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Cell Phones Down, Flooding Rescues Happening in St. Charles Parish; Former FEMA Deputy Administrator, Daniel Kaniewski, Discusses Hurricane Ida Destruction & Government Response; Hospitals Battle Oxygen Shortage Amid Virus Uptick in South; Board Member: Pfizer Expected to File Data for 5 to 11-Year-Olds in Sept.; Biden Attends FEMA Briefing on Ida's Devastation. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired August 30, 2021 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:31:13]

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Continuing our coverage of what is Tropical Storm Ida. Louisiana's governor says cleanup from Ida is going to be a fairly long ordeal.

Reporter Jennifer Crockett, with CNN affiliate, WDSU, got a remarkable look at the damage in one suburb of New Orleans.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JENNIFER CROCKETT, REPORTER, WDSU: I'm here in St. Charles Parish on Airline right before it meets St. John parish. I want to show you some of the damage.

Take a look at this CVS pharmacy with some significant structural damage. You can see the cinder blocks there have been tossed about.

Now let's look at this neighborhood. This is the backside of Armond Estates. Right now, the only way you can get into it -- look over here, Mike. The only way you can get into it is a high-water vehicle like this St. Charles sheriff's deputy truck right there.

They are going in. They have been looking for people. I'm told that everyone who needed to get out of our Armond Estates in St. Charles Parish has been able to get out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: You saw what the wind did, and then the rain bringing all of that water.

Daniel Kaniewski served as the deputy FEMA administrator from 2017 to early to 2020. He's now managing director at Marsh McLennan, which deals with risk mitigation now. Daniel, you were also an adviser to President Bush during Katrina.

What's your assessment of the response to the hurricane so far?

DANIEL KANIEWSKI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, PUBLIC SECTOR, MARSH MCLENNAN ADVANTAGE & FORMER FEMA DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR: So far, so good. This is a catastrophic hurricane, much like some of the catastrophic hurricanes where I was at FEMA in 2017 and before that in the White House in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina.

With anything this catastrophic, all bets are off on whether this is going to end up being a successful response or one that is a challenge.

CABRERA: Do you think we have a full grasp on how bad it is at this point?

KANIEWSKI: I think we're getting a better handle on that. That will only come with time.

Response-and-recovery operations began at first daybreak this morning. And I'm sure that there's overhead imagery and other types of assets in the air, whether it's helicopters or airplanes, looking to see what the scope of the damage is.

But I can tell, just based on your own reporting, it's heavy.

CABRERA: What is the biggest danger currently?

KANIEWSKI: I'd say, right now, it's to make sure we get people out of harm's way. I mean, out of the flood waters and unsafe buildings. Response and recovery begins with search and rescue.

CABRERA: And at last check, there's been one storm-related death. You talk about how gigantic this storm was. Do you expect that number to go up?

KANIEWSKI: I assume it will rise significantly, yes, as those response-and-recovery operations continue.

Unfortunately, what we haven't heard is some of the hardest-hit communities where you likely have collapsed buildings and other types of damage, high flood waters. That storm surge that came in was devastating, I'm sure.

Unfortunately, there probably be will additional casualties.

CABRERA: Talk to me about how social media has helped with response efforts. You pointed out how so much has changed technologically since Hurricane Katrina and that that may be an advantage for search rescuers.

KANIEWSKI: That's right. One of the things we lacked in 2005 was something we called situational awareness. That's a fancy way of saying knowing what's going on, on the ground.

Certainly, we lacked that at the White House and FEMA. Even state and local responders had little idea of what devastation was out there.

Now with social media, frankly -- Twitter came around in 2006 and revolutionized how response agencies gather information.

CABRERA: This all happened on the 16th anniversary of Katrina, which still haunts all of us here in the U.S.

[13:35:06]

Was Ida a test of the improvements that were made since Katrina? And based on what we're seeing right now, does it give you confidence that our infrastructure is in a much better place?

