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Hurricane Ida Slams Louisiana With Wind, Rain, And Storm Surge; New Orleans, Surrounding Parish Without Power. Hurricane Ida Roars Inland With Category 3 Force; Flash Flood Emergency Is Issued For New Orleans; Aired 9-10p ET
Aired August 29, 2021 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM on this Sunday evening. Welcome to our breaking news coverage. At this very moment New Orleans and its surrounding parish is completely without power tonight, hours after Hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana, just shy of category five.
Ida has been every bit the monster that was fear. It is officially time for the strongest storm ever to hit the state with sustained winds at landfall of 150 miles an hour. That is even stronger than Katrina, which hit 16 years ago today.
It's too early to assess Ida's huge swath of damage but the wrecking power is obvious. Just look at this video here on your screen, flooding is widespread, and some areas could see up to 20 inches of rain. More than 700,000 homes and businesses are now without power. And that number is sure to climb. Officials say it could take weeks to fully restore power. That within the next hour or two New Orleans will be seen its highest winds and heaviest rain. The levee system was vastly upgraded after Katrina and is holding as of now.
Now south of the city, the rainfall and storm surge have pushed water over a levee and Plaquemines Parish. A flash flood emergency is in effect and residents are urged to seek higher ground. Earlier, I spoke with a critical care doctor in Baton Rouge who is bracing for the worst.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. CHRISTOPHER THOMAS, BATON ROUGE CRITICAL CARE PHYSICIAN: We believe it will probably be the most significant event of our lifetime. We currently have a full hospital. But we're the Regional Medical Center. And so, we are essentially acting that role. We have over 700 providers in the hospital, 50 of those are physicians, 400 or nurses, 300 are non-clinical. We're split into two staffs. We will do one shift during the day, one shift at night. And we will alternate until we are able to get through this. We're also becoming very concerned about our southernmost neighbors, the hospitals that are already in the path here of Ida are demonstrating some failures, whether that's roofs or whether it's generators.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: And joining me now to further discuss is Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards. Thank you for joining us, Governor. What can you tell us about the power situation in Orleans Parish?
GOV. JOHN BEL EDWARDS, (D) LOUISIANA: Well, it's tough all-over Southeast Louisiana. And about 45 minutes ago, it was reported that the entirety of Orleans Parish went out. Now they're still isolated places with the generators and the turbans are still working to operate the pumps. But the entire parish of Orleans went out in terms of the power that's being provided there. But that's true for most of Southeast Louisiana. We're up to getting close to 800,000 outages, not unexpected when you have winds that come in at 150 miles per hour. And so, this storm, as you mentioned, is everything that was advertised in terms of the wind in terms of the storm surge, and quite frankly, the rain that's falling as well. So, this is a very devastating storm.
BROWN: Yeah, in fact, last hour, I spoke with the president of Jefferson Parish, and she told me that people reporting water up to their chest inside their homes. What is your reaction to that?
EDWARDS: Yeah, well, I mean, it's a very serious event. And the good news is, you know, you look for good news where you can find it is our levee systems are holding up remarkably well. The Hurricane risk reduction system to provide protection to the most populated portions of Orleans and Jefferson Parish on both sides of the river. It is held up there's not been any overtopping. Most of the levees south in (inaudible) parishes even have held up very well.
You mentioned an isolated area down in Plaquemines Parish on the east bank, that area around Braithwaite that happens quite frequently with storms. So that one was not unexpected in that area had been under mandatory evacuation order since Thursday. But this is a very serious storm. I'm not sure where the President was referring to in terms of where, they were -- the house with water up to someone's chest, but I'll try to call her and figure that out after I get off this program.
BROWN: Yeah, and on that note, I mean, what about rescue operations, you have residents calling in, what's going on that front?
EDWARDS: Well, quite frankly, when you are at the height of a hurricane you can't get first responders out of because it's just simply too dangerous. The wind speeds don't allow for that, and the other hazards associated with the hurricane, but just as soon as we possibly can, we will be engaged in very robust search and rescue operations.
[21:05:08]
You know, the entire national guard is activated. We've got search and rescue assets staged across 14 parishes, just with the National Guard, 195 high water vehicles, 73 boats, we got 34 helicopters ready to fly in the morning. But our Urban Search and Rescue, we've got over 900 additional people there with 21 teams that actually are comprised of teams coming from 15 different states. And so just as soon as the weather will allow, we're going to get out and do search and rescue. But this is why we tell people that they need to be prepared to ride out the storm and be able to make it for the first 72 hours, if at all possible, just to make sure that there's -- that they can do that, while we engage in our search and rescue.
And of course, we're very optimistic that no one's going to have to wait 72 hours for someone to respond to the call. But we won't know more about the situation really. At least not as much as we want to know until tomorrow morning when the sun comes up.
