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Hurricane Ivan Headed For Florida Keys?; Rumsfeld on Terrorism
Aired September 10, 2004 - 15:00 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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Our top stories now.
Eyeing Ivan the Terrible from Kingston to Key Largo: The massive hurricane is aiming directly for Jamaica, where half a million people have been urged to seek higher ground. People are also streaming out of Florida Keys right now, too. More on Ivan in a moment.
Flooded by Frances: Take a look at Mountain Island, North Carolina, where the remnants of that hurricane blew through two days ago. Much of the area northwest of Charlotte is still under water. Flooding problems are being felt from Asheville to the coast.
Authentic and made fairly recently -- that's the conclusion of CIA experts who have been studying this videotape of Osama bin Laden's right-hand man. The tape of Ayman Al-Zawahiri was broadcast by the Arab network Al-Jazeera yesterday, the first on-camera message from al Qaeda leaders in more than two years now. Not a total loss.
NASA scientists say they've managed to recover some of the material in the Genesis space capsule retrieved from the sun. That didn't seem possible immediately after Genesis came crashing to Earth on Wednesday when its parachutes failed to open.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We begin this hour with fears of a three-peat in Florida. Not since 1964 has the Sunshine State been the victim of three hurricanes in a single season. On Monday, however, barely a week after Frances and a month after Charley, Hurricane Ivan may visit the Florida Keys.
That's still far from certain. And CNN's meteorologist Orelon Sidney is busy comparing some widely divergent predictions -- Orelon.
ORELON SIDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Thanks a lot.
One thing that is for sure is that Jamaica is going to get a very sharp blow from this storm, expected to start impacting the area actually within the hour with hurricane force winds. The hurricane force winds extend out about 60 miles from the center. And at last report, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, it was 85 miles from Jamaica. So, you can see hurricane force winds are in the offing.
Central winds around the storm still gusting up above Category 4, but the sustained winds are still at 145 miles an hour, moving to the west/northwest at 12 miles an hour. Again, the models are in pretty good agreement, taking it over Jamaica and continuing then through the Cayman Islands as we go through Saturday and Sunday, and then the northern coast of Cuba will be affected by Monday. This is quite a slow-up, about 24-hour slow-up from what we had predicted earlier in the week. We think, though, it will be a Category 3 storm across the Florida Straits before it starts to make its way into the Gulf of Mexico. And then, the models are just really all over the place. Some of the models actually take it up the Florida Panhandle and continue northwestward with it. I think that's highly unlikely.
Other outliers in the east take it out across the Bahamas. And a lot of the models are right in the middle. So, it's just going to be at this point too early to call. We're still watching a couple of things that are driving the storm. One is a big ridge of high pressure out to its east. This is expected to, I think, diminish in strength over the next few days, though the westward push probably won't be as significant.
We do have a front that is moving across the Eastern United States. And sometimes the flow out ahead of that will take a storm and pull it northward, too. So, that's lots of stuff to consider before we know where it's really headed. And it looks like Florida's certainly in the middle of all the models. So, that's a pretty good bet. The question is where and when -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: OK, Orelon Sidney, thanks so much.
SIDNEY: You're welcome.
PHILLIPS: Fred?
WHITFIELD: Well, Ivan is already blamed for more than 30 deaths across the Caribbean, at least four of them children washed away by a giant wave in the Dominican Republic. That nation on the island of Hispaniola is no longer under hurricane watches or warnings as Ivan recedes in the distance.
Nowhere so far is the storm's power more apparent than in Grenada, however, where nine out of every 10 buildings are damaged or flattened outright. At least 22 of the island's citizens or visitors are dead, and police tell the Associated Press they're scrambling to bury the bodies because there is no electricity in the morgue. By day's end, three out of four residents of the Florida Keys are expected to be out of the Keys.
But CNN's John Zarrella is still there not going with the flow at all.
Why are you still standing there when the others are passing you by, John?
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Story of my life, Fredricka, always going against the flow here, particularly when it comes with hurricanes, being where I shouldn't.
But this here is US-1. It is the only road in and out of the Florida Keys. And it has been busy, steady all day today, steady stream of traffic. But good to report that no problems with the evacuation. The residents began evacuating this morning from the lower Florida Keys. That was the first phase of the evacuation. The middle Keys evacuation began at about noon today. And at 4:00 this afternoon, the upper Keys, which is where we are, will begin the evacuation process as well.
Emergency officials here about expect 60,000 of the 80,000 people to be off the island chain by the end of the day. Now, of course, with two hurricanes already under our belts here in Florida and the potential for a third, there is certainly a heightened state of anxiety all across the Sunshine State.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA (voice-over): Denis Chavez has had just about all he can take. He and daughters Alexis and Ashley spent Thursday cleaning up the yard of their Palm Beach County home.
