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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Hurricane Rita Aftermath; Officials Give Preliminary Damage Assessments
Aired September 24, 2005 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: We'll be hearing from him shortly. That part of Louisiana took a pretty good whack from Rita when she came ashore early this morning. When daylight broke, it was clear the damage caused by the Category 3 hurricane across the coast of Texas and Louisiana was extensive, but if Katrina is your reference point, it surely was not as bad as it might have been.
It was plenty bad enough. It's been a rough day along a good stretch of the Gulf Coast. Anderson?
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And Aaron, it has been a long day here as well. A lot of rain, a lot of wind hampering efforts to find out A, information, and find out people who are in need and are in need of rescue.
In Abbeville here further south, we are getting reports that there are anywhere from a couple dozen to maybe a couple hundred people who need to be evacuated from their homes because of water that continues to rise. We'll have more on their story later, Aaron.
BROWN: Anderson, thank you. We have a long way to go over the next couple of hours. First, here's the very latest information we have on where things stand across the Gulf.
The storm that came ashore is a Category 3 hurricane. It is now just a tropical storm, just. Winds at about 50 miles an hour. It's expected to weaken to a tropical depression shortly.
When Rita made landfall, the extreme southwest coast of Louisiana was ground zero. The parishes of Vermillion and Cameron, the hardest hit. Calcasceu (ph) hard hit as well.
All day, hundreds of rescue boats searched for as many as 1,000 people who could not or did not heed the mandatory evacuation orders before Rita hit.
So far, authorities are reporting no deaths directly related to Rita. But they are cautioning us, and we caution you that they have been yet to get to some of the hardest hit areas. So that is very imprecise tonight.
Tonight, a million or so people in the region are without power, because of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. The Gulf of Mexico normally eight miles south of Abbeville, Louisiana, tonight is just about a mile south. The tidal surge that high.
The mayor said today it's the worst flooding they have had in 40 to 50 years. And that's where Anderson is - Anderson?
COOPER: Yes, Aaron, I want to show you -- a gentleman came up to me on the side of the road just a short time ago. He had been evacuated from a town called Esther. I want to show you some video that he shot.
This is what he saw this morning when he woke up. He and his dad, they went through the storm. The eye passed them over. They thought, OK, everything's fine. They went to bed.
He woke up 5:00 a.m. this morning to take a cigarette, he said. His front lawn was moving. It was water. His entire front lawn was water. And as you see in this video, it just rose and rose and rose. The winds have been coming from the south here. And they have been bringing water with them all throughout the day.
So a lot of people who thought that they had made it through this storm suddenly found themselves swamped. Their home was literally swamped. This young man actually had to go up into the attic with his father, finally, use a shot gun to blow a hole in the attic roof. He got out of the attic that way. He swam across Highway - the highway to a neighbor's house, got a boat. Ultimately, that boat began to sink. He finally got a rescue helicopter to come and get him and his father to safety. And he is safe tonight.
But these - to me, these images really give you a sense of just - I mean, this water pouring into the house, just unstoppable. And when you think - you know, you might think of this happening during the storm. But when the worst has already passed you by, to have this storm surge still coming out, still flowing in, it's a remarkable thing to see.
It's really the first glimpse we've gotten. And we just literally this guy just stopped us on the side of the road and said he had this video he wanted to show us.
We're going to have a lot more of his story in - later on tonight and tomorrow as well.
I want to bring in a representative from the fire department here in Abbeville. Jason, I'm sorry, what's your last name?
JASON HARMON, PIO, ABBEVILLE, FIRE DEPT.: Harmon.
COOPER: Harmon. How are things now? What kind of - how many people do you think are in need of evacuation?
HARMON: We're not real sure exactly how many people we have in the affected areas. We're trying to make an assessment of that.
Rescue operations were hard today because of the weather. We still have a lot of bad weather today, a lot of wind. It was hard for us to get out there and see exactly what we had.
So we're hoping by daylight, we can find out what's going on.
COOPER: So you're - I mean, I hear what you have a lot of boats ready to go, but with the winds, it's hard to use some of the boats.
HARMON: Exactly, exactly. I heard it was possibly two of our boats had slipped over today when we first began operations. So they called all of our boats back in. We're going to wait until some winds die down, so we can actually get out there and start...
COOPER: One of the best sights I saw all day was you guys on a flat bed truck with a load of ice, just going around dumping in people's pick up trucks.
HARMON: Doing whatever we can to help our friends and neighbors. During Hurricane Lily, we had quite a bit of damage. We cut trees for about two weeks.
It only took several hours to clear the roads today. We didn't have the same kind of wind damage that we had, but the flooding's been enormous.
