on the tough time getting out, we go now to CNN's Gary Tuchman who is now in Port Arthur, Texas.
Gary, what's it look like there?
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, the winds are starting to pick up, but this is nothing yet because the worst, of course, is still to come. This is a town with a bulls eye on its back. It's an oil town that's about to become a major hurricane town, Port Arthur, Texas, right near the Louisiana border. And when people tried to get out of Texas and tried to head east, it was a nightmare. We were driving along the Louisiana roadways on Interstate 10 heading west from New Orleans.
As we were heading west, we were driving 75 miles per hour consistently, no one in our way the entire time. But in the other direction trying to get away from this hurricane, thousands of other people. And they were not moving. And we saw for about 65 miles from Lake Charles, Louisiana in the west to Lafayette, Louisiana in the center of the state traffic not moving at all. As far as I know, many of those people may still be on the roadways. It really was a nightmare.
Traffic started picking up in the southwestern portion of the state a little bit. But then they got to that bottleneck, and it was a real difficult situation. Now, we saw the reverse three weeks ago. People were heading from New Orleans to the west trying to get away from that hurricane. So it's really been a nightmare for the state of Louisiana.
A lot of those people are hoping that come Saturday or Sunday they could come back here to Port Arthur and other places near here in Texas. But, of course, as we've learned, there are no guarantees.
Aaron, back to you.
BROWN: Gary, thank you. Not to correct a colleague, but a nightmare is getting caught in a hurricane. Trying to get out of one in bad traffic is a big deal inconvenience. But it could be a lot worse.
Rita continued to mimic Katrina today. It lost some steam. It was downgraded to category four. It's expected to come ashore as a category four just as Katrina did, meaning the winds will be somewhere between 131, 155 miles an hour, which is plenty reason enough to worry. Max Mayfield helps us sort through this stuff. He's at the National Hurricane Center in South Florida tonight.
Max, there was this little wobble that we saw earlier tonight to the west. Does it mean anything?
MAX MAYFIELD, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: It doesn't mean a thing. We see that all the time. And it certainly did wobble to the west. And it may wobble a little bit more to the north. And overall, it's going to turn back towards the northwest. And we're very confident it's going to, you know, make final landfall there somewhere close to the upper Texas or extreme west Louisiana coast.
BROWN: Let's talk about timeframe. They'll start to get bad weather, really nasty weather, high winds and rain about when?
MAYFIELD: Well, actually probably the first area to get tropical storm force winds will be on the Louisiana coast just because it's closer. And they'll probably get some of the storm force winds in these outer rain bands very late tonight or early tomorrow morning. And then as it continues toward landfall, the storm force winds will be arriving onto the Texas coast likely tomorrow afternoon. So, you know, the farther you are away, the longer time you have here to make preparations and complete those evacuations. But everything really needs to be done, you know, as early tomorrow morning as possible.
BROWN: In the target area 24 hours from now, what would you expect the weather to be like?
MAYFIELD: Definitely going downhill in Southwestern Louisiana. The core of the hurricane should be approaching, in fact, by, let's say, about eight p.m. tomorrow evening. It should be just off the coast here of Southwest Louisiana. And we'll see how the steering currents set up here whether it keeps heading into that extreme upper Texas coast or into extreme Southwest Louisiana.
And wherever it makes landfall, there just, you know, nearer into the east or where the center costs (ph) of the coast is where you'll have the highest storm surge. And right now, that looks like the Beaumont, Port Arthur area. A little bit to the east, and it'll definitely be Cameron, Louisiana and up into Lake Charles. A little bit more to the west, and we're still talking Galveston Island and Galveston Bay.
BROWN: All right, Max, we'll talk tomorrow. We'll have a really good idea this time tomorrow where it's coming ashore. Thank you, as always. Max Mayfield at the National Hurricane Center in South Florida.
Anderson, the underlying message in everything that Max says is what people in your part of the world have been doing today, which is trying to get out. You don't really need the lesson of Katrina, but if you did, there it was. Get out no matter how slow the traffic is if you've got enough gas in the car. It is time or past time to move.