BROWN: And you have been warning residents how dire this was going to be and it is turning out to be the monster that you have advertised as you said, where do you think Louisiana is with this storm? I mean, it hit landfall this morning, it's still packing a powerful punch particularly in New Orleans and elsewhere. Do you think that in some areas, the worst is yet to come?
EDWARDS: Oh, there's no doubt so it hasn't even reached Interstate 10 that connects Baton Rouge and New Orleans. And it really it lost its forward speed. It started knuckle balling around, if you will, when it got inland to about Houma, and it stopped moving forward as fast as it had been. But it hasn't gotten I-10 yet. And so, we know, for example, that the North Shore area is going to get pounded a little later north of Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Marple (ph) up through Livingston and Tangipahoa over to St. Tammany parishes. And in the wind, the rain is just going to be, you know, it's going to be huge and could be those 20, 24 inches that were advertised in those areas. The heaviest rainfall is right along the track and just off to the east. But I will tell you, nobody is out of the woods in Southeast Louisiana yet. And we're going to be dealing with this hurricane until sometime well after midnight.
BROWN: And we should note again, remind our viewers that this is all happening on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a tragic reminder of how often your state deals with these kinds of natural disasters. What is your message to the people of Louisiana right now?
EDWARDS: Well, you know, first of all, in many respects, we're a different state, we're stronger, better prepared, there's been $14 billion invested in the protection system around Orleans, Jefferson Parish and elsewhere. And you can see the lights are flickering here. But we're better prepared now in terms of that protection system. But when you have Mother Nature throws you a stone this strong with the surge, the wind, the rain that we were talking about with Hurricane Ida, there's going to be devastating impacts. And we have to do everything we can to save lives in the immediate response and we'll get to the property repairs later.
But I can tell you for several days, we're going to be engaged in search and rescue boat. The primary search, the secondary searches and so forth. And we're going to be in this for the long haul, but the people of Louisiana good and resilient people and I can tell you we're going to get through this.
BROWN: The lights flicker where you are in Baton Rouge, on the other side of the screen we were just showing New Orleans where the power is down, all the powers down in New Orleans. So, we're going to go to a reporter there on the ground. But Governor John Bel Edwards thank you very much for bringing us the latest in your state.
EDWARDS: Thank you, Pamela.
BROWN: And let's take you there, to New Orleans, we're seeing that video right now. It is a city in the dark. CNN's Brian Todd is there. What can you tell us, Brian?
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, the power is completely out in New Orleans. We just got word from the New Orleans Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness that the city is completely dark because they had what they call a catastrophic transmission damage to some of their transformers and some other power sources there. So, the city is completely dark.
I can actually show that to you, I can step aside to your left, my right. I'm going to step aside and our photojournalist, Jake Shire (ph), is going to throw his camera down Bourbon Street. The only reason that you see anything beyond me down there is because Jake's light is shining some light down Bourbon Street, there's a larger building there with some lights at the top of it, that has to be generator power. The only buildings that have any power now are doing so via generator and that of course in and of itself as we've been reporting that brings dangers in and of itself because according to Louisiana State officials last year when Hurricane Laura came through here, they had 25 deaths as a result of that storm. Out of those 25, nine of them were because of carbon monoxide poisoning.
[21:10:17]
People are not using (inaudible) and experience that cause illnesses, what local officials here are really (inaudible) as the power is out here, it gets more and more dangerous to venture out, of course, be careful how you use your generators. We were told that the eye of the storm has very recently made its closest pass and it's going to make to New Orleans that was about 25 miles south, southwest of New Orleans. That's --
BROWN: And Brian, I'm just going to cut in because we were having trouble hearing you right now, which is just a sign of what is going on there on the ground in New Orleans, where you are where it's really getting the worst part of the storm right now that it has since it made landfall. Brian Todd, thank you very much being live for us there on the scene in New Orleans where the city is completely without power. The only way you have power in that city is through a generator.
And just moments ago, I spoke to Cynthia Lee Sheng. She is a Jefferson Parish president just south of New Orleans. And she gave us a very disturbing update about the rising water there. And I wanted you to hear how she describes it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CYNTHIA LEE SHENG, JEFFERSON PARISH PRESIDENT: Right now, my concern is we've lost contact with Grand Isle so we -- that is the island right on the Gulf of Mexico that I've been very, very concerned about. We lost contact with them. We've not been able to reach them. So, I don't know what they're going through. And then closer up here, it's still outside the hurricane protection system, an area called Lafitte, and Lower Lafitte, Barataria, Crown Point. The water is rising. People are in their homes, and we're getting reports of people with water up to their chest. They're asking to be rescued. So very, very dark situation and we just can't get out yet.
