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CNN Sunday Morning
Many Florida Residents Without Power
Aired September 26, 2004 - 09:20 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.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good morning, and welcome to this special edition of CNN SUNDAY as we continue to track Hurricane Jeanne. We've been talking all morning along with the reporters about the power outages in many areas of Florida. And now we want to get an official word on that.
And for that, we go on the phone to Mayco Villafana, with Florida Power and Light, the spokesperson there.
I understand you're in Miami this morning. Good morning to you.
MAYCO VILLAFANA, FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT: Good morning, Betty.
NGUYEN: Well, what's the situation? How many people are without power right now?
VILLAFANA: Well, at the moment, in Florida Power and Light's service territory, which encompasses 35 of the 69, 70 counties in the state of Florida, there is about 938,000 customers without power in all of those 35 counties.
NGUYEN: Does that surprise you, that number? Or is it a little bit lower than you expected? Because I know when Frances came through, and all these other hurricanes, it seems like there were a little bit more power outages than we're seeing right now.
VILLAFANA: Well, what we see here is every hurricane is unique and it brings its own set of problems and challenges. In Hurricane Charley, we had about 874,000 that were out, and it affected 22 counties.
Hurricane Frances was a huge storm, very slow-moving. It stayed and hovered over the Labor Day weekend. And that created destruction and damage in 35 -- all of our 35 counties, and nearly left 2.8 million customers out.
The storm is not over. It's still in -- over the peninsula. So therefore, the numbers I'm reporting may change somewhat once this hurricane passes through.
NGUYEN: Have crews been able to get out there and start making these repairs as of yet?
VILLAFANA: We have not been able to get out there yet. But in the -- in the counties that are on the fringes in the south, Miami- Dade, Broward, we're going to get going very, very quickly and begin the first -- first and foremost, doing an assessment of the damage, so then we can apply the right manpower and the right materials to -- to fix the -- the electrical systems.
NGUYEN: Of course, one of the big concerns, downed power lines, especially when daybreak comes. It's already arrived there, and people want to go and see the damage to their homes. Your advice is just to stay away.
VILLAFANA: Our advice is to stay at home, stay with your family. Keep them safe. It is not the time right now to be outside. If there are energized lines, what we want you to do is call the electrical company, but let the emergency crews, let those who are professionals and have dealt with this issue before be out there, take care of that issue before you wonder and perhaps create a tragedy.
NGUYEN: Is there a number for people to call if they are experiencing power outages or know of someone who is?
VILLAFANA: It's not as much calling for whether they have a power outage. It's more we can tell from our system when the lines go down and who's without power.
What we want is people to call in if they have -- if they find essentially they see an energized line, they see a power line that still has electricity, we want to know about that. And they can call the 1-800-FOR-OUTAGE. 1-800-FOR-OUTAGE number, and that will give us an idea of where these lines are down.
NGUYEN: OK. Quickly -- we're almost out of time -- how long do you think it's going to take to begin restoring this?
VILLAFANA: That's a challenge that we're facing now, and we believe right now that in some areas this may take at least three weeks.
NGUYEN: Three weeks.
VILLAFANA: the state of Florida has been hit with a number of storms. You only have a limited amount of skilled workers that can do this, and they're going from one storm to the next. So, right now, without an assessment, we're looking possibly that some people may be connected three weeks down the road.
NGUYEN: That's a long time. Obviously asking for patience this morning. Mayco Villafana with Florida Power and Light, thank you so much for that information -- Drew.
VILLAFANA: Thank you.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN ANCHOR: On the northeast coast of Florida, the historic city of St. Augustine, that is where our reporter from WLTV affiliate out of Jacksonville, Maria Tsataros is on the line.
Maria, what is the situation there right now? You're sort of on the northern end of this. MARIA TSATAROS, REPORTER, WLTV: Yes, the situation actually has progressively gotten worse since this morning. We've been out here monitoring the storm since about 4:00 this morning. And as you can see here behind me, St. Augustine beach, the winds and the waves are really whipping up.
