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Hurricane Ike Coverage Continues
Aired September 13, 2008 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN NEWS ANCHOR: It is a huge storm and a huge land nass which to cover. We've been trying to keep a close watch on all of it as you saw through most of the morning and now we're getting some of the first images coming out of Galveston, Texas. That was the first hit and the hardest hit there in Texas. Just take a look at some of the images we are just now seeing, right there, the property damage, right there along the coast.
A city of 57,000, and we understand right before the storm hit about 40 percent of the residents of Galveston Island decided to stay. These live pictures now coming in from KPRC our affiliate there out of Houston, Texas. And you see the destruction here from this live shot of just the debris, presumably, from a number of the homes and businesses and condominiums that line Galveston Island. Right there, you see the pier in the background and in the foreground all of that debris. A real mess there.
The expectation was this Category 2 hurricane would indeed cause a lot of damage here in Galveston, that's why the push came from federal, state and local authorities for all of the residents there and the visitors to simply get out. The mayor did encourage all of the residents there to get out under that mandatory evacuation, but as I mentioned, about 40 percent of the residents decided to stay.
We haven't heard anything more about the people who have decided to stay there and just how many of them fared, but you see the infrastructure damage there, very serious, very severe.
Our Rob Marciano was there in Galveston. He is there now and he's joining us live with a little bit more on the information that you have.
It's a beautiful backdrop behind you just to see the water there, but we can see from tho those now new picture the kind of damage and destruction caused by those waves.
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, the waves were just relentless last night, Fredericka. As a matter of fact, all day long yesterday and into the evening hours, this railway and stairway, down to what is usually the beach, the beach which goes out 500 yard. So, even now the storm has passed and the surge is still significant. But, last night things were completely covered. Winds were blowing the other way, by the way, and waves were crashing on the sea wall and sea spray and water was flooding this entire boulevard.
Right now I'm standing on asphalt that was torn off by those waves. The sea wall, by the way, made of a lot of concrete and also granite. So, it did OK in most spots, but the asphalt peeled off by some of these waves and strewn about all of the way over here. Look that the. These are actual parts of the roadway where the storm surge hit up against this curve and this is echoed all of the way down.
As a matter of fact, farther down the roadway, right around where they have the Galveston 1900 hurricane memorial, that statue and plaque pretty banged up. It's probable the worst spot that we've seen so far.
As far as wind damage, we've seen quite a bit of that as well with some windows blown out. Obviously, trees and power lines down and also brick being peeled off of concrete at the building right over there. So, much calmer now, but the most ferocious part of the storm was the back side of the eye, Fredericka, when it came through, winds really ripped and did probably the most damage then.
As far as what officials are telling us right now, they are going door-to-door, the fire department is out there right now going door- to-door trying to see and clear houses if there are survivors who have stayed behind, maybe they need medical attention and then they'll get the call out to EMS and then they'll go ahead and treat anybody that may be left behind...
WHITFIELD: Go ahead, sorry.
MARCIANO: Go ahead -- Fredericka.
WHITFIELD: Yeah, I just saw a couple of people walk behind you and I'm curious to know about what their story is, another person just walking behind you, they clearly among the 22,000 or 20,000 or so folks who decided to stayed there in Galveston. Any chance to grabbing them real quick to find out why they stayed and how they fared?
MARCIANO: All right. Come on. So, there were a lot of locals -- but, we're a little bit limited, Frederick but where we stayed last night, pretty fortified. Obviously a lot of media staying there. Also fire department, police officers, there were some nursing home patients, as well. Once the eye turned and came through and winds turned, the upper levels of the hotel was not safe, so they went door- to-door and they're bringing people down and evacuating people down the stairwell. That was kind of a crazy thing, too, so it was a horrible night, last night.
How are you doing, sir? Where are you from?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right here.
MARCIANO: Where did you ride the storm out?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I stayed on the second floor.
MARCIANO: Yeah, where's your home?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eighty First and Sea Wall.
MARCIANO: So, you evacuated from there?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I Went from there to here, yes sir.
MARCIANO: Have you been back to your home, yet?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I have.
MARCIANO: How does it look?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Destroyed.
MARCIANO: Completely destroyed?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Completely. But hey, if my apartment Colleen's watching, your apartment's fine, baby, we're moving in together.
MARCIANO: All right, moving in by default. OK, I'm glad you survived. Sorry about your house. Seems to be a silver ling to that story.
WHITFIELD: Yeah, he's got a sense of humor about it all. And you know, we just saw some of the images and we have some of the images up on the screen, right now as we're talking to you, Rob, and we're looking at all of the debris, obviously it's difficult to discern exactly where it came from, and what kinds of structures, et cetera, but that man who talks about, and very light heartedly, that his home is gone, the expectation that a good number of these structures right along the beach have been obliterated, is that the sense from officials there that there's a certain percentage of loss that they were expecting from this storm?
MARCIANO: It's been a frustrating morning so far. They won't give out any numbers because really, Fredericka it's only been the last couple of hours where winds have subsided enough to where it's safe for even the fire department to go out. So, there have been reports, obviously, throughout the storm coverage about where that gentleman lives on the west end of the island, which is not protected by the sea wall and also on the east end -- far east end of the island, past where the ferry is, also some reports of significant damage, there.
