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Preparing for Hurricane Rita; FEMA Briefs Press

Aired September 22, 2005 - 14:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: More now on our top story, Hurricane Rita, a massive storm threatening vast destruction along the Texas coast. Rita has weakened slightly from a Category 5 to a Category 4, but officials warn it remains a very dangerous hurricane. Rita is barreling across the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to slam into Galveston, Houston area early Saturday.
Tens of thousands of people are fleeing the area and in the process creating a massive traffic jam. To ease conditions, officials have made all lanes of Interstate 45 one way leading north. Before that happened, one resident says it took him 13 hours to travel only 48 miles.

In Louisiana, an urgent warning today from Governor Kathleen Blanco.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO, LOUISIANA: Rita has Louisiana in her sights. It's predicted that landfall will be from the Texas border to as far over as Morgan City, Louisiana. We must move our people. Everyone in coastal areas south of I-10 must evacuate, and you should be leaving now.

I still want you to pack thoughtfully, and be well prepared as you do this. This is a massive storm, a powerful storm. Forecasts call for a 20-foot surge. A storm surge in Vermilion Bay can swamp three parishes. Hurricane-force winds will rip much of western Louisiana. Rains are projected to be as much as 15 to 20 inches. Head north.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And while the -- most projections show the center of Hurricane Rita passing west of New Orleans, the storm covers a wide area. Even an glancing blow could cause new devastation to the already-stricken city. CNN's Mary Snow joins us now with the latest from there -- Mary.

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, here in New Orleans, certainly everyone watching that forecast so closely because of the fragile levees. Now we are here at the 17th Street Canal, and engineers say they are taking, learning a lesson from Katrina that they did not have in place, that they have in place now because of Rita.

What you are seeing are these are steel reinforcements. They have been placed throughout the past couple of days, finishing just last night. And these are 60-foot steel pilings that are being placed at the canals, this in an effort to try to keep water from coming in.

I just took an aerial tour with Brigadier General Bruce Berwick, and he is inspecting the work done by the Army Corps of Engineers. What he is saying right now in terms of his assessment, he says if the forecast holds for between six and eight inches over three days, and a storm surge stays between three and five feet, and the levees hold -- those are the three conditions -- he says that probably New Orleans could expect minor flooding.

And when he means minor flooding, he is estimating between two and four feet. Any variation of the forecast in terms of rainfall and storm surge certainly can effect that estimate. He says that he feels comfortable that the city has done as much as it possibly could to shore up these levees. We are right near one of the levees that failed and caused that devastating flooding.

We flew over some of those areas today. And of course, those pictures tell the story of just what happened when these levees failed. But that forecast is going so closely watched because of these fragile systems. These systems that are really -- that the city is depending on to keep the city from flooding once again -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Mary Snow, quick question for you, as I wanted to just tell our viewers we are waiting for acting FEMA director David Paulison to step up to the podium. We are expecting a news conference any moment now from FEMA there in Washington, D.C. We'll bring that to you as soon as it happens.

But Mary, I mean, this is really the first chance that we've been able to see what's being done to, I guess, try and reinforce those levees. I mean, that's the biggest concern now with people living there, of course, is to see another breach. So basically, are they taking these steel, I guess these steel rods -- these posts in addition to sandbags and sort of layering it up against the existing levee?

SNOW: Absolutely. And maybe we can ask our photographer to pan over. We can see these steel pilings. You see them over the canal entry. What this is basically doing is blocking off the water. This is something that was not done in Katrina according to engineers.

Now this, of course, is in addition to those huge sandbags, those 3,000-pound sandbags that were placed at the levees. And what was explained to me is that this will give an additional about three feet height in terms of the canals to try to block that water off. So, this is an additional step.

But when I was talking to the Brigadier General Berwick before about what the plans are, he is saying at this point they are aiming to have the levee system that was in place before Katrina restored by December, and then an improved levee system in place by June.

But he also pointed out, though, that we have several more weeks of the hurricane system. And certainly, this was not comforting news to hear every day and really hour by hour the forecast is being monitored to see how much rain could potentially affect New Orleans.

PHILLIPS: And real quickly, just one question. Sorry, Mary, I know we are getting real technical. But the clay foundation that eroded in the first place, is that going to be replaced with something? How are they dealing with the foundation? Do you know?

SNOW: With the foundation right now, it's really a foundation made of earth. I mean, we were standing a couple of minutes ago at the place where the levee broke here at the 17th Street Canal. And that, of course, is going to have to be reinforced to go along with the rest of the levee that is in place. Right now, though, it is just really sand and gravel that is holding up the place where it failed.

