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CNN Live Saturday
Bad Weather in the West; Noor Surgeon Speaks
Aired December 31, 2005 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN BREAKING NEWS.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: Dramatic pictures of a rescue from a flooded river in California. A swiftwater rescue team pulls a woman from her submerged car. The woman was trapped for an hour and a half. She was taken to the hospital and treated for exposure. And there has been widespread flooding in Northern California. The rescue was one of several reported in the region today.
Monica McNeal is in the Weather Center, keeping a close watch of things, and apparently they're not out of the woods just yet. More bad weather could be on the way, dumping more rain.
MONICA MCNEAL, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely. And I tell you what, it's one bad situtation, going to another bad situation. Now, most of the folks out there need to switch to severe weather mode, which basically means you're going to be dealing with the possibility of some hail, some very gusty winds. We've seen wind reports gusting up to about 50 miles per hour, and more heavy rainfall.
As you take a look at what is going on, you're certainly noticing there is a tremendous amount of watches and warnings. The flood warnings extend all the way from Redding from I-5 all the way down to parts of San Francisco, back to down Sacramento and extending all the way into the central interior parts of California. So just about the entire state is under some type of warning with all of this very, very heavy rain fall. Lets show you the heavy rain fall, the latest radar showing this schwa line racing through parts of Stopton (ph), it is moving at about 40 miles per hour. As of right now right around Napa you are getting a break.
Right around the San Francisco area you are seeing somewhat of a light break, and also into Santa Rosa you are dealing with a break right now. But there is yet more rain to enter into the forecast. We will continue to see these lines of showers and thunderstorms moving through the region, just about all day.
As we take a look a little bit farther south across parts of Los Angeles you're under the gun as well for some heavy rainfall, all of this stuff is moving in your direction, so later on this afternoon, you're going to be dealing with some very, very wet conditions. As we look at the satellite to show you kind of the big picture of what's going on, take a look at this large system. This has a big comma shape system that's pounding the coast right now. But as we take look out toward the west here is yet another system so this is what we've been talking about the one-two punch, this is number one and that storm system number two, that's going to be the next powerful punch. Here's the forecast look over the next couple of days what's going to happen in Los Angeles. A high today of 63 with rain, and then on Sunday looks like 63 and possibly a good chance of rain for that Rose Parade. I know you haven't seen rain for the parade in about 50 years. That may certainly change with a high temperature of 63 degrees and some rain in your forecast.
Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Monica, just help me piece together the portions there in northern California that are experiencing a lot of this water. We've got Marin County, Sonoma, as well as Napa, all of them reporting a large amount of water. We've seen the pictures. Now we're looking at the Sacramento area where we're seeing them doing some sandbagging there. Are we talking about less than a foot of rain, many inches of rain or are we talking about feet of rain in a short amount of time?
MCNEAL: As of right now, over the past 24 hours, most of the valleys have gotten two to four inches of rainfall, Fredricka, and then mountainous regions four to eight. Now we're going to add more rainfall in additional one to two inches of rainfall. That's why generally most of these areas are dealing with this heavy rainfall and they've already spilled out of their streams and out of their banks so that's why we're seeing some flooding in mainly the street areas and then the neighborhoods and as we can't say this enough, if you are traveling, are driving, please, don't try to drive in the water, because you just never know how much rainfall is already come down.
WHITFIELD: Right, it's very deceiving. We talked to an emergency services person out of Sonoma (ph) County a little bit ago. She was saying how you can have a few inches of rainwater on the ground.
MCNEAL: Right.
WHITFIELD: People are driving fairly confidently, and think nothing of it and suddenly they find themselves in feet of rainwater and really get themselves into trouble, just like apparently this woman.
MCNEAL: Right.
WHITFIELD: Somehow got into some serious trouble there in the Soma area, before the Swiftwater rescue teams were able to pull her from her vehicle after an hour and a half.
MCNEAL: I do want to add too; once you get underneath one of these heavy thunderstorm cells it dumps a copious amount of rainfall in a just minutes. When they issue the flash flood warnings, folks, please be on the lookout. We are talking about one to two inches of rainfall in an hour, that's a lot of rainfall coming down in a short amount of time. You really have to be careful when you're running into these situations and that's really what the scenario is on the west coast and we'll be dealing with that through the rest of today and even into tomorrow. WHITFIELD: OK Monica, thanks so much. We want to drop in and listen into our affiliate coverage out of Sacramento, UPN 31 affiliate KMAX. Let's listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE SMITH: You get an idea of geography and first of all let's look at Sierra County, particularly Sierra Valley, which is an upscale residential development northwest of Reno. Highways 49, 89 and county road, A-23 are closed at this point, which means that Sierra Valley is temporarily isolated. We just spoke with the Sierra County S.O. just about ten minutes ago. So far no evacuations there. The other route through the Sierra is highway 70, up through the federal river canyon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Big problems there right?
SMITH: Big problems there, because it is closed from Greenville and the Jarbo Gap, just absolutely closed. A lot of debris, just a mess up there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You also had big fires, about four or five months ago?
