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Extremely Dangerous Hurricane Helene Make Landfall; More than 2 Million Customers Without Power in Southeast U.S. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired September 27, 2024 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us in the U.S. and around the world. I'm Max Foster. It is Friday, September the 27th, 9 a.m. here in London, 4 a.m. in the Florida Big Bend region where Hurricane Helene has made landfall overnight, sweeping across the coast as an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with winds of 140 miles per hour. It's now weakened but continues to unleash life-threatening storm surge, flooding rains and destructive winds across the southeast. Helene has knocked out power to more than 2 million homes and businesses in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. One Florida sheriff says they're fearing the worst when the sun comes up.

And Tallahassee's mayor says his city has never seen a storm like it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN E. DAILEY, MAYOR OF TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA: None of us have experienced a Category 4 hurricane this close to Tallahassee. This is a historic storm for us. Right now, everyone stay safe, shelter in place, stay home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: About 40 people have been rescued from rising water in Pasco County, just north of Tampa, and rescues are still underway. Guests at a hotel in Manatee County were also evacuated because of deteriorating conditions. Plus, at least three people have been killed as the storm continues to pummel the southeast, two in Georgia and one in Florida.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RON DESANTIS, (R) FLORIDA GOVERNOR: Not only are we seeing it hit landfall here in northern Florida, you're still seeing surge in water rising in parts of Florida far south from the Big Bend area. So you look at southwest Florida, you look at the Tampa Bay area, you're seeing really significant amounts of surge. There's going to be streets that are that are flooded and will continue to flood all up and down the west coast of Florida.

So it's hazardous conditions right now. And please, you know, do not be going outside until things settle down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: We're covering the storm from all angles. CNN's Ivan Rodriguez is live in Tallahassee, Florida. But first, we're going to go to CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking Helene and where it's heading.

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, that's right. I think the key component here is that just because it has made landfall does not mean this storm is over. In fact, we are still yet to see some of the worst impacts for a few states in particular.

Right now, you can see the center of the storm is located just over portions of south central Georgia. Sustained winds of 80 miles per hour still gusting higher than that. The storm is already knocked out a tremendous amount of power. We're talking one point eight million customers so far. Some of those in Florida, it will be days before they get their power back. Other states like Tennessee and Kentucky have yet to really see their numbers tick up because the worst of those conditions is not yet there.

You can see here the storm is expected to go back down to a tropical storm, likely kind of somewhere between Augusta and Atlanta this morning and then continuing its trek up into Tennessee and Kentucky, where then it will kind of hover over these states. And that's unfortunate because it means it will have a lot of time to dump a tremendous amount of rain for some of these areas. And some places have had plenty of rain so far.

Look at this. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, all of them having at least some spots pick up at least a foot of rain so far and more rain. Maybe the exception to that would be Florida. But for Georgia, the Carolinas, more rain is still yet to come.

The other thing has been the wind gusts. Perry, Florida, where it was very close to where the landfall took place. Wind gusts of ninety nine miles per hour. Douglas, Georgia, which for reference is more than 90 miles away from the coast. This is well inland, having a wind speed of ninety two miles per hour.

And this is not on the water. This is well inland here. You can see we've got that rotation still of the storm. The bulk of the heavy rain really overspreading making Augusta, Atlanta. Right now, we also have several tornado warnings right there along the coast, just south of Charleston, South Carolina. And tornado warnings are going to continue.

In fact, you can see the tornado watches in effect for portions of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Many of these do not expire for at least another two hours, which would be 6 a.m. local time. But some of them might actually be extended into further hours just because the potential is really going to be there in some of these communities throughout the day today, especially for the Carolinas and even portions of Virginia, Norfolk, all the way down to Charleston, looking at the potential there for some tornadoes today. And that's going to last through the afternoon hours.

[04:05:02]

Rain is also going to continue because it's not just going to end quickly. This is a look of the scope of how much rain has already fallen. Again, you can see here that yellow and orange color indicating at least widespread 4 to 6 inches.

But we have had numerous places that have picked up 10, 12, even 14 inches of rain. The green color indicates a flood watch, meaning flooding is the potential is there for flooding today. The red areas indicate where flooding is already ongoing, Max.

So, again, this is going to be a twofold here. So, yes, even though the storm itself has made landfall, it's not over yet. And the worst is yet to come for some of these communities.

FOSTER: Allison, thank you so much. Let's go to one of those communities. CNN's Ivan Rodriguez is live in Tallahassee in Florida, where they're extremely concerned, aren't they, Ivan, about this surge?

IVAN RODRIGUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Max, good morning. The surge was a massive conversation for so many communities across the state of Florida. Here in Tallahassee, also a big conversation was also how damaging the wind was going to be.

