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Abortion Banned in Texas?; Hurricane Ida Aftermath. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired September 02, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:01:13]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Top of the hour. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell. Good to be with you.

Listen, this week, states on three coasts of the U.S. have been rocked by extreme weather. And it's becoming more evident and more urgent that this is the cost of climate change and ignoring it.

After the fifth strongest hurricane in U.S. history crashed ashore Sunday in Louisiana, Ida then churned Northeast. And the floods and the tornadoes, you see the video, they have been ignore mostly destructive. At least 23 people have died between Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

CAMEROTA: More than 1, 300 miles away from the Northeast and Louisiana, where the storm first made landfall, the heat index could hit 110 degrees today in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Those are places that are not expected to have widespread power back for weeks.

There are still 900,000 customers without electricity there. And let's not forget about the West Coast. Severe drought and dry conditions are fueling wildfires there in places that, of course, I mean, used to be paradise. Firefighters are working around the clock to contain the blaze at Lake Tahoe.

President Biden says, if we do not act now, we will continue to see the wrath of Mother Nature.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The past few days of Hurricane Ida and the wildfires in the West and the unprecedented flash floods in New York and New Jersey is yet another reminder that these extreme storms and the climate crisis are here.

We need to do -- be much better prepared. We need to act.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLACKWELL: We will talk more about that in just a moment.

But, first, let's get you to some of the places that are now looking at the damage caused by the aftermath of Ida.

CNN's Paula Newton is in Mullica Hill New Jersey. Shimon Prokupecz is in the Bronx right now off the Major Deegan Expressway.

Let's start with Shimon. I can see the water there. Give us an idea of how deep it is and what the challenge is.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

So, I mean, this is pretty incredible. And we have seen some of the aerial shots throughout the day. But when you actually get out there and you see this, and just to think what so many of these drivers, passengers must have been going through as the torrential rain was coming down, many of them stuck in their cars, having to be rescued.

You could just see people just leaving their cars behind. These cars are turns around in different directions just because of the strength of the rain, the way the water just became -- increased in size and, therefore, a lot of these cars started floating.

So, as you said, we're here on the Major Deegan, and it's probably going to take several more hours before they start to pump some of this water out. I actually saw a couple blocks away there, the authorities here brought pumps to get some of this water out.

But I have this thing here, because I also just kind of want to show you how deep this is. It's about knee length or so at this point. So the water has not receded much. We do see a water line here, but it hasn't receded much.

And we really haven't seen any of the authorities here trying to clear this out. They are further ahead. Evelio (ph) here I think maybe we can show you. If you look further ahead, there are some authorities here. Police are there. And they're actually towing some of the cars.

We have also seen some of the drivers are starting to come back to retrieve their cars. Also, guys, what I'm really struck by is the trucks. Look at the trucks, the number of trucks here on the Deegan.

Of course, the Deegan is known for the trucks, for different kind of traffic, because it's such a hub for vehicles and traffic to come into Manhattan, to go out to Connecticut, other parts north, parts south.

But, look, there's a UPS truck, other delivery trucks. I see a Whole Foods. So, it just tells you that people were not expecting this. You have truck drivers, presumably experienced drivers, they can drive through almost anything probably. But you can see, even them, they even got stuck here.

[15:05:08]

And just stretches from probably miles and miles, guys. And we will see what happens here and how they come in and how they start to remove this. But I think the gravity of this situation, seeing the cars as they are here, my God, what some of these people must have been going through as the rain was coming down over them.

CAMEROTA: Oh, absolutely. I mean, clearly, people were caught unaware.

But, Shimon, you want to be clear, those vehicles that you're pointing out, those trucks, those are abandoned. That's not traffic behind you. Those are people who had to abandon their cars last night.

(CROSSTALK)

PROKUPECZ: Yes, these are all people who left their cars. They had to abandon the cars. And they left here, probably having to be rescued, right?

The fire department, the police department, they responded to hundreds of calls last night, people frantic, calling from their cars that they needed to be rescue, people standing on top of these roofs.

You can see the water even in some cases hitting the -- and this car, Evelio, here, show where you kind of see the mud and the dirt. I mean, the car was up to the hood here, maybe even the windshield in some cases here. Or maybe that's just from the rain.

But, still, how frightening for these people. (AUDIO GAP) It's probably around 10:00, 11:00 at night as this is happening. It's just scary. And just to see the cars and how they were spun around and turned around, and then, yes -- and then, as you said, the trucks. People just abandoned everything, and probably ran for their lives here.