COOPER: Yes, it certainly is. We heard from the mayor of Houston now saying, though, that the time may have passed given all the hurdles on the highway. Now he wants people to just stay where they are. The mayor of Galveston echoing that as well. If you haven't left Galveston by now, you probably should just stay here.
Earlier I spoke with two people, Nick and Linda Nichols, who have been in their car since six a.m. this morning. They're trying to evacuate from Houston. They're trying to get to Austin. They've been stuck in the car with their two old English sheepdogs. One of the dogs is sick. They join me again by the phone.
Nick, how is the traffic now?
NICK NICHOLS: Well, we're moving along. We're approaching 17 hours. And I hope our son is waiting for us. The dogs are alive and well. One is still a little bit under the weather.
COOPER: Seventeen hours -- how far have you gone?
NICHOLS: I think we're approaching -- we're about 20 miles from Austin, about 15 from Austin.
COOPER: The end is in sight. How is the traffic moving where you are?
NICHOLS: Well, it's pretty sporadic. We kind of get a spurt in there where we can kind of drive normally, then we're bumper to bumper.
COOPER: How are you doing on gas?
NICHOLS: Well, I'm down to about a quarter of a tank. I have not stopped to get gas, but many places along the way have had signs out saying no gas. Once in a while you'll see all the cars lined up getting gas.
COOPER: Some local officials had said that if people broke down on the side of the road and needed gas that they would have tanker trucks helping to fill people up or at least give them a little gas to help them get on their way. Have you seen any of that?
NICHOLS: I don't think they're on our route. I didn't see any of that at all. I saw some people with gallon jugs of gas that had to walk across the street where they could get some. But I didn't see a tanker out here.
COOPER: And how are people, I mean, behaving on the highway? Are they, you know, switching lanes? I mean, how are tempers on that highway?
NICHOLS: We were just on I-10 for 17 hours coming up. And everybody was in very good shape there, very polite, courteous. I didn't see any of the, you know, passing on the left or the right or anybody getting out of line. They're pretty cooperative, understanding the situation and trying to get out of Houston.
COOPER: How is your wife doing?
NICHOLS: She's doing real well. She's taking care of the dogs pretty good and me. And hopefully we'll get a little supper here about midnight somewhere.
COOPER: So you're about 20 miles from Austin. How long do you think that's going to take you?
NICHOLS: We're not sure. We saw the lights in the distance, and that's a trip we did not think we would make today. But we ought to be there within 30 minutes or an hour maybe. It could take two hours.
COOPER: Well, let's hope it's the 30-minute timeframe. And I hope your son has some hot food waiting for you and a nice bed, not one of those futons or air mattresses. I hope he's got an actual bed for you all. Good luck to you.
NICHOLS: Thanks so much. Enjoyed visiting with you.
COOPER: All right. Well, you take care and those dogs, too. I know one of them is sick. I hope that dog gets better soon.
Galveston is a very quiet town this evening, very quiet because nearly everyone has deserted. The mayor estimated some 90 percent, but frankly, they don't know how many people exactly have remained. Nearly deserted is not the same as deserted. A few here have taken Rita's measure and have decided that they are up to the challenge. For that, we turn to Sean Callebs who is also here in Galveston, Texas.
Sean?
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening to you, Anderson. I know you were right here a short while ago during the Larry King show. Water was slapping up against the bottom of the seawall. Well, now it's coming up very regularly. Also a couple of local gentlemen who are going to ride this storm out on this island just pulled up a short while ago.
And they tell us down on the west end of the island where the seawall does not extend, does not protect the island that the water from the Atlantic is already pouring across that lower end of the road. That is significant because this storm is still a long way away. And it's going to get a lot worse, even if the eye does not smack directly into Galveston. It's going to move, certainly push the surf up in this area.
Joining us right now is Jamie Benham. He runs a construction company here. Jaime, you just went down there. You're going to ride the storm out here. Firstly, why risk it? Why not get off the island?
