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CNN Live Saturday

Hurricane Frances Makes Its Way Toward Florida's East Coast

Aired September 04, 2004 - 20:00   ET

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

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


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In the news now, we welcome you to CNN's special hurricane coverage and here's what's happening all around the world. Hurricane Frances slowly making its way to Florida's east coast. The storm a strong category two right now, maximum winds 105 miles an hour right now. It's about 50 miles offshore, probably inside that now. We have an update at this hour, any moment now, from the hurricane center. We'll bring it to you as soon as we get it.
And also making news today, completely separate story in a whole different part of the world, Los Angeles International Airport getting back to normal after two unrelated security breaches shut it down. In one incident, eight people injured in a small accidental explosion of a flashlight. In the other, a man entered an unauthorized area.

At least 25 have been killed, 40 others wounded in a suicide car bombing in the north Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Sixteen police officers also killed in the fighting in the town of Lapkifa (ph).

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to our special coverage of hurricane Frances. I'm Carol Lin at the CNN global headquarters in Atlanta.

O'BRIEN: And I'm Miles O'Brien. Frances has begun its pounding and we've got reporters of course all along the Florida coast for you. It's been a long day for people up and down Florida's east coast and for that matter, people on the west coast who evacuated. It's going to be a long night for all of them as well, long night for us too. Hurricane Frances packing intense winds and rain, been battering the coast for hours now as you can see. West Palm Beach here and cities farther north have borne the brunt so far. But because Frances is moving at such a slow pace, about the pace of a walk, we're afraid the worst is yet to come.

LIN: It's hardly a walk out there in Florida right now. Miles, we you talking about the latest projection. We have it in. Jacqui Jeras of the weather center, Jacqui what have you learned from the National Hurricane Center?

JACQUI JERAS, METEOROLOGIST: Well, the big difference Carol is that there has been a little bit of a drop in pressure, about 10 millibars and that's somewhat significant. It may show a little bit of a sign of strengthening, but the maximum sustaining winds are the same at 105 miles per hour and the location, check it out, that's about the same too, still about 50 miles away from the coastline.

One other big change that has happened is now the threat of tornadoes in increasing. Of course with hurricanes, you always have a lot of (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and we always do have this threat of tornadoes and there has been a new tornado watch which has been issued which covers much of Florida.

Here's the new things that we have to tell you. Our current wind, 105, still a strong category two. Landfall is still expected some time tonight, maybe midnightish, give or take a little bit of time there. And the strongest winds are arriving, just about now on shore. They should be pushing in within the next couple of hours. We've already had plenty of hurricane force gusts. Now those hurricane force maximum sustained winds should be arriving. That means 74 miles per hour or greater and massive Florida flooding can be expected, locally heavy rain up to 24 inches. We could possibly see eight to 12 inches, become very widespread across the state.

Here's that watch that I was mentioning. It's just to the south of Jacksonville. It includes Orlando down towards Melbourne, into Tampa and it's getting down towards the Palm Beach. This will be in effect until 8:00 tomorrow morning. So in addition to those winds, addition to the storm surge and the flooding, we're now keeping our eyes out for tornadoes, again, though, that's very common in hurricanes.

LIN: So Jacqui, just to be clear for me, that wide area that you're talking about, tons of rain, winds up to 100 miles per hour over that wide swath.

JERAS: In the tornado watch, is that what you're talking about in the box?

LIN: OK. All right.

JERAS: What area are you talking about Carol, I'm not sure what you mean.

LIN: The last thing that you were just talking about is a tornado watch and not just in terms of...

JERAS: Right, where the tornado watch is, that's just where the threat of tornadoes is going to be. That doesn't mean that those hurricane force winds are going to be within that boxed area. Hurricane force winds right now extend out about 75 miles from the center of the storm and the storm's about 50 miles away from shore. So go ahead and do the math. Yes, those hurricane force winds are pushing on shore right now.

LIN: Amazing. All right. It's back. We want to go to the scene. Thanks very much Jacqui. We want to go to Gary Tuchman right now, who's in Fort Pierce. That is the eye, where the eye of the storm is literally heading. Gary, you are soaked. What's going on?

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, we can tell you, when it comes to weather, I think there are few things more frightening than a powerful hurricane that comes at night and that's what we have here right now in Florida. Here at Fort Pierce, in St. Lucie County, where the eye wall and the eye and heading, it is profoundly dark outside. Everybody we have seen in this area has no power.

About the only lights we have seen in this area are the lights at the train tracks. The train crossing has been ringing now for five hours, about two blocks from where we're standing and the red lights are on. Obviously there's something wrong with the tracks and that is the only light we've seen. It is very dark and obviously is a very dangerous time and police are very concerned, because they've had a number of problems already.

We are standing right now in Fort Pierce which is on the intercoastal waterway, which is right behind us. You can see the boats. This is the marina. Half a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, Hutchinson Island, is the island, the barrier island that's just behind us. We just took a ride there. We saw lots of damage, a ton of moderate damage and some major damage too, including a restaurant that has collapsed. Completed evacuated, except for one guy who we saw just sitting on a chair in front of his house with 85 mile an hour gusts, don't ask me why, but we did see him.

Here at Fort Pierce, population, 39,000, we have seen virtually no cars on the road this entire day and nothing at all at night. Now police are telling us they've had several stores and houses that have had partial collapses or complete collapses. One Kmart lost its roof and is now flooding. We've also heard from police. They've gotten lots of calls from people who've decided not to go into shelters and there are 5,000 people in shelters in this county alone. This county only has about 200,000 people. So that's one out of every 40 people basically in shelter.

But they're getting calls in the last couple of hours now from frightened people. It's getting dark. Trees have fallen. We're scared. What can you do for us? And police are telling them, right now, stay in your house, get behind as many walls as you can. Stay away from windows, but we can't pick you up. We can't take you to shelter, because you had that chance and we feel it's not safe for us to leave.

So the situation right now, a lot of frightened people to be very frank with you. Lots of trees down, tens of thousands of customers without power and lots of hurricane still to come. Carol, back to you.

LIN: Gary, I know it's been a very wet day for you. Can you give us an idea of how the conditions have changed in your location? The wind, the amount of water that you're experiencing.

TUCHMAN: Starting at 10:30 this morning Carol, the rains started coming down torrentially. The winds picked up to tropical storm force within about an hour. Since then, since 10:30, that means we're talking about 9 1/2 hours now, we've had torrential rain except for about 15 minutes inexplicably a couple of hours ago. If you didn't have radar and you didn't have satellite, people would come out of their houses and would have thought it was all over and then it all picked all over again and this - one thing that we just can't emphasize enough. We always talk about the winds when these hurricanes are coming. But the fact is, we don't talk that much about how big the hurricane is. And what's worse, having 145 mile an hour per hour hurricane that's just small and crosses in two hours or having this, the 105 mile per hour hurricane that takes 30 hours. I would think this is worse.

LIN: Yes. It sure looks like the situation is getting worse there. As you stand, Gary, I know you're operating on - you must be operating on generator power at this point, Gary, because there's no power anywhere else and the curfew is in effect.

TUCHMAN: That's exactly right. We have a generator that's providing us -- this is one light bulb of light that you see me with right now. We have a generator and that gives us enough power to do that and you're right. There's a curfew in effect between 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. If we weren't members of the news media or police, we'd be violating the curfew right now, but we have permission to be out here, telling you and telling the world what's going on right now here at south central Florida.

LIN: And we're lucky for that. Thanks very much Gary, Gary Tuchman in Fort Pierce, Florida.

O'BRIEN: Fifty miles to the north of there is Melbourne, Florida. That's where we find Anderson Cooper along with Chad Myers. Maybe you can ask Chad, Anderson, about this. The current forecast and the current position report from the hurricane center indicates that Frances is 50 miles offshore. Three hours ago, Frances was 50 miles offshore. Now by my reckoning at 5 miles an hour, it should have picked up 15 miles. What's going on?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's one of the things that is so frustrating for residents here. I mean they have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this storm, told one thing, then a few hours later of course that's (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the thing about hurricanes, you just can't predict. Miles O'Brien pointing out that some three hours ago, it was about 50 miles offshore, supposedly moving 5 miles per hour but now it's still about 50 miles per hour. Why isn't it moving like it was supposed to?

CHAD MYERS, METEOROLOGIST: Well, the eye wall, the outside of the eye wall is actually getting much closer. It's almost over Boca right now and that's where the heaviest, I think the strongest winds are going on right now on land. Clearly there's still big winds out in the ocean that haven't got here yet, but the whole thing is getting -- the eye wall is actually smaller, which means the storm is getting stronger and the winds are picking up. I haven't seen an aircraft recon out of there yet. They're still holding that, but I bet in the next 20 minutes, we'll get a new recon that says the winds have picked up, especially at flight level.

COOPER: It changed speed, when it actually hits land, comes ashore, does it change speed at all? Does it change wind speed?

MYERS: Yeah. It slows down because it loses the warm water, but even if it, even if it hits Boca like it's doing right now, we're not -- we still have most of that hurricane over the Gulf stream. So it's not going to lose much power until it actually gets over all land and then maybe toward Orlando or up, toward the other side, out toward Tampa. When it gets over land, it doesn't have the water, it doesn't have the fuel. The way a hurricane works, you take the hot water in the ocean and it evaporates into this thing, just like a steam, if you put your hand over a teapot, you get burnt. When the steam comes off the ocean, the warm water comes off the ocean, it condenses in a hurricane and that condensation gets very hot and that heat goes up like a hot air balloon. That's how you get the swirling, rising motion. That's how you get a hurricane in the first place, that latent heat of condensation is what makes it go. There's a lot of latent heat in the Gulf Stream so that's why it's getting stronger over the Gulf Stream and it will slow down when it gets over land because there's no hot water.

COOPER: It's interesting though. We were just hearing Gary Tuchman from Fort Pierce who has been talking about torrential rains all day. It's not raining here right now and we've got really very little rain relatively speaking.