COOPER: Just (INAUDIBLE) what you're doing. And I hope to work with you tomorrow.
HARMON: Thank you.
COOPER: Thanks very much again. So much - there is so much here that needs to be done and so little - sort of the information's hard to come by, just trying to find out exactly how many people are in need, how many people do need to be evacuated.
We're going to try to get some more facts tomorrow morning, when we're able to go out, if we can on a boat, and try to see for ourselves.
Earlier, I spoke with Governor Blanco, Kathleen Blanco, who made a big point to be here on the ground and to be seen here on the ground. I had a short conversation with her. Here's some of it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO (D), LOUISIANA: The water's rising from Vermillion Bay, as had been anticipated. And places that have never seen water before are experiencing these flood waters coming in. This wind coming from the south pushing Vermillion Bay waters inland. And also, using this Vermillion River to deliver this body of water into places that a lot of times, you know, you don't expect to see water.
COOPER: You don't have it. All right, how many - any sense of how many families right now are in need of help?
BLANCO: Well, I spoke to the Office of Emergency Preparedness here. And General Leblond tells me that they saved about 250 people.
Now we have a little situation going where a lot of people left. They went to safety. And this morning, they thought that they could go back in and check on their property. They did. That was before the floodwaters started rising.
COOPER: Oh, really?
BLANCO: So some of them had, you know, managed to get out when they recognized that waters were coming in. Others had to be rescued.
And you know, since we have this - again, a very dynamic situation that keeps compounding.
COOPER: And part of the problem is that with the winds continuing, I know there are a lot of boats on hand. I just talked to Lieutenant Colonel from the Wildlife Department who's in charge of this. They got a lot of boats, but with these winds, they can't use some of these boats.
BLANCO: It's very dangerous. We're in a rural setting, where you've got wide open waters often times. And in this case, when the winds are still as high as they are now, with these gusts that are 25 to 30 miles an hour or higher at times, that'll just topple a boat.
So you cannot get in with boats. It's very difficult to send helicopter rescue units in also, because all of that is affected by this wind. We can't put the rescuers at risk, because then they become victims. We have to make sure that everybody works as best they can and protects - in protecting life, including their own.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Just to give you a sense of where we are, Aaron. We're in Abbeville in the restaurant called The Riverfront Restaurant. It's a lovely restaurant that has been - there's basically water all around it. And Jenny Leblanc, one of the owners of it, kindly let us tape here.
But just to give you a sense of the water level, look, if you go down about three steps here, and then you hit water. There's usually all grass here. The body right over there - there's a little thing up there, Aaron. The people normally park their boats obviously don't need to do that now. They can bring it right up to this deck, Aaron.
BROWN: Just two questions. Is the water still rising or has it started to recede at all?
COOPER: We've gotten conflicting reports. Jenny, the owner of this restaurant, said she has seen the water here in Abbeville drop over the course of the day, but one of our reporters talked to a sheriff here, who said that in other areas, the water is still rising. I haven't seen it for myself with my own eyes. So I can't say.
But I can't say in Abbeville the water's lowering.
BROWN: I'm sorry, and roughly, you're in - this is Vermillion Parish, I believe. How many people live in the parish? How many people are we talking about here?
COOPER: You know, honest, I don't know. I just got here.
BROWN: OK. COOPER: So you know, let me find out. Hey, Jenny, do you know how many people live in this parish?
She doesn't know either.
BROWN: OK.
COOPER: So I'll try to get you information for you.
BROWN: No more trick questions tonight, I promise. Thank you.
COOPER: Bring it on, bring it on.
BROWN: We probably will. Thank you.
We're going to check with our severe weather expert Chad Myers. He's down in Atlanta. Tonight, another long day and night for him. The storm is, Chad, pretty much stalled?
CHAD MYERS, METEOROLOGIST: It has, although some of the moisture has moved away now. And that's some good news.
There's - when I show you this satellite, you're actually going to see this thing almost tear itself apart. The whole storm from Memphis now sliding clouds. You may even see clouds right now in Washington, D.C. from this system, even though there's no rain anywhere near you.
Some of the threat, though, today, the biggest threat I think tonight are these storms that you see here. The counties you see in red, those are tornado warnings in effect. There have been 18 reported tornados on the ground today.
New Orleans in the clear, though. Boy, couldn't be better news for New Orleans or even some of the western parishes that got hit so hard. Things are really clearing up for Abbeville. Back over to Lake Charles, as a lot of clean up still to do, clearly.
Watch the cloud cover come up to Texarkana and then slide to the east. See this yellow and orange right there? That's what I'd like to see. I want the moisture to get pulled away from this storm and thrown up to the northeast.