JAMIE BENHAM: My parents don't want to leave, and I'm not going to leave them behind. And they've rode a few storms out, and for some reason they think it'll be OK to stay. So I'm not going to leave them behind.
CALLEBS: How anxious are you? Because certainly you've seen what that storm -- you know, we just saw what happened with Katrina. And now... BENHAM: I'm pretty anxious because I've got a crew of 30 working in New Orleans right now with FEMA down there doing blue tarp and cleanup. And so, I'm anxious to get this storm over with and see where it takes us.
CALLEBS: Now, what are you going to do tomorrow? I mean, it's going to start raining in the early morning hours. What are you going to do to prepare? And are you in a secure, safe place?
BENHAM: Right now we've got approximately 200 or so gallons of diesel. We've got about 100 gallons of gas. We've got generators. We've got food.
CALLEBS: So you're doing the best you can?
BENHAM: We're doing the best we can. Right now we're just out kind of touring the island seeing exactly what's going on.
CALLEBS: OK. Well, Jamie, we'll continue to check in with you. The best of luck to you and your family. Be safe, more than anything.
BENHAM: Appreciate it. Thank you.
CALLEBS: That's the situation out here. We know that water is coming over on Seawall Avenue. We're going to go down and check it out in just a little bit.
Aaron, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better here. And there are still a lot of hours before the teeth of this storm really sink into this little strip of barrier island.
BROWN: It sounds like you're guest there is ready for a hurricane party. Thank you, Sean. Sean Callebs in Galveston tonight.
Coming up, preparing the levies in New Orleans for what may come next. Will they hold? They've just now been repaired. And exhausted and beaten, the residents of Little Grand Isle, Louisiana prepare to deal with yet another hit. They've had many over the years. We'll take a break first. This is State of Emergency.
(COMMERCIAL)
BROWN: That's Houston, Texas tonight, the interstate. All eight lanes, as I remember the interstate in Houston -- all eight lanes moving in one direction out of town to the north. People there evacuating. People from the coastal cities coming through Houston, which probably wasn't the greatest move in the world, either. But they're all caught up in traffic that's moving a mile or two or three an hour trying to get to friends or relatives, trying to get out of town before the storm hits about 24 hours from now.
The tide's already two feet above normal in New Orleans. The storm surges predicted to get about five feet or so. Several inches of rain on the city and on the levy system that failed just a few weeks ago. It will be tested yet again.
Here's CNN's Adaora Udoji.
ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As dark clouds move in, this is it, the last best line of defense for St. Bernard Parish where floodwaters swallowed tens of thousands of homes after Hurricane Katrina. Now officials fear they have no idea what to expect.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I guess in New York you all have had the 9-11 event. This might be our 9-11 here.
UDOJI: We're just east of downtown New Orleans with parish levy engineer Bob Turner who stayed as the Army Corps of Engineers' holdout. This levy, a 56-mile long soft mound of earth with a steel middle, something kids might run up and down. He calls it an inner levy, a second line of defense. Katrina already destroyed the outer levy, so this is all there is to hold back the storm.
It's really windy up here.
BOB TURNER, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Yes, it is.
UDOJI: Does that worry you?
TURNER: Well, this wind is what's driving the water in. That's what's causing the tides to rise. So, yes, that is a little bit of a concern.
UDOJI: Windy and raining. Though the eye of Rita is still more than 225 miles away, the outer rain bands are already blowing hard and have dumped so much rain the last 24 hours water levels are up a foot and rising faster and faster.
This is one of the levies. It's like a small hill. And the problem is this, the water is just yards away. And if it rises high enough and storm surges force it over the hill, it'll go straight into the parish. Weather models predict a storm surge of three to five feet. But Turner says anything over that means big problems.
TURNER: A major hurricane -- basically we have no defense against that right now, none whatsoever.
UDOJI: That's the big question everywhere here, how will the battered levies hold up. Volunteers like Eddie Woerner who have been feeding thousands of police officers and rescue workers isn't taking any chances, packing up the outdoor kitchen and heading to higher ground.