So we're still in the assessment mode. I mean, the storm is just now waning and, ourselves, we have only recently been able to get on the air. So, it's such a big storm, Fredericka and it's lasted so long and it's obviously hampering rescue efforts even right now.
WHITFIELD: Right. Just to reiterate, your headline, your live shot that fire and emergency responders are now going door-to-door to check out a number of those properties for the people, maybe 20,000...
MARCIANO: Fredericka...
WHITFIELD: Yeah, go ahead.
MARCIANO: I got some more people for you. Where are you all from?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Galveston, originally east Texas, but now we're from Galveston.
MARCIANO: Where's your house?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right back behind Holiday Inn, Seaside Village.
MARCIANO: I hear that's pretty high in elevation. Did you ride the storm out there?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we did.
MARCIANO: How'd you make out?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was scary, but we made it. I mean, all of us pulled together. She was in the closet with grandma and we were behind the door holding the doors closed at one point.
MARCIANO: What's your daughter's name?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her name is Cayenne (ph).
MARCIANO: Cayenne, what did you think of the storm last night, sweetheart?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I slept in the closet.
MARCIANO: Was that was comfortable?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
MARCIANO: were you scared?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A little.
MARCIANO: A little? I was scared a lot. You're pretty brave.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're islanders. We're the one who survive!
MARCIANO: Congratulations. Good job. All right, guys. Glad you survived the storm.
Is your house all right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, chimney's messed up and there's damage done to it in the inside, but it's an apartment complex, so that's on them.
MARCIANO: Well, you're smiling, that's good news. You got your family and everything is all good. Congratulations to you. Best of luck. All right, so there you go. The area where they live, that was pointed out to me yesterday, Fredericka, as being one of the few high points on the island and one of the few areas where you don't need to buy flood insurance and obviously his home was not flooded and maybe sustained a little bit of wind damage on a night that his little daughter tell her friends about and maybe her grandkids down the road.
WHITFIELD: Yeah, hot little spicy Cayenne there with quite the personality. And certainly a trooper there to endured staying in the closet all night. You know it was incredibly frightening for those family members.
Rob, how about for you? We know you were in a fortified hotel there, but can you describe for me all of the things that you heard, perhaps, overnight while you all were hunkered down when the brunt of that storm was coming through?
MARCIANO: What we heard?
WHITFIELD: Yeah, what you heard in terms of the wind and you know, the howl, I've covered a tremendous amount of hurricanes as well and that experience, you don't have to be standing outside to know about the brunt of the storm, but you can be inside and the shrill of the wind sometimes can be so frightening.
MARCIANO: Yes, it can be. And this building having some glass exposure, that was frightening as well and there were quite a number of windows that blew out, but apart from other storms I've been in where the hotel really got torn up and there were holes in the walls, holes in the ceilings and a lot of blown out windows, that's when you really get the whistling going, that's when you start to shake in your boots, but this place was pretty well buttoned down, so to speak.
But the look on the people's -- folks' faces when they were walking down the stairwell, we were kind of walking up as a lot of people were evacuating down, all sorts of media, police department, fire department and then the elderly, too, was there definitely a look of fear, sincere fear on a lot of their faces just to get down to a lower floor because the building actually was shaking. You could feel it wobbling back and forth and it is only 16 stories high, so that gives you an idea of how strong the wind was.
WHITFIELD: Wow, scary stuff. And glad we're getting a chance to talk to some of the folks who decided to venture out, now they feel it's safe enough to get a see some of the damage there, but, as you said. in terms of the official assessments just now getting underway with daylight and with a lot of the heavy rain now passing as this storm makes its way across the rest of Texas. Rob Marciano, thanks so much.
Let's talk about other parts of Texas now. Downtown Houston, not that far from Galveston, there. Betty Nguyen, as well as our Jeanne Meserve, are in downtown Houston.
Let's begin with Betty to get an idea of what you've been seeing, there. I know there's been a lot of flying debris littered about downtown Houston, which we can see in the backdrop of your live shot.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN NEWS ANCHOR: Yeah, I want you to take a look at that. But before I do, I want to tell you that there for a while the winds died down and so did the rain, but now the rain is picking up once again, so that could be a problem for people trying to get into this area and assess the damage.
But, take a look behind me. Look at that tree, right there. Now, there is a light pole in the way that you can't really see the roots of it, but the tree has been uprooted. That gives you an idea of how strong this storm was as it blew through downtown Houston. Overnight, Jeanne Meserve clocked winds somewhere between 115 and 130 miles-per-hour and we can see what those winds have done.
Over to my left. If I can get Joe to turn to his right, I'm going to take you down this street, here on Congress, and if you take a look at the parking garage right by the red light there at the bottom of the street you will see an awning. That's one of many awnings that has littered downtown Houston and we are seeing debris all over the place.
Joe, take a look to your left, right here, and pan up to the large building because that is a JPMorgan Chase building. It's the tallest building in Texas. It has about 75 stories and on the left side from the way that you're looking at it, as the viewer, those windows, about 50 percent of the windows from the 30th floor and down are blown out. And we looked a little bit earlier, maybe you can still see it now, you see debris kind of hanging out the windows. Well, I walked down there just a few minutes ago and got a good look at what that was. We thought they were maybe curtains, but in fact, they are miniblinds, they're metal miniblinds.