SMITH: There were a couple of fires up there and that has not helped the situation at all simply because when you have fire it leaves a lot of bare earth, you get a lot of rain and it falls down on the canyon, so caldrons has been really busy on Highway 70.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So we've been talking down here since I-80 is blocked and a lot of people might expect to go up highway 89 or around Paradise over 70 but those are blocked. You can't get to Reno from there.
SMITH: You really can't get there from here. It's difficult to do. You have to take the long way around. Susanville, U.S. 395 got closed from county road E-3 just outside of our town to 22 miles north, terminal grasshopper road because of some roads flooding. They diverted southbound traffic north of Susanville south to highway 139, and back connecting to 395 that way. Highway 32, which is the road from highway 36, just west of Chester, down to Chico, that was closed all night long but that has been reopened. That's a good sign. We've had a couple of local closures, for example, well a lot of folks who commute to Susanville's two cruises, they had to find the long way around today.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So inconvenient and dangerous. Mike Smith you are the news director with Sierra Radio, obviously going to be a long day for you. We'll check back in with you if you don't mind in a little bit and check on 70 with the mudslides. We're getting some live pictures from a familiar place.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes Doug Brenner lives in Sacramento, not far from Loman's Plaza Mall. Jason Howe, CBS 13 reporter is at your house this morning.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks, I appreciate that. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We'll get him on the phone. We just lost him. We'll try to get back to him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are you doing? Normally you're nervous, all the things you are, but normally you're unflappable. I got to say your voice as we were watching you tour your home it was hard for me to hear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was my home. That was the first time I had gone back in and I hesitated to do that without practicing but I said let's take a look at it while we were rolling tape and this is what you're looking at now a live picture. If we get our photographer to pan to the right if he can hear us, my home is the very last one on the right. You could see the water there, still significant and as he's panning over at the very end there, it is a two-story home so the second story fortunately is has not been touched by the water but the first floor had some four and a half, five feet of water.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then the cleanup, when the water resides. The mold. Jason Howe from CBS 13 is on the live now. Jason can you hear us?
JASON HOWE: U can hear you. I've got some good news for Doug. The water has actually dropped here. If you take a look at that wall over there you can see the high water mark, it's dropped about looks like a foot and a half so far, dropped a couple of inches since I've been here, about a half an hour. Again we've been talking to different residents here. They say they woke up this morning at 6:00 a.m., they heard security on the telephone telling them to move their cars because that end of the complex towards Northup Avenue flooded and the cars were in probably about two feet of water. You saw a couple of feet of water inside a lot of the units.
Now, what's interesting about this, again, you know, we really don't think about elevation here in Sacramento. We think of the whole area being flat but if you move around over to this side you can see this end of the complex is completely dry. The problem here, I'm told, is that we're at the confluence of a couple of canals. Again, as Doug said earlier, the amount of water that was just falling in the immediate area was so great that it overwhelmed the canals and overflowed into the complex. Security guards here tell me in 1997, things were actually a lot higher, things could be worse but again, if you are in a flooded unit, well, can't be much worse than it already is.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Pretty bad and that is a huge condominium complex, how much units?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: You've been listening to our affiliate live coverage out of Sacramento, KMAX, UPN 31 station talking about the flooding that is taking place there in many parts of northern California. We're going to continue our coverage but for now we'll take a short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) WHITFIELD: We're continuing to watch the situation out in northern and central California, where a whole lot of rain ever since yesterday and continuing throughout the weekend is causing a lot of flooding, in some cases flash flooding, in other casing small creeks and streams are going over their banks, causing real problems from inches of standing water, into feet of standing water.
Ray Leonard is the Sonoma County operational center public information officer, and joins us on the phone right now, and Ray, we're looking at images from all parts, from Sonoma County to Napa, to Sacramento, et cetera, and we're seeing a similar situation, rushing water in some cases. What's happening there in Sonoma County?
RAY LEONARD, SONOMA CO. OPERATIONAL CTR (via telephone): Well, we do have what you're seeing on those pictures is rushing water. We have flooding in the low-lying areas especially in the river area, as well as localized flooding, low-lying areas.
WHITFIELD: OK, if you don't mind speaking up a little bit into your receiver so we can hear you a little bit.
LEONARD: Absolutely.
WHITFIELD: Earlier I was speaking to one of your colleagues, Janice Atkinson with the emergency services and she was talking about the Russian River in particular that was cresting or threatening to crest.
LEONARD: Yes, it's anticipated at 1:00 p.m. today it will be at 41 feet and then by 2:00 tomorrow morning, it will be at 45 feet. With flood stage being at 34 feet.
WHITFIELD: OK, and also a lot of people think Sonoma County, Napa County, they think about the wineries, the vineyard, they don't think about the heavy residential communities. Paint a picture for us. When you talk about some of these creeks and rivers, particularly the Russian River possibly rising even further, how many residents are in jeopardy?
