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CNN Live At Daybreak

Relief Efforts Under Way For Storm Victims; Rescue Operations Under Way in New Orleans

Aired August 30, 2005 - 06:29   ET

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

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: As the Red Cross begins its largest ever relief efforts and corporations are lending a hand, Carrie Lee joins us now with a look at a few of the companies helping out.
Good morning -- Carrie.

CARRIE LEE, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Tony.

Well, a couple of the home improvement chains are getting involved. Lowe's, for one, says it has hundreds of truckloads full of emergency supplies ready for relief efforts. And Lowe's is also going to take donations from customers to the Red Cross at its stores and on its Web site. Lowe's is going to match those donations up to $1 million.

Also, Wal-Mart is donating $1 million to the Salvation Army. And like Lowe's, it has set up ways in its stores and on its Web site for customers to support relief efforts.

Finally, T-Mobile is offering free Wi-Fi service at its hot spots in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama through Friday.

Katrina may turn out to be one of the costliest storms ever. One risk consulting firm is now estimating insured damages could be anywhere from $9 billion to $16 billion. And the impact may be felt by consumers all over the country. Just to put that in perspective, Hurricane Andrew back in 1992 cost almost $21 billion.

Meanwhile, prices for products from the Gulf Coast region could rise sharply. This includes everything from seafood, shrimp, oysters, catfish, poultry, cotton, and, of course, oil. Oil futures rose $1 a barrel yesterday to about $67, but that was well off the overnight high of over $70. That all cleared the way for stocks to rise yesterday. But right now oil is moving back about 68, and stock futures are pointing to a solidly weaker open this Tuesday morning -- Tony.

HARRIS: Carrie Lee. Carrie, thank you.

And up next on DAYBREAK, we'll take you back to New Orleans. The trouble there is far from over. Levies that everyone thought had held now appear to be giving way. We've got the latest. And back to Biloxi, the damage there is massive. The latest on the rescue efforts are coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HARRIS: And from the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Tony Harris in for Carol Costello. And good morning, everyone. Thanks for waking up with us. And millions this morning are waking up to disaster.

For many, it's been a sleepless night of tense cleanups and rescues in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The massive storm has left more then 50 dead, thousands homeless. And just because the storm has passed the Gulf Coast it doesn't mean the danger is over. Don't believe me. Spend a couple of minutes now with Chad Myers in the CNN weather center.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HARRIS: New Orleans is mostly under water this morning. And as Chad just mentioned, a levy break late last night sent even more water into already saturated city streets. The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, tells CNN affiliate WWL that the city is devastated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA: We probably have 80 percent of our city under water. With some sections of our city the water is as deep as 20 feet. We still have many of our residents on roofs still waiting to be rescued. We have firemen, policemen, just about everybody that you can think of out there trying to rescue individuals from their roofs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: CNN's Adaora Udoji joins us live from just north of downtown New Orleans, where she has been witness to an amazing story of a recovery effort that I imagine, Adaora, continues at this hour.

Let's check in now with Adaora Udoji, who is standing by just north of downtown New Orleans. And she has been following an amazing rescue effort during these overnight hours.

Adaora -- good morning.

ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Tony.

Indeed it's been incredible. We're just north of downtown New Orleans, and we're standing on Interstate 10, which is a major artery. And you can see all of those boats lined up. That's where more than two dozen rescue workers have been painstakingly going through neighborhoods here, blocks and blocks of neighborhoods. Nobody is exactly sure how far the flooding goes.

But homes are flooded six to eight feet of water, some of them all the way up to the attic and some of them even covered. And they have pulled out hundreds of people. We've been watching for many hours now, and it's well above 500 people that they have taken, evacuated from their homes, many of whom were hiding in attics, some of whom were on top of their houses, using their cell phones if they had them to call. If not, there were even some people who were just yelling at the top of their lungs, hoping someone would stop.

Out of that 500-plus or so, from what we understand, there were no major injuries, mostly scrapes and bruises. And, of course, people are exhausted, and they have come off the boats, some of them with no shoes on. We're talking about entire families, lots of children. Some people bringing their pets. And many of them are walking up this ramp. And right now, there are at least 100 people who are sitting and waiting to be taken to evacuation centers.

The boats down here are empty at this point, because we understand or we believe that rescuers are themselves trying to get some rest, because as the sun comes up in the morning they're going to get a much better idea of just how devastated this area has been by Hurricane Katrina.

And this is not the only place, Tony. West of us there are entire neighborhoods that are also flooded. South of us there are neighborhoods that flooded. In fact, one where there's an estimate that 40,000 people's homes are under water.

So a lot of work to be done here in the coming days -- Tony.

HARRIS: And, Adaora, these are very dangerous rescues. So we have to ask the question, who are these people who decided to try to ride it out? Are these people who had the means to get out and just chose to stay? Or are these people who just couldn't get out for whatever reason?

UDOJI: I think the vast majority were people who just didn't have anywhere to go, simply put.

HARRIS: Yes.