And I want you to take a look at this over here, Joe, because this is just a piece of what's hanging out of that building. This is what's left. Can you imagine? We're several blocks down the street and this is a piece of the miniblinds that have blown out.
I also noticed on the street, this right here, Fred, and at first I thought maybe that was a light from some of our live shots that we've been doing all night long. But, I turned it around and it looks like it's someone's stereo system, a speaker system, right here. I don't know if that came from someone's, you know, residence, if it came from a high-rise condo, maybe even one of the restaurants in this area. But this is what is really so interesting to me, this piece of paper, it's all wet and there's plenty of them all along the streets here in Houston. I'm not sure what building it's blown out of, but this one here has to do with biofuels. The one underneath says "confidential." So, there are a lot of documents, really important business documents that have littered the street of downtown Houston, and in the meantime, as we look at all this debris, Fred, that really doesn't even describe the situation down where Jeanne Meserve is because flooding has occurred at the Buffalo Bayou and that can pose some serious problems.
WHITFIELD: All right, Betty, well, let's check in with Jeanne, right now, just down the street a few blocks away from you. And Jeanne, clearly, the bayou means water, but the problem here is too much of it now.
All right, looks like Jeanne Meserve can't hear me right now. We'll try to get back with her.
Yeah, we do have you? All right, Jeanne.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Here I am. Can you hear me, Fred?
WHITFIELD: I can.
MESERVE: OK, great.
WHITFIELD: It's a big mess, I know.
MESERVE: Yes, we have moved. We were down at the flooding down on Commerce Street and it looked very bad, it was hindering access to the interstate highway, a critical access point to downtown, but we have moved up by the JPMorgan Chase Center and Tower that Betty was talking about. Bear with us because when our cameraman tries to shoot this he's going get water on the lens and you may see him wipe it.
You heard Betty talking about how the windows were up on the lower floors, here's a close-up view of exactly what it looks like. As she mentioned, you can see the things that almost look like Christmas tinsel hanging out of the windows, those are the blinds that used to be in some of those offices. Virtually every window just on this side of the building, up from about 30-some stories and then as you get higher up the building the damage is less severe and there is a theory as to why that's the case. Perhaps John can move over here to the Morgan Chase Center, this which is across the street, another building which has lost windows from the ground floor on up.
We talked to a city official earlier who speculated that this building, the Morgan Chase Center may have had pea gravel on the roof and when the winds came through, that gravel was swept off of the roof and over onto the JPMorgan Chase Tower and that's why you see the damage in the lower part of the building rather than the upper part of the building.
Now, the police have closed up the street here. You can see the police tape up. There are people in here trying to take pictures and they're being pretty stupid, and I'll show you why. This is what's coming out of this building, big chunks of glass are coming out of here and they're continuing to come out now. So, police are very anxious to keep people away from this because it is just plain, old- fashioned dangerous.
I will say that these buildings appear to be the worst-hit in the city. We've done a little bit of a tour, we've talked to police officers who have looked all over. They say this is really the epicenter of the window damage, here in Houston. Back to you.
WHITFIELD: And, Jeanne, can you give me an idea of how urgently these emergency responders are trying to keep people away given it's dangerous for them, spectators and passersby to come down there, but it doesn't pare the job of the emergency responders to try to the get to the bottom of assessing the damage, getting folks out of harm's way and trying to, I guess, do some repairs or try to get things back to normal as best they can at this stage.
MESERVE: You know, you have to believe that some of these police probably have more urgent missions that they could be doing, but they have a presence downtown no matter what for security purposes and whatnot. We see a couple of parked cars further down this street where they're clearly working, but, yeah, it doesn't help them any to have this number of people out here.
I can probably see apart from the news crews, 10 or 12 people out here, they're out here with their video cameras and their cell phones trying to get a shot, again, of this spectacular building, maybe Jon could show you one more time that has just been devastated at least on this one side by Hurricane Ike -- Fred.
WHITFIELD: All right, Jeanne, thanks so much. Betty Nguyen just a few blocks away there in downtown Houston.
And Betty, I know you spent a lot of time at the hospitals, as well, kind of the more vulnerable of patients who were taken to supposedly more fortified areas. How did they do? I'm talking about the babies that were taken mostly to the basements or parts of the building where there were no windows.
NGUYEN: Right, because then the unit where they were, the neonatal intensive care unit, there was a whole wall that was just full of windows and had these storms blown through that area, which they did, and picked up some kind of debris or even just the blunt force of these strong winds, it could have shattered the windows. You would have babies lying there in their little incubators, their little cribs, their little plastic cribs and had glass all over them, so they didn't want to take that danger, they didn't want to take the risk of injuring those babies. So, what they did was they something that was really proactive.
Early yesterday afternoon, they decided to roll all the babies down to a lower level of the hospital, which is really where they had day surgery. It's a fortified area, there are no windows down there and they also had equipment, should there be any kind of need for a major medical situation. They were fully stocked and fully prepared to do that whenever it was need, if it were needed. And in fact, parents just so that they would aren't have to be away from their small infant during this storm, they set up beds so that they could sleep down there and even cradle their child throughout the storm.
So there was some interaction between the babies and the parents and really all of them, as far as we know, made it through fine, but I will warn you, though, Fred, we're probably going to learn about this a little bit later today, many hospitals did lose power. Now, most hospitals are equipped with backup generators, so maybe later on today we'll be out and about and be able to get a better assessment as to how they fared through this storm, but I'm hoping, as far as we know, things are A-OK.