BROWN: That is dire. And what else are you hearing from people calling in? I mean, that is horrific.
SHENG: It is horrific. Where we're almost -- the electrical grid is just almost out. We're probably at 95% out of electricity, we were a very large transmission tower came down that said, a lot of our community. So, we're getting reports of roof damage, roofs, you know, trees down, tree roots pulling up in damaging water mains, so now our water pressure is going down. So, you know, we are also responding to an assisted, actually a condominium where there's some elderly people who are living there and their roof partially collapsed. We're trying to get them out to a church across the street. So, it is very, very busy here and we're -- we just can't respond yet.
BROWN: Right. I mean, so what are you doing in these cases, when you get a call like that with these senior citizens or the person who has, you know, water up to their chest, what can you do?
SHENG: Well, people just, you know, I got a text from a friend of mine, and she said a tree fell on her neighbor's house. She wants the neighbors to come to her house, but she said she can't walk outside right now. So, it's just the winds are so heavy, so high right now, we just can't get out. We were able to get one of the Fire Chiefs over to the Assisted Living Center to see what it's like. It's not a dire situation, but they do have water in the building that's on the first floor. There is some type of collapse that having water intrusion. So, the real situation I think is very dire, the water that is rising in the areas of Lower Lafitte.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: CNN's Jason Carroll's in Houma, Louisiana not far from where the storm made landfall. So, Jason bringing us up today, what is going on there right now?
JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, believe it or not, Pamela, it's actually much better now than it was just even an hour ago. The winds have definitely died down compared to what we saw an hour ago. And an hour before that.
I want to give you an update, though, in terms of what we're seeing and what we're hearing about damage in the area. Because, you know, we've been experiencing these high winds for several hours now just being pounded here in Houma by Hurricane, by the hurricane. And so, the question was, what's happening out there because it's tough to see from our vantage point, because even when it was daylight visibility was so low, but we were hearing reports from the sheriff's department, for example, who was telling us that they were starting to receive calls from folks who were saying that they were losing the roof. You heard about powerlines being down. Well, let me give you an example of what we just did. We just were able to take a cursory tour from the area where we are right now just about a half a mile away is the Houma power station. And the folks who were sort of bare, who were waiting out the storm there, lost part of the side of the building, there was some damage to the side of the building. They said there was damage to the roof and so what they did was they left that building and then sought shelter where you can see those lights behind me. That's the Houma Civic Center and so they went there to seek shelter. But when they were there at that Civic Center part of the Civic Center's roof was blown off during the worst of the hurricane as well.
[21:15:13]
There were two structures behind me there, were those -- where see those lights. Both of those buildings layer lost part of the roof. We drove over there and saw that. So that's just a quick example, just in this immediate area of some of the damage that we are already seeing. Emergency crews, telling those folks who have been calling them saying, hey, we've lost part of our roof. The sheriff is saying that they are unable to get to those people now. They're going to have to wait until the storm really dies down until they're able to see what's out there on the roads before they can make their way out to really get an assessment of the damage. But it's already very clear from what we've seen that Houma took a really big hit from Hurricane Ida. Pamela.
BROWN: And you experienced it firsthand, Jason, earlier today you were standing one place, you moved in a tree felt right where you were standing that just shows you how dangerous the conditions have been there in Houma. Jason Carroll, thank you for bringing us the latest there on the ground. And right now, a group of private boat owners calling themselves the Cajun Navy is mobilizing this search and rescue to help survivors of the storm. Their President Todd Terell joins us in just a moment. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Gulf Coast residents are bracing for survival as Hurricane Ida continues to pummel Louisiana tonight. Life threatening, flash flooding and devastating ones have taken hold in the area as the dangerous storm flaws inland. Winds of 120 miles per hour are battering homes and businesses as we speak, making it one of the most powerful storms to ever strike the region.
Phone lines are down in parts of Louisiana. You have hurricane force winds that continue to move through southern Louisiana along with heavy rain producing flash flooding. Hundreds of 1000s along the Gulf Coast have evacuated but millions more have decided to ride out the storm in their homes. And an army of private citizens who call themselves the Cajun Navy is mobilizing to help anyone who needs to be rescued. Watch one of their volunteers witnessed earlier today as Ida made landfall.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just so bad right now, y'all, holy (bleep).
[21:20:03]
I got to get out of here. I cannot stay. That as I would like to y'all. This boat is trouble boat, men. It's lean.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And joining me now is Todd Terrell. He is the president of the United Cajun Navy.
Todd, thanks for joining us. This morning, you said on CNN, this storm was making you nervous. How are you feeling now that it's made landfall?