KANIEWSKI: It was a test. But, then again, FEMA and response agencies have been tested basically every year since 2005.

There's been devastating hurricanes and wildfires, tornadoes, floods, you name it, over the past 16 years that have tested the response agencies over and over again.

Specifically with regard to New Orleans, yes, it did test, definitely, the flood-control system and it seems to have met the test. Of course, I would expect that with the $14.5 million investment to strengthen that infrastructure.

Unfortunately the rest of the nation's infrastructure is not in such good shape and may not be able to withstand disasters of this scale. That includes areas right outside of New Orleans. That infrastructure likely was badly damaged by this storm.

CABRERA: And sadly, things are only probably going to get worse because of the climate crisis. This is the first time ever that we've had one area see back-to-back hurricanes year to year with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour.

The level, the strength of this hurricane. We talked about how much longer it lasted. And you talked about some of the other natural disasters we've been covering, all the wildfires that are getting worse and more devastating as well.

Daniel Kaniewski, appreciate your expertise. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.

KANIEWSKI: Thank you.

CABRERA: Hurricane Ida causing major damage, knocking out power to hospitals already filled with COVID patients.

In one Louisiana facility where generators failed, staff have had to bag patients on ventilators by hand. That means manually pushing air in and out of their lungs.

And to make matters worse, there's a critical shortage of oxygen across the south.

Senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, is joining us now. Tell us more about this oxygen shortage. Elizabeth, what's causing it?

DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Ana, part of what's going on is there's so much more of a demand for oxygen because there are so many COVID patients and many end up in the ICU needing oxygen.

On top of that, let's look at other places that need oxygen that are putting even more of a strain on the system.

So some businesses have reopened that use oxygen. For example, restaurants, other types of businesses that use oxygen have reopened.

Also there's a shortage of drivers. In the same way there's a shortage of workers in many areas, there's a shortage of drivers to get oxygen where it needs to go.

All of this is just adding up to a lack of oxygen in many of these places.

Yet, another reason that people need to get vaccinated. If we can take some of the demand off oxygen as far as COVID patients go, it will make it better for everyone else.

CABRERA: And there's new information on when kids ages 5 to 11 might be eligible for shots? Fill us in.

COHEN: That's right. It's very interesting. The former head of the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who is now on the board of Pfizer, had interesting thoughts about the availability of the shots for kids who are 5 to 11.

Those children are being studied right now. They've already finished up their clinical trial and Pfizer is going through the data.

Let's take a listen to what Dr. Gottlieb had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, PFIZER BOARD MEMBER & FORMER FDA DIRECTOR: Pfizer is going to be in a position -- the company, I'm on the board, as you mentioned -- be in a position to file data with the FDA at some point in September and then file the application potentially as early as October.

So that will put us on a time frame where the vaccine could be available at some point late fall, more likely early winter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So if Dr. Gottlieb is thinking, say, late November, December- ish, that lines up with how things went with the adult trial that was done last year.

Children are even a little bit trickier. They're giving the same dose to 5-year-olds and 11-year-olds. You have to be careful a dose that works for a 5-year-old is strong enough to work for an 11-year-old, and that you don't see any side effects.

The bottom line is you don't want to rush this. It takes months to sift through the data and that's exactly what they're doing -- Ana?

CABRERA: Elizabeth Cohen, thank you as always.

[13:39:13]

Get ready for a major legal fight. The House committee investigating the deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill is about to target the phone records of key people who attended the Stop the Steal rally that day. That means key Republican lawmakers, former President Trump, and members of the Trump family. Details when we come back.

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CABRERA: Right now, the president meeting with FEMA over Hurricane Ida. Let's listen.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good afternoon, everybody.

We're waiting for a few more people to get on but we're going to get started, if that's OK with you all.

And thanks for joining me.

I'm here the FEMA director is on, the FEMA Director Criswell. She's on. And I'm with my senior adviser. A boy who knows Louisiana very, very well, man, and New Orleans, Cedric Richmond.

