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New Day

Hurricane bears Down on Florida; NFL Player Claims Police Violence; Climate Change and Hurricanes; Woman Survives Irma. Aired 8:30-9:00a ET

Aired September 07, 2017 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:30:54] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Hurricane Irma is ripping through the Caribbean, heading to Florida. Coastal evacuations are already underway. In some places, many people are still scrambling for water, food and fuel.

So let's talk about all of this with Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.

Senator, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

SEN. BILL NELSON (D), FLORIDA: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: I know that yesterday you were down in the Miami area. You met -- at West Palm (ph). You met with emergency officials. What did they tell you are their biggest concerns as they watch this category five storm?

NELSON: Right now the roads are clogged. People are trying to flee. They're taking seriously. You can imagine the congestion coming out of The Keys. But it's now on every interstate and every toll road with tolls suspended all over the state. And so we desperately need gasoline. And that's what I fired off an e-mail last night to the head of FEMA to see if they can get gasoline into the state, because people, they're running out in their cars. They can't get it in the gas stations.

CAMEROTA: Yes, we're looking at -- on the other side of the screen from you -- we're already seeing the traffic heading out of the danger area, or trying to. A lot of it is clogged.

So when you wrote that e-mail to FEMA trying to sound the alarm about gas shortages, what was the response?

NELSON: Well, that was late last night. And, you know, this is early this morning. We'll keep it up. I came back to Washington to vote on this aid package. We've got to get the FEMA money because it runs out tomorrow. And what I've asked both leaders in the Senate, along with my colleague, Senator Rubio, is if we could put into the Harvey package money for Irma, because this one is bearing down. The last two days, basically the track hasn't changed. It's going to hit south Florida and it's going to come right up the east coast of Florida.

CAMEROTA: So what's been the response to your request to try to get money now for Irma?

NELSON: This $15 billion aid package, I think there will be some flexibility in there for not only Harvey, but also FEMA in Irma. Remember, FEMA is really stretched on its resources. It runs out of money tomorrow. It's already started to pull people out of Texas to pre-position them for Florida. And FEMA's only got so many people and so much money. And that's why this aid package is critical.

CAMEROTA: Yes, we did talk to Brock Long about this very thing earlier in the hour who said that, you know, they're going to do their best and he's not, you know, watching the nickels and dimes right now, he's just worried about people's lives.

But you, senator, were -- it seems like you were writing a flurry of letters last night, not just to FEMA. You were on sort of an e-mail writing tick to all sorts of people, trying to raise -- sound the alarms. I mean, as I understand it, you wrote to FEMA. You wrote to the FTC about keeping an eye on price gouging. You wrote to NOAA because you're worried about what, hurricane hunters?

NELSON: Indeed. We've got a single point failure in our G-4 that flies above the hurricane and proves the track accuracy by 15 percent. That's a single point failure. Same thing with the hurricane hunters that go in at 30,000 feet, fly around in the eye of the storm. They drop suns (ph). Now they're dropping UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, that help improve the accuracy.

But we only have so many of those planes. And we've been kicking FEMA for years to try to get the backup planes to do it. Air Force planes will help. But, on that G-4, there's only one of them that can fly above and drop those instrumented packages above the hurricane.

[08:35:06] CAMEROTA: All right. Well you certainly are keeping your eye on all of these things and all of the possible voids, but, thank you. I know that you are just issuing a warning to everybody to be on their game because Irma is headed to Florida.

Senator --

NELSON: And, by the way --

CAMEROTA: Go ahead.

NELSON: If that were not enough, now we got to worry with the airlines starting to jack up prices for the available seats -- and there are not many -- to get out of Florida. So that's another one of our tasks.

CAMEROTA: OK. You have a very busy day, and a full plate.

Senator, thank you so much for taking time for us to be on NEW DAY.

NELSON: Thanks.

CAMEROTA: Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: And where you see gouging online or elsewhere, send it to us on our threads. You know how to get me on Twitter and elsewhere. We will call it out. Sometimes there's an OK reason for it. Sometimes there ain't.