WHITFIELD: Yeah, and I know there's been expressed concern about the generators, whether they be at hospitals or perhaps even some nursing homes or even some residences, because the number of people or households and businesses without power, if we're talking about a million and two million it is likely to be not just a few days, but maybe even into a week or more before that power can be restored.
NGUYEN: Right. Well, we heard upwards of four million earlier this morning, so maybe you're getting a new number, but to give you some perspective on what a problem that can pose, especially for the Houston area, back in 1983 when Hurricane Alicia blew through it killed 21 people, but it also knocked out power to 750 homes. Well it took them two weeks, back then, to restore all that power. So, if you're thinking that we're dealing with four million, two to four million people, that's going to take quite a bit of time to restore all of that.
WHITFIELD: Yes, it's already sounding like a month before power can be restored...
NGUYEN: People don't want to hear that.
WHITFIELD: No, they don't want to hear that so, pretend I didn't say it. All right, Betty, we're going to check back with you in a moment and we'll have much more coverage on Hurricane Ike and the damage it has caused to particularly Texas and even Louisiana, as well. We are just now with daylight, getting some more images in of the kind of damage and destruction. We're not just talking about branches like this and tree limbs coming down and, of course, we are talking about the power outages and we're talking about some major structural damage, as well. Much more when we come right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARIO BENITEZ, HOUSTON RESIDENT: I tell you, next time I'm going leave. I'm not going stay.
MARCIANO: Sir, what happened to your house? Did it survive OK?
BENITEZ: Yeah, it survived, it's leaking a lot of water a little bit, not so much.
MARCIANO: Who was in the house?
BENITEZ: My mom, my nephew and me, only us three.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: All right, Mario Benitez out of Houston saying thank goodness he and the family are OK, but next time, that's it, they're out of there and they will be heeding the warning that, of course, a lot of officials are hope and wishing that a lot of the folks who decided to stay, there in Texas, and didn't heed that mandatory evacuation, will next time because certainly it makes it very dangerous, not just for them, but for emergency responders, as well.
Jacqui Jeras is in the Weather Center and you know, we're talking, Jacqui, as if Ike is past tense. It is still a force out there, it's over land, but it battered the coastal cities pretty hard there in Texas and Louisiana.
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Oh, yeah, unbelievable. You know, and Fredericka, we still haven't gotten into some of these places, so I think those pictures that shock you still could be coming on in and something else to think about, too, you know, those people are starting to get out there in these conditions and it's still not safe. You know, Jeanne Meserve with those shards of glass and there may be pieces just kind of lingering up there, hanging on by a thread and one little blow of the wind and it comes on down, so that's a dangerous situation. The power outages are tremendous. What I understand, Fredericka, by the way, to clarify that from earlier, about two million customers, so to speak, or households are without power. So that equates to about four million people without power.
There may be live wires out there and there's all kinds of debris all over the place, it's not safe. Officials are tell you if you've evacuated and you don't want you to come home just yet. They need to get in there and do their work, and so wait until they give you the all-clear before you try and head back in the area.
Now, the good news, I can tell you, this thing has weakened. We are down to Category 1, hooray, 80 mile-per-hour wind, but it's still enough to cause some damage and we've been getting some reports of a lot of trees down, here, north of the Houston area, in Lufkin and down towards the Huntsville area. This is all to the east of Interstate 45. And something else, as we still have those outside feeder bands that are coming on through, here.
The Beaumont-Fort Arthur area could ultimately end up being one of the worst-hit areas here, because of the surge pulling in through Sabine Pass on up through the lakes and into the rivers and the feeder bands continue to push on in here so we can see tornados and we're getting those strong winds within these thunderstorms, so we just got a gust reported at the top of the hour, 59 miles-per-hour, so that can cause a lot of damage still. So this is ongoing still near the coastal areas, but something to think about that this certainly is by no means over and done with.
Here's a statistic for you to give you a better idea. We change our locator to Dallas because it's heading on up to the north now, about 165 miles away and by the way, I think Dallas, you might skirt out easy on this one because all of the winds, for the most part, are near the center and off to the east of this and Dallas, I think it could really turn out OK for you as this starts to turn northeast early in very short order. You're going to get some gusty winds. It's not going to be a great day, but nothing compared to what they've been seeing down to your south.
Check out some of the peaks. You know, landfall about 2:00 Local Time, early this morning, 102 miles-per-hour, in Anahuac, and Port Arthur, 96 miles-per-hour, we're seeing gusts around 60. Ninety-two with the peaks that we saw and this was unconfirmed from a storm spotter in Houston, that was near Hobby Airport. But all the (INAUDIBLE), basically been wiped out by the winds, so it could have been a little bit stronger than that. We don't have accurate information.
Now, where is this thing going? We're pulling up to the north now and we're expected to take that curve up to the north and the east and the big thing that just stands out here when you look that the track, look how fast this thing is all of a sudden going to move. You know, we're already up there at about 15, 20 miles-per-hour. It is going to accelerate and it picked up within this trough and, boom, look at this, this is tomorrow morning already, right near the Arkansas and Missouri state line. Boom, look a this, 8 p.m. Sunday into the Ohio Valley, so the faster we can get this thing out of here, the better off we're going be. But one of the big concerns is it's hooking up with the front that's already been producing some torrential downpours across the nation's midsection.