EDDIE WOERNER, VOLUNTEER: We're going to have a grand finale on Saturday or Sunday.
UDOJI: But now you're not?
WARNER: This storm has ended it.
UDOJI: New Orleans police say they have no idea how many people have evacuated or how many have stayed, though some officers say they haven't seen many people around. In St. Bernard parish, Turner is getting ready turning on water pumps now to push the rainwater out. He says there aren't many people left here.
TURNER: More water in the parish at this point in time is not going to do any -- can't do any more damage than what's already been done. But what it will do is it's going to significantly delay the recovery effort.
UDOJI: Delay. He plans to stay unless Rita moves in too close.
And, Aaron, right now at this hour, the rain still is coming down a little bit, a little bit lighter than it was earlier. Also today, Aaron, local officials and the Army Corps of Engineers -- they also shut the steel doors of the levies surrounding Lake Ponchartrain. They, of course, are still very concerned about the three levy breaks just north of us that happened after Hurricane Katrina. But at this point, all they can do, Aaron, is wait and see what Rita does.
BROWN: We will wait and watch with them. Thank you, Adaora Udoji.
Just to underscore something that Max Mayfield said a little bit ago, the New Orleans area, the Louisiana area, as you look at the graphic of the hurricane, the front end of it, the most inland end of it, if you will, will hit the Louisiana area first. So that will be -- we'll get an early indication of whether the levies are going to hold, Anderson, before even we start to see the effects, the main part of the hurricane hits down where you are.
COOPER: Yes, you know, and it's heartbreaking, Aaron, to think that there are people in Louisiana, a lot of people who have just gone through all of this who are just getting back on their feet, just beginning to comb through what was left of their lives or think about returning home who now have to put the pieces they had barely picked up to face or to flee another storm. CNN's Ted Rowlands has their story.
TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: By late Thursday afternoon, the wind was already blowing and waves were pounding Grand Isle, Louisiana. This Gulf coast town already battered by Katrina is preparing for another powerful storm. An evacuation was ordered Thursday morning. Cars streamed out of the city all day. John Bird gathered up his possessions that survived Katrina and got ready to leave.
JOHN BURT: It's depressing to see all this mess to start off with. And the damages are ridiculous. I don't know of anything you could do here. All we can do is wait and see what this one does. You know?
ROWLANDS: Chris and Caroline Angelette may stay and ride out the storm. They say that'll be a last minute decision. They spent the day bringing things inside and packing for possible evacuation. The thought of having to go through another hurricane so soon after Katrina is hard for Caroline to deal with.
CAROLINE ANGELETTE: We're very tired. This has been a long month for us. We can't believe it's over three weeks now, and we're at it again. You know? Stop the cleaning process.
ROWLANDS: For the past three weeks, people have been working around the clock trying to clear debris into piles like this after Hurricane Katrina. They are going to have to start all over again once Hurricane Rita moves through.
Grand Isle is not in the direct path of Hurricane Rita, but the tidal surge associated with the storm is expected to flood the city. With most homes already heavily damaged by Katrina, many people fear there won't be much left after Hurricane Rita. Ted Rowlands, CNN, Grand Isle, Louisiana.
COOPER: Man. Coming up tonight on Newsnight, how Houston hopes to shield its hospitals from the effect of the coming storm so that what happened in New Orleans does not happen again there. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL)
COOPER: I don't think any of us who saw it firsthand are going to forget what happened in New Orleans hospitals after Katrina hit there. Patients and doctors and staffs abandoned having to plan their own way out, trying to keep their patients alive with low supplies, with their hands, bare hands at times.
In Houston, no one wants anything like that. Most of the city's approximately 72 hospitals are planning to stay open. But they say they have got everything under control. CNN's senior medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has been investigating.
DR. JEFF KALINA, METHODIST HOSPITAL: Beyond that, the smaller circles are what we call special needs hubs.
SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: In the wake of Hurricane Katrina four weeks ago and Tropical Storm Allison four years ago, Texas Medical Center is taking no chances with Rita.
Where did the water get to? Did it get all around here?
KALINA: It got around three feet up.
GUPTA: Dr. Jeff Kalina, who's on the Texas Medical Center's disaster preparedness committee, says they have learned a lot and are confident they can continue to safely treat patients here.
KALINA: We are not below sea level like New Orleans is.
GUPTA: Why don't you just move the patients out? I mean, this place might get hit by a category five hurricane. Why not just move them out?
KALINA: Well, you know, evacuating a hospital is not an easy task. We're a pretty safe haven for patients.
GUPTA: Houston falls into a very interesting position. You see, they won't accept any patients once the hurricane starts because they may get hit themselves. But they aren't quite worried enough to evacuate the thousands of patients here now.
I'm standing on top of Methodist Hospital. All around me 70 acres and about 40 hospitals. It is the largest hospital complex in the world. And today all of these hospitals are talking to one another. They are preparing for a hurricane, loss of electricity, loss of water, loss of plumbing and possible flooding. This will be their first true test since Tropical Storm Allison.
If you lose power, what happens?
KALINA: We have generators, and the center point has backup trucks in case our generators go out.
GUPTA: If you lose communication and can't call anybody on the phones, what do you do?
KALINA: We have walkie-talkies and satellite phones.
GUPTA: Water goes out?
KALINA: We have our own self-contained water supply.
GUPTA: There's violence or looting breaks out around the hospital?
KALINA: We have security, and we have in-house police that are off duty with an agreement from the police department that those police officers are allowed to stay on duty here.
GUPTA: Flooding, lots of flooding?
KALINA: We have flood gates.
GUPTA: Your ventilators stop working in the ICU?
KALINA: We have backup generator power.
GUPTA: Really you've thought of everything.
KALINA: Yes.
GUPTA: How comfortable are you right now with, you know, the preparedness of Texas Medical Center?
KALINA: I'm very confident that we can ride this thing out.
GUPTA: For now, they are 100 percent confident. And some of this helps. Sure, there is the obvious like boarded up windows. But consider this, unlike at Charity Hospital in Louisiana where generators were in the basement and quickly shorted out, these generators are several feet above sea level. And there are 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel to power them all throughout the hospital.
There are also wireless devices if communication goes down, places to sleep and plenty of food and water, a stockpile for eight days. And these remarkable doors, floodgates, really, just like a submarine, first to keep the water from getting in, second, to contain it if it does seep through. Dr. Jeff Kalina will be on duty here through the hurricane. And this time they say they're ready.
Really amazing, Anderson, as well. We saw some patients that actually were evacuated from Katrina to hospitals in Texas and subsequently had to be evacuated from those hospitals to hospitals in Houston. So two evacuations in just a couple of weeks, very difficult for those patients. But let me tell you, after having toured around Texas Medical Center, it appears that these guys are absolutely confident they're going to be able to withstand whatever comes their way, be the hurricane and the forceful winds and possibly the flooding that might follow as well. They seem ready, Anderson.
COOPER: That is certainly good news, Sanjay. I know you'll continue to watch that story.
Back here in Galveston, flooding is very likely. We're on a seawall right now built in 1903, started in 1903, I should say, finished around 1905 after that 1900 hurricane came and killed more than 8,000 people. We've been kind of tracking the flow, the ebb and the flow of the water here. The waters are really getting a lot stronger now, the tide coming in and basically moving up this water.
There are these sand dunes here, which are now being eaten away. I'm guessing by, you know, a few hours, those sand dunes are going to be completely gone. And you see lots of debris, which the mayor of Galveston has told me she's been seeing over the last several days and she believes may be coming from Louisiana, from New Orleans as that water recedes. You know, people's shoes and just all sorts of garbage actually washing up on the shore, a very grim and tangible reminder of Hurricane Katrina, which came on here just a short time ago.