We are keep an on all aspects of Hurricane Irma. But there is another story that you have to hear and think about. He's a star on the football field. Now he says he was the target of excessive force. There was a policing incident that has a Seahawks lineman taking on the Las Vegas Police. We'll tell you about it next.

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[08:40:21] CUOMO: All right, time now for the "Five Things to Know for Your New Day."

Number one, Hurricane Irma is battering the Caribbean right now, hitting the Dominican Republic and Haiti after reducing the small island of Barbuda to rubble. Puerto Rico feeling the wrath. Most of the population left without power or water.

CAMEROTA: Coastal evacuations beginning in south Florida this morning as 6 million people in the region brace for the possibility of a direct hit. Many, of course, are scrambling for water, fool and food. President Trump tweeting this morning, Hurricane Irma is raging, but we have great teams of talented and brave people already in place and ready to help. Be careful and safe. Hashtag FEMA.

CUOMO: President Trump also blind-siding and infuriating Republican leaders by cutting a deal on the debt ceiling with Democrats. House Speaker Paul Ryan is scheduled to have dinner with the president tonight at the White House.

CAMEROTA: Don Trump Jr. faces Senate investigators behind closed doors today. He'll be questioned by judiciary staff members about his 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer. A top senator tells CNN he will also have to testify publicly or face a subpoena.

CUOMO: South Korea's prime minister is calling the situation with North Korea grave during a meeting of defense ministers in Seoul. The North is expected to launch another intercontinental ballistic missile in the next two days.

CAMEROTA: For more on the "Five Things to Know," go to cnn.com/newday for all of the latest.

CUOMO: All right, it's time for the "Bleacher Report" and it is a big story that certainly transcends the world of sport. You have Seahawks lineman Michael Bennett. He's a star on the field, no question about that. He is weighing whether or not to sue the Las Vegas Police. Why? He is accusing officers are racial profiling and excessive force for an incident that was caught on camera minute the recent Mayweather/McGregor fight. Bennett was there for the fight.

CNN's Dan Simon has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The video, obtained by TMZ, shows Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett being handcuffed outside a Las Vegas night club.

MICHAEL BENNETT, SEATTLE SEAHAWKS PLAYER: I wasn't doing nothing, man. (INAUDIBLE). I was here with my friends. They told us to get out, everybody ran.

SIMON: Officers let the Super Bowl champion go after a few minutes, but the episode has ignited a fire storm with Bennett claiming he was unfairly targeted by cops. Las Vegas Police officer singled me out and pointed their guns at me for doing nothing more than simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In a statement on Twitter Bennett says he went to Vegas to watch the Mayweather/McGregor fight on August 26th. After the fight, while heading back to my hotel, several hundred people heard what sounded like gunshots. Like many people in the area, I ran away from the sound, looking for safety.

He later says, an officer placed his gun near my head and warned me that if I moved he would blow my expletive head off. He says the handcuffs on his wrist were so fight that his fingers went numb.

BENNETT: This is an emotional moment for me. I know a lot of people were like, oh, did -- did he want this on his self. I didn't ask for this moment.

SIMON: The 31-year-old, who recently announced he would not stand for the national anthem following the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, choked up when talking about the arrest.

BENNETT: I try to tell my daughters every single day that they matter and that, you know --

SIMON: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called Bennett a leader, adding that the league will support Michael and all NFL players promoting mutual respect between law enforcement and the communities they loyally serve.

And the Seahawks simply tweeting, we stand in support of Michael Bennett.

KEVIN MCMAHILL, LAS VEGAS METROPOLITAN POLICE UNDERSHERIFF: I see no evidence that race played any role in this incident.

SIMON: Las Vegas Police describe a different version of events. That Bennett's actions appeared suspicious and that when more security video emerges the officers will be exonerated.

MCMAHILL: Once Bennett was in the officer's view, he quickly ran out of the south doors, jumped over a wall onto Flamingo Road east of Las Vegas Boulevard into traffic.

Due to Bennett's actions and the information the officers had at the time, they believed Bennett may have been involved in the shooting and they gave chase.