Less than a week ago, they watched as the core of Hurricane Frances just missed them. Now, it's Ivan, and now the anxiety level is going up again.
Denis says maybe it's time to leave Florida for good.
DENIS CHAVEZ, FLORIDA RESIDENT: It's a tough decision mentally, but we're exhausted. We're just -- I don't -- I just don't want to go through it again, and I don't want to put my kids through it again.
ZARRELLA: But it's very possible that it will be deja vu all over again for some parts of the so-called Sunshine State. Ivan, coming up from the south, compounds the problems. Evacuations have begun in the Keys, but do people go east or west to get out of harm's way?
Debris, that could become deadly projectiles, still litter streets from Punta Gorda to Fort Pierce. Fuel is still a precious commodity. Utility trucks handling Hurricane Frances repairs need it, but so will evacuees.
GOV. JEB BUSH (R), FLORIDA: So, I mean, welcome to our world. This is -- there is no set answer to any of these questions. A lot of this depends on where the storm goes. We have a huge challenge in front of us.
ZARRELLA: Plywood continues pouring out of home improvement stores. People who didn't or couldn't board up for Charley or Frances are now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You could only get so many pieces of wood, and now we're boarding up the rest of it, because I'm just too scared to see what's going to happen now.
ZARRELLA: With no let up in this mean season, many hurricane- punch-drunk Floridians have opted to live in the dark, even those who have electricity. Everywhere you look, shutters or plywood cover windows, and people say they are not coming down until the tropics calm down. (END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA: So, where are all these evacuees leaving the Keys going to go? Well, there are no shelters open in the Florida Keys. The shelter for these people is on the mainland at the Florida International Unity in South Miami. Others may opt to go further north and potentially right into the teeth of the storm, depending on where Ivan goes.
And that's the quandary here, where do you go to get way from Ivan -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Wow.
So, John, just thinking about some of the last images in your piece there, did you find that are a lot of residents who are saying, you know what, we're just going to leave our hurricane shutters up through November when the hurricane season ends because it's been so aggressive in the past month?
ZARRELLA: Oh, no question about it, everybody you talk to. In fact, I've got my shutters up and they're not coming down, certainly not until we get past the peak of the season, which really runs through the first week of October and everybody else around me and my neighborhood and the people we work with all expressing the same opinions. Look, what's the sense of putting them down just to put them up again possibly a couple of weeks from now -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Boy, and that peak of the season beginning today officially.
John Zarrella, thanks so much.
Well, wherever Ivan goes, whatever it does, you'll see and hear it first around the clock right here on CNN.
PHILLIPS: Progress report on the war on terror. On the eve of the anniversary of September 11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is speaking out about the state of the world three years later.
Our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, has the details -- hi, Jamie.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra.
Well, in an appearance at the National Press Club today, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld delivered a strong defense of the Bush administration's policy of preemption in fighting what the administration calls the global war on terror. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld mentioned specifically the hostage taking and the siege of a Russian elementary school and said that probably every father and mother in America wondered if it could happen here. It could, he warned.
And that's why, he said, it was so important to fight what he said was the war against terrorism where they are, rather than here in the United States. He also noted the growing death toll. More than 1,100, he said, have died, the U.S. military, in the global war on terror, including about 1,000 in Iraq so far. And he had an answer to critics who say it's not worth it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: You can't go to the hospitals in Bethesda or Walter Reed and see those folks and not have your heart break for them and the fact their lives are going to be lived differently, or tomorrow when we go to Arlington and recall all those who died on September 11, and lives not lived.
But it is worth it. It is worth it. And those who suggest to the contrary are not only wrong, but they will be proved wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCINTYRE: Rumsfeld did predict a rise in violence in Iraq as insurgents continue to try to derail the January election. He predicted that more U.S. troops would die, but he said it was a very, very important battle being that was waged there. And he said that a free, self-governing Iraq and Afghanistan will, quote, "give a powerful momentum to reformers throughout the region and discredit the extremist ideology of America's enemies."
Even before Rumsfeld, though, gave his speech, one of the administration's sharpest critics, Senator Ted Kennedy, was denouncing Rumsfeld on the floor of the Senate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: The administration had been doing its best to convince the American people that the war would be easy. In February 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld told troops that the war could last, you know, six days, six weeks, I doubt six months. As Secretary Rumsfeld well knows, it's now been three times as long as that, with no end in sight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCINTYRE: And he said that the administration had failed in Iraq, but Rumsfeld took strong issue with that. And he said that he has specifically never predicted how long the war would take, because, he said, it's unknowable. But he said what is important is that the United States government is doing whatever it can to make the country safer -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Jamie McIntyre, thank you.