BLACKWELL: Yes, and no immediate respite anywhere nearby. I mean, you have just got to get out of the car and then find a safe place in all that wind and water.

CAMEROTA: Shimon, thank you very much for showing us the aftermath of how dramatic it was here last night.

Let's go to Paula Newton. She's in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, which had an entirely different extreme weather event. So there were tornadoes there last night.

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

And yet, Alisyn, people here too, as Shimon just said, running for their lives. I want you to take a look at the Castle (ph) family home. I mean, guys, this is a family dream house. They built it seven years ago. Within just a matter of moments, it's now already been turned into rubble.

And you will see Mike Castle (ph) there. He's already got his work gloves on. He's trying to clean up his home. He described to us just an absolutely terrifying scene. He took his 3-year-old daughter, Brianna (ph). He says, if it wasn't for his wife getting him out of the shower, they had just a few minutes to get to the basement, and then it happened.

Look at those windows, completely blown out. They said they have had the warnings here before. But, as Mike says himself, this is New Jersey. This is not Oklahoma. And they just were not expecting this. And he said, had it not been for the urgency with which his wife was speaking, he does not think they would have gotten out.

Now, look, I have said it before. It is a miracle that there have just been minor injuries here and no deaths. And they're thanking certainly everyone for that here. This is a close-knit community. But already people asking the question, should we rebuild?

I mean, look, they're doing their best to already clean up this morning and trying to assess the damage. But this is nothing that they say they could have foreseen. Certainly, there had been strong winds here in the past. You would have lawn furniture blow over, but to sit there and think that you were running for your life inside of a span of about three minutes.

And if these homes didn't have the fortified basements that they did, they believe the destruction and the loss of life would have been profound, in their words, dire. And I think the governor of New Jersey was here this morning. And he did speak to them, of course, a lot of help here already on the scene.

But there are questions to be asked in terms of, what do you do even to get that warning system perhaps beefed up? Three minutes is not a long time. And, as he said, sometimes, you don't even act that quickly even when you do get those warnings on your phone.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, just remarkable to know that there wasn't more depth there.

Paula Newton, thank you very much.

Now let's go to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The storm there is being blamed for three deaths. And, as you can see, the search-and- rescue efforts are continuing.

BLACKWELL: CNN's Pete Muntean is in Philadelphia, where flood warnings are still in place their.

Pete, show us around. What are you seeing?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor and Alisyn, the Schuylkill river has crested now here in Philadelphia.

But we are not out of the danger zone yet. I just want to show you how quickly things can change here. You can see the concrete wall back there behind me. Only a little bit ago, the water was right to that waterline there. It has come down in the last 20 minutes or so, but, with it, all of this debris presumably from towns upstream, where this was also a problem.

You mentioned the deaths in Montgomery County. We know there was water rescue after water rescue in the town of Bridgeport, 500 calls for water rescues in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, alone.

We are down closer to the city of Philadelphia, and you can see the Schuylkill River looks more like rapids right now. A long time coming when it comes to fully cleaning up what this mess, the river is bringing right now. It is dirty. It is filled with trash.

I'm seeing lumber. I'm seeing tree trunks. I'm seeing propane bottles. I'm seeing siding from houses.

[15:10:04]

Off in the distance there, that's Interstate 76. That's the Schuylkill Expressway. And, right now, it is a parking lot. If you know Philadelphia, you know how bad the Schuylkill be. But now it is even worse. It is truly stopped, because, as you go into town, at the intersection of 76 and 676, there was a lot of flooding there too.

It's hard to know really where the Schuylkill ends and the road begins. There's a pumping station there at 76 and 676. But it is also underwater, according to Governor Tom Wolf's administration, because it can't its job. It is underwater and things are getting worse really by the minute here in Philadelphia and the surrounding region.

We know that there are 300 roads, according to the governor's office, that are closed in Pennsylvania alone. Schuylkill has crested; 17 feet was the highest it got. It's now down to about 16 feet, according to the National Weather Service. Flood stage is about five feet. We will not get there until after midnight tonight -- Victor, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Pete Muntean, thank you very much.

BLACKWELL: So, you have seen the damage from the tornadoes and from the devastating floodwaters.

New Jersey was hit by both.

Peter Yacobellis is with us now. He's as a council member in the city of Montclair.

Peter, you're great for context, because I understand that you were the director of the Superstorm Sandy command center. So, by comparison, how does this storm compare? And what are you seeing the across Montclair?

PETER YACOBELLIS, MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY CITY COUNCIL MEMBER: Yes, so here we are again, right?