MYERS: Anderson, I think we've probably had less than half of an inch. We had a couple squalls earlier that will probably raise our totals, because they came in with the first rain bands. But since 9:00 this morning, less than a 1/2 an inch a rain and it's all obviously going sideways. Very little of it is actually falling. I think half of what we feel is actually blowing out of the river here, is the spray that we feel all day. I mean we haven't even got our hair wet all day. It's been crazy.

COOPER: What we have been noticing though just in the last couple of minutes, some explosions on the horizon. What that is is transformers on the barrier islands. You can't see it because it's too dark out. There is still electricity on part of the barrier island at Melbourne Beach but not as much lights on as was before and that's because some of these transformers have exploded.

MYERS: Yes, just in the last probably 15 minutes, we've seen three or four go and something else I just noticed. There were two police cars that just went over the bridge and they said they weren't going to do that. They said if you're in trouble, we're not coming to get you. So there's obviously something going on over there that warrants them going over that bridge. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) winds here just a little bit ago were 82. The winds on top of that bridge Anderson are 100, because it's higher off the ground and they're taking their life into their hands to get over that bridge, obviously to do something very important on that barrier islands.

COOPER: Also the lights on the bridge, you probably can't see it on camera, but there is a bridge going over the barrier island in Melbourne Beach, Melbourne Beach. A lot of the lights have fallen down already.

MYERS: They were falling down when I was over that bridge at 5:00 this afternoon. There was already about 10 of them gone and every once in a while, you see the light go out. You can't see the pole fall over because it's too dark now, but the lights are going out one at a time as those poles are getting knocked off the bridge.

COOPER: All right. Well, it's going to be just the beginning of a long night, Miles and we'll be here.

O'BRIEN: Anderson, I think of those officers having to answer the call of duty. I mean I can only imagine trying to drive across those causeways much less respond to something like that. Do we have reports that there are big pockets of people trying to ride things out there on the beachside?

COOPER: We don't know total numbers. Local officials do have the information about who is still out there. They've taken down peoples' names. They've taken down the next of kin for notification which gives you a sense of how strong they think this storm might be and the worse that could possibly happen, but most people now who cross over there -- it's very hard to get over there -- you actually have to sign a waiver acknowledging that not only do you know what awaits, but you also realize that the police will not come to rescue you. It is very frustrating I think for police officers and any rescue personnel to see people out on the beach, taking pictures, just walking around because for all the documents they sign, you know when push comes to shove, those police officers are going to do their utmost to try to help those people and they could be endangering themselves.

O'BRIEN: Anderson Cooper and Chad Myers In Melbourne. Stay safe, thanks very much. Carol.

LIN: At the center of hurricane Frances, spent much of the afternoon off Palm Beach, Florida and that is way too close for comfort. John Zarrella is braving the elements in West Palm Beach right now. John, obviously the wind's kicking up quite a bit, strangely calm where you are.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Carol, as soon as you throw to me, it gets calm. I can tell you it hasn't been for the past hour. It has been quite intense here, but we are still protected somewhat by the building here and you can take a look up at the trees there. They're still blowing, not as much as they were a few minutes ago. It was I would say definitely gusting pretty close to hurricane force. The rain was coming.

We have seen the same thing here that they are seeing up in Melbourne, with the transformers exploding in the distance, those flashes of blue light and I know we have a shot of the courthouse here in downtown west Palm Beach that's all lit up, probably obviously on generator power. Much of Palm Beach, which is off to my right, you can't see much of anything out there, it is other than a few lights from houses that -- and apartments and condominiums that may have generators, but other than that, it is like pretty much all up and down the east coast of Florida this evening, pitch black darkness, except for the lights from --

Now you can see the wind is really kicking up in those trees as we're getting some of these squalls and gusts of wind blowing through here. A lot more debris beginning to fly around here in West Palm Beach, considerably more debris flying around than there was earlier in the day and again, really starting to howl again here with our pictures up in the trees. I'm sure you can see it. We can feel it certainly, again, even the protection of the building not always sufficient for us here Carol, but so far so good. It hasn't been horrible here and it's just been gusts periodically as you can see and then it'll calm down. We haven't had anything sustained winds that I've seen anywhere approaching hurricane force yet, certainly not sustained. Carol.

LIN: All right. Thanks very much, John Zarrella in West Palm Beach as hurricane Frances now 50 miles off the Florida coast.

O'BRIEN: From Flagla (ph) to Florida City, that's the extent of the hurricane warning. We've got correspondents pretty much up and down that stretch. St. Augustine is near the northern end of the Florida peninsula of course, part of all this. David Mattingly is watching the storm I'm told from there. David.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, the wind continuing to pick up here as well. We can show you what's happening to the street signs here. They're already starting to do that high wind dance that we're so familiar with when weather like this comes in. Also up above, you can see the traffic lights starting to shake and shimmy a little bit in the wind. I know you can't see it now, but beyond there, we just witnessed a spectacular sunset, bright red clouds against a blue sky, very sharp, sharp contrast to what we see happening right now in central and south Florida.

We're expecting to see the edge of this storm which will be plenty for this town, because it is so low, so many low-lying areas. I want you to take a look. This street will probably have some flooding problems when the starts to get here because the drains just can't handle even a quick thunder shower here at times because several parts of this city are below sea level. So we're expecting eight to 10 inches of rain, everyone thinking that flooding is going to be one of the major problems associated with this storm.

Also we have some video we want to show you. This video was shot at the beaches not far from here earlier today. There was a huge project a couple of years ago where the Army Corps of Engineers pumped tons and tons of sand back onto the beach so that this city could still have a beach in an area where it had washed out. Everyone watching that area right now, wondering if beach erosion might cause a lot of that beach, that new beach, to be stripped away. So again, some very large concerns about storm damage on a very large scale here, also concerns about the economy. As you can tell behind me, this town looks deserted right now, when it should be just hopping with tourists celebrating. What this has is a very big holiday on Labor Day weekend. Miles.

O'BRIEN: Not exactly the birthday celebration they expected in St. Augustine, David Mattingly, thank you very much. Carol.

LIN: All right. Well, Shakespeare once said, what's past is prologue and if you take a look at what Florida is about to experience just hours from now, all you have to do is go to the Bahamas. That is where CNN's Karl Penhaul has been reporting from Freeport. He's via phone right now. Karl, the last time I talked to you about an hour ago, the waters had risen, no idea yet the final death toll or injuries, but I know you've got some information. What's the situation there right now?

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's correct Carol. Freeport and the rest of the Grand Bahamas still taking a real battering from the tail of hurricane Frances. In fact the tail end has been much more vicious, much more powerful wind than the leading edge which we saw as yesterday and then in the course of the morning, the eye of the storm passed over the island and the winds did lull, but as I say now, the winds are really vicious ones again and police are saying that they could still last like this for another three or four hours possibly.

Now in the course of the morning, one man about 35 years old was found drowned on the western part of the island. Another man, an 80- year-old is still reported as missing, but conditions out there right now just will not allow emergency services to go out on the hunt unless they specifically know where they're heading.

Earlier in the day, we did head out with a police unit on a bulldozer. They headed out to the north side of the island to try and rescue an elderly couple who simply refused to leave their home. But it was too -- the winds were too powerful. We couldn't get there Carol. Police said that they even feared that the winds could flip the bulldozer. That if it wasn't engulfed by the tidal surge. In some parts of the island now, eight feet of water lying about and that's right through homes. The winds have whipped off the roofs of many homes as well and by the second here at the police control center where we are now, calls are coming (AUDIO GAP) frightened residents...

LIN: All right. That's Karl Penhaul on a satellite phone from the Bahamas from Freeport and clearly the damage still devastating, the waters still very high Miles right now as they try to figure out how many people missing, how many people are dead.

O'BRIEN: Well, I think they're only beginning to really take the toll there in the Bahamas and that's going to be the story for the next couple of days across the Bahamas and into Florida of course.

You never know what you'll see during the middle of a hurricane. We'll take you for a very wet look at the damage in Melbourne, Florida. Stay with us as we continue our coverage of hurricane Frances.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: In addition to our army of correspondents, producers, photographers and satellite technicians up and down the east coast of Florida, we have been relying very heavily all day on the good graces of our affiliates and we do appreciate them for their efforts as a matter of fact. Let's listen to one dispatch we heard a little bit earlier from our affiliate WPBF out of West Palm Beach.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're near a building that we can hear the roof, we can hear some of the sheeting on the roof kind of squealing right now, so if I kind of bail out of this picture, you'll know why. Some of the other things that we saw, we saw the backyard of a woman's home where a sailboat had floated down the intercostal and crashed into her concrete bridge. It was a bridge that had been there since 1939. That bridge is now completely demolished.

As we made our way down to Palm Beach, we saw more yachts and boats that had been pulled from whatever they were, from whatever they were tied down to. One of them had crashed into the north bridge. The mast of that sailboat that we saw crashed over onto the north bridge.

One thing we noticed is that on Palm Beach, the homes in the areas that were closer to the ocean have fared far better than some of the inland properties and some of the inland structures.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: And then we have our very own people out on the road. For example, in Melbourne, which is about midway down Florida's east coast, Chad Myers went for a drive around the area watching conditions go from bad to worse. He joins us now from Melbourne. Chad, you had a chance to drive around the area.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS: ... wind coming across this nice flat water here at the intercostal. Then it will pick up these trees and these trees are basically all just indigenous to the area. They're just sitting here, but they're never trimmed and then all this stuff just gets blown onto the roadway and that's typical of any basically north, south highway, because the winds have been coming in from the ocean, I bet.

Here's where a lot of flooding comes from. You got the clogged drains. Now there's no reason for that water to be there. If those trees weren't there, that would not be flooded. And if those trees stay there the whole time and it keeps raining like it's going to rain 16 inches predicted, this whole intersection is going to be flooded because those limbs are in that gutter right there.

We're trying to do a story about how much the wind is higher up there.

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: OK.

MYERS: Can I get up there?

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: Who you with?

MYERS: CNN.

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: CNN. Need your ID.