But as we have been standing here, this water just continues to come up. And it has really now reached about half-way up these steps. So it's sort of a very small benchmark of the progress of this storm, a storm which is very much still out there and very much still headed this way. It is posing particular problems for those who make their living from the sea, shrimp fishermen, for one. CNN's John King has that story when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL)
BROWN: It's just a remarkable scene outside of -- or inside of Houston, Texas tonight. We looked at it a moment ago. These are people trying to get out on an -- what is now -- an eight-lane interstate all going in the same direction. We saw the flashing lights of an emergency services vehicle, perhaps an ambulance. Imagine having a heart attack or an accident or something in Houston tonight and having to get to a hospital in an ambulance. And the only way there is the interstate. People moving a few miles an hour. The traffic seemed to be moving a little bit better. It's been a very long day for a lot of people on the roadways in Texas.
For some people who live along the coastline, the threat of Rita is more, of course, than just a threat to their homes. It has the possibility of destroying a livelihood. That is especially true of the shrimpers who were struggling even before Rita. Our chief national correspondent, John King, joins us tonight.
John, good evening.
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good evening to you, Aaron. We are now in Freeport. This is the Bridge Harbor area of Freeport. You can see this canal behind me go up here and take a right, you'll come first to Surfside. And it's a quick sail over to the Galveston area. This is one of many communities we have visited today. We started at about 130 miles to the west of here in Corpus Christi this morning as we have moved east visiting a number of small communities, many of them scarred by hurricanes in the past. All of them now all but deserted as Rita draws near.
Shrimp boats moved inland safe from the storm, part of an urgent, unprecedented evacuation along the Texas coastline. This is the Victoria Canal in Calhoun County, about 75 miles northeast of Corpus Christi. Mark Carnes is one of the few holdouts in Port Lavaca. His cluttered, rusty boat holds his home and his source of income.
MARK CARNES, SHRIMPER: We've been waiting to see what this storm's going to do, you know, five, six days now.
KING: Right.
CARNES: Yes because you don't want to be out there. It's pretty dangerous out there. You know? It'll sink a boat this size, believe me.
KING: Times are already tough, prices for shrimp way down, fuel costs way up.
CARNES: There isn't going to be money to be made with all the fuel prices and stuff.
KING: Right.
CARNES: And the fuel prices are probably going to go up any higher now.
KING: Up higher because a quarter of the nation's oil is refined here along the Texas Gulf coast. A few days offline would crimp supplies. Any major damage, hurt even more. Just getting gas is tough for those looking to get to safer ground. There are lines in the few places the pumps are open.
Connie Bashong (ph) manages the Exxon station just outside of Bay City. She's decided to stay open until the tanks run dry. Then she and her husband will head inland to stay with family.
KING: If the lines stay like this pretty constant, how long?
CONNIE BASHONG (ph): Maybe three or four hours we'll be out.
KING: Route 35 along the coast is bustling with traffic, many families heading west now because traditional evacuation routes to the east and north are clogged with traffic. Just up the road in town, a last minute rush to board up storefronts. The Main Street coffee bar leaving word it hopes to reopen Monday and poking fun at those close enough to read the notice.
Port Lavaca was hurting to begin with and is a virtual ghost town now. Mark Carnes has the fuel, but would prefer to save it for a post-Rita shrimping run, assuming he weathers the storm.
CARNES: If it's going to go in at Galveston, you know, the water's going to go up (INAUDIBLE). These boats will be over there on the other side of that road there. There's going to be a lot of boats gone. That's going to really mess us up down here really bad. It's going to be a disaster, if you ask me.
KING: Now again, most have obeyed the evacuation orders. Some hearty, you might call them stubborn few remaining behind. Of course, they're watching the latest projections, the satellite tracking. But, Aaron, some of them also saying they believe a big storm is coming this way for more anecdotal reasons. They say the skies here are usually filled with seagulls during the day. None today.
They believe, again, these tides also as well an indicator a big storm is coming. Just in the hour or so we have been here, two inches or more the water has come up. The families just across the canal have left. They believe the storm will hit to the east of here, Aaron, but they're not quite sure. Most people not taking any chances.