And in Washington Saturday, President and Mrs. Bush will mark the September 11 anniversary by attending a service of prayer and remembrance at 7:30 a.m. at St. John's Episcopal Church. Then, at 8:46, they will observe a moment of silence at the White House. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will lay a wreathe at Arlington National Cemetery at 9:30. And at noon, there will be a service at the Washington National Cathedral. In New York, the state will fall silent at 8:46 a.m., the moment American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Then will be another moment of silence at 9:03, the time United Airlines Flight 174 slammed into the south tower. There will be a tribute in light at sundown. A remembrance service will begin at 9:45 a.m. in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to honor those killed aboard United Flight 93.
Well, we'll be reading some of your e-mails in just a few minutes regarding the 9/11 anniversary. The question: Does 9/11 still have an impact on your daily life? Send us your e-mail at livefrom@cnn.com and we'll read what you have to say.
WHITFIELD: Taking advantage of those reeling from a hurricane disaster. Now the Sunshine State is fighting back against price- gougers. A conversation with Florida's attorney general coming up next.
Plus, why you know longer have to be famous or powerful to get on a U.S. postage stamp. It could be you on there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, as Florida gets ready for Ivan, there is renewed concern about price-gouging from the last two hurricanes. There have been hundreds of allegations against a variety of businesses and the state has already filed several complaints.
Joining us now, Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist in Miami. He's been extremely busy.
Charlie, nice to have you with us.
CHARLIE CRIST, FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Thank you, Kyra. It's good to be with you.
PHILLIPS: Well, I guess it's busy in a bad way.
Let's talk about the thousand types of complaints and what kind of complaints we are talking about?
CRIST: Well, believe it or not, we're now over 2,000. The last update I got was 2,071. And they're all across the board. It's plywood being accelerated in the price, bottled water, generators, food stuffs, anything you can imagine that is a necessity that people need when they're trying to get ready for an approaching hurricane, those are the kinds of things we're getting calls about. And it's in incredible numbers that it's happening.
PHILLIPS: So, looking at those items, are we talking about big business and small business or just private contractors?
CRIST: It's just all of that.
PHILLIPS: OK.
CRIST: It really is. It's big business, small business, some mom-and-pops. Anything that you can think of just about is happening.
And what we want to do is try get the word out that these cases will be prosecuted. They will be prosecuted aggressively. We've already been prosecuting some of the cases from both Charley and Frances. And we hope to try to dampen the amount of calls that we get in relation to Ivan coming toward Florida.
PHILLIPS: How many price-gouging investigators have you dispatched and how exactly does an investigation begin? You get the complaint and then what happens?
CRIST: Well, basically, the call comes into our call center in Tallahassee, Florida. Once that happens, they turn it over to one of 60 investigators and then they will either call the establishment that is being complained about or make a personal visit to see what the facts of the particular case might be.
Once they determine what the facts are, then they would go ahead and turn it over if they believe it's substantiated to one of our prosecutors, who will go ahead and follow up on the case and file the complaint. That's generally how it works.
But we're also being proactive. We have people out in the affected areas once the storm has passed to make a very visible physical presence from the attorney general's office to try to help deter other people from thinking about price-gouging. And so far, it seems to be fairly effective. But in addition...
(CROSSTALK)
CRIST: Go ahead. I'm sorry.
PHILLIPS: No, I was going to say, any sting operations?
CRIST: We do have some of that. But as you might expect, I don't want to talk about it too much, because we don't want to tip off people who we might be able to stop.
PHILLIPS: Of course.
What about cell phones? Actually, something that you had talked about in another article that I read about roaming charges, some of these companies getting people with their cell phones?
CRIST: That's right. We're starting to get complaints, frankly, about AT&T. And we're currently investigating them for some charges, additional charges to connect you and then an additional higher charge during the course of the storm per minute, which, if it bears out, obviously would be unconscionable.
But the only company we're hearing about it from is AT&T, who we have another action against in a different episode. But we're following up on that and trying to verify whether or not in fact it's happening, although I've gotten that kind of complaint from reporters. So, we're pretty sure it's happening. PHILLIPS: All right, as we look at the phone numbers for where you can call if you do have a complaint for price-gouging, I want to hold them up here for a little bit.
How expensive are the fines? And can you put some of these people out of business, some of these private contractors, some of these insurance scams, even going after, say, an AT&T, if indeed they're doing these roaming charges that are out of control? Can you put these folks out of business or can you just fine them?
CRIST: Well, a little bit of both. The fines are significant in Florida.
We're very fortunate. We didn't have a price-gouging statute until Hurricane Andrew occurred. But once that happened, it passed in a special session in December of 1992. And it says that there's a $1,000 fine for every incident, up to $25,000, if there are that many incidents in a day.