And what I'm going to do is make a brief statement here and then go through and tell you what we're doing. But then hear from all of you, if that's OK.

I know you're busy as the devil. I know you got a lot to manage in your states. But the fact is that I want to hear from you. We both want to hear from you.

And we know Hurricane Ida had a potential to cause massive, massive damage, and that's exactly what we saw.

We already know there's at least one confirmed death and that number is likely to grow.

We've got a million people in Louisiana without power. And for a time, Ida caused the Mississippi River to literally change its direction.

And some folks are still dealing with a storm surge and flash flooding. And there are roads that are impassable due to debris and downed power lines.

We need people to continue to shelter in place if it's safe for them to do so.

And for those who have lost their homes, you know, states working with the American Red Cross have already opened 50 shelters in the affected areas across the gulf coast.

We've already begun search-and-rescue efforts and we get folks who out there who need assistance. And we're doing our best we can.

More than 5,000 members of your National Guard have been activated from Louisiana and Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas to support search- and-rescue and recovery efforts.

[13:45:07]

And FEMA has prepositioned literally millions of meals and liters of water. They're already prepositioned, as well as other resources in the immediate area.

And we've deployed more than 200 generators and we already moved into the region. They've been moved in ahead of time. And the Administrator Criswell and her team and FEMA is working, getting more of those into the area.

We're in close contact with local electric providers to see what they need. They're all private providers. We don't control that. But we're doing all we can to minimize the amount of time it's going to take to get power back up for everyone in the region.

We've been working with electric sector throughout the night, and all day today to assess and understand the full extent of the damage.

To accelerate the process, I've asked the Federal Aviation Administration to work today with Louisiana and Mississippi electric companies to authorize the use of surveillance drones to assess Ida's damage, to energy infrastructure. While ensuring those flights do not disrupt aerial search-and-rescue operations.

And I've also asked the pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to immediately make available any satellite imagery that can assist in assessing the damage in your states and cities.

Local utilities are going to soon begin restoration work, including prioritizing getting transmission lines into New Orleans. Get them back up and running. A lot of them have been taken down.

More than 25,000 debris crews and lineman from at least 30 states are rolling in to support you. Some are already prepositioned and close and, hopefully, are already underway.

But we need to be prepared and we're about as prepared as we could be for the early stage of this. There's a lot more to do.

We also know a lot of people lost their cell phone service. If their particular carrier tower is down or damaged.

This morning, the Federal Communications Commission has worked with cellular providers to initiate the Cooperative Framework Agreement.

That agreement allows customers on one line -- with one provider to go to another provider if that provider is down. It allows customers to use roaming access carriers to any of the carriers up and running.

That means you should be able to get a signal no matter who your carrier was or is.

The main thing I want to make clear to all of you is we're providing any help you need.

As I said, I've got my senior adviser, Cedric Richmond, with me. He's a New Orleans native, was a Congressman of Louisiana's second district for 10 years.

He knows the area. He knows the people. And he -- who have been affected by Ida. And he knows how to get things done in the government.

While FEMA is our lead for on the ground response, if there's something you need, that needs my attention, Cedric is your direct line. Direct line in the White House throughout this recovery.

And I mean that. Whatever you need, go to Cedric. He'll get to me. We'll get you what you need if we can.

The people of Louisiana and Mississippi are resilient, and -- but it's in moments like these that we can see the power of government responding to the needs of the people if the government is prepared and if they respond.

That's our job, if we work together. The folks get knocked down, we're there to help you get back down your feet.

The most important element is coordinating all the branches of government, state, local, and federal. And that's what we're trying to make sure -- what we do before the hurricane hit.

We're going to stand with you and the people of the gulf as long as it takes for you to recover.

And so I'm now going to turn this over to Governor Edwards of Louisiana.

Governor, give us your assessment of what you have, what you're seeing out there. Tell me what you're hearing and what your team on the ground and anything you need that we haven't gotten to yet.