The big problem here in St. John's County and in St. Augustine is beach erosion. This is the pier. And the pier actually extends about 600 feet out into the Atlantic.
Now, after they did a beach redirgement project just about a year ago, they spent $18 million bringing in sand. And at that time, the sand extended out to where the pier ends.
Well, now, as you can see, after Hurricane Frances, Charley, and now this storm, the sand has just been eaten away. So there goes that $18 million project. I can tell you a lot of county residents here in St. John's County are very upset about that.
People are out here monitoring the storm, trying to check out the conditions. Emergency management officials here in St. John's County are actually urging people not to do that, to stay inside.
Even though we haven't seen the worst of this storm just yet, we're expected to see the worst of this hurricane at about 2:00 in the morning, and continuing on until about 8:00 in the morning. The conditions still continue to worsen.
We've been monitoring the wind gusts here, sustained winds at about 25 miles per hour. Maybe we can show you here. We're actually in a little bit of a wind tunnel right now. And we've seen wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour.
The other issue going on here in St. John's County is severe flooding. We're at a high tide right now, and it's just now starting to rain. So obviously, that flooding is going to get worse.
We're going to continue to monitor the situation here, but people are being asked to stay inside. There are still a lot of people already without power, and we haven't seen the worst of this storm just yet.
Back to you.
GRIFFIN: Maria Tsataros, St. Augustine, part of our continuing coverage of Hurricane Jeanne.
We'll be back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRIFFIN: The big story this Sunday morning, hurricane Jeanne, the damage she's left behind and she's not through yet, the storm churning across Florida right now. It is heading for Tampa Bay. Welcome back, I'm Drew Griffin.
NGUYEN: And I'm Betty Nguyen. Thanks so much for joining us. Here's what's in the news this morning.
Of course, hurricane Jeanne, she is losing more strength as she heads farther inland. It's now been downgraded to a category one storm after coming ashore on Florida's east coast as a category three. Jeanne's top winds have dropped to about 85 miles an hour but it is still packing heavy rain. Jeanne has left parts of the northern Bahamas under water. Check out this video. The hurricane brought high winds and heavy rain shredding roofs and flooding neighborhoods. But there are no reports of deaths or serious injuries. Authorities say some neighborhoods are covered by up to six feet of water.
Now to Syria this morning. In the aftermath of a deadly car bombing in the capital of Damascus. The Palestinian militant group Hamas says the blast killed one of its leaders. Hamas says Israel was involved and is vowing revenge.
A search is to resume later today for Hawaiian sight seeing helicopter. It crashed in a remote mountainous area of Kauai on Friday. A pilot and four passengers are missing. Crews spotted the burned wreckage yesterday but were unable to reach the area before dark.
GRIFFIN: Hurricane Jeanne has been downgraded to a category one. Rob Marciano broke that and now he's tracking the rest of the news with this hurricane. Rob.
ROB MARCIANO, METEOROLOGIST: Hey, guys. We'll probably see it downgraded to a tropical storm before it reemerges in the Gulf of Mexico later on this afternoon. But tropical storm or hurricane force winds have been occurring in gusts at least in Orlando and we'll probably see similar conditions break down here in the Tampa Bay and Clearwater Beach area, maybe even Saint Petersburg, as well.
Moving to the west northwest at 12 miles an hour, winds sustained at 85. You see the eye wall collapsing here and getting a little bit weaker. However, the winds from this thing still extend well out from the center, especially to the northern part of the center and the northeastern coast of Florida including St. Augustine, Daytona Beach and still Melbourne getting some significant wind and wave action and rainfall still, 55 mile an hour wind gusts at Tampa Bay, 70 at last check in Orlando. Look at Daytona Beach, 51 mile an hour wind gusts there, 44 mile an hour wind gusts at Fort Myers.
