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CNN Sunday Morning

Hurricane Michelle Heads Toward Cuba and the Florida Keys

Aired November 04, 2001 - 10:13   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.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: A category four hurricane described as extremely dangerous is speeding its way toward Cuba. Hurricane Michelle is packing high winds and heavy rains. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have been evacuated.

CNN's Lucia Newman picks up the reporting from Havana.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Hurricane Michelle, which had been inching its way toward Cuba overnight, is now moving here at twice the speed, and, in fact, is expected to hit mainland southwestern Cuba by late this afternoon. At least 300,000 people have been evacuated, more than half of them from Havana. Many of those people live in the area that you see directly behind me.

That is the Malecon, Havana's famous seaside drive, and directly in front of it is Old Havana and Central Havana. It is one of the most crowded areas, one of the most populated areas in Cuba. And many of those houses that you can barely see there in the background are crumbling or are about to crumble. Their structures are very, very weak. They are just barely standing, and many are expected to not to be able to withstand a storm as intense as Hurricane Michelle.

Now as we know, this is the worst hurricane to hit Cuba in more than half a century. The last time that this capital saw anything like this was in 1946. Most Cubans by now have stocked up on water and on non-perishable foods, and they've bolted their doors and their windows as best they can.

In the countryside, the farmers have been picking tobacco frantically to try to salvage what they can of that precious crop as well as bananas. Livestock had been moved to higher ground. We know now that the airports have been closed to both national and international flights. Thousands of packs international tourists have been trapped and will have to wait out this storm until it's all over. As for the people of Havana, well, they are now just holding their breath and waiting.

Lucia Newman, CNN, Havana.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAVIDGE: Hurricane Michelle is not expected to have a direct impact on the United States, but it's going to be close, very close.

Lets check in with Jill Brown to find out where Michelle is headed -- Jill.

JILL BROWN, CNN METEOROLOGIST: You are right, Marty. Close enough that evacuations are in progress. Hurricane warnings have been issued for the Florida Keys.

And looking at the satellite pictures you can see why. This is a center of the hurricane, but those clouds extend well up over the Florida. The rain's already here. The winds will pick up and you can expect the heavy surf that you already have to just increase through the day today and last through much of the day on Monday.

Now here's a better satellite picture so you can see what going on. You can see the eye and then it becomes obscured so it makes a little more difficult to track where the center of circulation is. It's the upper level wind bringing you some of the high clouds over the eye so we can't see it very well.

But it looks like it's going to be on the east end of the Isle of Youth and later this afternoon crossing over Central Cuba. And again, the winds are 135 miles per hour. As a matter of fact, we have gotten the latest update from the hurricane center with no change basically.

The winds stay the same, 135 miles per hour. That was expected. We don't expect it to gain strength or loose strength until it makes landfall. At which point it will go only a sliver of land, really. It's a fairly small crossing. However, it's fairly mountainous, so that should act to weaken it. And then it comes back over the Florida Strait and expected to head up to Bahamas and not make landfall in the U.S.

It's moving fairly quickly, northeast at 12 miles per hour. That may pick up somewhat. So we'll wait and see what happens on our next update from the hurricane center but you can see 7:00 p.m. Sunday, by 7:00 a.m. Monday, it's already well over toward the Bahamas. So this track has stayed the same, that's very good news. It looks like we will not see landfall from this, but because we're so close obviously we'll want to watch it very closely.

With a 135 mile per hour wind, I want to show how this compares to some other infamous hurricanes that we have seen in the last few decades. Hugo, you'll remember had 135 mile per hour wind and that was September of 89. You know the damage that did.

We know what Andrew did and the winds were not as strong as we have with Michelle right now. Camille was the second strongest to ever make landfall in the United States. It had 200 mile per hour wind gusts. We are not at that level but this could really do some very serious damage in Cuba.

It should be weaker once it heads towards the Bahamas and we'll see some peripheral effects here in the United States, but it should not be anything compared to what they'll have Cuba or the Bahamas. So we'll continue to watch it and give you the updates as we get them. Marty, back to you.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: Jill, I'm going to take it away. As you mentioned, lower Florida Keys could be feel those hurricane force winds. Reporter Dianne Fernandez from our CNN affiliate WSVN reports on how Key West residents are preparing for the storm.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're to evacuate your homes and are to report to shelters.

DIANNE FERNANDEZ, WSVN REPORTER (voice-over): The lower Keys in Key West under a mandatory evacuation, everyone from residents to tourists being told to get out while they still can.

JIM ROBERTS, MONROE COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR: We have arrived at the point where we don't think it's really viable anymore to wait for the evacuation order. People have to have reasonable time to make the 120 miles out of the Keys and find another location where they're safe.

FERNANDEZ: The evacuation covers the 50 miles south of Marissant (ph), but many locals who say they've weathered other hurricanes are planning on riding Michelle out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We live and we are not leaving, we will never leave.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was born and raised here. It is just -- you just wait them out, see what happens.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Last time they evacuated us, they called it off the next couple of hours.

FERNANDEZ: Many businesses along Duval Street are boarded up and shut down for business after spending all day Saturday preparing for whatever Michelle might throw their way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: And that was Dianne Fernandez from our CNN affiliate WSVN in Miami, Florida.

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