LEONARD: Well, that's hard to say at this point. In the last flood we evacuated 430 people from the river area, which is the Russian River, in the Guerneville and Monte Rio areas. That area has grown since the last flood, and from '97, so it could possibly be, you know, even 100 to 200 more people in that area since it has grown so much. Sonoma County is a combination of urban and rural areas and the area we're talking about is west of the largest incorporated areas, Santa Rosa, and is affected because of the Russian River, which runs from Mendocino County down through Sonoma County and out to the ocean at Jenner and the high tide, of course, has a major effect on how the river is flowing, and we're coming up to high tide so the river doesn't have anywhere to flow to, that with saturation of the ground and the river already full from rain in the last week and a half or so is causing real problems in those areas, bridges.
We have numerous road closures, damage to asphalt, mudslides in a number of different areas. So we've encouraged people, although we're not doing a mandatory evacuation it is highly recommended they get out. We cannot evacuate tonight. We cannot help them once it gets dark because of the dangers that are there, so we're encouraging everyone to evacuate and go to shelters. Right now we have --
WHITFIELD: Are you giving folks like a time line right now or a deadline for them to get out of that area by a certain amount of time?
LEONARD: Well we're not giving them any deadlines. We're recommending before nightfall because we have no means of getting them transportation in there to them. We've arranged high water vehicles to come in and help people get to the shelters. We've got shelters in the Sebastopol area, we have shelters in the Petaluma areas, and we evacuated two mobile home parks. We've had six homes evacuated in the valley area due to mudslides, so those have been evacuated and have gone to shelters.
WHITFIELD: Now is it a threat of mudslides or are the mudslides actually happened?
LEONARD: The mudslides have actually happened.
WHITFIELD: Wow and you know we look at some of these pictures, and most of the images show a very flat region, but we also know that Napa and Sonoma are filled with lots of peaks and valleys, aren't they?
LEONARD: Yeah, the incorporated areas of Sonoma County is in the valley, we're surrounded by beautiful rolling hills that cause the runoff to come down into the low-lying areas. It's a great place to live unless it's raining six inches in the daytime so you know; we are affected considerably in that area.
WHITFIELD: Well, now how unusual is this? If we're talking about, depending on what portion of northern California you're in, anything from one to two inches of rain, to four to six or four to eight inches of rain, those numbers seem pretty insignificant when you look at the images of the standing water that is in some cases in feet, measured in feet.
LEONARD: Absolutely. What you've got going on here is a combination, the ground is saturated now due to the recent storms, so there's nowhere for the water to go into the ground, you know, the vegetation and the earth can only hold so much, and then it has to be runoff. With the high tide, we've got a lot of tidal concerns with the areas of the creeks that feed the tributaries into Pebble Bay and Bodega Bay.
WHITFIELD: Ray, if I could interrupt you for a moment and explain the video we're seeing right now. You mentioned mudslides actually happening. We have some images in the Santa Rosa area that are documenting indeed the mudslides that have happened and we're seeing what appear to be firefighters and other rescue workers that have responded to at least this one residence, where it even appears that some of the vehicles in front of the house, images we just saw a few frames ago demonstrated that there was some damage to the vehicles as well. LEONARD: Absolutely. I mean, we've heard reports of people being in their cars and having water up to their knees, we've had reports of cars being filled up to their windows, empty cars, fortunately. We have had six rescues. So it is a serious time. You don't want to be driving through these puddles. You don't know how deep they are or anything else.
WHITFIELD: It is dangerous, indeed. Ray Leonard, thank you so much for being with us.
LEONARD: You bet.
WHITFIELD: Sonoma County Operational Center, PIO. I'm going to let you get back to your duties because we know that you guys are pretty overwhelmed and there's a great need for you. Thank you so much Ray.
Also on the telephone with us out of Marin County not far from there is a resident of that county, Diane Vellers is on the line with us. Diane, what are you experiencing?
DIANE VELLERS, MARIN COUNTY RESIDENT (via telephone): Hi, good morning. Well, you know, this morning our house is on Tamalpias Road in Fairfax and we're literally on the side of the mountain. There are 53 steps from the street to my front door so it's a pretty steep sloap. This morning, my husband ran up to the stairs and said, "Give me the keys to your car. I got to get our car out of here."
WHITFIELD: Really?
VELLERS: So I threw him the keys, and I grabbed my video camera and ran down my stairs, to see basically a wall of mud that's probably three to four feet deep come down our road, and just take out trees, the trees were crashing into cars, and smashing the cars through people's fences and tipping them over the sides of the, you know, because we're all on a hill. So if your car goes through the fence, your car is going to go over the embankment into someone's yard below, and it's just total craziness. I've never seen anything like it in my life.
WHITFIELD: So even though you've lived in Marin County perhaps awhile, you haven't experienced anything like this, given the threat of heavy rain?
VELLERS: We bought this house five months ago.
WHITFIELD: Oh, no!