MYERS: Look at the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) blowing, just an amazing sight here as we get a little bit higher in altitude, how much harder the winds are blowing right here. You know what, in fact, I'm going to stop the car right here and try to figure out what these guys are going to do but in the meantime I have my little wind vane here. I'm going to stick it out the window, see if I can get a wind speed -- 67, 69 and this is only 63 miles an hour and you can really feel the car. It's 75, that's 78. Right there that's 81 miles an hour. You can feel the car shaking at this point.

Here we go already. This is the back onto the mainland side and we've already lost one light pole here and now this one's on the ground here on the road and if you take a look over to the left, there's a light, light, light, light, light. There are five of them and over here on our side of the road, there are none left, so I'm not sure if they're down there in the intercostal waterway or not. Lost an ice machine right there in this Texaco station and let me tell you, in the days to come, when the power is out, there is nothing more precious than ice. Ice and water. The water's probably going to go out too, because the power goes out, then there aren't really pumps, although in this town, in Melbourne, actually the pumps are hooked up to some backup generators so we may still have water in this town. A lot of towns will not. Ice is just the commodity that everybody needs.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS: And you know, if you still have power and you're still watching us down here and you still have water, put some in your bathtub because you will need that water later. I can't stress it hard enough. In three to five days without water and it's just -- you know how sweaty hot it is here in Florida. You need something to wash off with. You also obviously need something for the toilet water because there's nothing coming out of the spigots at all. When they finally do get it back up, obviously it's going to be contaminated and so you're going to have to boil it or buy it and I can't stress enough about that. Ice man, if you can make some more ice, get it in the cooler and get more in the freezer before your power goes out, just something to keep your -- even beverages cool, but of course all your perishable items that are cool right now in your refrigerator. When that power goes out, that warms up really fast. Guys.

LIN: All right. Thanks very much, Chad, also needing the ice to preserve whatever food you can get in the next few days.

MYERS: Yes, well, of course, yes and we were in Winn-Dixie on Friday in Orlando and the place looked like it was ransacked. There was nothing left. There was like cat food left. You couldn't find a roll of duct tape. You couldn't find water, a couple bottles maybe of Gatorade and some ginseng tea that I bought, because I figured well, at least it's something to drink but the water was completely gone.

LIN: Well, Chad will be well hydrated and at peace with that stocking (ph). All right. Thanks Chad Myers. Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. One thing about a hurricane is it really runs almost the full gamut of every weather possibility. You've got rain. You've got wind. You've got storm surges and flooding. You also get tornadoes. Jacqui Jeras is in the weather center and she's been watching a tornado warning for us at the cape.

JERAS: That's right. We just told you at the top of the hour, we've got the tornado watch in place and now we have our first official warning, tornado warning in effect for northern and central (UNINTELLIGIBLE) County and east central Florida. It does include Cape Canaveral and also Kennedy Space Center until 9:00 right now. It's kind of difficult to see on the radar right here, we don't see any strong hook signatures or anything like that. But we're going to put this into velocity mode and take a look at the wind speed and this is one of the key things. When we say why Doppler radar is so great is because you can see the wind speed and the wind direction and there you can see the little couplet there.

We've got this in the -- there we go -- and the green is moving towards the radar and the red is moving away and so that shows, when you see the green and the red together, just like that, that is the identifier so 40 miles in, 40 miles out so that is the big area of concern. You can see it is just off the cape right now. It's also moving very, very quickly at 65 miles per hour to the west southwest. So again, a tornado warning for northern and central (UNINTELLIGIBLE) County until 9:15.

I want to take you out to our other weather radar computer, our GR1115. If we could switch over to that and show you where the watch is in effect right now. It's just to the south of Jacksonville and it's heading all the way down to West Palm Beach, over towards Fort Myers and also includes (UNINTELLIGIBLE) into Tampa, into Orlando. So this covers a large area where we do have the threat of tornadoes and this watch is in effect until 8:00 tomorrow and we'll probably get a new one to refresh on top of that for tomorrow. So the threat of tornadoes, we're looking at that heavy rain that continues to move very, very slowly.

One other thing Miles, that I want to point out before I go here is that at the top of the hour, when we issued the new advisory, talked about there's been a drop in pressure, down about 10 millibars and we just got a statement back from the National Hurricane Center that there was a typo and it only dropped about 2 millibars. So that's some good news that maybe it's not strengthening like we had initially thought when we see a pressure drop like that.

O'BRIEN: Yes. It's worth reminding folks that as that pressure drops, hurricanes tend to strengthen. Point out just a couple of things about the Cape, the Kennedy Space Center. Those space shuttle orbiters Jacqui, they put the landing gear up and they close the payload bay doors and that puts them 16 feet above sea level, behind doors which are capable of withstanding sustained 120 mile an hour winds. So even with that possibility of tornadoes notwithstanding, it appears the three shuttle fleets should be OK through this, correct?

JERAS: I would think so, yes and when we were looking at that day to day (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 40 miles per hour in, 40 miles per hour out, so that gives you maybe 80 miles per hour. So this is a very weak tornado, maybe an F0 or an F1 and again it actually hasn't been sighted so its radar indicated.

Also another thing to keep in mind, we get these tornado warnings. In a hurricane, we usually can't see them. The rain is coming down so heavy, so they're hidden in that rain shield so when there's a warning, you really need to take it very seriously because you may not see it coming. O'BRIEN: Well, there's nobody there. We do know that. They have vacated the premises, so we don't have to worry about human beings. We do have to worry about the assets for the space program. That's another matter entirely of course on this night in the grand scheme of things, we're concerned about people more than that right now. Jacqui Jeras, thank you very much.

Back with more in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: All right. In addition to our army of correspondents, we have a lot of affiliate help tonight. WSEN, our Miami affiliate has found a story of Hollywood, Florida. Let's listen in for just a moment.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... just like it was snapped out of the ground. You heard it. Crack, just like that, right out of the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: All right. For the good news, no one was hurt. But these two ficus trees are now gone, can't even use them for firewood.

O'BRIEN: All right. Well, we get what we get in this case when we go trolling through the affiliates. We are not too saddened to report the loss of the two ficus trees, given the grand scheme of things. But nevertheless, one little slice of life as we all spend this night watching Frances come ashore.

Now the eye of hurricane Frances still hours away from landfall but the winds and the rain already having an impact as you just saw there in Hollywood and elsewhere. There has been a tornado warning now issued for Brevard County right around the Kennedy Space Center. Jacqui Jeras just told you about that a few moments ago. No way to know whether it is a tornado that has touched down or whether it has developed conditions right for it however. And that's why that tornado warning was put into effect. There's nobody there so we have no way of verifying what's going on there on the ground.

There is a tornado watch for much of Florida. That will be in effect until 8:00 tomorrow morning. Who knows, it might be extended. Whenever there's a hurricane, you're going to have a tornado watch. That goes hand in glove. Power outages, trees are down, including the focuses, heavy rains. Hurricane Frances is more than twice the size of hurricane Charley which three weeks ago went diagonally in the other direction across the Florida peninsula.

LIN: Well, if you've ever nursed a ficus, Miles, you would know that ficus don't like to be moved. So...

O'BRIEN: ... much less a hurricane.

LIN: Much less, indeed. All right. Well, right now, well over a million people in Florida are without electricity. Frances began knocking out power along the coast early this afternoon and reporter (INAUDIBLE from CNN affiliate WFOR (AUDIO GAP) (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: firefighters want you to stay away. I'm now joined by an official just to explain what exactly is going on here. This is breaking right now as we speak. Please, first of all, state your name for me.

LT. JOSEPH: Lieutenant Joseph:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lt. Joseph, what's going on here?

JOSEPH: What we have here is a broken power line. It powers the building here. From the strong winds has snapped and it is arcing on some of the other power lines to the rear here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. And we just get here, rushed here immediately after I saw this. What street are we at? What's going on?

JOSEPH: We're in the 500 block of Gordan Ave. (ph)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gordon Ave. As soon as we saw the smoke up in the air from sunrise in A1A (ph), we immediately jumped in our car and came here. This -- look at it. Just let it run. This thing just keeps on popping. Sir, what would happen -- how many volts is that? That's amazing.

JOSEPH: I'm not really sure. It's definitely high voltage there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what -- if you look right over here, Joachim, if you could pan there, there's some spectators who are seeing it as well, a guy drinking his coffee. What would happen sir, are they allowed to come over here and get as close as we are to see this thing?

JOSEPH: No, no, not at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's your concern about them over there?

JOSEPH: Nothing really with them over there, as far as the power, but my concern is the buildings here catching on fire from this (UNINTELLIGIBLE) coming from the live wire there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well on behalf of CBS 4, our anchors Angela Ray, Ileana Varella (ph), we want to thank you for allowing us to get so close to share this with our viewers and this is exactly why officials strongly recommend that you be careful. That's why we have the mandatory evacuations, according to Broward officials. Why? Because things like this can happen. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) hurricane Frances can continue to come on in, sorry about the low visibility on your lens. There's a light drizzle right now and the gusty winds continue to come in.

O'BRIEN: All right. About 40 minutes ago, we got an update on the situation for hurricane Frances from the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The director of that operation is Max Mayfield. He's a man who in these circumstances apparently doesn't sleep. Max, thanks again for joining us. I'm curious, between the 5:00 advisory, these are 5:00 Eastern times I'm giving, 5:00 and 8:00, in each case it said the eye was 50 miles off shore. This storm though is moving ever so slightly. So clarify that one for me.

MAX MAYFIELD, DIR. NATL HURRICANE CENTER: Well, it is. OK, well, it started with kind of going for a while there parallel to the coastline but it is moving now, that's good news. It's been stalled much of the afternoon and in fact if you look behind me here, you can see that innermost eye wall just about to come onto the coast there in Palm Beach and Martin County, Florida. In fact the Palm Beach International Airport just reported a gust to 74 miles per hour. So that's hurricane force winds right there and they've still got more to come.

O'BRIEN: All right. Well, I don't want to get too far ahead of it here, but does that indicate to you it's taken a little dogleg to the south. Is Fort Pierce still the anticipate landfall or really, when you think about the size of this storm, doesn't really matter that much.