So even if it sits here and spins with winds right now are 40, let's say it spins all week with 20, but if there's no moisture left, we're not going to see that flooding problem that looks so likely yesterday.
Obviously, some numbers here. Beaumont, Texas, over 8. Center, Texas, over 8.5. Baton Rouge, over 7 inches. So yes, there has been a lot of rain in some spots. And yes, there has been flooding.
And here's the forecast from right now through Sunday into Monday. And every spot that you see in purple is 10 inches or more. But I guess that's not really a stretch, Aaron, since some spots already have eight. Back to you. BROWN: Chad, just on - from your end, it has been a little weaker once it hit land than you thought? Or about as you thought?
MYERS: About as I thought.
BROWN: OK.
MYERS: I think the great news about all this thing is it did not hit Houston. Folks in Lake Charles aren't thrilled about that.
BROWN: Yes.
MYERS: But the population center of Houston at 5.1 million people, a lot more money in there, a lot more things to damage in here, and a lot more lives, you know, could have been at really risk here. And now Lake Charles got it, but as it moves - storm moved onshore, it has already weakened to only 40 miles an hour. It's the relativity of these sorts of things.
BROWN: Yes, Chad, very much with us for the course of the night. Much more on the program ahead, starting with a day of rescues.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got boats.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got boats.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Water. Young and stupid.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: They ignored the orders to evacuate before the storm. Today, they were ready to be saved.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Doing all right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm all right, thanks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: They stayed behind, too, and rode out a nasty night. They say they would do it again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I saw that road yesterday, and all those people in front of that road, I knew we made the right choice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been here all my life, and I've seen it flood. Never nothing like this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: A city underwater, swamped by Hurricane Rita.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) West state police!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And the trouble isn't over, not by a long shot.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to have a lot more flooding and - which is going to cause the city a lot more problems. And we just - all we can do is hope that we don't have any more flooding.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: From New York City and Louisiana, this is a special edition of "NEWSNIGHT."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Just right before the break, you heard a bit of Anderson's interview with the Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, particularly about the situation in Vermillion County Parish. We can now tell you population about 60,000.
The governor's with us on the phone, talk a little more broadly about the situation in the state. Given, governor, Katrina now three weeks ago and Rita last night, is the emergency response system in the state overwhelmed?
BLANCO: Well, Aaron, we had a lot of practice, I'll tell you. And so this time around, we had all of the federal agencies deployed, you know, beforehand. We were pre-staged.
We had all of our state agencies pre-staged before Katrina, but we've got extra help now. You learn a lot of lessons, but it's very convenient to have everything here, you know, still here. And nobody had yet left Louisiana.
We've got our work cut out for us. This Hurricane Rita touched us from coast to coast, from Mississippi to Texas. And everything in between along the coastline and in the upper reaches of that region has been impacted. Our whole state has been impacted because our state is taking care of many, many evacuees from Katrina and now additional ones from Rita.
BROWN: Governor, let me ask a couple of quick questions. Do you have adequate communications with every part of the affected area tonight?
BLANCO: Well, we have emergency communications. We anticipated that. And that was one of the critical problems that happened in Katrina. Communications did not even exist between the local areas and our office of emergency preparedness, but before this storm staged, we put in a communications network for our first responders that actually has held up. It has allowed us to know what the needed, when they needed it. And we could tell them how it was getting there.
And so, it has been a piece that was really, really missing in Katrina...
BROWN: Yes.
BLANCO: ...when every single communication network went down.
BROWN: The first concern always in these things is to make sure everybody who can get out alive gets out alive. Do you have a feel at all for the numbers of people, as you described it, from coast to coast in your state, who may be stranded tonight?
BLANCO: Well, I think we evacuated probably some 200,000 to 300,000 people. And I think that's approximately, you know, the number for that particular region. You know, for Katrina, we evacuated over a million people in 48 hours because we had a well planned and well executed evacuation plan for our urban area.
But no less for our southwest region, we also evacuated thousands of Texas evacuees through Louisiana. It caused us a little bottleneck in one small area. But passed that, I mean, once folks got through that little area, they were breezing through.
And we only could go north in Louisiana. We could not go east. The east is impaired. We could not go west because the hurricane was possibly going to hit Texas.
So our people got out. But we did, I would say a very fine job. Very - I know there are some people that have to be rescued, and have been rescued today, but they're not in the large numbers that we might have expected otherwise.
BROWN: Governor, I know there's - from our talk just before we went on, there's a lot of work to do. Everybody down there is weary from the last month. And we wish you nothing but the best. And we'll talk in the days ahead. Thank you very much.
Kathleen Blanco, the governor of the state of Louisiana.