VELLERS: And we bought a family home. We moved to Marin County to Fairfax to buy the house that my husband grew up in, so his family has owned this home for 35 years. And no, they've never experienced anything like this. As a matter of fact, last night, when the rains were coming down so hard, my husband kept assuring me, you know, "we haven't had slides up here in years. There's not going to be any problem. Slide." And sure enough, we had two slides. We had a slide behind our house that it just dump a bunch of mud onto our lower deck, and then we had a slide on the other side up the hill a little bit from our house, so there were two separate slides and all of the neighbors were in the street trying to dig out the dirt because the neighbors across the street on the lower side of the hill, you know, the mud went into their homes.
WHITFIELD: Oh, my gosh, how much mud are we talking about in terms of depth?
VELLERS: Well, when we left, when we left, I'm literally in my car with my family right now, we took our neighbors with us with our dogs, their kids, and just we had to hike up the hill, up the mountainside with our backpacks and our children and our dogs to get to higher elevation to get our cars.
WHITFIELD: Was it dark at the time this was happening?
VELLERS: No, this was like in the, two and a half hours ago.
WHITFIELD: We know for some people who have experienced the mudslides or the flash floods it was in the darkness earlier this morning and so visibility, of course, was a big challenge. Now what, about your neighbors, talking with them and they're helping you out and everybody's helping one another out, how is everybody managing? How are they coping?
VELLERS: Well, I mean, I think everybody's pretty shook up. Like I said, most of the people in our neighborhood have been there for a pretty long time, and it's not something that they are accustomed to seeing. We just haven't had slide issues evidently on our hill, and so everyone's, you know, everyone's upset, of course. And you know, we left. The police came and evacuated us. So I don't know what the condition of our homes are right now.
WHITFIELD: Well, Diane Vellers, good luck to you, and your friends and neighbors there and family a resident of Marin County. We're going to continue to watch the developments out of north and central California, with very severe conditions as a result of a lot of rainfall, and in addition, after we take a short break, we want to update you on an Iraqi 3-month-old baby who is suffering from a birth defect, life-threatening birth defect. And now thanks to great cooperation of military personnel, as well as some civilian medical personnel here in the states, now this baby is on the way to the U.S. we'll give you an idea of how the efforts, how her journey is coming along of baby Noor. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Any moment now, we expect that this little baby girl, 3-month-old Iraqi girl baby Noor will land in the U.S. with family members to get some potentially life-saving medical attention here in Atlanta. Just moments ago, one of the doctors who is expected to perform one of the surgeries or help administer the medical care to baby Noor held a pres conference at Atlanta's Harts field-Jackson Airport, Dr. Roger Hodgkins, Hudgins I'm sorry, of Children's Health Care. Let's listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ROGER HUDGINS, NEUROSURGEON: I'm the least prepared of all because I didn't know I was supposed to give a prepared talk but I'm just the local pediatric neurosurgeon who just happened to get a phone call from the hospital, asking me if I would participate and be involved, and this has turned into something beyond anything I've ever been part of, but I'll just tell you how much of a joy it's been to watch the outpouring of emotion and the outpouring. I think, from around the country of what's going on here. Obviously good works happen every day in Iraq, and good works happen with the soldiers, and we hear all of the negative. It's about time, I think that, we've had the opportunity to hear some of the good, and I really appreciate my small role in this. Thank you.
We will go ahead and take questions, and then I'll let you know what we're going to do after this.
QUESTION: Doctor, may I ask you a couple of questions. I know it's very tough, having not done an evaluation on this little girl to figure out exactly what her prognosis is. Given what you do know about it and what is possible with corrective surgery, give me a sense of what you think her condition is, and what her chances for a relatively normal life will be, once she has been through this surgery.
HUDGINS: Yeah, difficult, but I can speak in generalities. Spina bifida is a common neurological congenital anomaly, and what happens is, the spine just doesn't -- the spinal cord does not close over, like it should, and when that happens, you can have the loss of all the function below that level, and typically, in the worst case scenario that means you're a paraplegic, you can't walk and have bowel and bladder problems, but spinal bifida also is a systemic disease in the sense that it affects the brain it affects the brain structure.
It can affect your intellect and a lot of other issues. We as pediatric surgeons follow the children from 0 through 21 or however how far we follow them. At each step along the way, there are new problems, trying to make that a long-winded answer, but my hope is that this child will, number one, be intellectually and cognitively normal. I think that almost certainly, there will be some catch up that has to take place, once we get through just the first medical part of this. But our goal just is not just to close in the back and put in a shunt and do this, that and the other but to care for the child in totality.
QUESTION: Given the fact that the surgery, had this child been born in this country, this surgery could have happened in (INAUDIBLE) as well as the first days of life. How much of a medical obstacle is it now that she is 3 months old and you have to go in and try to do the corrective surgery now?