As far as the -- what's doing with the radar, center of it right here. Here's Orlando, here's Tampa Bay, about, less than 50 miles now away from Tampa Bay and heading in that direction. This part of the western eye wall is heading into the eastern parts of Tampa right now and this probably has some winds gusting to 60 miles an hour or better and certainly some heavy rain with that, so conditions around Tampa Bay going downhill rather rapidly.
Forecast has not changed. It will change as we get towards 11:00. They'll have a fresh forecast for us and they may nudge it a little bit farther to the west and what that will do, that will affect folks in Tallahassee. But right now, the forecast is to take it just to the north of Tampa Bay and then out over the northeastern Gulf of Mexico where even if it goes a little farther west, the waters here not all that warm, being stirred up from Ivan the last couple of weeks.
Either way, the forecast does bring it to the big bend area of the panhandle of Florida later on tonight and early tomorrow morning and then rainfall will be spreading across Georgia and the Carolinas. And the potential for flooding is there certainly as we go through the next couple of days.
Tornado watch out with this thing. We haven't seen a whole lot of tornadoes, thank goodness, at least for right now but as the day rolls along, north of the system, with the sun hitting the ground there, we might see a better chance of seeing small tornadoes pop up. It is weakening somewhat, but still a hurricane with 85 mile an hour winds. Back to you guys in the studio.
GRIFFIN: Rob, we get some e-mail questions this morning. One just came in. What changes in November that ends the hurricane season?
MARCIANO: Well, hurricane season starts June 1, ends November 30th. And basically the most basic answer to that is that the waters get cooler. And the other question, the other answer to that is that our jet stream gets a little bit stronger and the inter-tropical convergence drops to the south. Basically, this swath of water gets below 80 degrees and when that happens, you lose the fuel for fire. Has to be at least 80 degrees or above and the water gets just a little bit cooler that time of year.
GRIFFIN: Very good. We'll get back to you Rob.
MARCIANO: Jacqui Jeras, I'm taking off, I'm going home. Jacqui Jeras will be up for the rest of the morning.
GRIFFIN: OK, well, thanks a lot.
NGUYEN: You've been up all night with hurricane Jeanne, thank you. And we do want to hear from you this morning if you are in the path of the storm and if you are able to e-mail us. Send Rob or Jacqui Jeras, who's going to be on deck next, about questions about the storm. All you have to do is e-mail that to wam@cnn.com. Let us know what's happening with Jeanne in your area right now. Again, the address on your screen, wam@cnn.com.
A weaker hurricane Jeanne is passing south of Orlando but it's still carrying drenching rains and flooding is expected to be a big problem. Let's take a look at some of the storm coverage from our affiliate WFTV.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can tell you that an officer with the Sanford police department pretty much said it best when he said Seminole Boulevard is now part of Lake Monroe. That's exactly what's happening here right now. All morning along, the rain has been very steady. The wind has been picking up, then subsided a little bit. You can see what the winds have done to the waves here on Lake Monroe. They're pretty big. I've got to tell you. The other part of the river walk, the center part of the river walk, it's not this bad. But you can see what the wind has done to some of the palm trees here. And you can see what it's doing right now to the sea wall. It's pretty much nonexistent. That's because of the waves that you see right here pounding beyond the sea wall and on to Seminole Boulevard.
Now, I can tell you that some other things have happened here in Sanford. There were some downed power lines. There was an oak tree that fell on a home. But other than that, it's been pretty quiet. But again, the main concern in Sanford is the river walk and this is the eastern portion of the river walk if we can pan over more to your right, Tom, you can come back to me and you can see what I'm talking about here. This is the eastern part of the river walk. We've got homes to my left and we have a park here to my right. But it's pretty intense, Greg.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Boy, the waves, and that's what I'll call them. They are waves. It's white caps out there and they're breaking right there onto the river walk. And if you turn around there and as photographer Tom pans out there, it looks like the sea is behind you, not Lake Monroe. Let's see if photographer Tom can zoom in a little bit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's pretty rough Greg. I'm having a hard time hearing you actually because the wind is pretty strong. But again, the rain has been very steady. I don't know if you can see that the rain is actually going in this direction as opposed to what we're used to. But yes, the waves are crashing. You can see some white spots here. You can see some downed palm trees. You can't see much of the sea wall because that sea wall is pretty much underwater at this point.