By and large, when Rita came ashore, she didn't hit any major cities, large cities. She hit a lot of medium sized and in some cases, small sized cities, cities like West Lake, Louisiana, where the flood waters are still rising.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): West Lake, Louisiana is a small town with big problems tonight.
JEREMY CRYER, POLICE CHIEF: I've been here all my life and I've seen it flood. Never nothing like this.
BROWN: Jeremy Cryer is a rookie police chief dealing with the disaster of a lifetime.
CRYER: And this is what scares me more than anything. This is Road Miller Avenue. And it looks like a lake now. Actually, it looks like a gulf.
BROWN: In normal times, the 6,000 people who live here work in the oil refineries or the casino on the Calpacheu (ph) River that runs through Lake Charles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: West Lake police.
BROWN: There's nothing normal about today. The river now runs through the east side of town, six feet deep in spots.
CRYER: We did water rescues this morning. We had about nine people that we got out of the - some homes that were flooded up to about four, five feet.
BROWN: West Lake's emergency shelter held Katrina victims a week ago. Now those here are from here. Most of have lost homes. Some fear they've lost much more.
TINA CARAWAY, FLOOD VICTIM: My biggest concern is my daughter. I lost touch with her at midnight last night. And when I last talked to her, their vehicle had been damaged by falling trees. So they could not leave. And all she kept saying was, "Mom, it sounds like a train."
BROWN: A train that hit this little town head on. Runaway barges wiped out a railroad bridge. The power is out. 300 homes flooded. Trees down all over. West Lake, Louisiana is a mess.
CRYER: Doing just about everything. We're enforcing the law, we're out on back hoes clearing roadways. We have chainsaw gangs. Anything we need to do, we're doing.
BROWN: It's been three days since Chief Cryer last slept. Tonight doesn't seem a good bet either.
In West Lake, the rain continues to fall.
CRYER: We're going to have a lot more flooding and - which is going to cause the city a lot more problems. And it's being quite a year. And this tops it off. Actually, I got go 20 years and not have another hurricane would be (INAUDIBLE). I'd be extremely happy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: I'll bet. Anderson, there are a lot of West Lake, Louisianas tonight. Towns of 10,000, 20,000, 25,000 people dotted around the region who are without power, without medical attention, without much of anything.
COOPER: There certainly are. I mean, you know, the town I'm in right now, Abbeville, is also - I mean, they - there's no power here. We're using light saw for a generator. There's flooding in this area. A lot of people don't even know the status of their homes. The lady who owns this restaurant, she's here sort of make sure the restaurant's OK, but her home is in another town just a few miles south of here. She has no idea.
She knows that town is - lots of it is underwater. She's very worried about her home, but she can't go back there. So there's a lot of - just a lot of anxiety.
And you know, you're talking about people being weary. People are just tired, just bone tired of this stuff. And it was just insulting all day long to have continued rain, the continued winds.
Often, you know, you wake up after a hurricane and the sky is shining and you at least get some relief and you dry out. There's not going to be anyone drying out for the next couple days around here.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been weathering the storm in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Small town just west of Abbeville, where I am. And today, he surveyed the damage with the town's mayor.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDY ROACH, MAYOR, LAKE CHARLES: Preliminary survey of neighborhoods...
SANJAY GUPTA, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Mayor Randy Roach has called Lake Charles home his entire life.
ROACH: The lake has risen higher than I've ever seen it before in my lifetime.
GUPTA: Saturday, Lake Charles was ground zero.
ROACH: You're seeing a lot of damage caused by downed power lines, broken telephone lines - telephone poles, a lot of wind damage, particularly to trees. And when the trees fall, they take everything with it.
And there's several roads in town right now that are impassable.
GUPTA: When the storm came through, truth is from the hospital complex, we could hear the roar of the wind and see the deluge of rain. But it was only at first light that we saw the aftermath of Rita's fury.
City councilman Stuart Weatherford has also lived here all of his 41 years.
STUART WEATHERFORD, LAKE CHARLES COUNCILMAN: This is Lake Charles. Actually, this is as high as I've ever seen it, as far as the eye can see is our boat - houses under the water.
GUPTA (on camera): The mayor invited us to go in the back of his truck to see some of this damage with him, as he's seeing it for the first time. Most critical, obviously, to everybody was what happened to Lake Charles. Here's the lake. You see it over here. A lot of the flooding that has occurred in this city actually because the lake - the levels rose high, flooding the streets all around it. You're seeing some of this damage through the mayor's eyes, as he sees it for the first time.
His biggest goal right now is to see that the mandatory evacuation did work. Now a mandatory curfew is well 7:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. The damage not as bad as a lot of people thought it might have been, but still an extremely dangerous place. Downed power lines, lots of water. They don't mix well.