MAYFIELD: It really doesn't matter Miles and that is so important not to focus on the middle of that great big diameter eye there. These (UNINTELLIGIBLE) up here to the north are really really strong, all the way up through Indian River County, Brevard County, around the Cape there. They're going to get pounded and I'll be very surprised if they don't get hurricane force winds up there.

O'BRIEN: All right. Can you remember a storm of this size that came across landfall, such populated areas in recent memory? Is there a hurricane you can recall that was like this?

MAYFIELD: Hurricane Juan meandered off the Louisiana coast for a long, long time or near the coast. But I can't remember one that's taken this long to move across the state of Florida.

O'BRIEN: And what's the concern on these lot slower moving storm? We've established that it has lost some of its intensity, but the fact that it moved so slowly, does that more than make up for the fact that it has lost some of its oomph?

MAYFIELD: Well, Miles, I think the fact that such a large hurricane is going to have a real significant impact. Of course, a storm surge and those batting waves on the east coast always a concern. But strong winds are going to spread across much of the Florida peninsula. We're going to have widespread actually massive I think power outages before this is all over, if those large trees fall down and then with that slower motion, we have to worry about the rainfall. We're forecasting eight to 12 inches of rain. There will likely be some (UNINTELLIGIBLE) amount much higher than that and you can lose your life from many of those hazards and people still need to be very, very vigilant.

O'BRIEN: You know, this long slow march across Florida is something we should focus on. We spend some much time on the coast covering these stories. I remember back three weeks ago in Charley, we got a lesson in how hurricanes can affect the internal parts of Florida. What's your biggest concern as it moves ever so slowly across the peninsula for the next couple of days?

MAYFIELD: Well, I think you've nailed it there Miles. We want to make sure that people know that a hurricane is not just a coastal event. Those strong winds and heavy rains and some isolated tornadoes will spread all the way across the peninsula, come out in the Gulf of Mexico. We may be looking at another landfall Florida panhandle sometime Monday night or so.

O'BRIEN: So really this storm is going to be with us for quite some time.

MAYFIELD: At least for another couple days to get through the state of Florida and then they'll start weakening as it moves up into Alabama and northward from there.

O'BRIEN: No rest for the weary there at the hurricane center, Max Mayfield, thanks for your time, appreciate it.

MAYFIELD: Yes sir, thank you.

O'BRIEN: Carol.

LIN: And certainly no rest for the people who are covering this storm. I want to take you now to Vero Beach and to our affiliate, WPOG. Let's listen in and watch what they're doing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a tree that was uprooted in Sunrise in a yard.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ripped up the grass there and it looks like a carpet and toppled over on top of a fence. That was in Sunrise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a look at this one in Boca Raton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a huge tree. These are banyans, probably a ficus tree. You know the root structure, you can see a wall behind it. That wall is probably five to seven feet so that root structure is probably about 10 to 12 feet across. That shows you the power of the winds in Boca Raton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it's interesting

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Well, the size and the ferocity of the storm, we're talking about of course that hurricane Frances, forced the largest evacuation in Florida history. Many of those people are riding out the storm in shelters. But CNN's Jason Bellini is live in Melbourne, right now at a shelter. Jason, how are people dealing with just waiting for this hurricane it hit and not knowing what's happening to their homes?

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been very frustrating to people. I can tell you that the TVs and there are probably 10 or 15 of them in this shelter are surrounded by people, all of them of course watching the news to see what's happening, what the latest state of the hurricane is and that's just about what everyone is talking about. People here have been told not to leave the shelter. They're in. There are 850 people here. They're not taking any more people. They're told to stay in place, to not even go outside between the various buildings in this enormous shelter that's at Brevard Community College here in Melbourne.

Now we talked to a lot of people, but I want you to meet Carol, this family. We met a mother with her children and they have got an interesting story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BELLINI (voice-over): Meet Madison, Megan and Morgan, all eight months old. Meet Daniel and Dalton, two years old and meet the mom of all five, Lisa Harnell-Hair (ph). She's made the Red Cross shelter a home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Since it's a strange place, the boys have done really well. They think it's a little party or picnic.

BELLINI: Lisa came prepared to stay a while.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We always have the master suite here, brought our own refrigerator and microwave and TV. She moved here Thursday afternoon.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My first big hurricane I guess and we have a lot of windows in the house in the back.

BELLINI: Even with the help of relatives, five children under two is a challenge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They sleep in the tent. We raised up one of the sides so they can stay cool. In case the hurricane hits we all grab a baby and run for shelter and just kind of hold them close. So we kind of have our own little plan. There's five of us adults to juggle and there's five babies of course.

BELLINI: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If the hurricane got really bad here as far as the building and all.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BELLINI: Now Carol, we're told that this shelter is strong enough to withstand at least a category three hurricane and right now it's certainly not that and so we're told by the Red Cross that this mother has no reason to fear, that things are going to be OK as long as people stay here in the shelter, until they're told that it's safe to go back. No idea when that's going to be. Carol.

LIN: Jason, for every parent or anybody who knows young kids and babies hats off to that mom for weathering out this storm at the shelter.

BELLINI: Absolutely. LIN: Jason Bellini. Thank you very much, reporting live in Melbourne.

O'BRIEN: We wish them well.

LIN: Can you believe that?

O'BRIEN: We really wish -- she has got her hands full in so many ways right now. We wish them well.

All right. About 3/4 of the way down the coast from Melbourne to Fort Pierce is the town of Vero Beach and the town of Vero Beach at one point was the projected landfall for the eye. As we have been reporting to you of course, it is a little bit farther to the south, Fort Pierce, but as Max Mayfield pointed out and it is a point well taken, the size of this storm makes that little point of distinction really a difference without a distinction.

Let's -- WPLG is our Miami affiliate. Once again, we want to thank all our affiliates up and down the coast. They have been extraordinary for us all this evening as we borrowed their people and listened in on some of their broadcasts. WPLG had a reporter in Vero Beach and let's listen in on their broadcast a few moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you see any flooding around Vero Beach?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what, we haven't seen a lot of flooding because the wind is blowing so hard, that even though with the rain we're getting, it's blowing a lot of the rain and a lot of the water off to the side of the road so no, we haven't seen much flooding. We have seen some damage, a lot of trees down in this area, power lines. There are about 100,000 people or so (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that are without power. So we've seen a lot of damage. Billboards have come down from their bases and their foundations so a lot of damage, not a lot of flooding at this point, but that is something officials are very concerned about because with this storm moving so slowly, it could just sit over the state and cause up to 20 inches of flooding. Matt, Dwight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keith, this is Don No (ph). I'm a meteorologist here at local 10. I'm looking at the radar. I know where you are and I'm looking at a very heavy band of rain that is rapidly approaching and as bad as you think it is now, it is about to get worse and it looks like it's probably about maybe 10 or 20 minutes away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don, it looks like you're bearer of bad tidings. We weren't looking forward to that news but I guess it's something we were expecting, yes. It certainly feels as if we are getting the early part of this new band that's coming in, so we're just going to ride it out and we'll let you know how things are next time you check with us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Keith is this as bad as you've seen it or was it worse earlier this evening?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, no. This is by far the worst we've seen. Now in the last minute or so, it's actually calmed down a little bit, but this is by far the worst that we've gotten all evening long, again, about three hours ago we had gusts up to 35, close to 40 miles per hour, but the way it feels, I'm pretty sure we've eclipsed those numbers at this point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, now you know you have about 10 to 20 minutes to take cover because the next band is definitely on its way. Keith Carver, thank you for that update from Vero Beach.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: All right. We thank Keith Garding (ph) and WPLG for that and we're going to take a break. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Obviously there are hundreds of people here at CNN bringing you this hurricane coverage and we've got crews all over Florida.

O'BRIEN: We're also proud of our affiliate stations as we have been saying. They are our partners and they are vital to ensuring that we deliver you the most complete and accurate coverage. Here's a sample of some of their reporting about hurricane Frances.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, before the storm, they advised people to make sure that you secure your property and now we see why. When you take a look at the boats here and that's the boat that I was talking about over there, that boat, that damage. Look at that. The mast of that boat just dangling on the side of the road as cars continue to pass by earlier in the day when hurricane Frances already dangerous.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can tell you exactly what does happen when a band moves in. You lose your hat and you almost lose your clothes too and you almost loose your footing and everything else. Welcome to Juno Beach. Of course this is not a picture you'll see on any Chamber of Commerce pamphlet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're doing all right. I'm kind of -- to your right, to your right. We have some metal flying over here to the left of us. It's getting a little dangerous.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ...from here. We're not leaving. This hurricane is going to have to bring us down before we leave.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now, we're sitting here on the pier at Juno Beach. Waves are in excess (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 50 and 70 miles per hour if not more. We understand they were clocked at about 90 not too far from here and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) some people who have (UNINTELLIGIBLE) what are you doing man? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Getting footage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Getting footage. You guys are storm chasers huh?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, I do a little bit of it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How dangerous is it for you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's pretty dangerous out there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, you guys, how dangerous is this for you up here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we're just shooting some footage (UNINTELLIGIBLE) footage. It's mad. It's unbelievable so we're going to roll through the eye now. We just stopped here to check for some surfers. They're not here so we're going to the eye.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just take a look, unbelievable. This thing continues to pop, that is extremely dangerous. Firefighters want you to stay away.

JOSEPH: What we have here is a broken power line. It powers the building here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just look at it. Just let it run. This thing just keeps on popping.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right and we're going to do our best to remain safe out here. As I mentioned, there's only a concern for me personally, but for anyone who's out. This is tough. For anyone who's out, is what do you do? What do you do, when you can't see things that may be flying at you?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: Our continuing coverage of hurricane Frances will continue with Larry King right about now in about three minutes and then Miles and I are going to continue our coverage at 10:00 Eastern.