NGUYEN: Now I do want to remind you, despite the live bug there, that was taped earlier today in Seminole County, Florida, a live report there from WFTV.
GRIFFIN: American Red Cross has established a couple of hotlines that you may be interested in, 1-866-GET-INFO. That's for information only. If you want help, you can call 1-800-HELP-NOW. That's the American Red Cross. Continuing coverage of hurricane Jeanne continues right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRIFFIN: Tarrey Codd is with our affiliate WPEC-TV. He's in Vero Beach, the northeast quadrant. This is just north of where the hurricane came ashore and most likely where most of the damage may be found. Terry, are you with us?
TARREY CODD, WPEC-TV CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I can hear you.
GRIFFIN: What's the situation there as now the sun is up and you can see the damage for yourself?
CODD: I apologize if I can't hear you so well. It is still (AUDIO GAP) died down, but you can hear that wind gusting from the northeast at this point. There is still fallout here. There are still -- we're still getting some very, very strong gusts at this point. The story though that we've seen so far this morning out on the streets here in Vero Beach is flooding. We want to show you some of those pictures right now that one of our crew members from news 12 and a Vero Beach resident, a man named Lewis Barton (ph) took earlier today. This is a mobile home park called Fair Lane Harbor right on the Indian River just probably about a half a mile from the Atlantic Ocean and this is Lewis Barton's feed. Lewis, tell us what you saw there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Devastating. There's three or four feet of water even at the (AUDIO GAP) park. Later on, you will see from the riverside that the river has extended right up through the trailer park. It flooded out the majority if not every home in the trailer park. I think there's probably 100 homes.
CODD: And what you're going to see is a shot from a bridge that goes over to the barrier islands and it's very shaky because it's so windy outside. This was about 7:00, 7:30. There's the picture right there. You can see there is actually a sea wall there that is completely gone and it looks like those mobile homes are literally in the river. This area lost five mobile homes during hurricane Frances just three weeks ago. And now we fear what these folks may go back to when they are allowed back in there some point either today, tomorrow, in the next few days. There was some significant water. As you can see, very dramatic pictures of flooding. This also is the Indian River on the barrier island, on the eastern edge going right over to Vero Beach. Lewis, you were telling me the water was about how high there?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eight to 10 feet high, higher than usual. I live in this area, cross this bridge on a daily basis.
CODD: And the water, Lewis, as you said was coming right over the river and making it completely impassable. You can see right there, that is actually a shot east going towards Vero Beach and you can see the debris there on the road that made it completely impassable. These shots also from the Vero Beach area. You can see these street signs, up to about, you know, three, four feet of water right there. That is looking directly over towards the ocean there. You guys could not drive any further. There were some homes that had flooding up three, four, five feet. Right there, that is part of the bridge, the Indian River bridge going over to Vero beach. Lewis, you've lived here a very long time. You went through hurricane Frances. You lost your home, part of your business. Tell us how devastating this has been for.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it makes it very devastating to see what's happening to a lot of our Vero Beach residents and neighbors. Now I can have a feel for what they're going to have to suffer in this. And it's just going to be very, very devastating.
CODD: Now we can tell you that Indian River emergency management officials were prepared for -- or were expecting rather a tremendous amount of rainfall, 12-14 inches of rain. So they knew that this was a possibility. They got some very strong storms here this past week, coupled with the rainfall from hurricane Frances, the ground was extremely wet. There's some other video. I'm not sure we're going to be able to show it to you or not, but a manhole cover with water literally bubbling up from underneath that manhole cover exploding into the roadway.