We're also, though, here in Florida suing under another statute. It's our unfair trade and deceptive practice. And what that does is give us the added punch of a $10,000 fine, but it could accelerate up to $15,000 per incident if the alleged victim is either a senior citizen or a disabled individual, which we've already experienced with one of our motel cases in the wake of Hurricane Charley.
As far as putting somebody out of business, the long and short of it is, if a contractor doesn't have a license and they're pawning themselves off as a licensed contractor, they definitely would go out of business, because that is a criminal offense. It's a third-degree felony in the state of Florida, punishable by up to five years in prison. That puts you out of business pretty quickly.
PHILLIPS: It still amazes me that people have the nerve to do this. But we're glad you're doing something about it.
Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, live out of Miami.
Once again, here's those phone numbers.
Charlie, thank you so much.
We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think there was whole camaraderie and a feeling that we're all together in the same situation. As far as -- I don't think -- no, I still think the feeling's there, because I don't really think the country feels that it's over.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think everybody is tired of being scared now. Just get back to life. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think 9/11 had a big impact, as you said, in kind of like looking out for your neighbor. Maybe a little bit has slipped back, as people have moved away from it. But when September 11 rolls around, I think people remember it again and it gets back in their blood.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Well, we asked to you send in your thoughts about 9/11.
WHITFIELD: And we asked if the terrorist attacks still have an impact on your daily life. Here's some of your answers.
From Pam in Wisconsin: "I don't allow 9/11 to affect my daily routine. I remember that day as well as anyone else, remember where I was and what I was doing. We were told to get on with our lives as usual. And that is what I intend to do."
PHILLIPS: Another Pam -- not sure where she is from. But she writes: "I'd say that my job is particularly hard. As a 20-year veteran as a flight attendant, I lost two friends on two of the flights that crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Every day, we as flight attendants have at the back of our minds not when it will happen again, but where."
"It's only a matter of time. I won't even begin to express how profoundly this war on terrorism and depressed economy has devastated the airline industry. Nothing will change in terms of security. It's still not safe to fly, not completely."
And from Anthony in New York City: "I work just a few blocks from the World Trade Center and seeing it is a constant reminder that we are terrorized every day, especially living in New York City. Even though we get by and live our lives every day, there is an underlying feeling of fear that this could absolutely happen again. It doesn't feel any safer here now than it did on September 12, 2001."
(FINANCIAL UPDATE)
WHITFIELD: Well, everyone wants to leave a stamp in some way, shape or form. Well, perhaps you thought you had to be really famous or long dead to get your face on a postage stamp. Well, we have got news for you.
CNN's Jeanne Moos now on stamps with a very personal touch.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ready to stamp out flags and presidents? Maybe you'd rather monkey around with your own image. You're looking at a valid U.S. postage stamp featuring Chippy (ph) and me. Or maybe you'd prefer your wedding photo, your baby or former dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Hey, how did an alleged war criminal become valid postage?
KEN MCBRIDE, CEO, STAMPS.COM: In some cases people are doing it somewhat like a game to try to get stuff by us...
MOOS: Ken McBride is the CEO of Stamps.com. On a trial basis, the postal service is allowing personalized stamps. You send in your favorite digital photo, pick a border and in a couple of days you're turned into a usable, actual stamp with a machine-readable bar code.
MCBRIDE: Babies and kids. That's about 40 percent of what we're getting.
MOOS: But then, there's the five percent reject rate. Nudity, political content, violence, anything objectionable.
MCBRIDE: We actually have human beings who look at every photo that's submitted.
MOOS: But humans being human apparently neglected to recognize Linda Tripp or this now famous photo of New Jersey governor James McGreevey and the former aide with whom he has reportedly had a sexual relationship.
BILL BASTONE, CO-FOUNDER, THE SMOKING GUN: They pretty much did it to see if they'd get through.
MOOS: Bill Bastone is a co-founder of the Web site, thesmokinggun.com. Their first attempts to bypass the photo stamp censors when Lee Harvey Oswald and the Unabomber was denied the stamp of approval, but Jimmy Hoffa made it and so did the Unabomber's Harvard photo.
BASTONE: We decided to put it on an envelope and mail it to ourselves.
MOOS: It arrived valid postage. Though personalized stamps cost more than twice as much as regular ones. At the United Nations there's a similar service. Jurors pose and get their new stamps in minutes valid only if mailed from U.N. headquarters.
The idea behind photo stamps is to send in sentimental photos like this Santa picture of me with my brother. Instead, they let Monica Lewinsky's stained dress get by. Talk about a sticky stamp.
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: OK. Well, she said it all for us.
(LAUGHTER)
WHITFIELD: That's going to wrap it up for LIVE FROM.