TODD TERELL, PRESIDENT, UNITED CAJUN NAVY (through phone): Well, the main thing is making me nervous right now even more so is that it's continued to keep its strength once it got into land. I don't think that anybody knew that this thing was going to stay as strong of a category as it is right now. And it's just as relentless. This has not given up. It has not given up. We are really kissing the devil over here. And it seems like it's going to be like this way all the way through the night.
BROWN: Your mission is to try to help people, but you have a powerful storm that is moving slowly over Louisiana. And it's nightfall there. So, what are you able to actually do right now?
TERELL: Well, you know, we have guys coming in from all over the country. And right now, we're trying to cut our way into Houma, and go a little bit south. There's a lot of people trapped down there. The problem is, is a lot of power lines across the road and stuff. We have airboats going in, one of the main needs we have right now is hard things, if you open these airboats, these airboats take 90 plus octane fuel. So, we're having trouble finding that right now. But it's dire street, there's people in their homes with kids, handicapped, elderly, with no roofs on their house, and the weather still plummeting pretty good. So, we're going to do the best we can into the night to try to get into some of them.
BROWN: And if you would, just paint a fuller picture of what you're hearing, you just sort of describe it there, there's people are trapped in their homes, can you just bring us into the situation a little bit more?
TERELL: A lot of people weren't expecting this, you know, a lot of people roofed of the house, and they have kids and stuff. And we can't get to them, you know, the water is high on the road, or the power lines are down. So, for the first time in my life, we're having to tell pretty much everybody to hunker down, old school is, grab a mattress and get in a bathtub or getting the center of your house. And there's been hundreds of people that we've had to tell that to today. We just can't get to them.
BROWN: How does that make you feel? TERELL: Well, you know, 16 years ago today was Katrina and a lot of us, we've suffered a lot of losses, personally with that. So, it's just -- it's kind of like deja vu these, you know, here again, and we were talking earlier, General Russel Honore. And him and I worked together during Katrina 16 years ago. It's just a real, you know, we're looking around and we're seeing total destruction. And we really haven't been able to see it yet, because it's dark. But we know that we wake up in the morning, it's going to be leveled to where we're at.
BROWN: Yeah, if you even go to sleep tonight. How do you think Ida compares to Katrina? You mentioned that today is the 16-year anniversary?
TERELL: I think when it's all said and done, this storm is going to have more widespread damage than Katrina. We're yet to see exactly what's going on in New Orleans. We're having a lot of reports around in the floss area. Mary (ph) and a little South with a lot of flooding. Unfortunately, it's nighttime. And you know, we can't assist that damage right now yet, I think it's going to be as bad or worse on a bigger scale. You know, this is devastating. And the calls that we got today they were desperate. It's going to be a long time for the weekend to recover from this.
BROWN: What is your biggest concern right now, Todd? Is it the rain? Is it the winds? Is it the combo? What is it that's really striking the fear for you right now?
TERELL: The fear for us is -- well, you know, we've been preparing for this for like two years with COVID. Right now, some of the people that we're picking up, in fact, I'm in a hotel right now, it is a power, and it is just, the rain is coming down for some of the people that were brought in, you know, there's no COVID protocol right now, we try to do the best we can with mask and temperature checks. But right now, my biggest fear is that we have people that we're bringing into an environment that, you know, we could have some problems later on. Unfortunately, you know, you got to consider saving a life first, you know, so right now, it's just this, we worried. This is the big worry everything. We got COVID. We got storm, devastating people and there's nowhere for people to go.
BROWN: There's nowhere for people to go, you've got the hospitals overcrowded with COVID patients, they can't evacuate the patients. You said, you've been preparing for this? How has your organization prepared for the devastation that this storm is likely to bring to your state in the Gulf Coast? As you pointed out, Todd, we still don't know the scope of the damage and this storm is still very powerful?
TERELL: (Inaudible) Louisiana right now, because this is, our home base is Baton Rouge. And right now, we're getting plummeted. I don't think we're going to get as much of a storm as we could have over here. But I think when it's all said and done, you know, it's going to be as bad or worse than Katrina on a widespread scale.
[21:25:06]
Going back to your COVID thing with the hospitals being closed, you know, full and stuff, people are wet, they're been wet all day, you know. And when you get wet, you know, you get sick you get the sniffles and stuff. So, we're seeing people right now that they're picking up and they're sniffling. And you know, we're not sure if it's because they're wet or they got COVID. So, the big concern right now is with the secondary is COVID on us. But right now, we just have nowhere to bring these people. We were prepared because we have supplies. We have tons of foods, snacks, water, Gatorade that we store in warehouses that are ready to go. But at this stage right now, we were not prepared for this type of destruction. And even on our scale of having supplies, I'm worried.