A lot of the roads, the side roads along one of the main roads here in the Indian River county area completely flooded out. There was not a tremendous amount of structural damage that we could see. There was damage from hurricane Frances where roofs lost shingles and roofing paper and people were trying to repair those roofs up until the last minute. A lot of those tarps are completely gone. They completely blew away in the storm.
And now what it looks like is possibly some of that rainfall may have come back in through the tops of those roofs plus the flooding that came in from underneath and into the first floors of those homes. These folks may be getting a double whammy here this morning. Rainfall from the top going in through the damaged roof and there's that manhole cover where you can see the water literally just bubbling up. That is a great illustration of the type of flooding and water that has just come into this area, not only from hurricane Jeanne but as we mentioned over the last few days.
Now, we do want to mention that there have not been any reports of any deaths in the Indian River county area, thank God. We have been told that they do not have any reports of any major injuries at this point. But of course, it may be some time before the folks are able to get emergency management officials are able to get out into these communities and the words that they are stressing to folks that live here, stay where you are. Stay where you are. That's what folks are waking up to here today in Vero Beach, a tremendous amount of flooding. That's the situation out here. Back to you in the studio.
GRIFFIN: Terry, we've been looking at your video all morning, thanks for putting that in context with some very bad flooding there along the Indian River. We can see there's going to be a lot of cleaning up to do particularly in that mobile home park. Betty.
NGUYEN: Tremendous flooding there. We want to go to the northeast or the northwest of Vero Beach in Orlando where CNN's Eric Philips is there. It was raining when we spoke with him earlier. You're getting a lot of Jeanne coming your way right about now, Eric.
ERIC PHILIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning here in Orlando. I can tell you that the situation has certainly deteriorated as the morning has gone on. At first, what we were seeing were gusts of wind coming through, very strong gusts of wind every now and then. But now it's becoming more often, more often you're feeling these strong gusts coming through.
You can see right behind me that the trees here in the Orlando area, we're not too far from Walt Disney world as a matter of fact, but the trees here have been trying to sustain the wind all day long. These young saplings over here obviously couldn't take it. Wind speeds up to 50-60 miles an hour here in Orlando. Officials telling us they experienced a gust at the Orlando airport of about 78 miles an hour. Just got off the phone with them a little while ago. What they're telling us is that the power outages here at the Orange County, Orlando area are still very sporadic. Right now they're saying about 175,000 people without power.
Of course, you've got a lot more people across the state without power at this point. And they're saying that those curfews are still in effect. The curfew from 11:00 last night until 5:00 this evening. With the storm moving through and making that west move towards Tampa, they're saying that it could be that the curfew will be lifted earlier than 5:00 p.m. But that they say is still a long way off. Right now, they're just concentrating on telling people to hunker down, stay safe, and realize that as this storm passes through, it could certainly become much more dangerous before it gets better. Back to you.
NGUYEN: Good information there Eric Philips in Orlando this morning. Thank you for that.
If you were sleeping overnight as hurricane Jeanne blew through Florida, Anderson Cooper was not sleeping. He was out in it all wet and this is what he saw several hours ago.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you have any sense of how long the northern part of the eye wall is going to last at this location?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I think you're going to be in it for another 45 minutes to an hour.
COOPER: 45 minutes? Are you kidding?
MYERS: They pay you the big bucks. Come on. Suck it up out there. Now you're protected aren't you? Right now you're protected?
COOPER: Yes, I'm not sure how protected I am. I didn't really intend to -- I was just walking away from the place where we were, and then all of a sudden, the winds just picked up like this and I just happened upon the camera here. We're at a different camera, different location. So I figured, you know, I should get on air as quickly as possible. But this is definitely the worst we've seen so far. And it's obviously very hard to stand. Our equipment keeps breaking down. The cameras keep getting water inside them. This is just relentless nonstop, just brutal winds.
We're going to be in it for a while. That's the problem. There's just no way to get out of it now that we're in it. And I can't even hear what Chad is saying. Whoa! And at this point in time, it is hard to stand up. Remember, you asked me about 20 miles an hour ago when is it going to be hard to do this. And I said about 100. And this is pretty darn close to 100.