O'BRIEN: We'll talk to the mayors of Melbourne and Fort Pierce, both places that could bear the real brunt of this dangerous hurricane, but that does not mean it's limited to those two locations. Stay with CNN. We'll be tracking this one all night.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired September 4, 2004 - 20:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In the news now, we welcome you to CNN's special hurricane coverage and here's what's happening all around the world. Hurricane Frances slowly making its way to Florida's east coast. The storm a strong category two right now, maximum winds 105 miles an hour right now. It's about 50 miles offshore, probably inside that now. We have an update at this hour, any moment now, from the hurricane center. We'll bring it to you as soon as we get it.
And also making news today, completely separate story in a whole different part of the world, Los Angeles International Airport getting back to normal after two unrelated security breaches shut it down. In one incident, eight people injured in a small accidental explosion of a flashlight. In the other, a man entered an unauthorized area.

At least 25 have been killed, 40 others wounded in a suicide car bombing in the north Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Sixteen police officers also killed in the fighting in the town of Lapkifa (ph).

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to our special coverage of hurricane Frances. I'm Carol Lin at the CNN global headquarters in Atlanta.

O'BRIEN: And I'm Miles O'Brien. Frances has begun its pounding and we've got reporters of course all along the Florida coast for you. It's been a long day for people up and down Florida's east coast and for that matter, people on the west coast who evacuated. It's going to be a long night for all of them as well, long night for us too. Hurricane Frances packing intense winds and rain, been battering the coast for hours now as you can see. West Palm Beach here and cities farther north have borne the brunt so far. But because Frances is moving at such a slow pace, about the pace of a walk, we're afraid the worst is yet to come.

LIN: It's hardly a walk out there in Florida right now. Miles, we you talking about the latest projection. We have it in. Jacqui Jeras of the weather center, Jacqui what have you learned from the National Hurricane Center?

JACQUI JERAS, METEOROLOGIST: Well, the big difference Carol is that there has been a little bit of a drop in pressure, about 10 millibars and that's somewhat significant. It may show a little bit of a sign of strengthening, but the maximum sustaining winds are the same at 105 miles per hour and the location, check it out, that's about the same too, still about 50 miles away from the coastline.

One other big change that has happened is now the threat of tornadoes in increasing. Of course with hurricanes, you always have a lot of (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and we always do have this threat of tornadoes and there has been a new tornado watch which has been issued which covers much of Florida.

Here's the new things that we have to tell you. Our current wind, 105, still a strong category two. Landfall is still expected some time tonight, maybe midnightish, give or take a little bit of time there. And the strongest winds are arriving, just about now on shore. They should be pushing in within the next couple of hours. We've already had plenty of hurricane force gusts. Now those hurricane force maximum sustained winds should be arriving. That means 74 miles per hour or greater and massive Florida flooding can be expected, locally heavy rain up to 24 inches. We could possibly see eight to 12 inches, become very widespread across the state.

Here's that watch that I was mentioning. It's just to the south of Jacksonville. It includes Orlando down towards Melbourne, into Tampa and it's getting down towards the Palm Beach. This will be in effect until 8:00 tomorrow morning. So in addition to those winds, addition to the storm surge and the flooding, we're now keeping our eyes out for tornadoes, again, though, that's very common in hurricanes.

LIN: So Jacqui, just to be clear for me, that wide area that you're talking about, tons of rain, winds up to 100 miles per hour over that wide swath.

JERAS: In the tornado watch, is that what you're talking about in the box?

LIN: OK. All right.

JERAS: What area are you talking about Carol, I'm not sure what you mean.

LIN: The last thing that you were just talking about is a tornado watch and not just in terms of...

JERAS: Right, where the tornado watch is, that's just where the threat of tornadoes is going to be. That doesn't mean that those hurricane force winds are going to be within that boxed area. Hurricane force winds right now extend out about 75 miles from the center of the storm and the storm's about 50 miles away from shore. So go ahead and do the math. Yes, those hurricane force winds are pushing on shore right now.

LIN: Amazing. All right. It's back. We want to go to the scene. Thanks very much Jacqui. We want to go to Gary Tuchman right now, who's in Fort Pierce. That is the eye, where the eye of the storm is literally heading. Gary, you are soaked. What's going on?

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, we can tell you, when it comes to weather, I think there are few things more frightening than a powerful hurricane that comes at night and that's what we have here right now in Florida. Here at Fort Pierce, in St. Lucie County, where the eye wall and the eye and heading, it is profoundly dark outside. Everybody we have seen in this area has no power.

About the only lights we have seen in this area are the lights at the train tracks. The train crossing has been ringing now for five hours, about two blocks from where we're standing and the red lights are on. Obviously there's something wrong with the tracks and that is the only light we've seen. It is very dark and obviously is a very dangerous time and police are very concerned, because they've had a number of problems already.

We are standing right now in Fort Pierce which is on the intercoastal waterway, which is right behind us. You can see the boats. This is the marina. Half a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, Hutchinson Island, is the island, the barrier island that's just behind us. We just took a ride there. We saw lots of damage, a ton of moderate damage and some major damage too, including a restaurant that has collapsed. Completed evacuated, except for one guy who we saw just sitting on a chair in front of his house with 85 mile an hour gusts, don't ask me why, but we did see him.

Here at Fort Pierce, population, 39,000, we have seen virtually no cars on the road this entire day and nothing at all at night. Now police are telling us they've had several stores and houses that have had partial collapses or complete collapses. One Kmart lost its roof and is now flooding. We've also heard from police. They've gotten lots of calls from people who've decided not to go into shelters and there are 5,000 people in shelters in this county alone. This county only has about 200,000 people. So that's one out of every 40 people basically in shelter.

But they're getting calls in the last couple of hours now from frightened people. It's getting dark. Trees have fallen. We're scared. What can you do for us? And police are telling them, right now, stay in your house, get behind as many walls as you can. Stay away from windows, but we can't pick you up. We can't take you to shelter, because you had that chance and we feel it's not safe for us to leave.

So the situation right now, a lot of frightened people to be very frank with you. Lots of trees down, tens of thousands of customers without power and lots of hurricane still to come. Carol, back to you.

LIN: Gary, I know it's been a very wet day for you. Can you give us an idea of how the conditions have changed in your location? The wind, the amount of water that you're experiencing.

TUCHMAN: Starting at 10:30 this morning Carol, the rains started coming down torrentially. The winds picked up to tropical storm force within about an hour. Since then, since 10:30, that means we're talking about 9 1/2 hours now, we've had torrential rain except for about 15 minutes inexplicably a couple of hours ago. If you didn't have radar and you didn't have satellite, people would come out of their houses and would have thought it was all over and then it all picked all over again and this - one thing that we just can't emphasize enough. We always talk about the winds when these hurricanes are coming. But the fact is, we don't talk that much about how big the hurricane is. And what's worse, having 145 mile an hour per hour hurricane that's just small and crosses in two hours or having this, the 105 mile per hour hurricane that takes 30 hours. I would think this is worse.

LIN: Yes. It sure looks like the situation is getting worse there. As you stand, Gary, I know you're operating on - you must be operating on generator power at this point, Gary, because there's no power anywhere else and the curfew is in effect.

TUCHMAN: That's exactly right. We have a generator that's providing us -- this is one light bulb of light that you see me with right now. We have a generator and that gives us enough power to do that and you're right. There's a curfew in effect between 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. If we weren't members of the news media or police, we'd be violating the curfew right now, but we have permission to be out here, telling you and telling the world what's going on right now here at south central Florida.

LIN: And we're lucky for that. Thanks very much Gary, Gary Tuchman in Fort Pierce, Florida.

O'BRIEN: Fifty miles to the north of there is Melbourne, Florida. That's where we find Anderson Cooper along with Chad Myers. Maybe you can ask Chad, Anderson, about this. The current forecast and the current position report from the hurricane center indicates that Frances is 50 miles offshore. Three hours ago, Frances was 50 miles offshore. Now by my reckoning at 5 miles an hour, it should have picked up 15 miles. What's going on?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's one of the things that is so frustrating for residents here. I mean they have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this storm, told one thing, then a few hours later of course that's (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the thing about hurricanes, you just can't predict. Miles O'Brien pointing out that some three hours ago, it was about 50 miles offshore, supposedly moving 5 miles per hour but now it's still about 50 miles per hour. Why isn't it moving like it was supposed to?

CHAD MYERS, METEOROLOGIST: Well, the eye wall, the outside of the eye wall is actually getting much closer. It's almost over Boca right now and that's where the heaviest, I think the strongest winds are going on right now on land. Clearly there's still big winds out in the ocean that haven't got here yet, but the whole thing is getting -- the eye wall is actually smaller, which means the storm is getting stronger and the winds are picking up. I haven't seen an aircraft recon out of there yet. They're still holding that, but I bet in the next 20 minutes, we'll get a new recon that says the winds have picked up, especially at flight level.

COOPER: It changed speed, when it actually hits land, comes ashore, does it change speed at all? Does it change wind speed?

MYERS: Yeah. It slows down because it loses the warm water, but even if it, even if it hits Boca like it's doing right now, we're not -- we still have most of that hurricane over the Gulf stream. So it's not going to lose much power until it actually gets over all land and then maybe toward Orlando or up, toward the other side, out toward Tampa. When it gets over land, it doesn't have the water, it doesn't have the fuel. The way a hurricane works, you take the hot water in the ocean and it evaporates into this thing, just like a steam, if you put your hand over a teapot, you get burnt. When the steam comes off the ocean, the warm water comes off the ocean, it condenses in a hurricane and that condensation gets very hot and that heat goes up like a hot air balloon. That's how you get the swirling, rising motion. That's how you get a hurricane in the first place, that latent heat of condensation is what makes it go. There's a lot of latent heat in the Gulf Stream so that's why it's getting stronger over the Gulf Stream and it will slow down when it gets over land because there's no hot water.

COOPER: It's interesting though. We were just hearing Gary Tuchman from Fort Pierce who has been talking about torrential rains all day. It's not raining here right now and we've got really very little rain relatively speaking.