PHILLIPS: "INSIDE POLITICS" with Judy Woodruff up next.
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Aired September 10, 2004 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Our top stories now.
Eyeing Ivan the Terrible from Kingston to Key Largo: The massive hurricane is aiming directly for Jamaica, where half a million people have been urged to seek higher ground. People are also streaming out of Florida Keys right now, too. More on Ivan in a moment.
Flooded by Frances: Take a look at Mountain Island, North Carolina, where the remnants of that hurricane blew through two days ago. Much of the area northwest of Charlotte is still under water. Flooding problems are being felt from Asheville to the coast.
Authentic and made fairly recently -- that's the conclusion of CIA experts who have been studying this videotape of Osama bin Laden's right-hand man. The tape of Ayman Al-Zawahiri was broadcast by the Arab network Al-Jazeera yesterday, the first on-camera message from al Qaeda leaders in more than two years now. Not a total loss.
NASA scientists say they've managed to recover some of the material in the Genesis space capsule retrieved from the sun. That didn't seem possible immediately after Genesis came crashing to Earth on Wednesday when its parachutes failed to open.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We begin this hour with fears of a three-peat in Florida. Not since 1964 has the Sunshine State been the victim of three hurricanes in a single season. On Monday, however, barely a week after Frances and a month after Charley, Hurricane Ivan may visit the Florida Keys.
That's still far from certain. And CNN's meteorologist Orelon Sidney is busy comparing some widely divergent predictions -- Orelon.
ORELON SIDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Thanks a lot.
One thing that is for sure is that Jamaica is going to get a very sharp blow from this storm, expected to start impacting the area actually within the hour with hurricane force winds. The hurricane force winds extend out about 60 miles from the center. And at last report, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, it was 85 miles from Jamaica. So, you can see hurricane force winds are in the offing.
Central winds around the storm still gusting up above Category 4, but the sustained winds are still at 145 miles an hour, moving to the west/northwest at 12 miles an hour. Again, the models are in pretty good agreement, taking it over Jamaica and continuing then through the Cayman Islands as we go through Saturday and Sunday, and then the northern coast of Cuba will be affected by Monday. This is quite a slow-up, about 24-hour slow-up from what we had predicted earlier in the week. We think, though, it will be a Category 3 storm across the Florida Straits before it starts to make its way into the Gulf of Mexico. And then, the models are just really all over the place. Some of the models actually take it up the Florida Panhandle and continue northwestward with it. I think that's highly unlikely.
Other outliers in the east take it out across the Bahamas. And a lot of the models are right in the middle. So, it's just going to be at this point too early to call. We're still watching a couple of things that are driving the storm. One is a big ridge of high pressure out to its east. This is expected to, I think, diminish in strength over the next few days, though the westward push probably won't be as significant.
We do have a front that is moving across the Eastern United States. And sometimes the flow out ahead of that will take a storm and pull it northward, too. So, that's lots of stuff to consider before we know where it's really headed. And it looks like Florida's certainly in the middle of all the models. So, that's a pretty good bet. The question is where and when -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: OK, Orelon Sidney, thanks so much.
SIDNEY: You're welcome.
PHILLIPS: Fred?
WHITFIELD: Well, Ivan is already blamed for more than 30 deaths across the Caribbean, at least four of them children washed away by a giant wave in the Dominican Republic. That nation on the island of Hispaniola is no longer under hurricane watches or warnings as Ivan recedes in the distance.
Nowhere so far is the storm's power more apparent than in Grenada, however, where nine out of every 10 buildings are damaged or flattened outright. At least 22 of the island's citizens or visitors are dead, and police tell the Associated Press they're scrambling to bury the bodies because there is no electricity in the morgue. By day's end, three out of four residents of the Florida Keys are expected to be out of the Keys.
But CNN's John Zarrella is still there not going with the flow at all.
Why are you still standing there when the others are passing you by, John?
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Story of my life, Fredricka, always going against the flow here, particularly when it comes with hurricanes, being where I shouldn't.
But this here is US-1. It is the only road in and out of the Florida Keys. And it has been busy, steady all day today, steady stream of traffic. But good to report that no problems with the evacuation. The residents began evacuating this morning from the lower Florida Keys. That was the first phase of the evacuation. The middle Keys evacuation began at about noon today. And at 4:00 this afternoon, the upper Keys, which is where we are, will begin the evacuation process as well.
Emergency officials here about expect 60,000 of the 80,000 people to be off the island chain by the end of the day. Now, of course, with two hurricanes already under our belts here in Florida and the potential for a third, there is certainly a heightened state of anxiety all across the Sunshine State.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA (voice-over): Denis Chavez has had just about all he can take. He and daughters Alexis and Ashley spent Thursday cleaning up the yard of their Palm Beach County home.
