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Eric Adams Appears in Court; Interview With Panama City Beach, Florida, Mayor Stuart Tettemer; Hurricane Helene Aftermath. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired September 27, 2024 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:34:13]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Well, Helene carved a path of destruction as it tore across Florida.

Look at this destruction right out of Cedar Key, debris scattered everywhere. Even though it's a little dark here in the video, you can still see all the damage.

Joining us now is Keith Turi from FEMA's Office of Response and Recovery.

We're just getting these remarkable images. How dangerous has Helene been and continues to be at this hour, Keith?

KEITH TURI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: Yes, Helene was obviously a very large storm, bringing a range of hazards, not only to Florida, but as -- all the way up through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and eventually into Kentucky and Tennessee.

It ranged from storm surge risks, damage from winds, and significant riverine flooding and flash flooding that we're seeing, so very dangerous storm that is still currently impacting a number of areas. And so the message really needs to be, this isn't over from a life safety perspective.

[11:35:08]

Really need to make sure that everybody's listening to their local officials, heeding those warnings and staying safe as the storm continues to move north.

BROWN: Well, just looking at these images, it really just tells the story of the damage left behind by Helene there in Cedar Key, Florida.

And even as the storm moves out of places, such as North Carolina, it's expected to move out in 24 hours, over the next 24 hours, and you heard the governor there warn that the threat will continue even after it moves out. Help us better understand why that is.

TURI: Yes, there's a range of reasons why, and many people think that, as the storm passes, the hazards will decrease. It's not necessarily true. A lot of the fatalities and injuries that happen from these types of

storms happen after the storm passes, and that can be from -- in North Carolina, from riverine flooding. That water still has to move downstream. Some areas where it didn't rain as much could flood as the water moves downstream.

But you also have risks associated with downed power lines, with floodwaters and what -- people are walking through or driving through floodwaters or even operating a generator and making sure that you do that safely and keep that away from your home.

So there's definitely a number of hazards that are going to remain from the storm. And, again, the rainfall is going to continue tomorrow into Tennessee and Kentucky. So we still have some ways to go with this one.

BROWN: Yes, and we were -- just did a live shot with one of our correspondents. And she was talking about the flooding there. And as she was there, there was like a -- all kinds of debris floating by, including what looked like a downed power line.

And you have to ask the question about the concern of possible electrocution for residents in these circumstances.

TURI: Absolutely.

I mean, there are a lot of dangers in those floodwaters, things you can see, and sometimes things you can't see that are going under the surface. And so really need to stay out of those floodwaters, make sure you get to a safe place. Local officials will help you understand what those safe locations are.

But also check on your neighbors and loved ones. This is a time where we all need to stick together. And so really safety and being really, really diligent is the message here for today and into tomorrow.

BROWN: We're just looking at this incredible video again in Cedar Key, Florida. And, obviously, Florida has had its fair share of hurricanes, tropical storms.

What has been a defining feature of this storm, in your view?

TURI: I think that the size of the storm was one of the most unique things for this particular hurricane, as it was so large, the wind field, the tropical-storm-force winds went 150 miles from the center.

And that meant that, even though landfall was going to be in the Big Bend, you also had that wind pushing water up into the into the Western coast of Florida. And so the size of the storm surge, the range in which we saw the winds in the hazards and, of course, the number of states that are going to be impacted, this is going to be one that we will be working on and recovering from for some time.

And it definitely has some unique characteristics to it.

BROWN: And what is your advice to residents digging out of this and just what they're facing ahead?

TURI: Yes, I think, first, again, as we said, make sure you stay safe. Make sure you check on your neighbors.

If you have damage, you want to make sure you document that damage, make sure you under -- that you take pictures of what has occurred. If you have an insurance claim, of course, that's going to (AUDIO GAP) as we continue to do assessments. So, we have emergency declarations that have been declared in all of those states by the president.

Additional types of assistance may be turned on here in the coming days as we continue to work with our state and local partners. So, if you keep that documentation, you might be able to be able to benefit from some additional type of assistance.

So -- but also it's going to be a long road. I mean, this is a difficult time. As you mentioned, some of these areas have had multiple storms over the last number of years, and so making sure that we just really stay with these folks and help them through what's going to be a long road of recovery.

BROWN: It certainly will be.

Keith Turi, thank you so much.

And now we can go to the Panama City Beach mayor, Stuart Tettemer. He is here with us.

Tell us what's going on in your city right now, Mayor.