MYERS: Anderson, I think we've probably had less than half of an inch. We had a couple squalls earlier that will probably raise our totals, because they came in with the first rain bands. But since 9:00 this morning, less than a 1/2 an inch a rain and it's all obviously going sideways. Very little of it is actually falling. I think half of what we feel is actually blowing out of the river here, is the spray that we feel all day. I mean we haven't even got our hair wet all day. It's been crazy.

COOPER: What we have been noticing though just in the last couple of minutes, some explosions on the horizon. What that is is transformers on the barrier islands. You can't see it because it's too dark out. There is still electricity on part of the barrier island at Melbourne Beach but not as much lights on as was before and that's because some of these transformers have exploded.

MYERS: Yes, just in the last probably 15 minutes, we've seen three or four go and something else I just noticed. There were two police cars that just went over the bridge and they said they weren't going to do that. They said if you're in trouble, we're not coming to get you. So there's obviously something going on over there that warrants them going over that bridge. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) winds here just a little bit ago were 82. The winds on top of that bridge Anderson are 100, because it's higher off the ground and they're taking their life into their hands to get over that bridge, obviously to do something very important on that barrier islands.

COOPER: Also the lights on the bridge, you probably can't see it on camera, but there is a bridge going over the barrier island in Melbourne Beach, Melbourne Beach. A lot of the lights have fallen down already.

MYERS: They were falling down when I was over that bridge at 5:00 this afternoon. There was already about 10 of them gone and every once in a while, you see the light go out. You can't see the pole fall over because it's too dark now, but the lights are going out one at a time as those poles are getting knocked off the bridge.

COOPER: All right. Well, it's going to be just the beginning of a long night, Miles and we'll be here.

O'BRIEN: Anderson, I think of those officers having to answer the call of duty. I mean I can only imagine trying to drive across those causeways much less respond to something like that. Do we have reports that there are big pockets of people trying to ride things out there on the beachside?

COOPER: We don't know total numbers. Local officials do have the information about who is still out there. They've taken down peoples' names. They've taken down the next of kin for notification which gives you a sense of how strong they think this storm might be and the worse that could possibly happen, but most people now who cross over there -- it's very hard to get over there -- you actually have to sign a waiver acknowledging that not only do you know what awaits, but you also realize that the police will not come to rescue you. It is very frustrating I think for police officers and any rescue personnel to see people out on the beach, taking pictures, just walking around because for all the documents they sign, you know when push comes to shove, those police officers are going to do their utmost to try to help those people and they could be endangering themselves.

O'BRIEN: Anderson Cooper and Chad Myers In Melbourne. Stay safe, thanks very much. Carol.

LIN: At the center of hurricane Frances, spent much of the afternoon off Palm Beach, Florida and that is way too close for comfort. John Zarrella is braving the elements in West Palm Beach right now. John, obviously the wind's kicking up quite a bit, strangely calm where you are.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Carol, as soon as you throw to me, it gets calm. I can tell you it hasn't been for the past hour. It has been quite intense here, but we are still protected somewhat by the building here and you can take a look up at the trees there. They're still blowing, not as much as they were a few minutes ago. It was I would say definitely gusting pretty close to hurricane force. The rain was coming.

We have seen the same thing here that they are seeing up in Melbourne, with the transformers exploding in the distance, those flashes of blue light and I know we have a shot of the courthouse here in downtown west Palm Beach that's all lit up, probably obviously on generator power. Much of Palm Beach, which is off to my right, you can't see much of anything out there, it is other than a few lights from houses that -- and apartments and condominiums that may have generators, but other than that, it is like pretty much all up and down the east coast of Florida this evening, pitch black darkness, except for the lights from --

Now you can see the wind is really kicking up in those trees as we're getting some of these squalls and gusts of wind blowing through here. A lot more debris beginning to fly around here in West Palm Beach, considerably more debris flying around than there was earlier in the day and again, really starting to howl again here with our pictures up in the trees. I'm sure you can see it. We can feel it certainly, again, even the protection of the building not always sufficient for us here Carol, but so far so good. It hasn't been horrible here and it's just been gusts periodically as you can see and then it'll calm down. We haven't had anything sustained winds that I've seen anywhere approaching hurricane force yet, certainly not sustained. Carol.

LIN: All right. Thanks very much, John Zarrella in West Palm Beach as hurricane Frances now 50 miles off the Florida coast.

O'BRIEN: From Flagla (ph) to Florida City, that's the extent of the hurricane warning. We've got correspondents pretty much up and down that stretch. St. Augustine is near the northern end of the Florida peninsula of course, part of all this. David Mattingly is watching the storm I'm told from there. David.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, the wind continuing to pick up here as well. We can show you what's happening to the street signs here. They're already starting to do that high wind dance that we're so familiar with when weather like this comes in. Also up above, you can see the traffic lights starting to shake and shimmy a little bit in the wind. I know you can't see it now, but beyond there, we just witnessed a spectacular sunset, bright red clouds against a blue sky, very sharp, sharp contrast to what we see happening right now in central and south Florida.

We're expecting to see the edge of this storm which will be plenty for this town, because it is so low, so many low-lying areas. I want you to take a look. This street will probably have some flooding problems when the starts to get here because the drains just can't handle even a quick thunder shower here at times because several parts of this city are below sea level. So we're expecting eight to 10 inches of rain, everyone thinking that flooding is going to be one of the major problems associated with this storm.

Also we have some video we want to show you. This video was shot at the beaches not far from here earlier today. There was a huge project a couple of years ago where the Army Corps of Engineers pumped tons and tons of sand back onto the beach so that this city could still have a beach in an area where it had washed out. Everyone watching that area right now, wondering if beach erosion might cause a lot of that beach, that new beach, to be stripped away. So again, some very large concerns about storm damage on a very large scale here, also concerns about the economy. As you can tell behind me, this town looks deserted right now, when it should be just hopping with tourists celebrating. What this has is a very big holiday on Labor Day weekend. Miles.

O'BRIEN: Not exactly the birthday celebration they expected in St. Augustine, David Mattingly, thank you very much. Carol.

LIN: All right. Well, Shakespeare once said, what's past is prologue and if you take a look at what Florida is about to experience just hours from now, all you have to do is go to the Bahamas. That is where CNN's Karl Penhaul has been reporting from Freeport. He's via phone right now. Karl, the last time I talked to you about an hour ago, the waters had risen, no idea yet the final death toll or injuries, but I know you've got some information. What's the situation there right now?

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's correct Carol. Freeport and the rest of the Grand Bahamas still taking a real battering from the tail of hurricane Frances. In fact the tail end has been much more vicious, much more powerful wind than the leading edge which we saw as yesterday and then in the course of the morning, the eye of the storm passed over the island and the winds did lull, but as I say now, the winds are really vicious ones again and police are saying that they could still last like this for another three or four hours possibly.

Now in the course of the morning, one man about 35 years old was found drowned on the western part of the island. Another man, an 80- year-old is still reported as missing, but conditions out there right now just will not allow emergency services to go out on the hunt unless they specifically know where they're heading.

Earlier in the day, we did head out with a police unit on a bulldozer. They headed out to the north side of the island to try and rescue an elderly couple who simply refused to leave their home. But it was too -- the winds were too powerful. We couldn't get there Carol. Police said that they even feared that the winds could flip the bulldozer. That if it wasn't engulfed by the tidal surge. In some parts of the island now, eight feet of water lying about and that's right through homes. The winds have whipped off the roofs of many homes as well and by the second here at the police control center where we are now, calls are coming (AUDIO GAP) frightened residents...

LIN: All right. That's Karl Penhaul on a satellite phone from the Bahamas from Freeport and clearly the damage still devastating, the waters still very high Miles right now as they try to figure out how many people missing, how many people are dead.

O'BRIEN: Well, I think they're only beginning to really take the toll there in the Bahamas and that's going to be the story for the next couple of days across the Bahamas and into Florida of course.

You never know what you'll see during the middle of a hurricane. We'll take you for a very wet look at the damage in Melbourne, Florida. Stay with us as we continue our coverage of hurricane Frances.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: In addition to our army of correspondents, producers, photographers and satellite technicians up and down the east coast of Florida, we have been relying very heavily all day on the good graces of our affiliates and we do appreciate them for their efforts as a matter of fact. Let's listen to one dispatch we heard a little bit earlier from our affiliate WPBF out of West Palm Beach.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're near a building that we can hear the roof, we can hear some of the sheeting on the roof kind of squealing right now, so if I kind of bail out of this picture, you'll know why. Some of the other things that we saw, we saw the backyard of a woman's home where a sailboat had floated down the intercostal and crashed into her concrete bridge. It was a bridge that had been there since 1939. That bridge is now completely demolished.

As we made our way down to Palm Beach, we saw more yachts and boats that had been pulled from whatever they were, from whatever they were tied down to. One of them had crashed into the north bridge. The mast of that sailboat that we saw crashed over onto the north bridge.

One thing we noticed is that on Palm Beach, the homes in the areas that were closer to the ocean have fared far better than some of the inland properties and some of the inland structures.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: And then we have our very own people out on the road. For example, in Melbourne, which is about midway down Florida's east coast, Chad Myers went for a drive around the area watching conditions go from bad to worse. He joins us now from Melbourne. Chad, you had a chance to drive around the area.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS: ... wind coming across this nice flat water here at the intercostal. Then it will pick up these trees and these trees are basically all just indigenous to the area. They're just sitting here, but they're never trimmed and then all this stuff just gets blown onto the roadway and that's typical of any basically north, south highway, because the winds have been coming in from the ocean, I bet.

Here's where a lot of flooding comes from. You got the clogged drains. Now there's no reason for that water to be there. If those trees weren't there, that would not be flooded. And if those trees stay there the whole time and it keeps raining like it's going to rain 16 inches predicted, this whole intersection is going to be flooded because those limbs are in that gutter right there.

We're trying to do a story about how much the wind is higher up there.

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: OK.

MYERS: Can I get up there?

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: Who you with?

MYERS: CNN.

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: CNN. Need your ID.