PHILLIPS: Wow, you hear can the winds picking up there too, through Mary's mic. Mary Snow, thank you so much. And with Hurricane Rita expected to slam into the Texas coast near Galveston, most residents are observing orders to get out.

Many have already packed up and pulled out. Others are trying to do that right now. CNN's Sumi Das now is in Galveston. She joins us live to give us a feel for how fast it's moving, if indeed folks are moving fast -- Sumi.

SUMI DAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Well actually, as of late Wednesday, 75 to 80 percent of the population of Galveston had evacuated already. The city's population is 58,000. Now, the mayor of Galveston was hoping that the remaining residents would start heading out of Galveston today. In fact, patrol cars were going to make their way around the city, urging people, using their loudspeakers, to get on the road, to evacuate immediately -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: So -- and I can actually hear honking and cars driving close to you. Are those people that are -- those are individuals still working their way out?

DAS: Yes, we are on Sea Wall Boulevard. This runs the length of the island. And we see some traffic here, but I imagine that typically, this is a very, very busy part of town. There are hotels here. There are restaurants here. And I think they have a fair amount of tourism that takes place here. So I think it's pretty quiet, relatively speaking.

We are seeing a few cars on the road. You heard one honking just a minute ago. But that's rare. This is pretty much a ghost town. There are very people on the street. Most of these stores are boarded up. Homes are boarded up, as well. And I have to say, I've covered a few hurricanes this season, and I have not seen people evacuate so far in advance of a hurricane's landfall -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Sumi Das there in Galveston, Texas. Thank you so much, Sumi.

And as we see those pictures from Galveston, take a look at these live pictures from Houston, Texas. Oh, boy. It's got to be a nightmare for those people right now trying to get out. We've been talking about it, of course, all morning. We'll continue to monitor that, tell you more about folks trying to get out of Houston.

But I want to you to Washington, D.C. now. Acting director of FEMA David Paulison about to give a briefing.

R. DAVID PAULISON, ACTING DIRECTOR OF FEMA: I told you yesterday that all the urban search and rescue teams and the disaster medical teams were en route. Most of them are on the ground now. And definitely all of them will be in place today.

Our commodities, we are still pushing them through. We want all of the commodities on the ground and in place by 6:00 p.m. this evening. And we are working with the state and local officials to make sure that happens.

As we said earlier, we are looking for 45 truckloads of water, 45 truckloads of ice and 25 truckloads of food. And we are well within our realm to get all of those on the ground and in place to make sure that they are ready to distribute as soon as the storm clears landfall and the winds start dying down.

We've continued to work with our state and local partners. And I would like personally to thank Admiral Hereth and Admiral Allen, the two vice admirals on the ground who are doing an outstanding job of coordinating our ground troops and coordinating our efforts on the ground to make sure that we're working well with Texas and Louisiana both.

And I also need to commend the state of Texas, as I did yesterday, and the state of Louisiana. They are working well with us. They are working very hard.

The evacuations are going very well. I know you see a lot of traffic on the road, but that's why we tell people to leave early when the evacuations are ordered. But we still feel that we have plenty of time to get those people out of harm's way before this storm makes landfall some time tomorrow.

I want to go back to personal preparation again. I think that's the most important thing that I can talk about right now. I talked with Max Mayfield just a few hours ago, from the hurricane center. This is a big, dangerous storm. It's a massive storm. It covers half of the Gulf of Mexico.

I urge all Gulf residents, not just the ones in Texas and the border of the Louisiana, to pay attention to where the storm is going. To pay attention to the track of the storm. It is still very unpredictable. As these storms get closer to land, they tend to move from one side to the other. So I don't think anyone in the Gulf Coast is out of harm's way.

Listen to your state and local officials. Listen to your emergency managers. If you are in an evacuation zone, please, you need to leave now and make sure you get out of harm's way. Make sure you have communications planned with your family. Not all shelters have pets, so make sure you take care of your pets before you leave. And also something I did not talk about yesterday is some of the issues we had in Katrina is if you have children, small children, put some identification on the child either with a wrist band or something in their pocket, so if something happens and you get separated, we can get your children back to you as quickly as possible. So please take care to do that.

I urge you to also take personal responsibility for your family. If you are going to stay, if you are not going to evacuate, if you are not in an evacuation zone, make sure you have food, water, medicine, diapers, flashlights, batteries, all those things you need to take care of yourself for at least three days.

Put your birth certificates, your driver's license, insurance papers in -- waterproof baggage works well to make sure that those things will be safe, so after the storm if you have a lot of damage.