We're going to have the energy of these two things coming together. The threat of tornados around the Arthur, Texas region today move up into the middle Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys for tomorrow. The flood threat today, down here across the Gulf Coast and moving into the Midwest, spreading into the eastern Great Lakes throughout your Sunday. So we're going to be dealing with Ike probably until Monday, in terms of weather. The cleanup, of course, obviously a very long time.
WHITFIELD: Yeah, definitely a long time, but I'm kind of encouraged by the fact that you said Ike is moving quickly because that usually means it will cut back on any potential for flooding because it's so slow moving like the hurricanes that becomes tropical storm...
JERAS: Like Fay.
WHITFIELD: Yeah, and Floyd, remember that? That caused terrible, terrible flooding, but it is considered a tropical storm now, right?
JERAS: No, it's still a hurricane
WHITFIELD: Why are we still calling it a hurricane when it's no longer over water?
JERAS: Well, because it still has the tropical characteristics. It takes some time to transition, basically to what we would call an extra tropical system and if those winds are 74 or over you're still going to see this thing as a hurricane. We think it will be a tropical storm later on this afternoon, but it might take until Sunday, late, before it becomes a TD or it becomes absorbed into that other system.
WHITFIELD: Well, it was powerful and is big -- I should say is powerful and is still very big.
JERAS: Absolutely. WHITFIELD: All right, Jacqui, thanks so much, we'll check back in with you.
All right, let's talk now a little bit more about some of those Texas coastal cities that while they still may be in the clear as far as the hurricane being over them. Houston, Galveston, Baytown, certainly not in the clear when it down to assessing the damage. Just now they're starting to venture out, officials are, to find out exactly what kind of damage was left in the hurricane's wake and to help us assess what might be next for the cities, Lieutenant General Russel Honore. You'll remember seeing him quite a bit leading the National Guard after Hurricane Katrina in particularly New Orleans.
So, give me an idea of what you're expecting here and now. Folks are starting to venture out. Those who decide to stay back and not heed the evacuations, they're venturing out along with emergency responders. This could be a terrible clash, couldn't it?
LT GEN RUSSEL HONORE (RET), CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it could and a danger to people who have gone out unaware, they need to stay on their property and take care of their neighborhoods and stay safe for the time being.
The first responders, police, along with National Guard. I know we've got National Guard in every zip code and area code and so there are some in the city. There is two convoys who left San Antonio this morning, they are just outside of Houston, as we speak, two 500- vehicle convoys, 1,000 men in each filled with everything from ambulances to back-up generator to communications as well as the IBBs, itty-bitty boats that can come in and support the first responders inside of Galveston.
WHITFIELD: So, the last thing they need is people that come out with their cameras and deciding hey, I want to get some of the first looks now, because they really do kind of get in the way.
HONORE: That is correct. Now, what's going on, Fred, any of those homes that were flooded, according to our search and rescue doctrine, the first thing, the first responders will do, they'll have to go to every one of those homes that's flooded and do what we call a knock and search, ask if anyone's in the home. That's the first round of searches that will take place. You have to do those in daylight. The second round will be to come and verify that nobody's in those homes. That appear to be empty.
WHITFIELD: It's the signature marking doors like we saw.
HONORE: Right. And then the other is the aerial search as soon as we can get helicopters up and people will be able to wave off to helicopters whether they need help, whether they need rescuing and those are fine on the roofs and we have another report, but not documented yet that people are on their roofs in some of the (inaudible).
WHITFIELD: How concerning is that to you that i understand that a number of the choppers really can't get in the air. HONORE: Right.
WHITFIELD: Until about 2:00 local time to do some of these search and rescue type of efforts. Does that concern you that that's an awful lot of daylight hours that have gone with the boats in the water without the choppers in the air. It means kind of manual searching if those vehicles can get in.
HONORE: Right. They're using high water clearance vehicles. Apparently soon they'll be able to get the itty-bitty boats in the water. Then with the air search ...
WHITFIELD: Does that concern you that there's that lapse of time.
HONORE: That's normal. It's a force of nature. There's nothing you can do about the wind. There are limits to our capability. But once all that happens there are other search engines we can put up. UAVs and the satellite will be able to get a shot. But the big thing is, this will be a personal thing going each house that was to make sure no one is in it. Aerial searches come in big areas, isolated areas and going into the hardest-hit areas that might be flooded and then bringing in the ground search and then the local police and fire departments will be directing those National Guard troops where they need help. National Guard troops will then call in if they need additional federal forces from NORTHCOM there are some on the ground now. We have special ops and capable birds that can do some night ops.
So they are well-equipped and it's a function of taking time to get the right equipment at the right place at the right time. Right now people need to be hunkered down. Stay in place.
WHITFIELD: Don't get too overly confident.
HONORE: Right.
WHITFIELD: We're going to talk some more coming up about the search and rescue efforts about the coordination that between U.S. Coast Guard, National Guard and local authorities. We saw police vehicles out in full force already.
We're going to check back with you in a few minutes on that. Lieutenant General Honore.
HONORE: And you know we have got about 20,000 people in shelters and I expect that number to go up as people will get to the point where they can't stay in their homes.
WHITFIELD: And yeah, they realize wait a minute, I'm not going have power for how long?