MYERS: Look at the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) blowing, just an amazing sight here as we get a little bit higher in altitude, how much harder the winds are blowing right here. You know what, in fact, I'm going to stop the car right here and try to figure out what these guys are going to do but in the meantime I have my little wind vane here. I'm going to stick it out the window, see if I can get a wind speed -- 67, 69 and this is only 63 miles an hour and you can really feel the car. It's 75, that's 78. Right there that's 81 miles an hour. You can feel the car shaking at this point.

Here we go already. This is the back onto the mainland side and we've already lost one light pole here and now this one's on the ground here on the road and if you take a look over to the left, there's a light, light, light, light, light. There are five of them and over here on our side of the road, there are none left, so I'm not sure if they're down there in the intercostal waterway or not. Lost an ice machine right there in this Texaco station and let me tell you, in the days to come, when the power is out, there is nothing more precious than ice. Ice and water. The water's probably going to go out too, because the power goes out, then there aren't really pumps, although in this town, in Melbourne, actually the pumps are hooked up to some backup generators so we may still have water in this town. A lot of towns will not. Ice is just the commodity that everybody needs.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS: And you know, if you still have power and you're still watching us down here and you still have water, put some in your bathtub because you will need that water later. I can't stress it hard enough. In three to five days without water and it's just -- you know how sweaty hot it is here in Florida. You need something to wash off with. You also obviously need something for the toilet water because there's nothing coming out of the spigots at all. When they finally do get it back up, obviously it's going to be contaminated and so you're going to have to boil it or buy it and I can't stress enough about that. Ice man, if you can make some more ice, get it in the cooler and get more in the freezer before your power goes out, just something to keep your -- even beverages cool, but of course all your perishable items that are cool right now in your refrigerator. When that power goes out, that warms up really fast. Guys.

LIN: All right. Thanks very much, Chad, also needing the ice to preserve whatever food you can get in the next few days.

MYERS: Yes, well, of course, yes and we were in Winn-Dixie on Friday in Orlando and the place looked like it was ransacked. There was nothing left. There was like cat food left. You couldn't find a roll of duct tape. You couldn't find water, a couple bottles maybe of Gatorade and some ginseng tea that I bought, because I figured well, at least it's something to drink but the water was completely gone.

LIN: Well, Chad will be well hydrated and at peace with that stocking (ph). All right. Thanks Chad Myers. Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. One thing about a hurricane is it really runs almost the full gamut of every weather possibility. You've got rain. You've got wind. You've got storm surges and flooding. You also get tornadoes. Jacqui Jeras is in the weather center and she's been watching a tornado warning for us at the cape.

JERAS: That's right. We just told you at the top of the hour, we've got the tornado watch in place and now we have our first official warning, tornado warning in effect for northern and central (UNINTELLIGIBLE) County and east central Florida. It does include Cape Canaveral and also Kennedy Space Center until 9:00 right now. It's kind of difficult to see on the radar right here, we don't see any strong hook signatures or anything like that. But we're going to put this into velocity mode and take a look at the wind speed and this is one of the key things. When we say why Doppler radar is so great is because you can see the wind speed and the wind direction and there you can see the little couplet there.

We've got this in the -- there we go -- and the green is moving towards the radar and the red is moving away and so that shows, when you see the green and the red together, just like that, that is the identifier so 40 miles in, 40 miles out so that is the big area of concern. You can see it is just off the cape right now. It's also moving very, very quickly at 65 miles per hour to the west southwest. So again, a tornado warning for northern and central (UNINTELLIGIBLE) County until 9:15.

I want to take you out to our other weather radar computer, our GR1115. If we could switch over to that and show you where the watch is in effect right now. It's just to the south of Jacksonville and it's heading all the way down to West Palm Beach, over towards Fort Myers and also includes (UNINTELLIGIBLE) into Tampa, into Orlando. So this covers a large area where we do have the threat of tornadoes and this watch is in effect until 8:00 tomorrow and we'll probably get a new one to refresh on top of that for tomorrow. So the threat of tornadoes, we're looking at that heavy rain that continues to move very, very slowly.

One other thing Miles, that I want to point out before I go here is that at the top of the hour, when we issued the new advisory, talked about there's been a drop in pressure, down about 10 millibars and we just got a statement back from the National Hurricane Center that there was a typo and it only dropped about 2 millibars. So that's some good news that maybe it's not strengthening like we had initially thought when we see a pressure drop like that.

O'BRIEN: Yes. It's worth reminding folks that as that pressure drops, hurricanes tend to strengthen. Point out just a couple of things about the Cape, the Kennedy Space Center. Those space shuttle orbiters Jacqui, they put the landing gear up and they close the payload bay doors and that puts them 16 feet above sea level, behind doors which are capable of withstanding sustained 120 mile an hour winds. So even with that possibility of tornadoes notwithstanding, it appears the three shuttle fleets should be OK through this, correct?

JERAS: I would think so, yes and when we were looking at that day to day (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 40 miles per hour in, 40 miles per hour out, so that gives you maybe 80 miles per hour. So this is a very weak tornado, maybe an F0 or an F1 and again it actually hasn't been sighted so its radar indicated.

Also another thing to keep in mind, we get these tornado warnings. In a hurricane, we usually can't see them. The rain is coming down so heavy, so they're hidden in that rain shield so when there's a warning, you really need to take it very seriously because you may not see it coming. O'BRIEN: Well, there's nobody there. We do know that. They have vacated the premises, so we don't have to worry about human beings. We do have to worry about the assets for the space program. That's another matter entirely of course on this night in the grand scheme of things, we're concerned about people more than that right now. Jacqui Jeras, thank you very much.

Back with more in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: All right. In addition to our army of correspondents, we have a lot of affiliate help tonight. WSEN, our Miami affiliate has found a story of Hollywood, Florida. Let's listen in for just a moment.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... just like it was snapped out of the ground. You heard it. Crack, just like that, right out of the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: All right. For the good news, no one was hurt. But these two ficus trees are now gone, can't even use them for firewood.

O'BRIEN: All right. Well, we get what we get in this case when we go trolling through the affiliates. We are not too saddened to report the loss of the two ficus trees, given the grand scheme of things. But nevertheless, one little slice of life as we all spend this night watching Frances come ashore.

Now the eye of hurricane Frances still hours away from landfall but the winds and the rain already having an impact as you just saw there in Hollywood and elsewhere. There has been a tornado warning now issued for Brevard County right around the Kennedy Space Center. Jacqui Jeras just told you about that a few moments ago. No way to know whether it is a tornado that has touched down or whether it has developed conditions right for it however. And that's why that tornado warning was put into effect. There's nobody there so we have no way of verifying what's going on there on the ground.

There is a tornado watch for much of Florida. That will be in effect until 8:00 tomorrow morning. Who knows, it might be extended. Whenever there's a hurricane, you're going to have a tornado watch. That goes hand in glove. Power outages, trees are down, including the focuses, heavy rains. Hurricane Frances is more than twice the size of hurricane Charley which three weeks ago went diagonally in the other direction across the Florida peninsula.

LIN: Well, if you've ever nursed a ficus, Miles, you would know that ficus don't like to be moved. So...

O'BRIEN: ... much less a hurricane.

LIN: Much less, indeed. All right. Well, right now, well over a million people in Florida are without electricity. Frances began knocking out power along the coast early this afternoon and reporter (INAUDIBLE from CNN affiliate WFOR (AUDIO GAP) (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: firefighters want you to stay away. I'm now joined by an official just to explain what exactly is going on here. This is breaking right now as we speak. Please, first of all, state your name for me.

LT. JOSEPH: Lieutenant Joseph:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lt. Joseph, what's going on here?

JOSEPH: What we have here is a broken power line. It powers the building here. From the strong winds has snapped and it is arcing on some of the other power lines to the rear here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. And we just get here, rushed here immediately after I saw this. What street are we at? What's going on?

JOSEPH: We're in the 500 block of Gordan Ave. (ph)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gordon Ave. As soon as we saw the smoke up in the air from sunrise in A1A (ph), we immediately jumped in our car and came here. This -- look at it. Just let it run. This thing just keeps on popping. Sir, what would happen -- how many volts is that? That's amazing.

JOSEPH: I'm not really sure. It's definitely high voltage there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what -- if you look right over here, Joachim, if you could pan there, there's some spectators who are seeing it as well, a guy drinking his coffee. What would happen sir, are they allowed to come over here and get as close as we are to see this thing?

JOSEPH: No, no, not at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's your concern about them over there?

JOSEPH: Nothing really with them over there, as far as the power, but my concern is the buildings here catching on fire from this (UNINTELLIGIBLE) coming from the live wire there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well on behalf of CBS 4, our anchors Angela Ray, Ileana Varella (ph), we want to thank you for allowing us to get so close to share this with our viewers and this is exactly why officials strongly recommend that you be careful. That's why we have the mandatory evacuations, according to Broward officials. Why? Because things like this can happen. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) hurricane Frances can continue to come on in, sorry about the low visibility on your lens. There's a light drizzle right now and the gusty winds continue to come in.

O'BRIEN: All right. About 40 minutes ago, we got an update on the situation for hurricane Frances from the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The director of that operation is Max Mayfield. He's a man who in these circumstances apparently doesn't sleep. Max, thanks again for joining us. I'm curious, between the 5:00 advisory, these are 5:00 Eastern times I'm giving, 5:00 and 8:00, in each case it said the eye was 50 miles off shore. This storm though is moving ever so slightly. So clarify that one for me.

MAX MAYFIELD, DIR. NATL HURRICANE CENTER: Well, it is. OK, well, it started with kind of going for a while there parallel to the coastline but it is moving now, that's good news. It's been stalled much of the afternoon and in fact if you look behind me here, you can see that innermost eye wall just about to come onto the coast there in Palm Beach and Martin County, Florida. In fact the Palm Beach International Airport just reported a gust to 74 miles per hour. So that's hurricane force winds right there and they've still got more to come.

O'BRIEN: All right. Well, I don't want to get too far ahead of it here, but does that indicate to you it's taken a little dogleg to the south. Is Fort Pierce still the anticipate landfall or really, when you think about the size of this storm, doesn't really matter that much.