HUDGINS: Surgically, this is now a significant undertaking, because what I can see from the pictures it appears as if skin has grown up over this thing, and with spina bifida typically a child is born and there's a clear sac that you see and at the top of that is actually the opened up spinal cord, so this spinal cord is open to the air, and that's why most of these babies are actually delivered by cesarean section, so that the mother doesn't contract on the spinal cord and cause potentially more deficits. But it's relatively easy from a neuro surgical standpoint, once they're here because we see the spinal cord and we can dissect it free and put it back where it belongs, I'm a little concerned we may not even see the spinal cord because the skin has rapidly grown up over the sac as it typically does.
I think that's a good thing in the sense that's probably what has kept her alive because that's prevented spinal fluid leakage, it has prevented germs from growing in so the baby hasn't developed meningitis so it's a good thing for her but presents a technical challenge for us.
QUESTION: As far as you could guess, what would be the immediate need that you would need to address surgically?
HUDGINS: Well, first we're going to bring the child back to the hospital to get a general evaluation, and for me to take a look at her from a neurosurgical standpoint. There are certain things that would precipitate a reasonably quick surgery, an expedited surgery, one of which is if she's leaking spinal fluid out of the sac we'd have to do the surgery within the next couple of days. Again, the risk there is if we don't there's a risk of meningitis.
So those type of assessments will need to be made but the first surgery is to close the back and to fix the defect.
QUESTION: What's the timeframe on evaluation surgery?
HUDGINS: It's going to take a number of days, if things are stable, because again, it goes back to the fact that this child, number one, is coming from a foreign country, so we need to make sure that she's healthy and capable of withstanding a surgery. It certainly looks like she is from the short video clips that I've seen, but we need to take a day or two and make sure that everything is stable.
Then, if we have the time, I'd like to get a CT scan of the head to look for fluid buildup, which is hydrocephalus, 90 percent of children with spina bifida have that, and again, to your question, we want to make this child developmentally and cognitively as normal as possible, and hydrocephalus can prevent that.
QUESTION: In the immediate 24 hours?
HUDGINS: Right, yes. Yes.
QUESTION: What's going on in the immediate 24 hours?
HUDGINS: In the immediate 24 hours, is an assessment of the child and surgery, if spinal fluid is leaking.
QUESTION: In the fact she's survived this long without surgery, I mean, does that give you a sense that her chances with surgery are probably pretty good or is that not indicative of anything?
HUDGINS: I think that the chances for her survival, hopefully, are good, yes.
QUESTION: What about paralysis and things like that?
HUDGINS: I just don't know at this point. I just do not know.
QUESTION: Possible, probable?
HUDGINS: Can't say. Again, statistically speaking in spina bifida, most children do have some forms of deficits. It can be as mild as simple bladder problems, and it can be as severe as paralysis. Most children are somewhere in between.
QUESTION: Doctor, if you're able to do this surgery successfully, how long do you anticipate it will be before the baby would be in a healthy shape before return to Iraq?
HUDGINS: Probably one to two months.
QUESTION: How long is the surgery?
HUDGINS: The surgery will probably take about three hours.
QUESTION: And then what after that? You said there might be another surgery or a third?
HUDGINS: Right. The first surgery would be to close the back to prevent the problems with meningitis to get skin over that area. The next surgery, if it occurs, would be a shunt surgery that, is drainage of the fluid that's in the brain down to the abdomen.
QUESTION: Doctor, all eyes are on you watching this whole process. Can you just tell us on an emotional level how you're feeling, having (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
HUDGINS: I think reasonably confident, I've done this before. I should probably let the family know that, too. What is unusual, though, is that most pediatric neurosurgeons don't have the opportunity to do a delayed case like this. This just doesn't happen in our country anymore. I've done, operated on two children in my career that were delayed, the oldest being eight, and that was a child that was told to go home and die, and the child didn't. And the long- term, so why would do you that? Well, the long-term implications are that most of these children will eventually die of something else whether it's kidney problems or even skin cancer, so there's a reason even at a late date to operate on these. So yeah, I'm feeling pretty good about it, thank you.
WHITFIELD: Hopeful words coming from Dr. Roger Hudgkin -- Hudgins of the Children's Healthcare Hospital out of Atlanta, talking about the hope that he hopes to provide through surgery to Baby Noor, once the baby arrives from Iraq to Atlanta, that happening any moment now.
Meantime, right now, out of the Sacramento area, because our affiliate KCRA is able to provide for us this video of a woman in the back of her pickup truck, as you're seeing there, when you see this raging waters, this is becoming a common scene throughout many parts of northern and central California, today. Let's listen in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And, absolutely, well, we're having law enforcement is just arriving on scene. Yeah guys, just keep following right down river and you'll see she's right literally right below me. She seems to be doing well. She's sitting in the back of the truck, she is holding tight. You can get down there, some trees and some wires to the due east, but be careful, might be better for a boat.
Yeah well, actually Fire Copter 1, Fire Copter 1, they did just dispatched them. They do have a hoist so, as we saw in the past floods, they'll come over and drop that hoist down with the horse collar. Don't know if they'll send a rescue fireman down, probably. They'll put her in the hoist, lift her back up and into the helicopter and get her over to dry land. So, as long as the water doesn't raise and that truck stays nice and solid, she should be safe.