HONORE: And the Red Cross is working that hard. And oh, by the way, the Red Cross needs money.
WHITFIELD: Thanks, general. We'll talk to you again soon. We appreciate it.
All right, in our next conversation we're going to be talking with the general about the search and rescue efforts, as I mentioned and we'll also be talking about what you at home if you've decided to stay and you're there in Texas or if you're in Louisiana, what you need to be doing in order to try to get some assistance if you need it. We'll be right back.
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WHITFIELD: All right. Here's what we know right now about Hurricane Ike, yes, it's still called Hurricane Ike even though it's been downgraded to a Category 1 with top sustained wind speeds of 80 miles an hour and mostly over land mass. The storm is blamed for three deaths so far, but that number could rise as search efforts get under way. Thousands of homes and businesses have been destroyed in Texas as well as Louisiana after attacking Galveston and Houston this morning, the center of the storm is now north of Houston near Trinity, Texas. Ike is expected to continue its path through southeastern and eastern Texas today and then right on into western Arkansas later on tonight.
We've got our correspondents all along the coast of Texas as well as Louisiana. Our Sean Callebs has actually been on his way to the Houston shipping lanes, is that right? He's on the road and I don't want like this scene. You have a microphone and you're behind the wheel. Are you parked or are you moving, Sean?
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Look, no hands. We're parked right now.
And the reason -- and I'll show you why we pulled over. We've been driving only about a mile from Johnson Space Center here on NASA Parkway. Bear with us because I know this cam will break up a little bit because we're on broadband. Look at this neighborhood. These homes have about five feet of water as far as the eye can see. This road that we're shooting down is actually called Sandy Cove. So not a great -- Look to the left there. You see a couple of guys on a personal watercraft which is kind of interesting. They just pulled up. And that's actually called Lazy Lake Drive. They're living the Lazy Lake life right now. But this is no laughing matter.
We know this storm is going to cause billions of dollars in damage. And this is a big problem.
Driving down through this road we went past the town of NASA Bay and the water was bordering us on the right and it simply poured over on to this area. You know, this is -- people are just thrashing around in the middle of a disaster zone, for lack of a better term. I'm going to pull down, Fredericka, bear with us and now we're going to drive just a little bit, but the microphone and everything's good and we're buckled in and there are a lot of cars around. There's another crew here shooting this scene, but as we go down this road, NASA Parkway, we noticed that basically the cars can only go down a quarter of a mile and then everybody turns around. So we're going to try and drive down and see exactly what's up here. We've not been down this road. We pulled over when we saw that neighborhood that had been flooded. We've done a lot of stories here and I'm sure Miles O'Brien can get through here with his eyes closed, Johnson Space Center.
We know a lot of NASA employees have been around the area. Look at the Hilton. You may be able to see the siding, the facade simply sheared off of that and it looks like some of the windows are out as well, but boy, a lot of damage there. Actually we were able to make it through here so some people must have come down and decided this is as for as they want to risk it.
You can see a lot of downed telephone poles and cars flooded in the parking lot here. A lot of crews decided to ride out the storm here clearly, trying to give folks a feel of what it's like.
Boy look at this water how it's just poured up out of this lake area. Okay, Fredricka. That's the situation here. We'll drive down a little bit further. We're inching our way toward the shipping channel to go as far as we can, the flooding comes up and we turn around and move around. But this is where we are now. We're going to get down there.
Because that's supposed to be -- we're worried about that area. A lot of mandatory evacuations and we'll show you exactly what.
WHITFIELD: What a real mess. All right, Sean, thanks so much.
Be careful on your driving there as well. We'll check back with you as we can get that connection. Meantime, let's talk about Downtown Houston again. Just about 45 minutes outside or so of where Sean is. Betty Nguyen is there in Downtown Houston. We see a lot of vehicular traffic behind you, most of them being police vehicles. That's a good sign because people don't have any business being down there except now I see over your left hand shoulder, I do see two pedestrians, what's going on out there?
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Folks are starting to come down out of these buildings. A lot of folks live in these high-rise condos here in Downtown and that was really a big concern as the storm headed in because of the windows here in downtown.
I want you to take a look to my left right here in that building. You can see many of the windows were boarded up and they survived that storm and even the windows in the building to the left and right of that, but what you can't see is on the roof. We've been told by people who live in the building they lost their air-conditioning unit and it just blew off the roof at some point during this storm and at this point we haven't seen them come back with it, so they may still be on the hunt. Take a look at this. This is another piece of debris that went flying through the air when Hurricane Ike decided to roar through Downtown Houston. This right here is quite heavy and should it have gone through a window or maybe hit a car or anything like that, it would have caused some major damage.
This right here used to be hanging on that pole right there which is the light post there for Congress Street. As you can see, this is just a small glimpse of some of the debris that's just littered all across Houston. We've seen confidential paperwork coming from some of these businesses. We've seen blinds blown out of windows that are just missing that the moment. In fact, behind me in the J.P. Morgan Chase building, that really tall tower that you see right there, about 50 percent of the windows from floor 30 on down on the east side simply gone, and you can see blinds blowing in the wind because those windows are blown out.
That's the situation here in Downtown Houston. As of this hour we have not heard of any deaths, although as you've been reporting, there have been three deaths total and we'll get a better assessment of that as people go in it for those search and rescue operations throughout the day.