I would say the difference is, with Sandy, it was much more about coastal flooding and power outages. And I think the suffering had more to do with the long term that the power was out. Now what we're seeing is much more inland flooding. We're seeing our businesses, a lot of our homes all flooded in places that don't typically flood, in places that certainly don't have flood insurance.

So it's been pretty devastating.

CAMEROTA: And, Peter, what about rescues? I mean, how fast did this happen last night?

YACOBELLIS: Oh, incredibly fast.

I mean, to your point, an earlier guest there, alerts go off, and you don't have enough time to necessarily react. We had over 50 car rescues in the town alone. We still have cars stranded on certain streets, as some of your images have showed.

We have had basement rescues from things flooding just late at night and coming so suddenly, store employees, restaurant employees in the restaurants downtown at the time the water was approaching the building and then coming through and then rising, and they're walking out, and they can't get the door open to get outside because the floodwater is pushing in.

I mean, just absolutely terrifying. I met with business owners this morning, some of them in tears in my arms. It is just -- it's just awful.

BLACKWELL: And the day after, even if there -- sometimes, we're not dealing with the standing water, what a lot of people who have never lived through these floods don't realize is, the next day, it's just mud everywhere that you have to now get out of the way.

YACOBELLIS: Yes, absolutely, mud everywhere.

And, look, people store stuff in the basement, right? Businesses store stuff in their basement. So we have got refrigerators and all kinds of I.T. equipment and inventory, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars worth of lost material.

So, I really do have to emphasize that New Jersey needs that federal disaster declaration from the White House and from FEMA. We absolutely need that. We need funds to flow to help individuals to small businesses, and for our local government in particular. We have to balance our budget all the time. And we have been living crisis to crisis.

I have got four school buildings that flooded a week before school is supposed to open. So it's a crisis. We need this declaration as soon as possible.

CAMEROTA: My gosh, Peter, I mean, when you put it that way, crisis to crisis, what's the answer?

YACOBELLIS: Look, I mean, that's it, right? We're living constant crisis to crisis.

The answer is, we have to take, finally take -- it's been from the 1970s we have been talking about it. We must take climate change seriously. We spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan. I think people want to start to see dollar spent in America, focusing on resilient infrastructure, focusing on quality of life and focusing on addressing these issues, addressing climate change.

We know what the problems are, and we know what the solutions are. We just actually have to start practicing some of those things.

BLACKWELL: All right, Peter Yacobellis, council member there in Montclair, thanks so much for your time.

YACOBELLIS: Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody.

BLACKWELL: All right. And good luck for all the work you have ahead over the next several weeks.

Still ahead: A major roadway turned into a river in Queens, forcing passengers on a city bus to stand on the seats to stay out of the water. We will talk to a man who lived through this last night. You will hear his story.

CAMEROTA: Plus, more from Texas, where the latest abortion restrictions are not the only dramatic new law in place.

What's going on in Texas?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:19:34]

CAMEROTA: In Queens, New York, a major roadway turned into a rushing river last night from the epic rain.

Just look at this, OK? One passenger captured the moments inside a bus as the driver tried to navigate through three to four feet of rain while the bus was filling up with floodwater.

BLACKWELL: New York Governor Kathy Hochul praised the driver for her heroic actions.

Joe English recorded these incredible videos. He's with us now.

[15:20:01]

Joe, OK, so you're in Queens. When did you realize that this was potentially about to happen, that that water was going to flow inside the bus?

JOE ENGLISH, NEW YORK CITY RESIDENT: Hi, Alisyn. Hi, Victor.

So, we had spent the day at the U.S. Open. And we had sort of seen the forecast for rain all day. And we were very lucky to actually sort of get any kind of decent day's play.

We were inside the main court when we got the flood warning. So we decided that it might be a good idea for us to head home. So, we were on the bus from Flushing Meadows back to Bushwick in Brooklyn. And the rain was -- I mean, we were soaked by the time we got onto the bus already, myself and my girlfriend.

And as we were coming up to Queens Boulevard, we saw the kind of flood drains start to come up. And at that point, it just looked like genuinely a river, like rapids coming down the road. And the bus driver, an absolute hero, I mean, I think her name is Rosa.

And her efforts last night made it so much easier for us all. She managed to plot a path through the floodwaters, at a time when sort of other cars were being abandoned.

We spoke to one young man who had to climb out the window of his car because the floodwater was coming up so quickly. And managed to kind of plot a path through. But it was hairy. It was -- when you see the floodwaters start to come in, and you're getting up on the seats, it was certainly an interesting experience.

