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CNN Live At Daybreak
Houston Cleans Up Following Massive Storms
Aired June 12, 2001 - 07:05 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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: We have got some very bad weather to report around the country. Severe storms have pummeled the Upper Midwest and Southeast. Tornadoes struck a small Minnesota town yesterday, destroying several homes and injuring six people. Hundreds of people are without power this morning.
President Bush declared a state of disaster in Louisiana because of flooding. Torrential downpours from Tropical Storm Allison dumped 3 feet of rain in less than a week. People still used boats to get around Houston yesterday, even though rain from Allison finally moved out. The storm killed at least 20 people.
Some 20,000 families around Houston are returning home to save what they can and toss out what they can't.
CNN national correspondent Brian Cabell has the latest on the cleanup.
Good morning, Brian. Where are you?
BRIAN CABELL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.
We're about a dozen miles north of downtown Houston northeast. And I'll tell you, it doesn't get much worse than this. We've been touring the areas for the last couple of days, and this is as bad as it gets.
This is a mobile home park, as I say, about a dozen miles northeast of downtown Houston, right along side a bayou. A surge of water maybe 10 to 15 feet high hit this on Friday night and Saturday morning. We also visited another neighborhood not far from here, brick-built homes, though 5 to 6 feet of water there. The homes are still standing there but not much left inside. People are trying to salvage what they can.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): Aretha Sherman sorts and dries the family photographs, reminders of a happier time, before the flood.
EZELL SHERMAN, FLOOD VICTIM: Looks like we lost everything, and everything in the house was house floating.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, we've got to come in here. CABELL: The water was four feet high in the house on Saturday. Now it's gone. Most of the furniture is destroyed, but not the family spirit.
SHIRLEY SHERMAN, FLOOD VICTIM: I'm going to go on with faith with the Lord, because I know he ain't going to put no more on me than I can bear.
CABELL: Down the block, at the Fontenot residence, it may look like a garage sale, but it's not. Family and friends from church are busily pulling possessions from the house to try in the intense Houston heat.
JAMES FONTENOT, FLOOD VICTIM: The one thing I think I should have done was gotten flood insurance. Other than that, things happen.
CABELL: The TV is a loss, and so are some prized record albums, but James Fontenot, a government worker, and his family don't plan to leave their house of 21 years.
Howard Gordon, a retired policeman, lives across the street.
HOWARD GORDON, FLOOD VICTIM: I get discouraged, I'm telling you. It's just hard to just start all over again, at my age too -- it's rough.
CABELL: He has some insurance, he says, but not much. He recently bought a car. It spent a day or two underwater. He's not sure whether it'll start again.
Family after family in this middle class neighborhood north of Houston can tell you about their losses and their survival, except for one: An elderly woman who lived here didn't make it out alive.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CABELL: Downtown Houston is cleaning up pretty well, but the theater district was hard hit: three Steinway pianos valued at a quarter million dollars apparently ruined -- also, the Texas Medical Center very hard hit: 30,000 lab animals were killed in the floods on Friday and Saturday. They have setback research, we're told, by a couple of years -- death toll in Texas and Louisiana now standing at 20.
I'm Brian Cabell, CNN, live in Houston.
LIN: Hey, Brian, a quick question for you: For people who don't have flood insurance out there, what are some of their options?
CABELL: There's not an awful lot. They're waiting for FEMA to come in and help them out with some grants, with some loans. But, frankly, they don't have much. We have some people across the street right here who don't have insurance. They're just sitting out here barbecuing, waiting for something to happen, salvaging what they can. But, frankly, they don't have an awful lot of hope except for the feds to come in and help them out. LIN: All right, we'll keep track of that.
Thank you very much, Brian Cabell, reporting in from outside of Houston.
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