Less than a week ago, they watched as the core of Hurricane Frances just missed them. Now, it's Ivan, and now the anxiety level is going up again.
Denis says maybe it's time to leave Florida for good.
DENIS CHAVEZ, FLORIDA RESIDENT: It's a tough decision mentally, but we're exhausted. We're just -- I don't -- I just don't want to go through it again, and I don't want to put my kids through it again.
ZARRELLA: But it's very possible that it will be deja vu all over again for some parts of the so-called Sunshine State. Ivan, coming up from the south, compounds the problems. Evacuations have begun in the Keys, but do people go east or west to get out of harm's way?
Debris, that could become deadly projectiles, still litter streets from Punta Gorda to Fort Pierce. Fuel is still a precious commodity. Utility trucks handling Hurricane Frances repairs need it, but so will evacuees.
GOV. JEB BUSH (R), FLORIDA: So, I mean, welcome to our world. This is -- there is no set answer to any of these questions. A lot of this depends on where the storm goes. We have a huge challenge in front of us.
ZARRELLA: Plywood continues pouring out of home improvement stores. People who didn't or couldn't board up for Charley or Frances are now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You could only get so many pieces of wood, and now we're boarding up the rest of it, because I'm just too scared to see what's going to happen now.
ZARRELLA: With no let up in this mean season, many hurricane- punch-drunk Floridians have opted to live in the dark, even those who have electricity. Everywhere you look, shutters or plywood cover windows, and people say they are not coming down until the tropics calm down. (END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA: So, where are all these evacuees leaving the Keys going to go? Well, there are no shelters open in the Florida Keys. The shelter for these people is on the mainland at the Florida International Unity in South Miami. Others may opt to go further north and potentially right into the teeth of the storm, depending on where Ivan goes.
And that's the quandary here, where do you go to get way from Ivan -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Wow.
So, John, just thinking about some of the last images in your piece there, did you find that are a lot of residents who are saying, you know what, we're just going to leave our hurricane shutters up through November when the hurricane season ends because it's been so aggressive in the past month?
ZARRELLA: Oh, no question about it, everybody you talk to. In fact, I've got my shutters up and they're not coming down, certainly not until we get past the peak of the season, which really runs through the first week of October and everybody else around me and my neighborhood and the people we work with all expressing the same opinions. Look, what's the sense of putting them down just to put them up again possibly a couple of weeks from now -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Boy, and that peak of the season beginning today officially.
John Zarrella, thanks so much.
Well, wherever Ivan goes, whatever it does, you'll see and hear it first around the clock right here on CNN.
PHILLIPS: Progress report on the war on terror. On the eve of the anniversary of September 11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is speaking out about the state of the world three years later.
Our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, has the details -- hi, Jamie.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra.
Well, in an appearance at the National Press Club today, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld delivered a strong defense of the Bush administration's policy of preemption in fighting what the administration calls the global war on terror. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld mentioned specifically the hostage taking and the siege of a Russian elementary school and said that probably every father and mother in America wondered if it could happen here. It could, he warned.
And that's why, he said, it was so important to fight what he said was the war against terrorism where they are, rather than here in the United States. He also noted the growing death toll. More than 1,100, he said, have died, the U.S. military, in the global war on terror, including about 1,000 in Iraq so far. And he had an answer to critics who say it's not worth it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: You can't go to the hospitals in Bethesda or Walter Reed and see those folks and not have your heart break for them and the fact their lives are going to be lived differently, or tomorrow when we go to Arlington and recall all those who died on September 11, and lives not lived.
But it is worth it. It is worth it. And those who suggest to the contrary are not only wrong, but they will be proved wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCINTYRE: Rumsfeld did predict a rise in violence in Iraq as insurgents continue to try to derail the January election. He predicted that more U.S. troops would die, but he said it was a very, very important battle being that was waged there. And he said that a free, self-governing Iraq and Afghanistan will, quote, "give a powerful momentum to reformers throughout the region and discredit the extremist ideology of America's enemies."
Even before Rumsfeld, though, gave his speech, one of the administration's sharpest critics, Senator Ted Kennedy, was denouncing Rumsfeld on the floor of the Senate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: The administration had been doing its best to convince the American people that the war would be easy. In February 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld told troops that the war could last, you know, six days, six weeks, I doubt six months. As Secretary Rumsfeld well knows, it's now been three times as long as that, with no end in sight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCINTYRE: And he said that the administration had failed in Iraq, but Rumsfeld took strong issue with that. And he said that he has specifically never predicted how long the war would take, because, he said, it's unknowable. But he said what is important is that the United States government is doing whatever it can to make the country safer -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Jamie McIntyre, thank you.