So there's no telling how long, I mean Rob was saying it might last for 45, 50 minutes.
MYERS: It sure could and if the storm continues to turn right, which it's not doing yet, we could be in the eye wall for an even longer time.
COOPER: Wow. Not good news for us here.
MYERS: This is just Mother Nature at her worst.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN: A couple of guys having a good time last night aren't they? They're drying out now.
NGUYEN: I don't know about a good time but they stayed standing despite all of that wind and rain coming at them. Of course we will have the latest on hurricane Jeanne, where she is right now with Jacqui Jeras right after this short break.
ANNOUNCER: Before Ivan, Gilbert was one of the strongest hurricanes ever seen in the western sphere. The 1988 storm devastated Jamaica with winds clocked at 184 miles per hour, leaving 20 percent of all Jamaicans homeless. Property damages on the island totaled more than $1 billion. Days later, Gilbert was downgraded to category three, but struck the Mexican coast south of Brownsville, Texas, with a ferocious one-two punch. Heavy rains and more than 29 tornadoes were reported.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Hurricane Floyd formed into a powerful category four on September 14th, 1999. It ravaged portions of the Bahamas. Watch its destruction as Floyd tore apart a pier as it hit Daytona Beach, Florida. As Floyd turned north, it weakened a bit after hitting land again near Cape Fear, North Carolina. The high rainfall created massive inland flooding. Floyd is responsible for one death in the Bahamas but claimed 56 lives in the United States.
GRIFFIN: We're back with live coverage of hurricane Jeanne, a changing of the guard in the weather department and Jacqui Jeras joins us now for the next, I don't know, what do you think, 18 hours.
JACQUI JERAS, METEOROLOGIST: You know, as long as you need me I'll be here.
GRIFFIN: All right. What's going on?
JERAS: Orelon's coming in at 4:00. Anyway, well, the inner core of Jeanne is now getting pretty close to Tampa at this time. I don't know if I'd really call it an eye wall anymore but you can see some of these darker returns just starting to push into the Tampa Bay area. So the worst of the weather is going to be arriving here pretty shortly with some very heavy downpours. Those winds are going to be increasing. It's moving west northwest at around 12 miles per hour at this time. Also Orlando getting caught pretty good with some of the very heavy rains at this time. The wind gusts, check them out, Orlando 70 mile an hour gusts at the top of last hour, 55 mile an hour gusts at Tampa. Fort Myers getting in on the action too, a tropical storm force at 44 miles an hour. Still pretty strong at West Palm Beach. We haven't been getting any reports out of Fort Pierce or Melbourne. Daytona Beach looking at wind gusts around 51 miles per hour, so still very strong out there.
This is our forecast wind field which goes along with the forecast track. And you can see that it's staying very strong as it moves up to the west northwest. We're expecting it to continue to weaken. Right now it's a category one, 85 miles per hour. We'll probably just a tropical storm later on for today. It should be kind of scraping along the coastline, possibly making its way all the way into the Gulf of Mexico, but not anticipating much re-intensification here. So that's some good news. But the track is making it a little bit farther on off to the west. Landfall if you remember for Frances was around St. Marks and it looks like this one is going to be chose to that as well and unfortunately that would bring it into the Carolinas and bring more heavy rain there. We're going to talk more about the rain threat coming up in just a little bit. Betty and Drew.
NGUYEN: Lots of rain expected from this one. All right. Thank you Jacqui. That is all for us here at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta. But CNN's coverage of hurricane Jeanne will continue.
GRIFFIN: As a matter of fact, Jeanne Meserve is going to take over from our studios in Washington, D.C. for about an hour as we keep track of this fourth hurricane to hit Florida this season. That is a record. We'll be back with continuing coverage after we take a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired September 26, 2004 - 09:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good morning, and welcome to this special edition of CNN SUNDAY as we continue to track Hurricane Jeanne. We've been talking all morning along with the reporters about the power outages in many areas of Florida. And now we want to get an official word on that.