BROWN: Actually, I believe the anecdotal stuff. I figure the seagulls do know something somehow. Just give me a sense of your plan for the next 24 hours. Everybody's being positioned to different parts of the Gulf. Where are you going to be?
KING: Well, we are going to wake up here in this area. If the storm continues to track as it does moving to the east of here, we're going to try to go across the bridge. You can't see it in the dark, but I can see it ahead of me. We're going to try to go across Galveston Island and move toward the east toward the border with Louisiana.
That all depends on what the weather looks like in the morning and whether we can get through an occasional roadblock. We had no problem with that today. So up in the morning and follow the storm to the east if that's the way it's still going.
BROWN: John, you and your guys stay safe tomorrow. Thank you. Our chief national correspondent, John King.
KING: Thank you.
BROWN: If you take a quick look again at Houston, Texas. That's Interstate 45 moving slowly out of the nation's fourth largest city. We'll take a break. Our coverage of the preparations for this storm continue after the break.
(COMMERCIAL) COOPER: Those images of the traffic out of Houston have been so extraordinary to watch over the last several hours. Let's check in with our colleague, CNN's Rick Sanchez, who is in the Houston area.
Rick, how does it look?
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's tough, Anderson. There's some relief. Rick, go ahead and show them, if you can. See this metro bus that's coming by? Those are people that are being picked up by a bus and they're essentially those folks who have been on the side of the road and have been stuck. They've run out of gas.
Now, I'm going to look behind me real quick. I can count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 vehicles where I am right here. I'm talking about an area that's maybe two football fields in length. Now, imagine how many other areas like this there are between here and Huntsville and beyond. We're talking about possibly 100 miles of turf and terrain where people have just not been able to continue.
Relief is supposed to come in the form of some type of gas, maybe in tankers. We haven't seen those. That doesn't mean they're not here. We've traveled about 10 miles. We haven't seen any of those. So really, it's a crap shoot for these folks in terms of trying to find gasoline. They get to intersections, they check to see if there's a gas station that may be open. Sometimes they're open. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they only have diesel.
So they'll get back on the road and try and figure out what they can possibly do. Most of them say I'm just going to stay here and see if they'll bring me gas. Unfortunately, as far as we've been able to tell, they've been waiting and waiting, and it still hasn't come. I'm Rick Sanchez off of I-45 in Houston.
Aaron, Anderson, back to you.
BROWN: Rick, thank you very much. Sometimes all you can do is wait. A quick check of morning papers from around the country. I'm fascinated by this story. Hurricanes are packing more punch. The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at how the energy of hurricanes has increased over the last couple of decades. A lot of debate about whether global warming is involved or not involved. And that, of course, always becomes political. It's just science, folks. And we'll figure it out some day.
Dallas Morning News -- Dallas out of the major part of the storm, but receiving a lot of the people coming its way. Out of Rita's way and right into a jam. Newsday on Long Island here in New York headlines it a little bit more simply: Texodus. That's a pretty good headline.
The weather in Chicago tomorrow if you happen to be in Chicago -- and you're probably a lot better off than being in the South -- is chilling, a very pleasant 66 tomorrow, according to the Sun Times. Our coverage continues 24 hours a day here on CNN as we prepare for yet another storm. We'll take a break. (COMMERCIAL)
COOPER: Aaron, we end our coverage from Galveston tonight on the seawall built after the 1900 hurricane hit. Let's hope this old wall, 105 years old, helps the people tomorrow when this storm hits.
BROWN: Well, here's the plan: we'll -- you and I will start at 10, and we'll just kind of keep going for as long as we can keep going tomorrow. The storm expected to come ashore in the early morning hours, early Saturday morning, Friday night. And you will find a spot, we hope, where you can safely talk about it.
COOPER: Let's hope.
BROWN: Sounds good to me. Our coverage continues with Catherine Callaway in Atlanta tonight.
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