Well, the worst part, though, was as soon as we got here, she was very upset, as you could well tell and she was actually considering jumping out of the back of that truck. You could she there say little water in the truck, as it was kind of turning and sliding off the road, there was quite a bit of water going into the truck, so she was obviously very freaked out, getting ready to jump into the water. We were able to coax her to stay in the truck. My buddy Cecil, obviously, he landed, they actually went out and yelled at her to stay in the truck until authorities could arrive. Well we called them and got them out of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and get them up here to rescue this gal.
WHITFIELD: Remarkable images coming out of the Sacramento area. On the left-hand side of your screen you're seeing a woman, who is in the back of your pickup truck. You heard the reporters in the chopper and on the ground talk about the situation of that woman how, in spotting her at first, it appeared as though she was quite emotional, and looked like she might even consider jumping out of the truck and into the water, but then from above out of the chopper, they were able to yell to her, "Stay where you are," right there in the cab of her truck, awaiting a potential rescue and they described how the chopper that's been flying overhead involving the fire department they just might drop some sort of hoist. But, of course, we're going to keep a close watch on that.
Now, the Rankin Valley Fire Department representative Doug Williams is on the line with us, and perhaps, Doug, you can give us an idea of when you come across a situation like this, just like, apparently, another fire fighting helicopter has, involving this woman, we hear that they just might drop some sort of a hoist or rope to her to pull her back up -- in a situation like this, what would your fire department ordinarily do?
DOUG WILLIAMS, RANKIN VALLEY FIRE DEPT: Well, I have to say that the operation of helicopters is not universal to every fire department, and in our particular county, it's actually the sheriff's office that would probably do something like that, but they would normally drop somebody down to assist the person that's in need of help, and bring them back to safety through that process. WHITFIELD: And Doug, we don't know the specific location of where this young lady is, in her truck, but we did see, based on some videotape earlier today, out of the Selma, California, area, the swiftwater rescue team coming to a woman who was trapped in her vehicle, and it was still dark, it was early this morning. Are you hearing on your radio that a lot of these types of rescues today are taking place as a result of all of this raging water?
WILLIAMS: Well, there is certainly a tremendous variety of things that have been going on, some of them have been the swiftwater rescues, a lot of them have been the stranded folks. We did have an incident in the city of Santa Rosa that started late last night, early into this morning where it took almost an hour to free an occupant of a home that was -- and they were working, you know, through the mudslide and so forth, to free the debris, and had to do shoring to protect the firefighters and that type of thing.
WHITFIELD: And this is a tough situation, isn't it, Doug? Because you've got a few different scenarios, from floodwaters, flash floods, to even mudslides, and now we're also hearing about some evacuations taking place in the Sonoma County area, as well.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, absolutely. There are dozens of incidents that have occurred since last night, at one point I was told that we had 40 pending requests for service in queue, just based on the demand for all the things that were going on, and as you mentioned, all those things have been happening at one point or another.
WHITFIELD: What's your greatest concern right now? More rain is expected in the forecast.
WILLIAMS: Well, right now the -- we do have a little bit of a lull, with some of the precipitation, so I think my main concern is, what's going to happen with the areas that collect all the runoff, and that is the Russian River, the lagoon, those types of areas, and they will continue to rise for another few hours at least, and the numbers that we're being told are pretty significant, in terms of how high the river's going to get especially out in the Guerneville area.
WHITFIELD: Doug Williams of the Rankin Valley Fire Department, thanks so much for taking the time. I know you all are going to be busy over the next few hours and thanks for updating us.
Battalion Chief Andy Pforsick out of Santa Rosa is also on the line with us. And Chief, what is the situation where you are out of Santa Rosa, we saw images earlier of mudslides. Is that your biggest problem?
BATTALION CHIEF ANDY PFORSICK, SANTA ROSA FIRE DEPT.: Well not typically. We do have one or two or per stormy event, but typically out in the steeper terrain, out along the river in the canyon territory, out toward the coast, they have a number of them. The one we had early this morning, well, starting at just before midnight last night, though, was the most significant one I had ever responded to.
WHITFIELD: And we're looking at images right now, Chief as you and I speak, we've been watching this young lady in the back of her pickup truck where apparently, some journalists said, they thought it looked like she was going to jump out of the truck and into the water, and they talked her into staying and in a wider view we're seeing a fire engine truck make its way to her to perhaps attempt some sort of rescue. So, as you and continue to talk, I just wanted to describe the images that we're seeing right now.
You've got mudslides, you've got standing water and some places just inches and others, we're talking about feet of standing water. Flash flooding is also a problem. How significant is that in the Santa Rosa area?
PFORSICK: Well, we experienced more surface water issues last night than we had ever. In fact, people who lived here over 30 years said they saw water coming over the road out of its creek banks and over bridges in places they had not ever seen it before. And mostly it was just the creek swelling so fast because there was so much rain, so steady that the water level was coming up.