And for that, we go on the phone to Mayco Villafana, with Florida Power and Light, the spokesperson there.
I understand you're in Miami this morning. Good morning to you.
MAYCO VILLAFANA, FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT: Good morning, Betty.
NGUYEN: Well, what's the situation? How many people are without power right now?
VILLAFANA: Well, at the moment, in Florida Power and Light's service territory, which encompasses 35 of the 69, 70 counties in the state of Florida, there is about 938,000 customers without power in all of those 35 counties.
NGUYEN: Does that surprise you, that number? Or is it a little bit lower than you expected? Because I know when Frances came through, and all these other hurricanes, it seems like there were a little bit more power outages than we're seeing right now.
VILLAFANA: Well, what we see here is every hurricane is unique and it brings its own set of problems and challenges. In Hurricane Charley, we had about 874,000 that were out, and it affected 22 counties.
Hurricane Frances was a huge storm, very slow-moving. It stayed and hovered over the Labor Day weekend. And that created destruction and damage in 35 -- all of our 35 counties, and nearly left 2.8 million customers out.
The storm is not over. It's still in -- over the peninsula. So therefore, the numbers I'm reporting may change somewhat once this hurricane passes through.
NGUYEN: Have crews been able to get out there and start making these repairs as of yet?
VILLAFANA: We have not been able to get out there yet. But in the -- in the counties that are on the fringes in the south, Miami- Dade, Broward, we're going to get going very, very quickly and begin the first -- first and foremost, doing an assessment of the damage, so then we can apply the right manpower and the right materials to -- to fix the -- the electrical systems.
NGUYEN: Of course, one of the big concerns, downed power lines, especially when daybreak comes. It's already arrived there, and people want to go and see the damage to their homes. Your advice is just to stay away.
VILLAFANA: Our advice is to stay at home, stay with your family. Keep them safe. It is not the time right now to be outside. If there are energized lines, what we want you to do is call the electrical company, but let the emergency crews, let those who are professionals and have dealt with this issue before be out there, take care of that issue before you wonder and perhaps create a tragedy.
NGUYEN: Is there a number for people to call if they are experiencing power outages or know of someone who is?
VILLAFANA: It's not as much calling for whether they have a power outage. It's more we can tell from our system when the lines go down and who's without power.
What we want is people to call in if they have -- if they find essentially they see an energized line, they see a power line that still has electricity, we want to know about that. And they can call the 1-800-FOR-OUTAGE. 1-800-FOR-OUTAGE number, and that will give us an idea of where these lines are down.
NGUYEN: OK. Quickly -- we're almost out of time -- how long do you think it's going to take to begin restoring this?
VILLAFANA: That's a challenge that we're facing now, and we believe right now that in some areas this may take at least three weeks.
NGUYEN: Three weeks.
VILLAFANA: the state of Florida has been hit with a number of storms. You only have a limited amount of skilled workers that can do this, and they're going from one storm to the next. So, right now, without an assessment, we're looking possibly that some people may be connected three weeks down the road.
NGUYEN: That's a long time. Obviously asking for patience this morning. Mayco Villafana with Florida Power and Light, thank you so much for that information -- Drew.
VILLAFANA: Thank you.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN ANCHOR: On the northeast coast of Florida, the historic city of St. Augustine, that is where our reporter from WLTV affiliate out of Jacksonville, Maria Tsataros is on the line.
Maria, what is the situation there right now? You're sort of on the northern end of this. MARIA TSATAROS, REPORTER, WLTV: Yes, the situation actually has progressively gotten worse since this morning. We've been out here monitoring the storm since about 4:00 this morning. And as you can see here behind me, St. Augustine beach, the winds and the waves are really whipping up.
The big problem here in St. John's County and in St. Augustine is beach erosion. This is the pier. And the pier actually extends about 600 feet out into the Atlantic.