And in Washington Saturday, President and Mrs. Bush will mark the September 11 anniversary by attending a service of prayer and remembrance at 7:30 a.m. at St. John's Episcopal Church. Then, at 8:46, they will observe a moment of silence at the White House. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will lay a wreathe at Arlington National Cemetery at 9:30. And at noon, there will be a service at the Washington National Cathedral. In New York, the state will fall silent at 8:46 a.m., the moment American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Then will be another moment of silence at 9:03, the time United Airlines Flight 174 slammed into the south tower. There will be a tribute in light at sundown. A remembrance service will begin at 9:45 a.m. in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to honor those killed aboard United Flight 93.
Well, we'll be reading some of your e-mails in just a few minutes regarding the 9/11 anniversary. The question: Does 9/11 still have an impact on your daily life? Send us your e-mail at livefrom@cnn.com and we'll read what you have to say.
WHITFIELD: Taking advantage of those reeling from a hurricane disaster. Now the Sunshine State is fighting back against price- gougers. A conversation with Florida's attorney general coming up next.
Plus, why you know longer have to be famous or powerful to get on a U.S. postage stamp. It could be you on there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, as Florida gets ready for Ivan, there is renewed concern about price-gouging from the last two hurricanes. There have been hundreds of allegations against a variety of businesses and the state has already filed several complaints.
Joining us now, Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist in Miami. He's been extremely busy.
Charlie, nice to have you with us.
CHARLIE CRIST, FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Thank you, Kyra. It's good to be with you.
PHILLIPS: Well, I guess it's busy in a bad way.
Let's talk about the thousand types of complaints and what kind of complaints we are talking about?
CRIST: Well, believe it or not, we're now over 2,000. The last update I got was 2,071. And they're all across the board. It's plywood being accelerated in the price, bottled water, generators, food stuffs, anything you can imagine that is a necessity that people need when they're trying to get ready for an approaching hurricane, those are the kinds of things we're getting calls about. And it's in incredible numbers that it's happening.
PHILLIPS: So, looking at those items, are we talking about big business and small business or just private contractors?
CRIST: It's just all of that.
PHILLIPS: OK.
CRIST: It really is. It's big business, small business, some mom-and-pops. Anything that you can think of just about is happening.
And what we want to do is try get the word out that these cases will be prosecuted. They will be prosecuted aggressively. We've already been prosecuting some of the cases from both Charley and Frances. And we hope to try to dampen the amount of calls that we get in relation to Ivan coming toward Florida.
PHILLIPS: How many price-gouging investigators have you dispatched and how exactly does an investigation begin? You get the complaint and then what happens?
CRIST: Well, basically, the call comes into our call center in Tallahassee, Florida. Once that happens, they turn it over to one of 60 investigators and then they will either call the establishment that is being complained about or make a personal visit to see what the facts of the particular case might be.
Once they determine what the facts are, then they would go ahead and turn it over if they believe it's substantiated to one of our prosecutors, who will go ahead and follow up on the case and file the complaint. That's generally how it works.
But we're also being proactive. We have people out in the affected areas once the storm has passed to make a very visible physical presence from the attorney general's office to try to help deter other people from thinking about price-gouging. And so far, it seems to be fairly effective. But in addition...
(CROSSTALK)
CRIST: Go ahead. I'm sorry.
PHILLIPS: No, I was going to say, any sting operations?
CRIST: We do have some of that. But as you might expect, I don't want to talk about it too much, because we don't want to tip off people who we might be able to stop.
PHILLIPS: Of course.
What about cell phones? Actually, something that you had talked about in another article that I read about roaming charges, some of these companies getting people with their cell phones?
CRIST: That's right. We're starting to get complaints, frankly, about AT&T. And we're currently investigating them for some charges, additional charges to connect you and then an additional higher charge during the course of the storm per minute, which, if it bears out, obviously would be unconscionable.
But the only company we're hearing about it from is AT&T, who we have another action against in a different episode. But we're following up on that and trying to verify whether or not in fact it's happening, although I've gotten that kind of complaint from reporters. So, we're pretty sure it's happening. PHILLIPS: All right, as we look at the phone numbers for where you can call if you do have a complaint for price-gouging, I want to hold them up here for a little bit.
How expensive are the fines? And can you put some of these people out of business, some of these private contractors, some of these insurance scams, even going after, say, an AT&T, if indeed they're doing these roaming charges that are out of control? Can you put these folks out of business or can you just fine them?
CRIST: Well, a little bit of both. The fines are significant in Florida.
We're very fortunate. We didn't have a price-gouging statute until Hurricane Andrew occurred. But once that happened, it passed in a special session in December of 1992. And it says that there's a $1,000 fine for every incident, up to $25,000, if there are that many incidents in a day.