But in the meantime, we want to get a grip on what is going in Surfside Beach, Texas, that's where my colleague Reynolds Wolf is. And he's watching it there, Reynolds, what are you seeing?
REYNOLDS WOLF, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Betty, these are the first live images we have out of Surf Side. I can tell you there's debris, there's flotsam all over the place and you see the welcome sign here. People come here to enjoy a beautiful beach and beautiful conditions but I tell you if you have to actually look out over that water, that water is still just very angry at this point, so to speak. You can also see pieces of docks, pieces of, say, gazebos that have just been ripped apart, actually now one with the trees.
There's a lot of damage with the restaurants nearby. As far as you can see, even down this roadway, you see just the flotsam, you see all kinds of garbage and all kinds of mess everywhere all due to this storm.
You know, the best way maybe to get an idea of how the storm is and how it compares to others we've had in the past is to speak to an expert. Maybe someone like the mayor. We have Larry Davidson with us. Larry, you've lived here for a good part of your life. How does this compare with other storms?
MAYOR LARRY DAVIDSON, SURFSIDE BEACH, TEXAS: It's probably one of the strongest storms in 25 years since Alicia. We've had a lot of tropical storms with flooding only, but the wind combined with the surge was pretty powerful and did a lot of damage here.
WOLF: So it looks like the surge could have been maybe around 10 feet close to the shore but around eight farther back. Just a guesstimate on the destruction. How many homes? Any idea?
DAVIDSON: Our first survey looks like at least 20 homes have been completely destroyed and maybe 20 to 30 more with some pretty serious damage. We're going through doing the assessment right now and trying to get into all areas that are damaged.
WOLF: Mayor Davidson, I understand that you had a resident that has become, I guess you can say, fairly famous around the country. Referring to, what was the name? DAVIDSON: Ray Wilkerson.
WOLF: And Ray, how old is he?
DAVIDSON: I think he's 65 or 70, we're not sure.
WOLF: And he had the idea of sitting out the storm and meeting it first hand. How did he come out?
DAVISON: He did just fine. We woke him up this morning and he was waving to us and everything was fine. He still had water around the location he was at. But he was fine and everything's good.
WOLF: OK. And thanks so much for your time. We we'll give you a break and we know you'll have a couple of busy days ahead of you. Folks, we're going to have a lot of story coming out not just along the Texas coastline but in all of southeast Texas. The story continue towns fold as this monster of a storm rambles its way up toward the Red River Valley and out to the center of the U.S. We have so much more coming up in just a couple of moments. You're watching CNN.
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NGUYEN: Hello, everybody. I'm Betty Nguyen live in Downtown Houston. As you can see, cars are starting to fill in to this vicinity. People are taking a look at the damage. I want you to look over to my left, and if you look up on the roof, you can see two gentlemen there. One in the navy shirt. His name is Jamie Wise (ph). We talked to him a little bit earlier and he's a restaurant owner. Not only does he live there, but his store is just right down the street.
And they're out there trying to assess the damage. He along with many, many others although I will have to admit there are a few onlookers who want to get a glimpse of the damage and there's plenty of debris in the street.
What is so amazing is that this storm blew through around 3 a.m. local time and it was very strong. Hurricane-force wind, we're talking something up to 115, 130 miles per hour. That's what we clocked, but right now we're still feeling the rain effects from it, so it is not over. In fact, my colleague, Rob Marciano is down in Galveston. That was an area of major concern. Rob, are you still feeling the effects of Hurricane Ike?
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. We're getting winds and they don't seem to want to give up here, Betty. They're different from yesterday and now they've switched southwesterly but they're doing the same thing. They're paralleling sea wall Boulevard which is where the sea wall is which is built to protect this city and did a pretty good job of it. Took a bit of a beating last night. The Gulf has receded somewhat, certainly from what we saw last night, boy, it was a horrifying event when the sun went down and those waves got bigger and bigger and they were crashing over the sea wall and splashing and tearing up, not so much the sea wall, but the asphalt of this modern-day roadway. You see some of the asphalt here piled up on this side and this kind of debris is strewn all of the way down up and down the sea wall. So it definitely took a bit of a beating. There is also a pier down there, an old fishing pier which survived the storms in the past. Didn't survive this one. That's gone.
There's been a flurry of - Greg (ph), can you see that? This is a dump truck filled with firemen, they're now pulling down the boulevard and it looks like they're making a left turn, two and a half, three hours ago the Fire Department finally released their men and women into the and go door to door to assess each and every household to determine if there was anybody in there to clear them, to mark them, to make sure if there was anybody in there they would get them medical attention.
So I've got to assume that's exactly what those gentlemen are doing. Police department also held up in our hotel as well.
I want to bring in Kelly Singer (ph). Kelly came up us to and was kind enough to tell us a little bit about your story. You live on the bayside. Your house is under water? Tell us what happened yesterday.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: About 9:30 in the morning I tried to leave to see how height water was and I made it about half a block and my car was pretty much submerged, but it was still useable so I got back to my house and parked it in my driveway. I had water up to my driveway about two inches deep within 15 minutes that came to the first floor landing on my stairs. I parked my car in my garage. This was a little bit before around 11.
MARCIANO: How high did it get?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It got between five to six feet when I left.