CAMEROTA: Joe, it looks terrifying, to be honest.

I mean, the floodwaters are in the bus up to the seat. Was it as scary as it looked? Was there a moment where you thought, oh, we might not get out of this?

ENGLISH: I think, at the time, the adrenaline kind of kicks in and you were just thinking, OK, like, how are we going to sort of plot our way through this?

I have been seeing the reports this morning, and 24 people now who've lost their lives. The worst we were dealing with the next day is drying out clothes and putting newspaper in our shoes.

So, for the families who've lost people, my heart breaks, my heart goes out. A 2-year-old apparently lost their life last night. And this is climate change. And this is the reality of what we're seeing. We know that climate change makes these kinds of events more severe. We know that it makes them more frequent.

And the slightly -- the really scary thing for me, I mean, last night was the first time that I had really experienced it at home. I have seen this kind of stuff around the world with my work. But seeing it at home is knowing that we're going to be dealing with this not just for 10 years or 20 years, but for 30 years-plus.

And that's even if we take concerted action now.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

Joe, we showed from Shimon's shot the Major Deegan, all of the cars that were abandoned. I imagine there were cars abandoned there where you were as well. Where do you go after this?

I mean, it's not like, once you get off the bus, everything solved. What happened on the trek home?

ENGLISH: No, completely.

I mean, we -- it was two buses that we were meant to take. And so we took the first one. And Rosa, the driver, got us to where we needed to be. We were then waiting for the second, but without really any kind of clear idea of whether buses were continuing, a little bit too far to walk, especially in those conditions. And an Uber didn't feel necessarily like the best idea. So, we

sheltered in a donut shop for a little while, until it sort of felt like it was slightly clearing, and then managed to get an Uber home.

But it was when we got home. That was when it really kind of hit. And then my little sister's due to give birth in the next couple of days. And I was just really thinking about the world that we're leaving for the next generation. There's a billion children around the world -- that's almost half of the world's children -- who live in countries that are extremely high risk.

And if we're seeing this in New York City, one of the richest cities in the world, one of the best cities in the world -- I feel so lucky to live here -- you think about how much worse it could be for vulnerable countries, where they don't have the resources available to sort of -- to acclimatize for these kinds of things.

(CROSSTALK)

ENGLISH: And so I think that's why the climate talks coming up in Glasgow in November are so important. And I really hope that all our leaders around the world will come together and have some kind of concerted action, because, otherwise, we're going to continue to see this.

We're going to continue to see people losing their lives. We're going to continue to see the heartbreaking scenes of damage to properties, people's homes.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Joe, I'm so glad you're making that point, because we can all recycle as much as we want, and it's not changing the climate crisis that we're seeing.

We need our world leaders to kick this into high gear and help tackle this.

Joe English, we're glad that you were safe. Thanks so much for sharing your video and your story with us.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

ENGLISH: Thanks so much, Alisyn. Thanks, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Thank you, Joe.

He tweeted out with the video: "Finally made it through the higher ground and a fellow passenger exclaims, 'Oh, no, I missed my stop.'"

(LAUGHTER)

BLACKWELL: Let's keep the main thing the main thing, fellow passenger.

CAMEROTA: I appreciate a little levity during the apocalypse, which is basically what we're seeing.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKWELL: Thanks, Rosa, that bus driver, too, who made it through, yes.

CAMEROTA: Heroic. Heroic.

So, the Northeast and the south are still suffering the effects from Ida, and, of course, wildfires are ravaging the West. A major one is burning in California. And it is threatening Lake Tahoe. We will have the latest.

BLACKWELL: And more from Texas. The new abortion law is just one of several controversial measures going into effect across the state.

[15:25:05]

We will talk you through them.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The Justice Department says it is weighing -- quote -- "all options" to respond to the new law in Texas that bans nearly all abortions starting as early as six weeks.

At midnight, the Supreme Court's conservative majority explained why it did not want to intervene.

BLACKWELL: And Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that it is flagrantly unconstitutional. She also attacked the way that it's enforced.

Any person in the U.S. can sue anyone who helped in the abortion in Texas for $10,000. Sotomayor wrote -- quote -- "In effect, the Texas legislature has deputized the state citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors' medical procedures."

Abortion is not the only hot button issue Texas lawmakers are taking on.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher explains new Texas laws go after voting and what's taught in the classroom too.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor, Alisyn, Texas' new law banning abortion, effectively, after six weeks is by far the most restrictive abortion law in the country right now.