We were expecting earlier today a direct hit possibly here in Tallahassee. Wind speeds up to 110 miles per hour and the damage we could see because of that. I can tell you, though, Max, we haven't seen any extensive damage so far.

So a lot of people waking up this morning here in Tallahassee are very thankful that that trajectory shifted a little bit more eastward. And Tallahassee was able to stay a little west from the eye wall of Helene. So not seeing many downed trees or power lines here.

But, again, this is just one county. Many other counties are reporting early assessments of damage. We know in Suwannee County, you mentioned earlier, sheriff's office there is hoping that they don't see too much damage when the sun does come out.

They're already asking for people and folks to prepare for what could be extensive damage. We know that they've already reported trees that have fallen on top of homes. Also extensive damage to people's property in other counties.

In Sarasota County, for example, there are some pieces of land, some islands that are no longer accessible because the waters have risen so much. Bridges are no longer accessible to many emergency crews. People are going to have to wait for that water to recede.

Sarasota's mayor says that this, she believes, is the worst storm that the city has seen in more than a century. So, again, a lot of these communities are going to be waking up to a lot of destruction and devastation. And all this is what we're talking about as Helene continues making its way northward.

And, Max, here where we are in Tallahassee, many students with university campuses also were sheltering in place. We know that they sheltered in place in a conference center specifically here at Florida State University that they said was prepared to handle and withstand these hurricane force winds. Across Leon County where we are, more than 1,700 people sheltered here as well.

So, Tallahassee, it is good news, but we are waiting to see those images this morning in other areas.

FOSTER: OK, that's good news at least. Thank you so much, Ivan.

More than 2 million customers are without power across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. That figure is according to Power Outage U.S., an organization that collects live data from the utilities.

A local news station caught the moment the power went out in a neighborhood in northern Florida. Residents in southern Georgia are being asked to shelter in place as trees and power lines are down from Hurricane Helene.

Georgia is taking the brunt of the storm now that its center is out of Florida. Forecasters say Helene sustained winds are down to 80 miles, but they say dangerous winds, rain, flooding and tornadoes could still cause plenty of damage. The storm's already blamed for two deaths in Georgia and one in Florida.

We're joined now on the phone by Bill McIntosh, the mayor of Moultrie, Georgia. The town is located about 40 miles, or 64 kilometers, from Florida's border. And as Ivan was describing, you don't quite know where the eye of this storm is going to end up.

How are you doing where you are?

WILLIAM M. MCINTOSH, MOULTRIE, GEORGIA MAYOR (via phone): We're settled down now. The storm has passed us and we had prepared very well for a big storm. And fortunately, I know there's damage in a lot of different places, but we have about a thousand people in our community without power.

Limbs are down and some trees, some trees and streets are blocked. But fortunately, we seem to have missed the big blow that we were expecting, that we were preparing for. So we feel like we've been very fortunate.

FOSTER: That's good news. What are you hearing from your counterparts in other areas?

[04:10:02]

MCINTOSH: Well, it looks like other areas around us were hit much harder than we were to the east of us. Valdosta, places like that, who have unfortunately recently gone through the same thing again. So we feel like we've been very blessed that we were prepared, but we didn't have what we thought we were going to get. So still a little gusty here and raining. We had six inches of rain

last night. And the problem is that we are extremely agricultural. That's the backbone of our economy.

And Wednesday night, we had six inches of rain, which put, you know, the trees, tremendous pine trees in our area. And that's what we were really afraid of, is that the roots of these trees were soaked and we were going to have a lot of downed trees. But it doesn't look like that happened.

But it is the harvest season. It is a time for that -- we depend on cotton, peanuts, things like that. And we were -- the farmers were really going to be devastated. And I'm sure there's some damage now, even now.

FOSTER: Yes, so the economic damage really is only going to become apparent, isn't it? When the sun's up and those farmers get out there and look at their fields.

MCINTOSH: Right. That's going to be that you'd be able to really tell what's happened because you can't see anything now. But when we get up in the morning, I'm sure we're going to find some real surprises as far as it seems like we missed it to the worst degree. But I'm sure there's a lot of a lot of damage that's going to be apparent in the morning.

FOSTER: I know that in some areas people were advised to write their names and their dates of birth on their arms, which is frightening advice. But this is sort of where you've got to, isn't it? You can only prepare people so much. And I guess it pushes the message home that this is a very serious situation. You should not go out.

MCINTOSH: Well, I think that people -- I think the news especially was very imperative about that. I think people really were afraid of this storm and were duly prepared to undergo a really bad situation worse than we did. So we -- it could have been a whole lot worse. And of course, we really don't know. We get out in the morning and see really how bad it was.