ROACH: That's the primary thing that we're concerned with is results. The results is, is that we got everyone's attention. Everyone who wanted to get out got out.
GUPTA (voice-over): Making it a successful, very successful night. In fact, according to the mayor, not a single death and very few injuries.
For sure, Krista St. Patrick Hospital is staying open, standing by now for the injuries that may occur during clean-up. Chain saw injuries are a known threat after hurricanes. If necessary, doctors here will even perform operations on emergency generator power, as they did last night.
But Mayor Randy Roach is on the move in his pick-up truck, checking in on his citizens.
ROACH: I think everything that we needed to do got done.
GUPTA: A clear indicator that being prepared paid off in this southwest Louisiana community.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: And one of the interesting things, Anderson, you were just talking about small towns. We're pointing out that this town, Lake Charles, actually very small population. It's about 75,000. Compared to New Orleans proper, about 500,000.
Easier to manage. That's what this mayor pointed out to us. It was easier to get those evacuations in place. It was easier to give some clear instructions to the hospitals and to the EMS and to the public works people. And that may have worked to their benefit in this particular case, Anderson.
COOPER: And of course, people have the lessons of what happened wrong, the last time, with Katrina, which they certainly have learned from. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks very much.
Just want to give you a sense of the flooding here in Abbeville. This is the riverside restaurant, which is normally - this is all grass, but you can see I put on my waders here. Basically just walked down the steps and it - the water's - it's about up to your knees. So it's not so high. And it was about a foot higher than this earlier today. It has actually been going down. But in areas south of here, we are told, the waters are not going down. And there are rescue operations underway right now throughout the night and very early tomorrow morning. That's when they're really going to start in earnest by boats.
The problem has been a, they don't know exactly how many families need to be evacuated. Numbers - some people say well, it's a couple dozen. Others will say a couple hundred. One official here said it might be as much as 1,000, but they seem to be coming down from that figure.
They just don't have the information right now. And with the continued winds that we've been getting all day, and it's not raining now, but we've been getting a lot of rain all day long, it's been hard for some of these boats that are getting flipped over, as they have to rely on helicopters so far.
We're going to have a lot more from Abbeville later on. But coming up right after the break, we're going to take you to Texas, the town of Beaumont, and also the town of Galveston to see how they weathered through the storm.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: First 30 minutes tonight, we've dealt mostly with the problems that have beset the state of Louisiana. We turn our attention now to the state of Texas. Jeff Colley is the emergency services director in the state. And he joins us from Austin.
What's the biggest problem you have?
JEFF COLLEY, TEXAS, DIR. OF EMERGENCY MGMT.: Our problem right now is to get into these counties that have had these - the damage and to make contact with local elected officials.
We have communication with them. So what we're doing now is to systematically go through the counties and check for those and rescue those that need rescuing and meet the many of them that - needs that they have.
We're very encouraged...
BROWN: I'm sorry.
COLLEY: We're very encouraged by what we're finding.
BROWN: You're encouraged that on the loss of life front, are you aware of any fatalities in this storm?
COLLEY: We're very fortunate. We have not had any fatalities to report at this time.
BROWN: Just in the region, I think it's a fairly wide area, is there any power, much power? What is the electricity situation?
COLLEY: We have about 800,000 without power. We expect that to drop. I was hoping we'd have a report before this interview, but we're very encouraged. Our power is starting to come back on. We have some areas of Texas that are very isolated. And it may take some time to do that.
But our rapid assessment teams are going into the areas. They're making those assessments. And we expect for those power numbers to drop very significantly here shortly.
BROWN: Just generally speaking, do you figure 24 hours from now you'll have a very good picture of the state of Texas and how it came through the storm?
COLLEY: Yes, we are. And we just finished a very intense effort to assess the petrochemical complexes off the coast, Beaumont, Port Arthur. And the reports have been very good, very encouraging.
We have no significant leaks and breaches in the petrochemical area. Some of the refineries are underwater, but they went through the shut down procedures very well. And we're very encouraged by that.
BROWN: That's good news indeed. That's people I know - you all were concerned about that. People around the country have reason to be concerned about that for different reasons.
Mr. Colley, thank you. I know you have much work to do tonight. We appreciate a little bit of your time.
And about this point last night, Galveston, Texas, which was on the western most part of where the storm hit, was aware that it was very likely going to be spared the worst of it. At the same time, it was dealing with a fire in the downtown area. Tonight, there's a dust to dawn curfew in Galveston. That's one of the problems that they are dealing with there.
Sean Callebs has been reporting for us in Galveston for the last couple of days and joins us again tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Surf's up on Galveston and so are spirits of those who chose to ride out Rita.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some doubt. We didn't get flooded. What more can you ask for?