UDOJI: But there have been a handful, maybe two or three people that we had spoken to who said were very fatalistic about the hurricane. In fact, one man had survived Hurricane Betsy. He said, look, if this is my time to go and that's my time to go, I'm going to stay in my home. I'm not going anywhere.

But I think the vast majority had nowhere to go. And now with many of their homes in dire straits, and some of them perhaps even destroyed, they have no idea of what's going to happen next -- Tony.

HARRIS: OK. CNN's Adaora Udoji. Adaora, thank you.

All right, let's check in once with Chad Myers in the CNN weather center.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Tony.

We're going to go to what we call the Vipir system here. This is the Titan radar showing 8 to 12 inches of rain, not that far from New Orleans. Now, we've switched to Vipir. And I'll show you what happened in the overnight hours.

There's New Orleans, and I will zoom in a little bit for you. On the north, Lake Pontchartrain on the south there, the squiggly line is the Mississippi River. Right up here in Lakeview, Mid City, Carrollton and City Park, and, in fact, in Bucktown, the old Hammond Highway bridge right there, I'm zooming in, circling it here for you, that's where the levy break occurred. And everywhere from the 17th Street Canal all the way over to the Marconi Canal and between Robert E. Lee Boulevard down to City Park Avenue, that was all flooded by that break right about there.

A 200-foot area broke in that levy. And so all of the water from Lake Pontchartrain has been pouring into New Orleans all night long, and, in fact, has been pouring right down Canal Street all the way into downtown.

So, as we wake up, as we get some more sunshine today and get some aerials of this area, I think we're going to see more devastation than we could have had and should have had without that levy break for sure.

HARRIS: Chad, the area of that break, is that a residential area? Are we talking about homes, apartment buildings and the like there?

MYERS: Oh, it's all residential. Absolutely, all residential. You're talking little towns or cities of Lakeview. You're talking Mid City. Carrollton is up there. Gentilly. City Park. They're all up there. And actually where this happened is a little area called Bucktown. But that's absolutely all residential, and all of those homes that you see there between -- the canal break was on the 17th Street side, Canal side, all the way over to the Marconi Canal side there.

HARRIS: OK.

MYERS: So, you kind of have to think about not the whole city flooded but certainly that side of that canal did.

HARRIS: Right. OK, Chad, thank you.

MYERS: You're welcome.

HARRIS: And still to come on DAYBREAK, the rescue effort in New Orleans is nothing short of epic. We're going to give you a look at the depths of the devastation that's like nothing you've ever seen or heard. We promise you. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Part of the economic effect of Hurricane Katrina will be felt far away from the Gulf Coast. That's because a large part of the country's oil production has been shut down due to the storm.

CNN's Ali Velshi joins us now from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with more on the impact.

Ali -- good morning.

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Tony.

We are, as you said, in Baton Rouge, heading toward Houma, Louisiana, which is one of the places from which they ferry workers in and out to the rigs in the Gulf Coast.

Now, what we have been learning is that, you know, oil prices came back down a little yesterday from their highs on Monday morning on news that the government might release some of the 700 million barrels that they hold in reserve in case the shortage of production starts to work its way through the system.

Now, what's happening is we're learning more and more about potential damage to rigs and platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. We know that at least two rigs that are operated by Shell are adrift. We've heard rumors of more.

The flights are starting to go out. They're starting to send more workers out, particularly to the western side of the Gulf. But as of today, they're going to start moving more and more workers onto the Eastern and Central Gulf. There will be flyovers at first to check that those rigs are not damaged or to see which rigs are damaged and to send more workers out there.

So, the crux of it here is that as we learn of more damage, of that which is visible and looking at the rigs, and the pipelines which are not running oil right now and the refineries, as that flows through and we learn about that, you might see oil start to go up again.

Already the futures price of oil for trading today, which opens at 10:00 in New York, 10:00 Eastern in New York, is higher than it was at the close yesterday, looking at above $68 right now -- Tony.

HARRIS: And, Ali, how long, so far even, have those rigs and those platforms been shut down?

VELSHI: Well, they've been shut down in most cases since Saturday. And that's taken about 2 million barrels a day out of the system. But if you combine this oil that's come out of the system that hasn't been there, the stuff that's not going to refineries and not running to pipelines, by some estimates more than 90 percent of the oil that's supposed to be coming through the Gulf and out of it into the refineries isn't going through. And clearly, that's going to be felt.

What some people are saying is as we learn of the damage today and yesterday, the rigs we learned about yesterday, you might see an almost immediate spike in the price of gas. Some people are expecting to wake up this morning to prices 15 to 30 cents higher per gallon of self-serve unleaded. Now that may not be across the board.

HARRIS: OK.

VELSHI: But this is a pinch that's going to be felt across the country.

HARRIS: Are we going to get any help from OPEC?

VELSHI: Well, OPEC has offered to help, but there are two problems with that. One is that OPEC doesn't necessarily have the capacity to help. And the second thing is that the oil that's refined in this part of the country is light, sweet crude. It's a type of oil with a sulfur content and a weight. OPEC normally produces heavy, sour crude. You can't just put that into the same system and have it refined the same way.