MARCIANO: What were you thinking then and who came to get you? You asked for help, didn't you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I called 911 and they gave me a number to the coast guard in Crystal Beach. They had somebody en route and they were there about 15 minutes and it was so windy and they had such a full load that they couldn't get me. They went ahead and left the island to evacuate the island over at Gulf Greyhound Park.
MARCIANO: Who came to get you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The phone went dead, and I decided to swim.
MARCIANO: Swim?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah, I had pat (ph) that was fine so I put her in a container, and I went to swim and we got about 10 feet and we decided to go back the other way.
MARCIANO: Who's we? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Myself and my dog, and the Council (ph) County Fire Department in one of the older vehicles picked me up and at about that time I looked up and I had the military Black Hawk helicopter hovering above my house.
MARCIANO: So the Fire Department came to get you and then the Black Hawk. Obviously this has been quite an experience. Have you ever seen a storm like this?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. Never.
MARCIANO: Worse than Alicia?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Much worse. Water, we didn't have the storm surge. We had tornadoes, but we didn't have storm surge like this.
MARCIANO: We are glad you swam out of it okay and getting your house back in order.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.
MARCIANO: Kelly Singer swimming for help.
How about that, Betty? We've heard a number of those stories actually today and the storm surge not quite what we feared, but certainly enough to flood a number of community and in her case, get her and her dog to swim for their lives, for the most part. Betty?
NGUYEN: What an amazing story. You know, she's really lucky because, Rob, as you well know as of late yesterday still warnings out that folks staying in Galveston would face certain death if they were in single-unit homes meaning one story or two-story buildings. So it's a good thing this she survived that. She is one lucky lady.
The folks down here in Houston are just as lucky. We haven't seen a whole lot of major damage. Of course there's debris in the street, no doubt, but we have not heard any of additional deaths so far. This storm has killed three people, but again, search and rescue efforts will be under way today and we'll get a better indication of the damage as the day continues. Stay tuned because we have much more as we continue to cover Hurricane Ike.
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WHITFIELD: In the lead-up to Hurricane Ike there were lots of complaints about gasoline, particularly a lot of folks in Texas said that some gas stations simply ran out of gas and that's why they decided not to evacuate. They didn't have the gas to get there. Other complaints, there were tremendous, through the roof kind of spikes in gasoline. Josh Levs has been keeping a close watch on the latter, in particular. What's the explanation as to why gas is so expensive in some parts, but not all parts.
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Analysts are telling us don't be surprised if it has more of a ripple effect in the coming days. Let me start show you in the board behind me, this is just in the dozen of I-Reports we've gotten today telling us how gas prices jumping in their areas. This is Pensacola, Knoxville, over here we have east Tennessee, Cummings, Georgia down here, Evansville, Indiana over here and I skipped one that's from Canada because I don't know if it's relate order not, but we're hearing from all these people and these are some of the more than 60 that I've seen that just came in this morning from the country. We have this video we're going to show you that and I-Reporters sent us. Here's what we're hearing.
Some people literally saw the price rise. You know how that's usually a metaphor in here they actually saw the price rise because they were in line to get gasoline and while they were in line people were coming out at these stations all over this region and raising the price by 50, 60, 70 and 80 cents we're hearing this.
Why is this? Let's go to the Google Earth imagery. We'll show you the oil refineries in Texas and some of the installations are offshore and some of them are on the shore and if they get wet, they can operate. We have 26 major oil refineries in Texas. We were already reporting yesterday 13 of them were shut down at that point because the storm was coming along and we know that among those is the number one largest and several of the top 10 largest in America. I spoke earlier with an analyst who told me, if you go to your local gas station and you see the prices way up, don't necessarily blame the local guys. Let's watch that.
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KEVIN KERRY, ENERGY ANALYST: When you are seeing is you are seeing the retail gasoline guys and it's not fair to blame them. They're reacting to the wholesale price they're fearful they're going to have to get. They're running out of gas, and they've got to refill the tanks and they're worried they're not going to get more supply and if they do, it is going to be awful expensive and they'll pass that on to the rest of us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVS: So that's what's happening in a lot of stations but we're also getting reports of price gouging.
Florida Governor Charlie Crist just said minutes ago that he's had 100 reports in his state of alleged price gouging, that's just in Florida. Certainly steps have to be taken for that. Think about natural gas, too. Let's zoom in on the board quickly before I toss it back to Fred.
I want you to see this, this is a look at natural gas pipelines in Texas. The blue ones lead to other states and the gray ones are just inside Texas. Here is an even better map. All this red is intrastate which means natural gas pipelines inside Texas. Texas has more interstate natural gas pipeline miles than any other state, 43,000 miles and you can see a ton of it is right down here and that's where ice is having a lot of its power and we have yet to assess the impact on the natural gas supply in the United States with those pipelines potentially being affected. So Fred, in the coming days we have this ripple effect throughout the energy markets here in the United States. And when you see the gas prices jump, send us those I-Reports because we want to get a sense nationwide of how far it's spreading and how quickly.
WHITFIELD: It's interesting, too and perplexing to a lot of folks because we're seeing a hike in the price of gasoline, but when we talk about the barrel of oil, we've been experiencing that going south in the past few days. So it's a real confusing little teeter- totter there.
LEVS: In fact, I was looking at what the CNN Money folks have been saying about that. Oil does is going down and even before this, gas prices were starting to go up nationally because of lasting ripple effects after Gustav.