CALLEBS: Most landmarks on this barrier island escaped unscathed. Luke's Deli is the place to be for food, drinks, and gas. The cash register is ringing.
And the cook didn't sweat out Rita. That happened whipping the day's special and serving people looking for a hot meal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turkey leg, big fat turkey legs, they're right here. CALLEBS: These are snap shots. This is the big picture. A ghost town. The mayor saying at least 95 percent of Galveston's residents followed a mandatory evacuation warning.
LYDA ANN THOMAS, MAYOR, GALVESTON: I want to say clearly that the city of Galveston is not safe. It is not safe.
CALLEBS: Rita knocked down many power lines here. 65 percent of the island is still without electricity. Only essential personnel are being allowed to return right now.
However, late in the day, the mayor said all residents can return home Sunday morning.
THOMAS: To the citizens of Galveston who want to come back, remember that the services are very limited. You need to understand that before you come home.
CALLEBS: This was Galveston at the height of the storm. Three buildings on fire, wind gusting close to 70 miles per hour.
MICHAEL VERELA, CHIEF, GALVESTON FIRE DEPT.: All your embers were flying from the two buildings that were totally involved. We had another structure over here to the south catch on fire. We made a stop on that building there.
CALLEBS: He says that fire stop probably kept the entire block from erupting in flames. Daylight revealed more damage. A restaurant nearly a century old collapsed. A lot of debris, a little flooding.
The mayor wants people back, but on her terms. Long time locals say the storm scared them, but...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can only keep some of them away so long. They got sand between their toes. Their sand crabs.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CALLEBS: And the weather today, as they began to do the initial damage estimate, it was warm, balmy, breezy, very comfortable. Almost surreal considering 24 hours ago, this area was getting hit hard by the wind and the rain from this storm.
Still, when the final chapter of this storm is written to people of Galveston, could very well say they expected, Aaron, it was going to be a lot worse.
BROWN: We'll get back to you. Thank you. Sean Callebs did yeoman's work yesterday, last night, in Galveston.
Anderson, I'm not sure you could tell, as you were listening, but I know you spent a lot of time with the mayor in Galveston over the last few days, how weary and tired she sounded and looked, honestly after this excruciating week of preparations and then riding out the storm? COOPER: Yes, she's a fascinating lady. She actually used to work in New York for Lord & Taylor, Harpers Bazaar Magazine back in the day. And she's been down in city politics in Galveston for quite a while.
It's been, you know, I think for everyone here, there's just this level of weariness. And you know, it's just bone tired. And you're just sick of it. You're just sick of this whole thing. You want the sun to come out. You want the water to go away. You want people to be able to return to their homes. And they deserve certainly that.
I want to check on Rob Marciano, who is in Beaumont, Texas, where we both rode out the storm. Rob, the situation there today is what? How much do people really know about the damage and any harm that was done to anyone there? I mean, do they have a sense of the scope of it yet?
MARCIANO: Well, it's widespread, but it could be worse. Infrastructure's pretty torn apart. That's probably the biggest issue. And officials are saying, of course you hear this time and time again, don't come back if you've evacuated. There's no running water. There's no electricity. Phone lines are down as well. So it's just not a place that you want to come back to.
Look behind me. This is - ironically enough, the name of this street is Orleans Street. And there's a coffee and beignets place just to my back.
But you know, metal roofing like this and light posts all the way down this street. And this sort of stuff is widespread. This came down when the storm came in around 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning last night, when the winds were really, really ripping.
That's when Hurricane Rita made landfall. Let's take a look at some other pictures. The first picture here is kind of unnerving. It's a funeral home clock. And it is stopped at five minutes to 3:00 in the morning. And then if you switch around - that's when the hurricane made landfall.
And when you switch around the letters, it kind of wants to say "Unreal." Gas stations blown apart. Blown out windows. Even brick buildings damaged from this storm. Trees uprooted, of course. Big, old, live oak trees. And structures damaged or stripped completely.
You know, it's not as bad as Katrina. I know a lot of folks at home may be a little bit numb from seeing some of the damage from Katrina, but don't tell the folks here in southeast Texas and the golden triangle when they have to come home to this and pick up the pieces, Anderson.
I know you're in Abbeville, Louisiana. That is the heart of Cajun country. I've been there. They're good people. And my heart goes out to them as well. And that will obviously be a developing story, as the floodwaters just seem not to want to go away - Anderson?
COOPER: Yes, it's one of those frustrating things, Rob. At this point, we kind of don't know what we don't even know. I mean, we don't know how many people are in need south of here in Abbeville. I mean, we've heard all these different estimates. And we know there are boats out there. Even in the darkness, there are helicopters out there looking for people. And it's really going to start again tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. They're going to regroup and go out there. We're going to try to go out there with them. So we'll bring some reports.