SIMON: As it turns out, there was no shooting that night, and Bennett says police let him go after realizing who he was. But the NFL standout is not about to let things go. He's hired a prominent lawyer and is considering a federal civil rights lawsuit.

Dan Simon, CNN.

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[08:45:02] CAMEROTA: That's a tough one. I mean, you know, you heard the sheriff or the police say that they -- what they said, their version was that they thought he was hiding behind a slot machine. That he jumped over a wall. Then he was running. They thought he might have been connected to the shooting. But that's not how he saw it and what he experienced.

CUOMO: Well, because he wasn't part of the shooting, right? They don't have any --

CAMEROTA: And there was no shooting, by the way. There was no shooting.

CUOMO: Well, whatever it was. Whatever they were worried about didn't happen, so he didn't have a role in it. So from his perspective, he is 100 percent justified in how he feels.

And, look, this is the truth. I know people don't like it. This happens too often. It just does. This is a big story. The police may have been justified in what they did. We'll see when the rest of the tape comes out. But it doesn't make it right from Bennett's perspective and so many people across this country who have found themselves in the same situation. Policing, even if this is the right call, there's no question that there are parts where it's the wrong call and policing needs to get better.

This story matters. We're going to stay on it.

CAMEROTA: All right, meanwhile, back to our top story, Hurricane Irma is among the strongest storms ever in the Atlantic. Is this the sign of things to come? How much of a role is climate change playing here, next?

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[08:50:08] CAMEROTA: Irma is one of the most powerful hurricanes in history and it could create one of the largest mass evacuations in U.S. history. So is this hurricane a sign of things to come and is climate change playing a role in more intense hurricanes?

Let's talk about all of it with the weather editor for "The Washington Post," James Samenow. Jason is your name, right, Jason Samenow?

JASON SAMENOW, WEATHER EDITOR, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Correct. Good morning.

CAMEROTA: I -- forgive me.

Jason, so you spent 10 years as a climate change science analyst. And did you see -- what did you determine? What did your research tell you about whether or not the intensity of hurricanes was increasing?

SAMENOW: Well, all the latest evidence suggests that as the earth warms, we're going to see warmer sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and across the world, across all the ocean basins, which would potentially increase the power and intensity of these storms. I mean stronger winds, heavier rains and as the sea levels rise, a bigger storm surge along the coast.

The evidence so far, we haven't yet seen a strong signal of that yet. But as we're seeing more of these intense storms, like Irma, the writing may be on the wall.

CAMEROTA: But -- so is it safe to say that the connection between climate change and hurricanes, the jury's still out on that?

SAMENOW: I wouldn't say that necessarily. I think all the available evidence suggests that we may be starting to see an increase in the intensity of the strongest storms. And that signal will become more clear over time.

We're just at the beginning of this in terms of the -- in terms of the climate change effect on storms. And we expect these effects to manifest themselves more strongly into the coming decades. The signal right now is weak or hard to detect just because we don't have that many years in the record. But as time wears on, I think it's going to become more clear.

CAMEROTA: OK. So, in other words, you don't have enough evidence or science to say definitively that it's climate change that's making us see -- I mean, look, what looks to us like these rapid-fire strong storms coming, you know, from Harvey to Irma. Now this is a category five. That sounds really ominous. But you're saying that you don't have enough science to hang your hat on this being about climate change?

SAMENOW: Well, I think we have to look at the fact that the sea surface temperatures have risen in the Atlantic Ocean and Harvey -- I mean Harvey and Irma now have moved over water which is warmer than normal. So it is likely it's having some affect. We just can't tell you exactly how big of an effect it is.

We've always had these storms coming through the Atlantic Ocean. We had the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane. We've had extremely powerful storm in past decades. But if you look at like Super Typhoon Haiyan, if you look at Harvey and you look at some of these monstrous storms we've seen in recent years, you have to wonder if climate change is beginning to have a noticeable effect. But I think, again, in future decades, it will become even more clear.