Our issues typically are not of a swiftwater nature, they're mostly just rising water that's fairly still. Although it's a panicky situation for someone, and seeing the movement of the water and the water rising and being cold, it just, it just distorts and compresses your ability to make judgment decisions and I believe that's what you're seeing with a person who wants to jump out of a vehicle into the water.
WHITFIELD: And chief, at what point does is the decision made to involve the fire department? I know each jurisdiction is different, to involve the fire department in a water rescue effort like this, is that particularly in a case when, perhaps there is not a swiftwater rescue crew available?
PFORSICK: All of our crews in Sonoma County are trained to some extent in swiftwater and every member of the Santa Rosa Fire Department is extensively trained in swiftwater, including a major drill exercise we just had last week at the peak flow through Santa Rosa Creek, with scenarios just as we would expect to encounter.
WHITFIELD: And this is really potentially very dangerous for your crews as well, even if -- even though they are very well-trained. We saw in images earlier during the rescue efforts of a woman in her truck that the jet skies that were being used were overcome by, you know, the current of the water. Talk to me about the potential dangers that your swiftwater crews then do face from time to time.
PFORSICK: Well, with the proper training and with buoyancy equipment and wet suits or dry suits, it's actually, it's amazing how much control you have of your direction of flow in the creek. However, the issues are a lot the issues of the incidents occur in the evening. People fall into the creek from homeless encampments and things, and locating them and then getting into the water in a timely enough fashion in order to rescue them can be challenging and the other thing is the rescuers encounter things we call strainers, which are obstacles in the creek, trees and things like that. If you get caught into one of those, you can get pulled in and down and that can really be a problem.
WHITFIELD: All right, and chief, I want to you stay on the line with me as we can just listen in for a moment to the rescue efforts currently underway for that woman who is in her truck. You and I will talk a little bit after we listen in to these folks in the rescue efforts.
PFORSICK: Okay.
WHITFIELD: All right, chief it looks like they've taken a break from conversing on the air and on the ground. I don't know if you are in front of a television set, but let me just try to describe for you what we're seeing. Say about 50 yards away from the woman in the truck are two people who are kind of on high ground, the highest ground possible next to all that water, and then up above is a chopper. It looks as though, perhaps, that fire engine that was nearby made a decision to stay put, perhaps the water was too deep. How might they be coordinating communications right now?
PFORSICK: Does it look like that helicopter has rescue capability? A long line or anything?
WHITFIELD: I don't see anything protruding from the chopper, right now. It seems to be circling. And you know what? Now I see someone who is sort of repelling down.
PFORSICK: OK, good. That is a rescue helicopter, then.
WHITFIELD: Yeah.
PFORSICK: The issue for the fire engine is we feel as though the clearance from the water is adequate, but all it takes is to fall into a ditch or a low spot, and if that fire engine falls off that road surface because they can't see it, then they become part of the problem instead of the solution. So, they are probably communicating by radio to that rescue helicopter, and getting them prepared to come in, and that's the best thing to pick her out of that truck and then they'll be finished with it.
WHITFIELD: In this air rescue is probably the safest route, isn't it, of all of your options to try to rescue this woman because one of the scenarios that you just described that there could be deeper pockets?
PFORSICK: Right. All of these rescue efforts escalate from the least risky to the most risky and throwing an object to them or grabbing them with a pole from the edge is the best option, all the way up to them getting into the water with them, running a rubber boat out from a telpher (ph) line to that victim, and if we have overhead clearance, no canopy of trees and things like that, that helicopter can get in and very safely pick the person from the truck and bring him to safety.
All right, Chief, we're going to try one more time to listen to see if they're conversing. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...the cable and the pilot and telling Brian, three inches right, three inches left, whatever it takes to try to keep that guy literally right over the top of the truck. Very critical flying here, and he's doing a great job. Look at the trees, though.
There we go. He's going to be in the truck momentarily. Sorry to interrupt you there. Yeah, they're getting ready to pick her up here, momentarily. They've just got her hooked in. You'll see, he should signal, and Brian's still got that helicopter exactly straight.
You were talking about the Super 204 helicopter that you guys use for this, one of the most stable helicopters that Bell has ever built and boy, you guys outfitted it to the "T." And we really can see the need for this in the Sacramento area. The fires -- there she goes, she's out of the truck, Ron, tilt down. And she's now probably 15 to 25 feet up in the air. The fireman, see, he's looking right at the trees so as we get a little closer to the brush, he could kick off. Brian is now moving the helicopter over towards the bank. He's almost over dry ground, he's just going to go over the fence there, and then he'll be lowering her to safety here momentarily. So, another real good rescue, kudos go out to Sac County Fire.
WHITFIELD: Chief Pforsick, are you still with me, out of Santa Rosa Fire Department?
PFORSICK: Yes.
WHITFIELD: All right. Well, it looks like it was a successful lift there. That was one lucky woman, Sacramento County Fire Department there doing exactly what you described, just might happen, by picking her up via helicopter and then taking her to safe ground as opposed to taking her back into the chopper.