MAYFIELD: It really doesn't matter Miles and that is so important not to focus on the middle of that great big diameter eye there. These (UNINTELLIGIBLE) up here to the north are really really strong, all the way up through Indian River County, Brevard County, around the Cape there. They're going to get pounded and I'll be very surprised if they don't get hurricane force winds up there.

O'BRIEN: All right. Can you remember a storm of this size that came across landfall, such populated areas in recent memory? Is there a hurricane you can recall that was like this?

MAYFIELD: Hurricane Juan meandered off the Louisiana coast for a long, long time or near the coast. But I can't remember one that's taken this long to move across the state of Florida.

O'BRIEN: And what's the concern on these lot slower moving storm? We've established that it has lost some of its intensity, but the fact that it moved so slowly, does that more than make up for the fact that it has lost some of its oomph?

MAYFIELD: Well, Miles, I think the fact that such a large hurricane is going to have a real significant impact. Of course, a storm surge and those batting waves on the east coast always a concern. But strong winds are going to spread across much of the Florida peninsula. We're going to have widespread actually massive I think power outages before this is all over, if those large trees fall down and then with that slower motion, we have to worry about the rainfall. We're forecasting eight to 12 inches of rain. There will likely be some (UNINTELLIGIBLE) amount much higher than that and you can lose your life from many of those hazards and people still need to be very, very vigilant.

O'BRIEN: You know, this long slow march across Florida is something we should focus on. We spend some much time on the coast covering these stories. I remember back three weeks ago in Charley, we got a lesson in how hurricanes can affect the internal parts of Florida. What's your biggest concern as it moves ever so slowly across the peninsula for the next couple of days?

MAYFIELD: Well, I think you've nailed it there Miles. We want to make sure that people know that a hurricane is not just a coastal event. Those strong winds and heavy rains and some isolated tornadoes will spread all the way across the peninsula, come out in the Gulf of Mexico. We may be looking at another landfall Florida panhandle sometime Monday night or so.

O'BRIEN: So really this storm is going to be with us for quite some time.

MAYFIELD: At least for another couple days to get through the state of Florida and then they'll start weakening as it moves up into Alabama and northward from there.

O'BRIEN: No rest for the weary there at the hurricane center, Max Mayfield, thanks for your time, appreciate it.

MAYFIELD: Yes sir, thank you.

O'BRIEN: Carol.

LIN: And certainly no rest for the people who are covering this storm. I want to take you now to Vero Beach and to our affiliate, WPOG. Let's listen in and watch what they're doing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a tree that was uprooted in Sunrise in a yard.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ripped up the grass there and it looks like a carpet and toppled over on top of a fence. That was in Sunrise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a look at this one in Boca Raton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a huge tree. These are banyans, probably a ficus tree. You know the root structure, you can see a wall behind it. That wall is probably five to seven feet so that root structure is probably about 10 to 12 feet across. That shows you the power of the winds in Boca Raton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it's interesting

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Well, the size and the ferocity of the storm, we're talking about of course that hurricane Frances, forced the largest evacuation in Florida history. Many of those people are riding out the storm in shelters. But CNN's Jason Bellini is live in Melbourne, right now at a shelter. Jason, how are people dealing with just waiting for this hurricane it hit and not knowing what's happening to their homes?

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been very frustrating to people. I can tell you that the TVs and there are probably 10 or 15 of them in this shelter are surrounded by people, all of them of course watching the news to see what's happening, what the latest state of the hurricane is and that's just about what everyone is talking about. People here have been told not to leave the shelter. They're in. There are 850 people here. They're not taking any more people. They're told to stay in place, to not even go outside between the various buildings in this enormous shelter that's at Brevard Community College here in Melbourne.

Now we talked to a lot of people, but I want you to meet Carol, this family. We met a mother with her children and they have got an interesting story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BELLINI (voice-over): Meet Madison, Megan and Morgan, all eight months old. Meet Daniel and Dalton, two years old and meet the mom of all five, Lisa Harnell-Hair (ph). She's made the Red Cross shelter a home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Since it's a strange place, the boys have done really well. They think it's a little party or picnic.

BELLINI: Lisa came prepared to stay a while.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We always have the master suite here, brought our own refrigerator and microwave and TV. She moved here Thursday afternoon.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My first big hurricane I guess and we have a lot of windows in the house in the back.

BELLINI: Even with the help of relatives, five children under two is a challenge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They sleep in the tent. We raised up one of the sides so they can stay cool. In case the hurricane hits we all grab a baby and run for shelter and just kind of hold them close. So we kind of have our own little plan. There's five of us adults to juggle and there's five babies of course.

BELLINI: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If the hurricane got really bad here as far as the building and all.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BELLINI: Now Carol, we're told that this shelter is strong enough to withstand at least a category three hurricane and right now it's certainly not that and so we're told by the Red Cross that this mother has no reason to fear, that things are going to be OK as long as people stay here in the shelter, until they're told that it's safe to go back. No idea when that's going to be. Carol.

LIN: Jason, for every parent or anybody who knows young kids and babies hats off to that mom for weathering out this storm at the shelter.

BELLINI: Absolutely. LIN: Jason Bellini. Thank you very much, reporting live in Melbourne.

O'BRIEN: We wish them well.

LIN: Can you believe that?

O'BRIEN: We really wish -- she has got her hands full in so many ways right now. We wish them well.

All right. About 3/4 of the way down the coast from Melbourne to Fort Pierce is the town of Vero Beach and the town of Vero Beach at one point was the projected landfall for the eye. As we have been reporting to you of course, it is a little bit farther to the south, Fort Pierce, but as Max Mayfield pointed out and it is a point well taken, the size of this storm makes that little point of distinction really a difference without a distinction.

Let's -- WPLG is our Miami affiliate. Once again, we want to thank all our affiliates up and down the coast. They have been extraordinary for us all this evening as we borrowed their people and listened in on some of their broadcasts. WPLG had a reporter in Vero Beach and let's listen in on their broadcast a few moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you see any flooding around Vero Beach?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what, we haven't seen a lot of flooding because the wind is blowing so hard, that even though with the rain we're getting, it's blowing a lot of the rain and a lot of the water off to the side of the road so no, we haven't seen much flooding. We have seen some damage, a lot of trees down in this area, power lines. There are about 100,000 people or so (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that are without power. So we've seen a lot of damage. Billboards have come down from their bases and their foundations so a lot of damage, not a lot of flooding at this point, but that is something officials are very concerned about because with this storm moving so slowly, it could just sit over the state and cause up to 20 inches of flooding. Matt, Dwight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keith, this is Don No (ph). I'm a meteorologist here at local 10. I'm looking at the radar. I know where you are and I'm looking at a very heavy band of rain that is rapidly approaching and as bad as you think it is now, it is about to get worse and it looks like it's probably about maybe 10 or 20 minutes away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don, it looks like you're bearer of bad tidings. We weren't looking forward to that news but I guess it's something we were expecting, yes. It certainly feels as if we are getting the early part of this new band that's coming in, so we're just going to ride it out and we'll let you know how things are next time you check with us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Keith is this as bad as you've seen it or was it worse earlier this evening?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, no. This is by far the worst we've seen. Now in the last minute or so, it's actually calmed down a little bit, but this is by far the worst that we've gotten all evening long, again, about three hours ago we had gusts up to 35, close to 40 miles per hour, but the way it feels, I'm pretty sure we've eclipsed those numbers at this point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, now you know you have about 10 to 20 minutes to take cover because the next band is definitely on its way. Keith Carver, thank you for that update from Vero Beach.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: All right. We thank Keith Garding (ph) and WPLG for that and we're going to take a break. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Obviously there are hundreds of people here at CNN bringing you this hurricane coverage and we've got crews all over Florida.

O'BRIEN: We're also proud of our affiliate stations as we have been saying. They are our partners and they are vital to ensuring that we deliver you the most complete and accurate coverage. Here's a sample of some of their reporting about hurricane Frances.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, before the storm, they advised people to make sure that you secure your property and now we see why. When you take a look at the boats here and that's the boat that I was talking about over there, that boat, that damage. Look at that. The mast of that boat just dangling on the side of the road as cars continue to pass by earlier in the day when hurricane Frances already dangerous.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can tell you exactly what does happen when a band moves in. You lose your hat and you almost lose your clothes too and you almost loose your footing and everything else. Welcome to Juno Beach. Of course this is not a picture you'll see on any Chamber of Commerce pamphlet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're doing all right. I'm kind of -- to your right, to your right. We have some metal flying over here to the left of us. It's getting a little dangerous.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ...from here. We're not leaving. This hurricane is going to have to bring us down before we leave.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now, we're sitting here on the pier at Juno Beach. Waves are in excess (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 50 and 70 miles per hour if not more. We understand they were clocked at about 90 not too far from here and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) some people who have (UNINTELLIGIBLE) what are you doing man? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Getting footage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Getting footage. You guys are storm chasers huh?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, I do a little bit of it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How dangerous is it for you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's pretty dangerous out there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, you guys, how dangerous is this for you up here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we're just shooting some footage (UNINTELLIGIBLE) footage. It's mad. It's unbelievable so we're going to roll through the eye now. We just stopped here to check for some surfers. They're not here so we're going to the eye.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just take a look, unbelievable. This thing continues to pop, that is extremely dangerous. Firefighters want you to stay away.

JOSEPH: What we have here is a broken power line. It powers the building here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just look at it. Just let it run. This thing just keeps on popping.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right and we're going to do our best to remain safe out here. As I mentioned, there's only a concern for me personally, but for anyone who's out. This is tough. For anyone who's out, is what do you do? What do you do, when you can't see things that may be flying at you?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: Our continuing coverage of hurricane Frances will continue with Larry King right about now in about three minutes and then Miles and I are going to continue our coverage at 10:00 Eastern.

O'BRIEN: We'll talk to the mayors of Melbourne and Fort Pierce, both places that could bear the real brunt of this dangerous hurricane, but that does not mean it's limited to those two locations. Stay with CNN. We'll be tracking this one all night.

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