BROWN: And you have all these people calling in, needing help but you can't help them right now. It's just frankly too dangerous. Todd Terrell, thank you very much. Thank you for all that you and your organization that all -- that you're doing to help in this very powerful storm.
TERELL: It's a mess but thank you all.
BROWN: And as we were just talking about with Todd, Hurricane Ida is still packs punches that moves across Louisiana. I'm going to talk to the mayor of Lafayette Parish. There was a curfew right now as the storms pass.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In New Orleans, the power is completely out after what's been called catastrophic transmission damage and the worst may be yet to come for the city, a city we're used to seeing full of life, not tonight, hours after making landfall. Ida remains a category three storm. With the storms eye just west of New Orleans and respond to tornado watch until 6 a.m. central time for Eastern Louisiana and stretching into portions of Southern Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. And as night falls, people in the path of Ida that have had little chance to assess the damage and we'll have to wait until the morning, so we have no idea how far the devastation goes.
The hurricane came ashore with 150 mile per hour winds and then it slowed to a crawl all the while continuing to pummel southeastern Louisiana for hours on end. And these are pictures from Golden Meadow earlier today.
I want to go straight to the CNN Weather Center for a reset of what's going on with Meteorologist, Tom Sater.
Tom, you have the power of the storm, you have it slow speed and that is really hurting Louisiana right now?
TOM SATER, ATS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, and that's been our concern all along, that the power and force of this, this little cannonball is more compact. I mean, Hurricane Katrina's wind field was four times greater and had a lot more water. But again, the power of this, get this, I mean, you can see the eye starting to collapse now and some of those darker colors. But we're still even though winds are dropping 150 miles per hour still category three for five hours today, the stated category for status inland. That is twice as long as Hurricane Laura last year kept its power. It's twice, as long as, hurricane Michael that devastated Mexico Beach kept its power. It's just staggering, making landfall central Daylight Time just before noon, and here we are around 8:30. It's only move 60 miles.
Shout out to the men and women who work at the National Hurricane Center. Before this was even named, they had a bead on the storm. They knew the intensity and the different stages, and they had that cone of uncertainty across areas of Louisiana. It didn't deviate much. They save a lot of lives. And they gave a good lead time for, you know, resources to get in place, a power cruise and for evacuations to take place.
Now, why do we always hype the difference between a category two or three? It's not what you think when it comes to damage. You know, you have a category one, sure winds are at 75 miles per hour damage. But oh, it's just a little bit greater a category two? No, you can't think of it linear. It's a logarithmic, OK.
Get down to Ida, wins at 150 miles per hour. It's, you know, it's not just category four, it's 256 times the amount of damage that a category one would provide. So again, it's staggering when you think of that.
Now let's look at all of the flash flood warnings that are in effect. We still have in Escambia County in Florida over toward Hamilton, Harrison as well. You get over towards St. Tammany, and then again, you've got New Orleans. They are in a flash flood warning. These bands that are moving in are significant because already we're seeing the amount of rain increase as that forward motion progresses, but it's also these outer bands that are not moving much the training of these showers and storms one after another is going to cause widespread problems, power outages, all right. Areas of red, they are widespread and we're already now starting to see them in parts of Mississippi. So, the number is growing every hour and will continue to grow through the night.
But you can just see all these areas of red Baton Rouge you get areas down towards Slidell, in fact, we thought we were going to have a tornado move towards Slidell. The radar is just to the north of there, they were under a warning for a while. But this tornado watches in effect until 6:30 in the morning, in the darkness of night. So, this is not going away.
Do we have on, we do. Right there, St. Tammany, you can see it just to the northeast of New Orleans. The center of the storm, Pam, is 30 miles just to the west, it's going to pretty much split the needle between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but these bands are quite heavy.
The heavy rainfall will continue through the night all the way up through the Ohio Valley and into New England. When a storm is strong enough and large enough and creates a lot of damage. It is retired and never to be used again. There is not a letter in the alphabet that has more retired names than the letter, I, Isabelle, Irene, Irma, Ivan, Ike, Ida will go on this list. There is no doubt about it.
Typically, the letter I storm happens around the fourth of October. We are way ahead of schedule Pam. And if you didn't know it today, we got J, Julian, not a worry, fish to warm up to the north. But we got a wave coming off the coast of Africa. The hits keep on coming. Let's just hope they stop coming to Louisiana. Peak of the season is around the 10th of September. It's going to be a long season.
BROWN: What you just laid out there, Tom, is very ominous. Tom Sater, thank you for bringing us the latest there.
And joining me now is Josh Guillory. He is the Mayor-President of Lafayette, Louisiana, which was northwest of New Orleans.
Thanks for joining us. Tell me what you're seeing right now. What is going on there in Lafayette?