PFORSICK: You bet, that's good for everybody there. That's what it's all about.
WHITFIELD: Wow, that's really incredible. Thank you so much, Chief, for being with us, out of Santa Rosa Fire Department, we know you'll be busy and best of luck to you along the way.
All right, Kim Kerr of Humboldt County Emergency Operations is with us on the line with us.
PFORSICK: Bye.
WHITFIELD: All right, Kim, if are you with us?
KIM KERR, HUMBOLDT COUNTY EMERGENCY OPERATIONS: Yes, I am.
WHITFIELD: All right, great. What is the scenario where you are?
KERR: We have over 59,000 customers without PG&E. We have all the roads into the county are basically closed, pretty much all the county roads are closed. We ended up with a windstorm this morning between 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. that was unexpected, it took out a lot of trees and we have downed trees pretty much throughout the county. And we have flooding, as well, because of the heavy rains, and we're waiting for a bridge in Fern -- which they call Fern Bridge down State Route 211 to recede, it's still rising right now and it won't go down until after 4:00, is what they're projecting.
WHITFIELD: And Kim, give me an idea of the geography here and your relation to the Marin County, Napa, Sonoma County, all counties that are experiencing this kind of standing water, and in some cases flash flooding and mudslides, as well.
KERR: Oh, we definitely have that. Humboldt County is north of Sonoma County, at about three hours north, actually. There's a county between Sonoma and Humboldt, which is Mendocino County, they're suffering the some thing, as well as a county north of us (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We're 80 miles south, actually 90 miles south of the Oregon border on the coast.
WHITFIELD: How concerned are you about forecast of more rain potentially throughout the weekend?
KERR: We are definitely concerned. We also have a high tide situation with the new moon, so we have flooding in an area Fields Landing and Salmon -- Field Landing, excuse me, King Salmon, which are -- Crosses 101 and shuts down those communities so we're dealing with the high tides as well as the river flows.
WHITFIELD: Did this seem to catch everyone by surprise or did anyone thought have thought this was coming, you know, by a certain hour this morning?
KERR: Yeah, we did know that this morning. We have been operational, we declared an emergency on December 9 -- excuse me, actually December 28, and declared an emergency and had been monitoring the situation. We've already been flooded once, it receded and then the heavy rains came yesterday and today. What we were not expecting was the heavy winds this morning.
WHITFIELD: Now, oftentimes during exercises no, matter what jurisdiction, they do map out though -- the most vulnerable of the residents and most vulnerable of communities. Have you been able to reach out to those identifiable vulnerable residents to make sure they're OK or that you'll be able to get to them if a rescue is need?
KERR: Yes, we have. We have done that. We actually have a couple shelters open now. The first day that we had floods we had to move some people out of a trailer park, so we know where those folks are, we're monitoring them. The local jurisdictions are working with us, and we have not had a problem or a request for us to do those type of evacuations yet, but most people up here, we're a remote area...
WHITFIELD: All right.
KERR: And we're used to those things.
WHITFIELD: Kim Kerr of Humboldt County Emergency Operations thank you so much. We're going to continue to watch the situation there in northern California, as well as in parts of Nevada, where we're also starting to see new pictures of flooding taking place in Reno, Nevada, as well. We're going to take a short break for now, we'll be right back.
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WHITFIELD: We continue to watch developments out of northern California and even now, parts of Nevada which, in Reno, Nevada, they're already experiencing their worst flooding since 1997, $1 billion in damage was caused then. Now they're experiencing much like parts of northern California, a lot of high water, rivers running over their banks, causing mudslides in some situations, as well.
And you're looking on the right-hand side of your screen, a rescue that just took place in the Sacramento area just a short time ago. Monica McNeal in the Weather Center and Monica, it looks terrible right now, and it could get worse, right?
MONICA MCNEAL, CNN METEOROLOGIST: You're absolutely right. And you were speaking with someone from Humboldt County. Listen to this, in Humboldt State University research vessel, there was a wind gust of 84 miles per hour, Fredricka, just an indication of all of the wind and that's why they've got all of these trees down, a 100-foot tree has already fallen about -- in that area, so a tremendous amount of rainfall and even more. And the biggest problem right now that we're dealing with is this is a very deep trough. It's a slow moving system so that's why it keeps dumping more rain and the bad thing about it is there's yet another storm system still out into the Pacific that's going to be moving onshore and bringing more rain to just about all of northern California, extending down into southern California, so more rain on tap -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, and now the most -- the areas that are experiencing the most problems right now, the Sonoma and Napa County areas, we're talking up to eight inches of rain in those areas?
MCNEAL: Some of those areas, yeah, have gotten eight inches of rain. Mendocino, 6.58 inches of rainfall in the last 18 hours. So, this is just an indication of how much rain in those general regions.
WHITFIELD: All right, more of this throughout the next hour. Monica McNeal, thanks so much. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. A short break, we'll be right back.
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