We're also, though, here in Florida suing under another statute. It's our unfair trade and deceptive practice. And what that does is give us the added punch of a $10,000 fine, but it could accelerate up to $15,000 per incident if the alleged victim is either a senior citizen or a disabled individual, which we've already experienced with one of our motel cases in the wake of Hurricane Charley.
As far as putting somebody out of business, the long and short of it is, if a contractor doesn't have a license and they're pawning themselves off as a licensed contractor, they definitely would go out of business, because that is a criminal offense. It's a third-degree felony in the state of Florida, punishable by up to five years in prison. That puts you out of business pretty quickly.
PHILLIPS: It still amazes me that people have the nerve to do this. But we're glad you're doing something about it.
Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, live out of Miami.
Once again, here's those phone numbers.
Charlie, thank you so much.
We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think there was whole camaraderie and a feeling that we're all together in the same situation. As far as -- I don't think -- no, I still think the feeling's there, because I don't really think the country feels that it's over.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think everybody is tired of being scared now. Just get back to life. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think 9/11 had a big impact, as you said, in kind of like looking out for your neighbor. Maybe a little bit has slipped back, as people have moved away from it. But when September 11 rolls around, I think people remember it again and it gets back in their blood.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Well, we asked to you send in your thoughts about 9/11.
WHITFIELD: And we asked if the terrorist attacks still have an impact on your daily life. Here's some of your answers.
From Pam in Wisconsin: "I don't allow 9/11 to affect my daily routine. I remember that day as well as anyone else, remember where I was and what I was doing. We were told to get on with our lives as usual. And that is what I intend to do."
PHILLIPS: Another Pam -- not sure where she is from. But she writes: "I'd say that my job is particularly hard. As a 20-year veteran as a flight attendant, I lost two friends on two of the flights that crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Every day, we as flight attendants have at the back of our minds not when it will happen again, but where."
"It's only a matter of time. I won't even begin to express how profoundly this war on terrorism and depressed economy has devastated the airline industry. Nothing will change in terms of security. It's still not safe to fly, not completely."
And from Anthony in New York City: "I work just a few blocks from the World Trade Center and seeing it is a constant reminder that we are terrorized every day, especially living in New York City. Even though we get by and live our lives every day, there is an underlying feeling of fear that this could absolutely happen again. It doesn't feel any safer here now than it did on September 12, 2001."
(FINANCIAL UPDATE)
WHITFIELD: Well, everyone wants to leave a stamp in some way, shape or form. Well, perhaps you thought you had to be really famous or long dead to get your face on a postage stamp. Well, we have got news for you.
CNN's Jeanne Moos now on stamps with a very personal touch.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ready to stamp out flags and presidents? Maybe you'd rather monkey around with your own image. You're looking at a valid U.S. postage stamp featuring Chippy (ph) and me. Or maybe you'd prefer your wedding photo, your baby or former dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Hey, how did an alleged war criminal become valid postage?
KEN MCBRIDE, CEO, STAMPS.COM: In some cases people are doing it somewhat like a game to try to get stuff by us...
MOOS: Ken McBride is the CEO of Stamps.com. On a trial basis, the postal service is allowing personalized stamps. You send in your favorite digital photo, pick a border and in a couple of days you're turned into a usable, actual stamp with a machine-readable bar code.
MCBRIDE: Babies and kids. That's about 40 percent of what we're getting.
MOOS: But then, there's the five percent reject rate. Nudity, political content, violence, anything objectionable.
MCBRIDE: We actually have human beings who look at every photo that's submitted.
MOOS: But humans being human apparently neglected to recognize Linda Tripp or this now famous photo of New Jersey governor James McGreevey and the former aide with whom he has reportedly had a sexual relationship.
BILL BASTONE, CO-FOUNDER, THE SMOKING GUN: They pretty much did it to see if they'd get through.
MOOS: Bill Bastone is a co-founder of the Web site, thesmokinggun.com. Their first attempts to bypass the photo stamp censors when Lee Harvey Oswald and the Unabomber was denied the stamp of approval, but Jimmy Hoffa made it and so did the Unabomber's Harvard photo.
BASTONE: We decided to put it on an envelope and mail it to ourselves.
MOOS: It arrived valid postage. Though personalized stamps cost more than twice as much as regular ones. At the United Nations there's a similar service. Jurors pose and get their new stamps in minutes valid only if mailed from U.N. headquarters.
The idea behind photo stamps is to send in sentimental photos like this Santa picture of me with my brother. Instead, they let Monica Lewinsky's stained dress get by. Talk about a sticky stamp.
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: OK. Well, she said it all for us.
(LAUGHTER)
WHITFIELD: That's going to wrap it up for LIVE FROM.
PHILLIPS: "INSIDE POLITICS" with Judy Woodruff up next.
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