Let me set some expectations.

We tell people to have food and water for at least 72 hours, three days, ahead of time.

I've been on the ground in many, many hurricanes. And I can tell you: It's very difficult for first responders to get to you right away. They're not going to be there in two or three hours, folks. So make sure you're prepared to take care of yourselves. And I cannot emphasize how important that is, because this is a dangerous storm.

The first responders are going to move in as quickly as they can. But they can't move until the winds die down. And they cannot move until the roads are cleared.

Your area could be flooded, so make sure you have taken care of yourself. We have to ensure their safety as well.

Roads and bridges may be washed out. You need to be careful if you're going to drive around after the storm because, again, we are looking at a Category 4 storm when it makes landfall. And it could be still a Category 5.

So I want to emphasize, again, the most important thing I can say is: Take care of your families, prepare yourself, and make sure you are ready to ride out the storm in a safe place.

What I'd like to do is to just take a few questions. And then I have to move and get back to work.

QUESTION: "Incident of National Significance": Has it been designated so? And if not, when? And if so, why is it being designated before Rita strikes, whereas it was designated after Katrina struck?

PAULISON: What we did was we gave a predeclaration landfall. We did it in North Carolina. We did it in Florida. And we are doing it again in Texas. And we will probably do it again for Louisiana. It's to give them some up front money to make sure they can do the things they need to do.

We generally have not done that in the past, but we feel like, because of the number of storms that we've had and, as stretched out as resources are, we want to make sure the states have the resources to do the job to take care of their residents.

QUESTION: Have the people in Louisiana expressed to you any concern about moving some of the assets from Louisiana or Texas? I understand the governor's called for some more assets as well.

PAULISON: We just had a video conference with Texas and Louisiana. Both states are very comfortable they have the assets they need to take care of their residents. Both states are very serious about evacuations. We're moving people out of harm's way, and we have resources on the ground to take care of both of those states.

QUESTION: So even though you brought some from Louisiana to Texas, I guess you're putting more back into Louisiana?

PAULISON: We're not moving anything out of Louisiana. We've moved stuff out of Florida to Texas. We have not moved anything out of Louisiana. We have resources on the ground there. We're going to keep them there. And we're moving new stuff into Texas to make sure they're covered.

QUESTION: Sir, some of the people in Texas have said they appreciate the supplies and the food and the water and the ice, but they really need gas right now because there's such a fuel shortage among all the evacuees who are on the roads trying to get out. One senator called it a parking lot.

Is the federal government, DOD or the National Guard planning on moving fuel supplies down to these areas?

PAULISON: Yes, all three. I just talked with the governor this morning, and that was his number one request is to make sure we can get some fuel down there to make sure those cars have fuel, to make sure the first responders have fuel. And we are working to process that right now. And there will be fuel on the ground, yes.

QUESTION: How much fuel? Where is it going to be positioned? How's it going to be distributed?

PAULISON: Well, the two public officials on the ground, the federal public officials on the ground are going to take care of the amount. I'm not sure exactly what that is. But they will have that. And we're working with the state to see how much fuel they need and when they need it and where they need it and also what type of fuel they need, whether it's diesel fuel or gasoline.

QUESTION: There seem to be a lot of the evacuees getting frustrated being stuck on I-45. They're turning around, going back home. Is that the right choice for these people (INAUDIBLE)

PAULISON: I would advise them not to turn around and go back home. I know they're frustrated. There's a lot of traffic out there. Again, that's why we try to evacuate early. If they stay on the road now, they're going to have enough time to get out of harm's way. And if not, the local officials will direct them to a safe shelter somewhere.

We try to evacuate early enough to make sure people don't get in traffic jams like this.

But this is a good thing. It's a good thing that people are paying attention. I think what we saw in Katrina wakes up people to the fact that they have to evacuate if they're in these low-lying areas, and that's what's happening, and we're pleased to see that happen.

QUESTION: What if the traffic doesn't leave by the time that landfall gets near?

PAULISON: Again, if there are still people on the road when the storm gets close, the local officials will put those people at shelters.

OK. Thank you very much, folks.

PHILLIPS: We've been listening to acting FEMA director David Paulison there, live out of Washington, D.C., just giving a quick briefing there. It's great to see the acting director of FEMA taking charge like that, coming forward and giving exact details, and obviously planning ahead of Hurricane Rita.