GOV. JOHN BEL EDWARDS (D-LA): Thank you very much, Mr. President.

You couldn't have picked a better person than Cedric Richmond. And we look forward to working with him as well.

First of all, let me thank you for signing my request for a pre- landfall declaration. And, last night, signing the major disaster declaration. That's going to be very helpful.

Hurricane Ida came on shore with everything that was advertised.

CABRERA: Yes. [13:50:00]

EDWARDS: The surge, the rain, the wind.

The good news, first, is all of our levy systems, particularly our federal levy systems and hurricane risk reduction systems performed magnificently. They were not overtopped. None of them were breached.

Even our levy systems that were paid for with state and local funding performed extremely well. It would be a different story altogether had any of those levee systems failed.

Having said that, the damage is still catastrophic. But it was primarily wind driven, but we know that there were some areas that received tremendous rainfall as well.

But we're going to be dealing with this damage for quite a while.

And you mentioned the power outage. That is critical for us. And it's really a million homes and businesses that are out. And my best guess is you're getting closer to two million people without electricity right now.

And of course, we're trying to prioritize the restoration so that our hospitals come back up first because, while they're all on generator power, generators, typically, you know, failed after some period of time. So we want to get them back up first.

And in the meantime, we already have the Corps of Engineers on the ground identifying additional generators that we can bring to these hospital locations so that should we have a failure before power is restored, we're going to be able to switch them over. They're working extremely hard on that.

And we have FEMA embedded with us here since before the storm. The truth of the matter is, since I became governor, they haven't left because of one disaster or emergency after another. But they're doing really well.

We look forward to visiting with Administrator Criswell, who I think is going to be able to come down tomorrow, Mr. President.

But this is going to be a long haul. And we know that we're going to need assistance with the housing program.

We're putting together preliminary information this week that can potentially drive an appropriation for a CVBG. We'll be getting with you all.

And I'll work through Cedric Richmond on that, Mr. President, to make sure that we can get a program up and running just as soon as possible.

But I want to finish with really the most important thing. We are still in a life-saving mode here, doing search and rescue. The roads, the highways into the most affected area were completely clogged with debris, downed power lines, trees.

We're making really good progress. We actually started our ground search and rescue this morning at daylight. We dispatched those forces.

And by the way, we already had search-and-rescue teams from 16 states in Louisiana as of yesterday. They started moving to the affected areas at 3:00 this morning.

At 6:00, they were actually doing search and rescues from 911 calls that came in over the night that couldn't be responded to. And then by 6:00 this morning, we actually were affecting rescues out of the air as well.

And the last thing I want to say is that the very first rescues occurred at a hospital down in Lafourche Parish by the U.S. Coast Guard because they were able to fly before any other assets could. And they were able to move about seven patients from a hospital down there.

You probably saw the hospital that had the roof just completely taken off --

BIDEN: Yes.

EDWARDS: -- yesterday. Your Coast Guard rescued and relocated those patients first thing this morning, and we are very appreciative of that.

BIDEN: Thank you. We worked real hard with you to get the search-and- rescue teams in place. But you say they have been able to respond?

EDWARDS: Yes, sir.

BIDEN: In a timely way?

EDWARDS: Yes, sir.

And I can't tell you they're everywhere we want them but they started responding first thing this morning. And those 16 teams, that doesn't include the National Guard or the officers here.

You know, I've got all 5,000 of my National Guardsmen activated. We're going to end up with about 5,000 more coming in from out of state through an EMAC request.

And one of the reasons this is important, Mr. President, is we've got 2,400 of our soldiers in our 256th Brigade Infantry Combat Team, they're deployed to the Middle East. And so we're going to have EMAC request for, I think, as early as tomorrow.

We're going to have additional soldiers coming from National Guards, from sister states and that's going to be very helpful as well.

[13:55:01]

BIDEN: Well, good.