FOSTER: Are you seeing these storms get worse every year?

MCINTOSH: Well, it seems to be, you know, in the past, we've had a Hurricane Michael, which was extremely devastating to our area. And it could have been a lot worse in our county. But it and especially to the agriculture, that was a real disaster.

But and it just seems like they get bigger and they even when I was growing up, I grew up here in Moultrie and, you know, we hardly ever had a hurricane. But it seemed like the last few years, you know, that's been the norm. But we've been very fortunate not to have been really blasted by any particular hurricane to this point.

FOSTER: OK, Bill McIntosh, mayor of Moultrie, Georgia, really appreciate your time. Thank you. And good luck with your work as the sun comes up there.

MCINTOSH: Thank you very much.

FOSTER: Now, in North Carolina, the popular tourist city of Asheville was inundated by torrential downpours even before Hurricane Helene's landfall. Video shows a torrent of water rushing down the Swannanoa River on Thursday. The fire department made several water rescues overnight.

Potholes have also opened up due to the heavy rainfall, posing a danger to both evacuees and first responders. The ground around Asheville is already soaked after more than 10 inches, 250 millimeters of rain from the previous storm. That has officials worried about landslides and buildings collapsing due to compromised foundations.

I will have much more on Hurricane Helene after a quick break. Our climate expert will explain how a storm builds to such a massive size and strength.

[04:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL BOBBITT, CEDAR KEY, FLORIDA RESIDENT: The gulf is rising up to swallow the island. I don't know that Cedar Key as we know it will exist in the morning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: A resident of Cedar Key there in Florida describing the situation just before Hurricane Helene made landfall. It roared ashore a few hours ago in Florida's Big Bend as a Category 4 storm with winds estimated at 140 mph. Helene has since weakened to a Category 1 as it barrels north through Georgia but remains dangerous and life- threatening.

Officials were concerned the storm surge could push water 20 miles from the coast due to Helene's massive size and powerful winds. Water levels have reached record-breaking levels in areas that are not even close to the storm's so-called eyewall. And the National Hurricane Center is warning people not to go outside when they're inside the eyewall and it depends -- well it becomes relatively calm in the eyewall and it can be deceptive. They say dangerous winds will increase very quickly once the eye passes.

Chris Gloninger is a meteorologist and climate scientist and he's in New York for Climate Week. Thank you so much for joining us.

We can emphasize too much, can't we, the size of the storm, where it actually hits because it's often the after-effects that have the true impact.

CHRIS GLONINGER, METEOROLOGIST AND CLIMATE SCIENTIST: That's right, Max. And if you look at the storm when it was about 150 miles away from Fort Myers in Lee County, for example, there were parts of Captiva, Fort Myers, Sanibel, St. James City that had three feet of water over normally dry ground. So that just shows the magnitude and the scope and size of the storm.

You go up to Cedar Key, they had about a nine-foot storm surge and even there that was far removed from the eyewall as it came ashore. So now we transition from a storm surge and wind impact to a flash flooding impact with nearly 30 inches of rain across parts of the Carolinas and all the way through Tennessee -- Max.

[04:20:05]

FOSTER: I was speaking to a sheriff earlier in a rural area of Georgia. He says they weren't hit as badly as they thought, but they do have a lot of fear about the crops in that area because they're all going to be flooded. He also describes how he grew up in that area and he couldn't really remember any hurricanes as a kid, but he's getting them all the time now.

GLONINGER: That's what you really have to look at when you look at the bigger picture of all of this. The Gulf of Mexico is warm, not just the surface, but all the way down to the ocean floor. That's called the ocean heat content.

And typically, storms turn the ocean into a washing machine and the cold air mixes up to the surface. It weakens the hurricane before it makes landfall, but this just isn't happening anymore. Because of climate change, those ocean water temperatures are warm all the way down to the ocean floor.

So these storms intensify right up until landfall and they maintain at least hurricane status well inland. So this is our new normal. The Gulf of Mexico, the warmth that we're currently seeing 300 times more likely because of climate change, and that is using attribution science.

And for every one degree of warming we see, Max, the atmosphere holds 7 percent more moisture. It manifests in 30 inches of rain when you have a storm come ashore. It was moving fast, but then it stalls out across Tennessee.

FOSTER: They don't have do -- they don't have to be huge, do they, to cause a lot of damage? Because when you talk about that increasing number of storms coming in, the ground becomes waterlogged. And when you're talking about these rural areas, the crops just don't get a chance.

GLONINGER: And if you think back to Hurricane Florence, which was supposed to be a major hurricane at landfall weakened into about a Category 1 in North Carolina, and then it just dumped feet of rain in the upstate. So to your point, it doesn't have to do at that point with hurricane intensity. Just an atmosphere that's a lot warmer, holds a lot more moisture, and it comes out in the form of very heavy rain.