HARRIS: Ali Velshi. Ali, thank you. Good information for us.

Survivors of Hurricane Katrina are telling heartbreaking stories of their struggle against the killer storm.

Reporter Jennifer Mayerle of CNN affiliate WKRG in Mobile spoke with a man who lost his wife in the Biloxi floods.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JENNIFER MAYERLE, CNN AFFILIATE WKRG REPORTER: How are you doing, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not very good.

MAYERLE: What happened?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The house just split in half.

MAYERLE: Your house split in half?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) bedroom, and we got up in the roof, all the way up to the roof. And water came in, and the house just opened up, divided.

MAYERLE: Who was at your house with you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife.

MAYERLE: Where is she now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't find her body. She's gone.

MAYERLE: You can't find your wife?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. She told -- I tried. I hold her hand tight as I could. And she told me, "You can't hold me." She said, "Take care of the kids and the grandkids."

MAYERLE: What's your wife name so we can put this out there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Toni Jackson (ph).

MAYERLE: OK. And what's your name?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hardy Jackson (ph).

MAYERLE: Where are you guys going?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We ain't got nowhere to go. I don't know where I'm going. I'm lost. That's all I had. That's all I had. I don't know what I'm going to do.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: Do you have any idea of how many stories like that we're going to hear today? The story to be told at first light today, it will be amazing. That was reporter Jennifer Mayerle of CNN affiliate WKRG. And we don't know yet what happened to that man's wife.

And up next on DAYBREAK, the situation in parts of New Orleans is heartbreaking. Coming up, we'll show you just how difficult it is through the eyes of one of our most seasoned correspondents.

ANNOUNCER: Keep watching CNN, your hurricane headquarters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: As you can imagine, major rescue operations have been going on overnight in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. CNN's Adaora Udoji tells us crews and boats have ferried some 500 people from their flooded homes. Some had to be pulled from their attics and rooftops.

Seeing the human toll and the devastation of this disaster is very emotional for both survivors and reporters covering Hurricane Katrina. Just listen to CNN's Jeanne Meserve in New Orleans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We originally set out to do live shots from a local radio station that was determined to stay on the air through all of this. They decided that we were hampering their operations. And so we got punted.

And we befriended a few security guards who gave us access to this garage. And it actually gave us quite a good view of the city. But we could watch as things transpired and the electricity went out from one sector to the next.

But also, it gave us some shelter. We have here some of the super structure of the garage right above us. And it really blocked the worst of the rain, the worst of the wind. So, we could operate even at the height of the storm.

I am looking over a scene of utter devastation. An entire neighborhood, water has come up to the eaves of the houses. And I am told this is not the worst of it, that beyond this is part of the upper Ninth Ward, I'm told. I'm told the main part of the ward further down is even worse. The water is over the houses.

This is a life-and-death situation. I think by the end of the night we're going to find a lot more deaths than we ever imagined. We've talked to a couple of the people who have been rescued. They say the water came up very suddenly after the worst of the storm had gone by. It was the surge. They said it was so quick they barely had time to get to their attics.

One guy had bare feet. He said he couldn't manage to get to his shoes. Another woman who I saw was in a housecoat and flip-flops. It obviously had caught people unaware.

There are people in these houses. They are one-story houses with small attics. The water came up very suddenly, they tell us, after most of the storm had passed. They believe it was the surge. It came up quickly. They fled to their attics. They looked shell-shocked. They looked like refugees. They are refugees.

As I left tonight, darkness, of course, had fallen, and you can hear people yelling for help. You can hear the dogs yelping, all of them stranded, all of them hoping someone will come. But for tonight, they've had to suspend the rescue efforts. It's just too hazardous for them to be out on the boats. There are electrical lines that are still alive. There are gas lines that are still spewing gas. There are cars that are submerged. There are other large objects the boats can't operate.

So, they had to suspend operations and leave those people in the homes.

We are sometimes wacky thrill seekers. But when you stand in the dark and you hear people yelling for help and no one can get to them, it's a totally different experience.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: And "Now in the News."

Mississippi officials estimate 54 people have died as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Thirty people are confirmed dead at an apartment complex near the beach in Biloxi. Louisiana's governor predicts deaths in her state as well. And there is a 200-foot breach in a levy in New Orleans. And water from Lake Pontchartrain is flowing into the streets, but there are no official figures yet.

In northern Iraq, a U.S. helicopter has been hit by small-arms fire. One pilot was killed, the other wounded. The Kiowa Warrior chopper was killed in Tal Afar.

President Bush marks the 60th anniversary of the allied victory against Japan in World War II. He speaks today at a naval base in Coronado, California. Yesterday, the president said the government will do all it can to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.

From the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Tony Harris in for Carol Costello. "AMERICAN MORNING" starts right now. SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Tony. I'm Soledad O'Brien. The devastation of Katrina is catastrophic. And it may be getting worse. In New Orleans, Louisiana, a levy holding back Lake Pontchartrain breaks. Now there is more flooding in downtown New Orleans. The city's mayor describes a desperate scene.

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