Well, look, if there's anything else you need, you know just call. I mean, you got the team at the table there. A lot of them. And so just holler.

And now Cedric -- who are we going to next?

CEDRIC RICHMOND, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: Governor Reese.

BIDEN: Oh, you are -- I understand, Gov, you're not only video, but you are on the telephone, so, Gov, fire away.

GOV. TATE REESE (R-MS) (via telephone): Well, thank you, Mr. President.

When we spoke on Friday, you assured me that when we asked for the pre-landfall declaration that you would immediately sign it and you did exactly that. And I want to thank you for doing so.

We're in a little bit of a different position right now, obviously, than our friends in Louisiana.

The storm is the -- the eye of the storm is currently west of Jackson. So we have between 18 to 22 more hours of the eye of the storm being in the state of Mississippi.

We also have -- because it's such a large storm, our largest threat in terms of tornadic activity remains on the coastline and the counties just north of there.

The storm, which really is challenging, has slowed down to about eight miles an hour. And so that's the reason it's going to stay in the state for so long, which leads to more and more rainfall.

So the bad news for us is that we're going to get even more rainfall than maybe we originally anticipated.

The good news is, because it's moving so slow, the wind speeds have not reached where we thought they would be in the 65, 75-mile-an-hour range here in central Mississippi. They're really closer to 30 to 40 miles an hour.

Certainly, still providing some significant challenges, but not to the extent that it otherwise could have been.

Because of that, we know that our greatest threats here in Mississippi are with respect to rising water and power outages.

The storm has been in the state for about eight to 10 hours now. We've got 135,000-plus Mississippi dwellings that have not and cannot receive power right now. We're working on that.

But we anticipate that number to significantly increase over the next 20 hours as the storm continues to move more, to move north.

We have determined in meeting with our team, Mr. President, as well as your team at FEMA earlier today, that the SARs assets, the search-and- rescue teams from FEMA in our state are not currently needed in our state. We believe our state and local assets can meet the needs.

And so we have encouraged our FEMA counterparts to release those individuals over to Louisiana to help with those search and rescue.

BIDEN: Good.

REESE: As well as I have directed my adjutant general, as we progress over the next eight to 10 hours, he has already reached out to his counterpart in Louisiana. And we're going to be sending men and women in uniform from Mississippi to help in Louisiana. Because that's who we are.

So we've got, again, about 20 hours ahead of us of winds and lots and lots of rain. But all things considered, because the storm slowed up so considerably, we're seeing more rain, more water but a lot less wind, which is certainly helpful.

BIDEN: Well, thanks an awful lot, Gov. And again, thanks for your generosity and sending some of those search-and-rescue teams to Louisiana.

And is Mayor Cantrell on?

Mayor Cantrell, are you on?

I don't think she was able to get connected.

RICHMOND: I don't think so, Mr. President. But we have Cynthia Lee Sheng --

BIDEN: Oh, OK.

RICHMOND: -- the parish president from Jefferson Parish, which includes Grand Isle and other places hard hit.

BIDEN: You were hard hit, weren't you, Madam President?

CYNTHIA LEE SHENG, PARISH PRESIDENT, JEFFERSON PARISH, LOUISIANA: Thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

SHENG: Yes, we were. Thank you, Mr. President.

Congressman, Governor, thank you.

We have not had contact with Grand Isle, Congressman. You know the mayor. I talked to him yesterday evening. He thought 40 people were on the island, couldn't get them off, including some firefighters. We have not had contact with them since yesterday.

I'm told that the mayor is in Galiano and, Governor, I think he's on a helicopter by the state police, is what I heard, to get him to the island. And as long as there's communication, we'll be able to communicate with him and see what's going on there. But it's very hard to not have any word from that island and the people on it since that time.

[14:00:00]

In Lafite, the water was very high, to the roofs of houses. Our first responders, the sheriff, our firefighters, Louisiana National Guard, some Coast Guard are there doing search and rescue. They're having to get boats in and out.