MAYOR-PRESIDENT JOSH GUILLORY, LAFAYETTE PARISH, LOUISIANA: Good evening, Pamela. Thanks for having us on. So, what we thought was going to happen in Lafayette is what Baton Rouge is experiencing right now and man, our hearts and prayers are going out with our friends in New Orleans.
[21:35:20]
You know, I've seen the reports just like everybody else. I'm tuning into the conference calls and briefings just like other mayors across our state and parish presidents across our stake, Mayor Contrail and Mayor Broom and all the mayors and first responders in these areas have our thoughts and prayers and our resources once this thing finally passes.
So, right now what we're seeing is just some intense winds, not nearly what we expect in Lafayette. Lafayette is about 70 miles west of Baton Rouge. So, we're not getting the winds that we thought we were going to get nor getting the rain or nor are we getting the rain that we thought we were going to get. But we're still taking it very serious. We're still getting gusts of tropical storm type winds. And that's serious. You know, we have a curfew here in Lafayette. And it's a little extra sensitive in this particular storm because we have so many of our neighbors, evacuate New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Southeast Louisiana on I-10, Interstate 10 on Highway 90 going north on I-49. And those two interstates go right through our city, so it puts a little extra strain on our first responders.
You see these tropical storm, gusty winds and heavy winds can come out of nowhere. And it doesn't take much to knock down a tree on a power line or a house or a road. And we have to keep these roadways clear for our first responders to be able to respond.
BROWN: And as you pointed out, you do have a curfew in place until at least 7 a.m. tomorrow, are most people heating that order?
GUILLORY: As right now, yes. And, you know, didn't take much enforcement only because we've been through this so much. And we had several tropical events last year. This year, it's we know -- it's -- we're not starting off too well with Hurricane Ida. But our people are very accustomed to hurricanes and tropical storms and usually when their civilian leaders issued guidance, it's usually complied with. BROWN: All right, thank you so much, Josh Guillory, we appreciate you joining the show, best of luck as a Hurricane Ida continues to pummel Louisiana.
And, you know, everyone warned, Ida was going to be a punishing hurricane. The governor urged people to evacuate, some parishes issued evacuation orders. But still people stayed. And I talked earlier on the phone with a Houma resident, Holly Beeson, who was now sorry, she didn't follow those evacuation orders.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HOLLY BEESON, HOUMA, LOUISIANA RESIDENT (through phone): Oh, my gosh, I wish I would have evacuated, could you not? It's not worth it. It's not worth it. It's very scary. And I can't tell people enough whoever's listening that, you know, when you do have the opportunity to evacuate, you should do it. And, you know, it's especially here in Louisiana, because, you know, when I first moved here, 11 years ago, you know, hurricane season ended in October and ends in November. So, I mean, it's just one thing after another. And this is very, very scary, very scary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: We hope to check back in with her to see how she's doing. But in the meantime, many Louisiana hospitals are already overrun with COVID patients, and one of the less COVID vaccinated states in the country. And earlier I talked with Baton Rouge critical care physician, Dr. Christopher Thomas, about handling this new wave of medical emergencies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. CHRISTOPHER THOMAS, BATON ROUGE CRITICAL CARE PHYSICIAN: We will use every bed available that we can to help those who are in the storm. And we will take our cues from the state when necessary. Over the next several hours and through the night, however, we're going to be concerned about the patients who are in our hospital, as we expect now, really significant winds and we would have liked for the storm to pick up and pace in the move quickly through our area. But this is not clear that it will happen.
BROWN: I mean, you have a hospital pack with COVID-19 patients. What is the feeling like in the hospital among staff and among the patients?
THOMAS: I think the patients have normal trepidation, as it's a hurricane, I think the staff here in Louisiana particularly in this hospital, we know hurricanes and so this part actually may feel a little bit more normal, although scary, and that we prepare every year for this. It's a drill we do. So, it is odd to say that maybe the hurricane part of it feels a little bit more like normal business in August and September then COVID does, but adding the two together is definitely stressful. And we worry about our oxygen supply and others but like I said, we've done a really good job of preparing for an event like this. (END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And we should note that Louisiana is not the only state feeling Ida's power right now. The storm is moving through neighboring Mississippi as well and the mayor of Hattiesburg joins me, next.
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[21:43:25]
BROWN: You are listening to the roar of Ida as it punish St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana. This has been a monster storm folks. Ida has now been downgraded to a category three hurricane, but it is still punishing the Gulf Coast with sustained winds of 125 miles per hour. It is also slow down and what that means is it increases flooding potential. Now at this hour, catastrophic storm surge, extreme winds and flash flooding continue in parts of southeastern Louisiana.
New Orleans is under a flash flood emergency and completely out of power. The only electricity is now coming from generators there. Entergy Louisiana says some customers could be without power for weeks.