CAMEROTA: OK. So category five, which is what Irma is, I mean we're seeing wind gusts --Chad Myers just reported to us of a wind gust at loft, I mean a very, very high elevation, not on the ground, but something like 200 miles per hour. Put this in context to us of what Irma looks like to you.

SAMENOW: I mean it's absolutely an incredible storm. It maintained winds of at least 185 miles per hour for more than 40 hours, which is longer than any storm in recorded history on the entire earth. So this is -- in terms of duration and intensity, there is no storm to rival this one.

It set a low pressure record in the -- as it approached the Caribbean. It is the strongest storm tied with the Florida Keys hurricane to make landfall when it smashed into Barbuda. So it is setting all sorts of milestones in terms of impressive intensity.

CAMEROTA: So, what's next? I mean if -- if the warm water -- if the ocean temperature has risen, which we know is true, and it's the warm water that's causing more of this intensity of these storms, what does that mean for people who live in Florida and who live on the coast?

SAMENOW: Right. So in the coming decades, we may see an increase in the number of category four and category five hurricanes. So I think it just means that we have to think very seriously about how we plan our cities, about our storm water management and just generally increasing our resilience to these storms, being prepared, being ready.

I think irrespective of whether climate change is going to play a role in the intensity of future storms, these storms are a part of our past. They're going to be a part of our future. And maybe even more severe. So we just have to improve our preparedness and readiness.

And we also, at the same time, need to -- as a risk management strategy, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions so the climate change effect might be lowered somewhat.

CAMEROTA: OK, Jason Samenow, thank you very much for being here with us.

[08:55:01] SAMENOW: You bet. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, now we have to resolve a cliff-hanger that we left you on yesterday. We checked in with guests who were in the throes of Irma. The last time we saw this woman, she -- her hotel room was being battered around by Irma. So Lauren Anmya (ph) was trapped with friends in her hotel in St. Martin and took this video of the storm outside.

Lauren joins us now by phone. She made it through the storm. We're happy to tell you. But she is still trapped.

Lauren, how are you doing at this hour?

LAUREN (ph) (via telephone): Well, the sun's kind of come out a little bit and the water had returned to a pretty turquoise color. So it looks a lot better. But, obviously, there are a couple of hurricanes coming up behind Irma, so we're really not sure what we'll be getting in the next couple days. CAMEROTA: Well, let's talk about that because you left us in such

suspense yesterday. I mean the hurricane was really bearing down on you and your friend there in the hotel room. And we're looking at your video of how intense it got. So what is your strategy now for getting off the island?

LAUREN: Well, right now we -- we've had flights that have been canceled and rebooked every day. And our latest ones on Friday and Saturday were just canceled. So one of us -- two of us have booked flight for Sunday and the rest of us are trying to figure out what to do next in terms of flying out. If Irma is going to hit Florida, we're not -- two of us are from Florida, specifically Sarasota, and we're not really sure if we should try and go there or head somewhere else to avoid the storm.

My car is actually parked in Miami, so I'm -- I'm not sure where to go right now.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my. I bet.

LAUREN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean this is -- wow, how nerve-wracking has this week been for you?

LAUREN: Very stressful. It went from, you know, our happy tropical vacation with the company Holly and I own called (INAUDIBLE) to being evacuate from the villa, to moving -- trying to get flights out and being told no. Moving into this hotel that's getting rocked by this hurricane. So it's been a whirlwind of a week. We haven't gotten a lot of sleep.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

LAUREN: Our -- we don't have running water. Our power's out. We can't charge our phones or anything. So, like I told Jose, my phone's down to 3 percent.

CAMEROTA: Oh, man.

LAUREN: So we're -- we're just trying to get by at this point.

CAMEROTA: Got it.

LARUEN: Keep in touch with our families.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Well, we'll let you go. We're happy to have helped you help your family, hear your voice. We'll let you go. Take care of yourself and we'll check back in with you tomorrow. Thanks so much, Lauren.

LAUREN: OK. You're welcome.

CAMEROTA: OK. Hurricane Irma coverage continues with CNN "Newsroom" with Poppy Harlow and John Berman after this very quick break. We'll see you tomorrow. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)