STUART TETTEMER, MAYOR OF PANAMA CITY BEACH, FLORIDA: Well, Panama City Beach has many years of experience with storm prep, so we were ready.

In PCB, rain came to about five inches. We experienced minimal wind damage. The storm surge of one to three feet pushed and compacted some sand. So there is some work to clear stormwater outfalls. Other than that, we're good. We're moving into an assistance role here.

BROWN: What is your biggest concern now that the storm has passed over your city, even as you move into this assistance role?

TETTEMER: We don't have any concerns here. Really, what we're doing is we're taking our P.D. and moving some officers to Perry, along with a mobile command unit, some lighting towers and some ATVs. There was no damage here, so we are good to go.

[11:40:00]

We also have a fire engine company that is ready to go as soon as we get orders from the state.

BROWN: All right, Panama City Beach Mayor Stuart Tettemer, thank you so much.

We will be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And in other news we are following today, New York Mayor Eric Adams will be arraigned next hour on federal corruption charges just blocks from the very office he is accused of abusing.

[11:45:02]

I'm joined by CNN's Gloria Pazmino at the courthouse and Alyse Adamson. She's a legal commentator and former federal prosecutor.

Let me again begin with you, Gloria.

Adams remains defiant. He says he will not step down, even as he goes to the courthouse today for his mug shot after being indicted.

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right Pam.

And the mayor is now sitting inside that courtroom. My colleague Kara Scannell is in there watching it all play out. The mayor is going to be arraigned any minute now. And, as you said, he will be processed, put through the federal system. They will take his mug shot. He will be told of what the charges are.

And I just want to take a moment to really think and take in the enormity of what's happening right now, right? This has never happened in the city's modern history. We have never had a sitting mayor arraigned on criminal charges, never mind the charges that he's being accused of, right, corruption, bribery, soliciting donations from foreign nationals, and defrauding the city's taxpayer-funded matching funds system, a system that is set up so that politicians don't feel the need to raise thousands and thousands of dollars from compromised donors in order to finance their campaign.

Federal prosecutors say that that's exactly what Adams did, that he took that money, and then he traded it in for favors for these donors. Now, we know that the mayor is currently inside the courtroom. He is seated beside his lawyer, Alex Spiro, and he's staring straight ahead, taking in the bench.

This is what my colleague Kara is describing. He appears to be looking in the direction of the jury box, which right now is filled in by the press. There is no jury that's been seated yet, of course. And he's also looking at the sketch artists. They're going to give us the only images that we are going to have from this proceeding, federal court, no cameras allowed inside.

So, just describing, talking about the enormity and the significance of this moment, because even though the mayor has said that he's going to fight these charges -- and, as you said, he has been defiant. He has declared his innocence. He has said that he is going to put up a case and lay out his case to New Yorkers.

There is a lot of pressure that's coming down on the mayor, his administration, and the people who are trying to run the city.

BROWN: I'm going to interrupt you, Gloria, because we need to go to the governor of Georgia right now on Helene.

GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): If you were in that path or certainly on the right side of the dirty side of that storm, it was a very hard hit. The rest of the state on the west side or left side of the storm, even though they were not unscathed, they weren't taking the brunt that a lot of the folks did with the high winds, even though we have had a lot of flooding in metro Atlanta and other places around the around the state.

But we caught a little bit of a break for some parts of the state in that regard. Early this morning, we had wind gusts over 90 miles an hour that were measured in South Georgia, Cat 2 hurricane. Actually, 100 mile-an-hour wind gusts were measured in Alma, Georgia, and Bacon County.

At this time, this has been a deadly storm. We have had 11 confirmed fatalities. I would ask all Georgians, like the Kemp family is doing, to keep these folks in these communities in your thoughts and prayers. We know that one of those was a first responder.

When we asked people to stay off the roads and be patient,it's because we are trying to get the people. It is a very dangerous environment and one of our finest has lost his life trying to save others. We're also trying to get the multiple structures right now that we know have individuals inside that we're unable to communicate with.

We will have to literally cut our way into situations like this. A good example is the Maryland search-and-rescue team who's here with us -- I want to thank them for that -- in Valdosta have identified 115 structures that are heavily damaged that we know there are multiple people trapped inside.

Again, we just want to urge people, especially in those areas, to be patient. We have a lot of people calling us because they may have a tree across their road in their neighborhood may be blocked. But our priority is getting to medical emergencies and facilities like hospitals, nursing homes and others that need critical help and don't have power.