Toby Barker is the mayor of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Mayor much of the focus tonight is on Louisiana but you're getting hit too, what is your biggest worry right now in Hattiesburg?
MAYOR TOBY BARKER, HATTIESBURG, MISSISSIPPI: Right now, we're an hour in half north of New Orleans and about an hour north of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. And so certainly we think about our communities that are on the coast right now dealing with the worst of it. But for us when we think of, we will probably face our toughest times between midnight 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. particularly now that this thing is slowed down, flash flooding is always an issue in our city. And so, when you put potentially 8, 10 inches of water on the roadways in a short amount of time that's going to cause some problems.
We're fortunate that it's going to happen at a time of day when we shouldn't have a lot of people out anyway. But when you also have wind gusts of 45 to 65 miles per hour with rain, you're probably going to see downed trees and powerlines and we hope that everyone will just take care. We know that both our hospitals are already at capacity because of COVID. And we really need everyone tonight to make good decisions.
[21:45:16]
BROWN: What is going on right now? How many are without power in your area? Have people been calling in to 9/11 asking for help?
BARKER: Yeah, again, we're an hour and half north in New Orleans. And so, the worst hasn't gotten to us. We, our window will be between midnight and 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. in terms of getting most of the rain and most of the wind and we expect that will be kind of the time when conditions really deteriorate in our area. BROWN: So, you're saying that you're expecting the worst overnight, what is your biggest fear when you wake up in the morning and it's daylight?
BARKER: Well, obviously when people try to get out and hopefully people will stay home in the early morning hours. But if we get trees on houses and power outages, we really want people just to take care of make good decisions and not get on the roadways and risk injury and overtaxing and already stretched hospital system. And so, we hope people will just make good decisions tonight, stay off the roads and hopefully we will limit the number of downed trees and hope that works out.
BROWN: OK, well, we certainly hope it works out as well. Mayor Toby Barker, thanks for joining the show.
Well, Hurricane Ida is already leaving a path of destruction tomorrow, the difficult task of cleaning up and moving on begins. In fact, we don't even know the extent of the damage right now.
Chef Jose Andres will be right here after this break. He is helping to feed those trying to rebuild and he joins me from New Orleans, up next.
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[21:50:13]
BROWN: We were tracking the very latest with Hurricane Ida. And CNN's Derek Van Dam reporting from the storm's path earlier this afternoon.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: These are literally scenes of my worst nightmares. We are staring down the eye of a monster category four hurricane. And it is unleashing his fury on Houma, Louisiana as we speak. I have to continue to get behind me because I'm sure, a large tree has just fallen down. And I want to make sure that it doesn't travel this way. What you can't see here to my right and directly to my left is that I do have protection between this concrete building. But this is what it's like to ride out a category four hurricane. It is extreme. It is loud. And it is literally feeling like a million pinpricks battering my face as these gusts come through.
We've had intermittent internet connection here. So, we don't exactly know how close we are to the eyewall. But my guess is that we have to be 10 minutes from the strongest part of Hurricane Ida. You have to feel for the people here and just talking to some of the residents who decided to evacuate to this hotel where we are at. And they have told us that they are pleased that it is at least a hurricane that's making landfall during the day because they fear for the residents who did not come to the shelters, did not come to these hotels and are riding the storm out in their homes. If it was dark, this would be an absolute catastrophic disaster for these people to live through something like this. We at least have the safety of a building in front of us, Jim. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. And we're glad that you're taking those precautions. Derek, let me just ask you since you've been there all afternoon, does it feel like things have progressively gotten worse to this point? Are these the most intense effects of the storm that you felt so far?
VAN DAM: All right. Yeah, this is without a doubt the strongest part of the storm that we felt so far and just --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.
VAN DAM: -- let these visuals play out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unbelievable.
VAN DAM: The reason I can stand here is only because of this concrete wall to my left. I am literally seeing trees topple over behind me. We've got trees on top of vehicles in our parking lot. We have no power here. We're running off of this vehicles, A.C. generated power. And we're thankful we have it but every once in a while, some of the strongest wind gusts take and knock this suburban large SUV up and down. You can see that rocking motion just because of the pure strength of the wind. Now, I'm not a particularly tall man. I'm not a particularly heavy man. Five foot 10, 150 pounds, maybe a bit too much information for our viewers. But let me tell you why that's important. Because without this protection from this wall here, if I step 10 feet behind me this small little man would be knocked on his ass.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Well that sums it up what it was like earlier there in Houma and it is nightfall now in Louisiana and the storm is still powerful moving very slowly across the state and right now a flash flood emergency has been declared in New Orleans and all of New Orleans Parish is without power after catastrophic transmission damage. That is according to the city, but major relief is on the way once the storm subsides as one group is on the ground with enough food to serve more than 100,000 meals.