Coming up next, John King is in the town of Port Arthur. A lot of people have concerns about Port Arthur. And there have been some stories about looting out of that town. We'll check in with John when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Showed you just a few moments ago the scenes in Beaumont, Texas, and the mess there. About 10 miles or so up the road lies a small town of Lumberton, Texas. About 10,000 residents there. Most of the residents evacuated. Some rode out the storm. And those that did told their story today to CNN's John Zarrella.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Down this street, three families, the Gracedels, the Chances, and the Coxes rode out the storm in David Gracedel's home. We wanted to see how they made out.
(on camera): The problem is trees are down, covering the street that leads to their house. So the only way to get there, having left the cars behind, is to walk.
(voice-over): We crawled through pines and oaks. Some had fallen over power lines. David Alliby and his family were making their way out as we were going in.
How are you doing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm doing fine.
ZARRELLA: A bit further down the road, a wet, cold Labrador retriever came up to us. Her owners must have evacuated and left her behind.
He's scared. Man. Oh, he's just whimpering.
The Gracedel home is still about half a mile away. Boy, look at this. Piece of the tree bark went right through this mail box.
A few hundred yards further down the road, Dan Gracedel and his two nephews have come up the road to meet us.
You're glad you're stayed?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hell, yes.
ZARRELLA: Together, we make our way to the house. When we see it, a tree has fallen on it. Others are uprooted. Around the back, the three families, 20 people in all, are sitting on the back porch.
Hey. Oh, you guys don't all look too bad. Worse for the wear. Everybody had a good time?
They were all just fine. It had been a frightening night. Trees snapping and transformers blowing up. But they say their decision to stay was the right one.
DAN GRACEDEL, LUMBERTON RESIDENT: And it's a personal decision. I mean, if you choose to go, that's smart. If you choose to stay sometime that might be smart. But it's a personal decision. And everybody has to decide for themselves of what they think they can handle based on the crew they got.
But you can't blame a man for staying or for going.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I saw that road yesterday, and all those people on the side of the road, I knew we made the right choice.
ZARRELLA: If there is a next time, and they hope there won't be, the families say they will probably stay. But if they decide to leave, they say, it will be long before any mandatory order is given to hit the road.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA: Well, the three families decided that they were going to stay and ride out the storm, they're not sure what they're going to do now. There's no water, there's no power. And officials have already told them it may be November before the lights come back on - Aaron?
BROWN: November?
ZARRELLA: November, at least a month.
BROWN: Well, that changes the equation something about whether you stay or went. Thank you, John.
John Zarrella up in - or down for us in Lumberton, Texas. Ahead on the program, a number of places still to check into. Houston, which of course the largest city in all of this, spared mostly. Port Arthur, can't say the same.
Also coming up, our severe weather expert Chad Myers tells us what Rita's up to now, what it might do, and the problems it might create. From New York and from Texas, and Abbeville, Louisiana, this is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Welcome back to this special edition of NEWSNIGHT from Abbeville, Louisiana, a town very much waiting tonight to see how bad this storm really has been in their community and the outlying communities.
Want to check in with severe weather expert Chad Myers at the CNN Center with some new information about the storm - Chad?
MYERS: It is now a tropical depression, Anderson. I'm telling you what, probably the best news I can tell you is that the hurricane center has completely changed their mind. Now that you see this storm, we noticed this a couple of hours ago, how the storm was getting just dragged off to the northeast at a pretty good clip.
Now we think, they think, that the storm is actually going to continue to move that way and not do the loop, and not cause the 25 inches of rainfall across the Sabine River.
There you go by Monday actually up into Kentucky. This is going to spread heavy rain into Kentucky, into West Virginia and Pennsylvania. And even if West Virginia and Pennsylvania get three or four inches, it's not going to have the effect that a 25 inch rainfall would have had over parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas.
Beaumont, you're already over eight. Texas, already over eight. Baton Rouge, about seven.
Here is the official forecast now for the next 48 hours. And yes, they'll be places, everywhere you see purple, they'll be places where there's 10 inches of rain or more. But you don't see the 25 plus anymore as the storm now is moving. And that's the best news I've had all week. Back to you.
COOPER: Yes, I'm going to tell the people around here, because they will be very happy about that.
MYERS: Yes.
COOPER: Chad, indeed. Coming up next, Aaron talks to the mayor of Houston. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A couple of nights ago, you watched people fleeing out of Houston, Texas. Tonight, a lot of those people are wanting to come back in. That's creating problems all its own. It's just one of the problems that city of five million or so people is dealing with.