A couple of things that he said. In addition to plenty of warnings, he is making it clear that you are responsible for your family. And he is asking everyone in those Texas areas and Louisiana areas to evacuate. That FEMA disaster teams are all in place. Everybody should be in place by the end of the day, 6:00 p.m. New Orleans time and Texas time, he is saying. Actually, I take that back. 6:00 p.m. Eastern, he said, those teams should be in place. Truckloads of food, water and ice ready to distribute.

And also, one of the reporters asked about -- we might be able to bring those pictures up again of the highway there in Houston. Everybody trying to get out in the commute. Just brutal right now. Some people saying it took 13 hours just to go 45 miles. He is saying don't turn around. A lot of people are getting frustrated. They're turning around. They're saying forget it. He is saying, please don't do that. This is a good sign that everybody's listening. Continue to move out of Houston.

We'll continue to update you on everything happening, of course, across Texas and Louisiana. Meanwhile, measuring the intensity of Hurricane Rita. Why the wind speed seemed to fluctuate so much. We're going to take you inside the eyewall. Dave Hennen here once again with the science behind the storm. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: After having Category 5 status all day, Hurricane Rita was downgraded slightly about an hour ago to Category 4. Wind speeds inside hurricanes fluctuate constantly, as you know, because of something called eyewall replacement cycles.

CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen joins us now to tell us they are and why they're so important. Layman's terms.

DAVE HENNEN, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Exactly. A little bit difficult of a concept. But we'll give it our best shot here. What we're dealing with is what we call the eyewall. That is the center of the storm. And within the center of the storm, and right around the eyewall -- we've all seen it on the satellite picture -- we'll show you right now. Right there, you can see very distinctly, the eye of the storm. That's where all the action is within the hurricane. And around that is the eyewall. So even a smaller area is the area of concern.

Let me show you a different graphic here. And this is kind of the structure of a hurricane. Let's fly you into kind of a cross section of what a hurricane looks like. And within the hurricane, there's the eye right in the center, right there. And as the -- we open this up, really a hurricane is nothing more than a band of organized thunderstorms. You have all these winds that are spiraling in towards the center. And each successive band, as you get closer to the center, is actually stronger and it makes up what we call the eyewall. That is this area right here.

And it's right along that eyewall where we have see the real catastrophic winds. When the hurricane center talks about these winds that are up to 150 miles per hour right now, that's in a very small area, right along the eyewall. It may be only be a ten-mile wide area where we see these catastrophic winds.

Now, the eyewall replacement cycle. What's that? What happens is in big hurricanes, you start to get another eyewall that forms similar to this. So you get the eyewall that begins to form outside of the inner eyewall. You have these winds coming in that kind of rob the outer eyewall, robs the inner eyewall. So the inner eyewall here, this little section here, begins to break down, and you get another eyewall that forms.

Think of it as a skater. We've all seen the pictures of a skater with the arms held out. When you pull your arms together, you begin to spin faster. And Kyra, what happens in some of these big hurricanes is that they actually get stronger after one of these cycles. So we go through the eyewall that is big. And then it begins to shrink again. And it's when that eyewall shrinks back together again, like the skater pulling the arms closer together, you begin to spin faster.

And we saw it in Hurricane Andrew. Right before Andrew moved onshore in '92 in south Florida, it actually was Category 4 storm, but went through one of these cycles, completed it and then actually strengthened as it moved inland. So what we hope doesn't happen in this case, is that we don't see one of these cycles complete itself right before the storm moves inland. Very little known about these, though, and impossible to predict when it's going to happen.

PHILLIPS: And you were saying this happens -- this environmental cycle happens about every ten years. I mean, why is that? Can we even touch on an explanation? I mean, global warming, the way we treat our environment.

HENNEN: Yes, possible. You know, we've been measuring hurricanes for only about 120 years or so. And we've only seen 27 Category 5 storms. So in that timeframe, we haven't had a lot of time to study these monster storms.

What we do know is that warm water in Gulf of Mexico is warmer than normal. That's why we've seen two Category 5 hurricanes within a month of each other, which is a very rare event. In fact, I've gone back and looked at the records. It only happened twice in history where we've actually seen two Category 5 hurricanes in the same season.

We may go years without ever seeing a Category 5 hurricane. So I think the bottom line is the jury's still out. Is it because of global warming? We probably don't have enough data to know. Certainly some people say so and some people say not.

PHILLIPS: Dave Hennen, thank you so much.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: That wraps up this Thursday edition of LIVE FROM. I'm Kyra Phillips at the CNN Center in Atlanta. We'll be back here tomorrow. Don't forget, we're your hurricane headquarters.

Now, Wolf Blitzer, live in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

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