Chef Jose Andres joins me now. He is the Founder of World Central Kitchen Organization. He has been a very busy man. He went from Haiti to there to New Orleans and Louisiana. Chef, thanks for joining us. Firstly, how are conditions where you are right now? And are you safe?
JOSE ANDRES, CHEF, FOUNDER, WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN: Yeah, I'm very safe. I'm here in a hotel downtown in the in the French Quarter. And I used them out from watching all the rain that is hitting so hard for now many hours with very big winds. So yeah, everybody's safe. Obviously, the best place to be is in a very big building in our downtown like New Orleans that even right now as we know all the cities without any electricity in hotels, they have generators, and we can be able even to communicate with you in the middle of this huge hurricane.
[21:55:06] BROWN: Which is pretty remarkable, right? So, you point out that in the parish right now in Orleans Parish, if you have power, it's because of the backup generators. How is that impacting you and your mission there?
ANDRES: Well, obviously, what we do as a food organization of World Central Kitchen is we make sure we have kitchens with food, with generators. So as soon as the hurricane goes away, we're always able to start cooking and more important, cooking without distribution is nothing. We saw that President Biden announced that already is more than 2.5 million meals between different organizations. Obviously, FEMA and the many other NGOs that are going to be joining us here in New Orleans are approached Louisiana to make sure that in terms of food and water, people will be taken care of, but without the electricity, and they announced that we may be without electricity, not only during days, but maybe in some parts during weeks is going to complicate things, it's really bad. Having generators, helps organizations like ours to have functional kitchens that then we make sure that we can start delivering food to the many people that are going to be in need of a meal.
BROWN: And what is your plan for that? How do you plan to deliver the food? When do you plan to do that?
ANDRES: Well, let me put it this way, when you start planning too much, things don't go as you plan.
BROWN: It happens when you're making plan, right?
ANDRES: For as we always say that the best is adaptation. So, we are already trying to see what, how we're going to have to adapt, no two hurricanes are equal. And that means that we're going to have to be seen all the different possibilities, we have food trucks coming in, that they are going to be helpful to us to position them as strategically in different parts that we can be delivering food quicker. We are already half, fully functional kitchen, that tomorrow morning, as soon as he's saved, our teams will go home, we'll start making meals, we'll start delivering to the different places that will we need to do that. But more important, we need to be planning ahead, not only for days, but for weeks, how we're going to keep the city of New Orleans fed and more important how we're going to be able to keep the entire state of Louisiana fed.
BROWN: As I mentioned earlier, you just left Haiti, which was ravaged by a major earthquake, in New Orleans, you're dealing with not only building damage, but potential flooding. And you also have a pandemic going on to. In all those conditions, how difficult are the logistics of distributing 100,000 meals?
ANDRES: Obviously, the main thing we saw in this pandemic things, World Central Kitchen we began feeding on the first of February on 2020, in Yokohama, when the first cruise ship with COVID cases was showing up and saying them we never stopped. At one point we were doing close to 400,000 meals a day, not only in America, but also in the middle of fires, earthquakes explosions, like the one in Lebanon, Beirut, all of the earthquake we saw, obviously, in Haiti, where used to came. We have teams in all those places. And the difficulty is that in the old days, we will be making big trays of 40, 50 meals that then we can be doing 10s of 1000s of meals a day. And during the pandemic, we began for obvious reasons of health coat, doing meals individually.
Right now, we feel more safe, we can deliver the same trays again and simplifies the process of feeding mass quantities of people. But obviously, we need to do that making sure that our teams are safe, and more important that the people we deliver the food to are also safe and probably doesn't become a problem on top of the problem.
BROWN: Right. I want to ask you a personal question before we let you go, Chef. I mean, this has been a particularly difficult year and you have seen human suffering firsthand so much. I remember when you went to India, during that the peak of the COVID crisis there, you just left Haiti and now you're in New Orleans. What does that been like for you emotionally seeing all this suffering up close and personal?
ANDRES: Listen, World Central Kitchen organization that we believe that the plate of food is the beginning of a better tomorrow. So, we tried to do it specifically that. In India at one moment, we were in 17 cities feeding more than 85 hospitals. Why? Because the systems were breaking down, people were not going to work to the kitchens. That's why organizations like world Central Kitchen had to step up and start covering all those needs.
For me, I'm not talking to feed the few like many other chefs not only in America but around the world. And for us to be at the service of helping people in the moment of need is probably the best call and the best thing we can do. So again, one plate of food of the time doesn't solve every problem, but the least brings a relief in real time as fast and as quick as we can. So, we can start thinking always about reconstruction.
BROWN: Jose Andres, thank you so much for joining us.
ANDRES: Thank you for having me.