Bill White's, the mayor. And Mayor White joins us now. What's your biggest problem right now?
BILL WHITE, MAYOR, CITY OF HOUSTON: Well, the one that is - we're coping with hour by hour, is just the number of evacuees we have from Galveston and from the Luvkin area, east Texas area. People who had been given temporary shelter and assisted living homes, geriatric community, people with special needs, and people who are now homeless coming into Houston seeking relief.
So we're opening some shelters for them, providing medical services, on top of the 150,000 Katrina evacuees, who've been living here. So this is an issue.
Then we want to get Houstonians back and on their jobs, and going on with their lives in an orderly manner. Those are some of the challenges.
BROWN: Let's talk about that last challenge, getting people back into Houston. We heard a report earlier that it was - the interstate was all backed up. Is that any better?
WHITE: Yes, it is. We have given instructions to people and we did early this morning, that they should avoid rushing. The central personnel should come in such as nurses and transportation infrastructure people responsible for fueling vehicles and the like.
And the city crews have begun their debris removal process, getting the power on. We had a lot of power outages, a lot of downed trees here. But thank goodness because of our preparations, not a single person lost their life.
BROWN: Right now, power on in the whole city. Most of the city?
WHITE: Well, it was this morning, you had much of the city, hundreds and hundreds of thousands out. And every hour that goes by, more power is, you know, brought back up.
But it's a lot of the traffic lights are still out. A lot of homes don't have power. So we're asking people to take a deep breath and take a pause if they're under shelter before coming back in.
We have a state wide plan with phased repopulation or the (INAUDIBLE) coming back in to Houston. So they can get back to work.
BROWN: Is there gas at the gas stations?
WHITE: There is at some of the gas stations. Some of them have a problem, because you know, some refineries have been shut down because of this. Refineries were out and are still out because of Katrina, but I've talked to the heads of a number of the major oil companies. And they're Houston production is back online. And they're out there distributing fuel.
For the next couple of days, it's going to be tight. There's some places not going to have fuel. As the week goes on, there ought to be more and more availability.
BROWN: How many days before you think it'll feel normal in Houston?
WHITE: Oh, it'll be several days. We closed our schools on Monday and Tuesday. We're having some of the non essential employment - we're not going to start on Monday or Tuesday. We're encouraging people to come back Wednesday. A lot of jobs have to be - people have to be on the job...
BROWN: Yes.
WHITE: ...at the beginning of the week, but we will be a much bigger city still. We were bigger after Katrina by 150,000 people. And there will be people who, especially those with special needs, who we've taken in with a lot of compassion here. BROWN: You have. The city has been incredibly generous to people by this combination of storms. Mayor, it's good to talk to you. Bill White, who's the mayor of Houston, Texas tonight.
Coming up, the scene in Port Arthur, Texas was hit quite hard by Rita in the early morning hours this morning. We'll take a break first from New York and Louisiana and Texas and beyond. This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Port Arthur, Texas is right on the Louisiana state line. It took a direct hit from Rita, but the advice for residents to get out of town appears to have made a big difference as it did across the region.
Our chief national correspondent John King weathered the storm in Port Arthur.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Mike Phillips was about to evacuate, as Rita closed in on Port Arthur. But he couldn't find gas. And now figures one advantage to riding out the storm is you get a head start on the clean-up.
What he didn't count on was Rita's ferocity.
MIKE PHILLIPS, PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS: About 3:00 this morning, it started. The house started shaking. I kept hearing a lot of noise, you know, tin and everything. Come out here about 4:00 this morning. Found all the trees.
KING: How long you think it's going to take to deal with this?
PHILLIPS: We're already talking about that. Going to get a chainsaw out maybe later this evening, start trying to get some of this away from the house.
KING: Across the city, downed power lines and trees, significant structural damage, and a storm surge that buried a decent chunk of Port Arthur under three feet of water. Up to seven feet in a few of the lowest lying areas.
Joseph Reynolds was watching from his apartment door when the tree out front was uprooted.
JOSEPH REYNOLDS, RESIDENT: Seen it leaning. The wind was blowing it so hard, it was pulling it from the roof, leaning. Then the wind and rain was pushing me back. I couldn't hold my door.
KING: He has no electricity and no running water and no idea when they'll be restored.
REYNOLDS: I called 911 and they said they couldn't send nobody to help me. Later, they're saying - they said get in your house. Get some pillows, blankets, and stay warm and stay from out the street, telephone, (INAUDIBLE).
KING: Without a doubt, Rita packed a fierce punch. We visited the Sabine Pass near the Texas-Louisiana coastal border when the eye of the storm was just 25 miles offshore. Swirling rains creating a virtual white out.
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