So again, another sign of a changing climate is that we have these storms, not even that are very strong, but produce a whole lot of water. FOSTER: And just take us through this warning that they put out to people who find themselves in the eye of the storm, because people who haven't experienced this would assume it would be pretty frightening. It's actually not at all, is it? That's probably the calmest place you can be. We still need to stay indoors.

GLONINGER: It is, and now again on the East Coast, we are in the overnight, and you may not see the sunshine, which you typically see during the eye of a strong hurricane, but it will get eerily quiet. But know that you're only halfway through that storm, and then the back end usually catches people off guard because there's a slow buildup when you see a hurricane moving ashore. But when you are on the back side of the eye, it goes from zero to 60 within seconds.

You don't have that buildup, and that is why, Max, it is incredibly dangerous to venture outside during that brief lull, that intermission in between the two acts, so to speak.

FOSTER: OK. Chris Gloninger, really appreciate your time and your insights this morning. Thank you for that.

More than 2 million customers are without power across Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. That's a figure we got from Power Outage U.S., an organization that collects live data from utilities.

Retired Army Lieutenant General Russell Honore says it's going to be a difficult task restoring power to those affected states.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. GEN. RUSSEL HONORE (RET.), U.S. ARMY: You're talking about between Atlanta and Tampa. That's a 500-mile run right there where normally these states do mutual aid and they help each other. Now they're having to call in assets from further across the country.

This is going to be a major challenge to get the grid back up, get the roads cleared, and get the infrastructure stood back up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Ryan Young, keeping an eye on conditions in Atlanta where the storm is heading, what's the atmosphere like there because it's about to hit, isn't it?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN U.S. CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it absolutely is, and now it's about a watch and wait. We already know about five inches of rain has already been in the Atlanta area. That was from an earlier front that moved through this week.

So the ground is already saturated, and for those folks who live in Georgia, it's been very dry here. In fact, it's almost been 30 days since there's been any substantial rain in this area. Now with all this extra rain that's been put on the ground, people are concerned about all the trees that are in this area because people forget Atlanta is a city built with inside a forest. So when we have this much rain in a short given time, trees start to fall over and over again. We know the next four hours will be critical in this area. We're already starting to see some rescues of people in apartment complexes across the city because the flooding has already started. Now that's something that's obviously going to get worse as the hours go on.

[04:25:00]

And in this city in particular, it's not built for heavy amounts of rain to come in in a short period of time. We've seen flash flooding events in the last few years because of sudden rain.

So when you talk about a slow-moving hurricane or something that could leave rain dropping hour after hour, that is a concern. That even happens on the highway here in Atlanta where we have a heavy downpour of rain that just kind of pops out of the blue.

So that's the concern right now in terms of trees falling, ponding. They're asking people to stay off the road. I've been looking at the emergency channels and so far, outside of that one apartment complex rescue, there hasn't been any big calls right now and no large amounts of power outages in the metro Atlanta area. But that could change very suddenly.

FOSTER: Are people heeding advice and staying home or are they taking the risk and going out, do you expect?

YOUNG: Well, that's a great question. Anybody who's been in Atlanta before knows there's a place called The Connector where a lot of traffic merges into one area. It's like three highways basically merged together.

That area is basically shut down right now. We have not seen a lot of cars moving through The Connector as we speak. We know there have been massive amounts of cancellations at the airport.

So it seems like people are staying inside. But as you know, as we call this 7 a.m. hour when first light sort of pops up, that's where people sort of venture out normally. Hopefully, they will heed the warning to stay inside because that's when the heavy parts of wind is expected to be in this area.

You add the heavy wind plus all these large trees and the saturated ground, that's when the issues could start. So hopefully, we'll move through this time period without having massive amount of power outages.

Looking at the power company, they say they are ready to stand up crews to go out and take care of the trees and to get things back up and running. But obviously, they wait till almost first daylight before putting their crews in danger that way.

And even the mayor of the city of Atlanta talked about how they have a special operations center that's ready to go at a moment's notice when it comes to trying to save citizens who might be involved in a weather event.

FOSTER: Ryan Young, thinking of you all there as the storm comes in, thank you so much for joining us.

YOUNG: Thank you.

FOSTER: Hurricane Helene may have weakened, but it's not done yet. Deadly conditions persist in many areas, and authorities still don't know the full scope of the damage in the dark.

Later, Israel's prime minister will address the U.N. General Assembly amid the escalating conflict with Hezbollah. We'll have the latest on U.S.-led efforts to reach a ceasefire.