Georgia DOT's reporting 152 road closures across the state and at least two interstate closures currently, I-16 in Laurens County and then I-20 just outside of Augusta and McDuffie County. We have 1,300 traffic signals that are out. Crews are actively assessing the damage and working to restore access where it's safe.

[11:50:01]

And, certainly, Commissioner McMurry can answer any other questions, but they are still assessing at this point. So we know we will get more information later in the day. We are deploying generators, especially in the Valdosta area to help power traffic signals.

From DOT's perspective, some of the Northwest Georgia crews that the damage wasn't quite as bad on the roads, they're now shifting to South Georgia to help our hardest-hit areas. We are in pretty good shape on bridges around the state, which is good. And our port, while it has limited operations, it is operational and has been the entire storm.

One thing to note up in Northeast Georgia in Rabun County, there's going to be a water release out of Lake Rabun because of the flooding that's happening. We're evacuating folks downstream from that so they're not cut off from the rest of the community.

If they don't leave now, they're going to be stuck there for at least a day or multiple hours. And Director Stallings can give you more information on that. But just be aware that there's going to be a water release at Lake Rabun. We have had some 911 disruptions.

As you can imagine, there's a lot of 911 facilities. Even the state operations center here earlier has had issues with power, and we know that's the case around the state.

Power outages, we have one million customers that are currently -- or one million meters, much more customers, but one million meters that are without power. Our utility companies are working as we speak. They literally started going in behind the storm as soon as day broke. We remain in constant contact with our utility providers in that regard.

Georgia Power has roughly 10,000 personnel responding and our EMCs have literally thousands that are doing the same. And we thank them for that. We have 17 shelters open across the state housing 1,100 people. A shelter in Coffee County lost its roof. Resources are being deployed to assist them to ensure their safety.

South Georgia Medical Center in Valdosta, the hospital down there is without power. Their emergency generator had a tree fall on it, so it knocked out their generator capacity. We and Georgia Power both responding with an emergency generator and Georgia Power is working hard to get the power back on there.

We have had a severe agriculture impact that is still being assessed. Commissioner Harper is going to speak to that shortly, but we know we have had flattened poultry houses and certainly a lot of road crop damage and nut tree damage.

Search-and-rescue operations, our teams are currently in the field and will continue to be providing assistant to -- assistance to the communities that were hit hardest by the storm. Just to recap, resources that we have right now, I mentioned a lot of this yesterday, but we authorized up to 500 of the Georgia National Guard. General Wilson will talk a little bit about that here in just a second.

We deployed 250 of them before Helene made landfall. Earlier today, as you know, I authorized a further 1,000 Guardsmen, and we have deployed already an additional 250 of those. And so we have 500 in the field as we speak and we will call the rest as needed and as requested.

They have 20 mobile cut teams, eight heavy equipment teams and we're also moving pods around for supply distribution. Department of Public Safety, all troopers and officers remain available. Currently, right now, we're having a hard time getting to places so we got to get our chain saw cut teams to continue working to free up roads. But we will have those resources moving as soon as it's safely to do so. We're moving troop deployments from Northwest Georgia again to south once more roads are clear. We're currently assessing by air. It took us a little while to get the choppers up and drones up because of the because of the winds and then also a low ceiling this morning, so we will continue to get more information in regards to that.

With that, I will turn it over to General Wilson. Then we will hear from Commissioner Harper. And then we take it questions.

General.

MAJ. GEN. RICHARD WILSON, GEORGIA NATIONAL GUARD: OK, sir. Thank you very much.

Hey. Well, good morning. The -- so, a lot of hard work happening across the across the state at the local state and the federal level. As the governor stated, currently, we have about 500 soldiers and airmen across the state that are providing response after the hurricane.

Some of the missions that we're currently doing include route and debris clearance teams. And we're doing that in an effort to try to get the pathways cleared, so that we can get the power turned back on as quickly as possible. And we're doing that with lots of engineers. We have got high-water vehicles.

[11:55:10]

BROWN: And Georgia giving us the latest update on the impacts of Helene.

You heard Governor Kemp there talking about the ongoing ripple effect from Helene, saying 150 people continue to be trapped in their homes in this hour in Southern Georgia. He said that they're having to -- rescue crews are having to literally cut their way in to some of these homes to rescue.

These are collapsed homes in some cases. It's a very dire situation there, more than a million people without power there in the state. You can see how widespread the storm has been, impacting Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee just to name a few, and it continues to wreak havoc at this hour.

Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Pamela Brown. You can follow me on Instagram, X, TikTok @PamelaBrownCNN.

Stay with us. "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" starts after a short break.