Now, after they did a beach redirgement project just about a year ago, they spent $18 million bringing in sand. And at that time, the sand extended out to where the pier ends.
Well, now, as you can see, after Hurricane Frances, Charley, and now this storm, the sand has just been eaten away. So there goes that $18 million project. I can tell you a lot of county residents here in St. John's County are very upset about that.
People are out here monitoring the storm, trying to check out the conditions. Emergency management officials here in St. John's County are actually urging people not to do that, to stay inside.
Even though we haven't seen the worst of this storm just yet, we're expected to see the worst of this hurricane at about 2:00 in the morning, and continuing on until about 8:00 in the morning. The conditions still continue to worsen.
We've been monitoring the wind gusts here, sustained winds at about 25 miles per hour. Maybe we can show you here. We're actually in a little bit of a wind tunnel right now. And we've seen wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour.
The other issue going on here in St. John's County is severe flooding. We're at a high tide right now, and it's just now starting to rain. So obviously, that flooding is going to get worse.
We're going to continue to monitor the situation here, but people are being asked to stay inside. There are still a lot of people already without power, and we haven't seen the worst of this storm just yet.
Back to you.
GRIFFIN: Maria Tsataros, St. Augustine, part of our continuing coverage of Hurricane Jeanne.
We'll be back after this.
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GRIFFIN: The big story this Sunday morning, hurricane Jeanne, the damage she's left behind and she's not through yet, the storm churning across Florida right now. It is heading for Tampa Bay. Welcome back, I'm Drew Griffin.
NGUYEN: And I'm Betty Nguyen. Thanks so much for joining us. Here's what's in the news this morning.
Of course, hurricane Jeanne, she is losing more strength as she heads farther inland. It's now been downgraded to a category one storm after coming ashore on Florida's east coast as a category three. Jeanne's top winds have dropped to about 85 miles an hour but it is still packing heavy rain. Jeanne has left parts of the northern Bahamas under water. Check out this video. The hurricane brought high winds and heavy rain shredding roofs and flooding neighborhoods. But there are no reports of deaths or serious injuries. Authorities say some neighborhoods are covered by up to six feet of water.
Now to Syria this morning. In the aftermath of a deadly car bombing in the capital of Damascus. The Palestinian militant group Hamas says the blast killed one of its leaders. Hamas says Israel was involved and is vowing revenge.
A search is to resume later today for Hawaiian sight seeing helicopter. It crashed in a remote mountainous area of Kauai on Friday. A pilot and four passengers are missing. Crews spotted the burned wreckage yesterday but were unable to reach the area before dark.
GRIFFIN: Hurricane Jeanne has been downgraded to a category one. Rob Marciano broke that and now he's tracking the rest of the news with this hurricane. Rob.
ROB MARCIANO, METEOROLOGIST: Hey, guys. We'll probably see it downgraded to a tropical storm before it reemerges in the Gulf of Mexico later on this afternoon. But tropical storm or hurricane force winds have been occurring in gusts at least in Orlando and we'll probably see similar conditions break down here in the Tampa Bay and Clearwater Beach area, maybe even Saint Petersburg, as well.
Moving to the west northwest at 12 miles an hour, winds sustained at 85. You see the eye wall collapsing here and getting a little bit weaker. However, the winds from this thing still extend well out from the center, especially to the northern part of the center and the northeastern coast of Florida including St. Augustine, Daytona Beach and still Melbourne getting some significant wind and wave action and rainfall still, 55 mile an hour wind gusts at Tampa Bay, 70 at last check in Orlando. Look at Daytona Beach, 51 mile an hour wind gusts there, 44 mile an hour wind gusts at Fort Myers.
As far as the -- what's doing with the radar, center of it right here. Here's Orlando, here's Tampa Bay, about, less than 50 miles now away from Tampa Bay and heading in that direction. This part of the western eye wall is heading into the eastern parts of Tampa right now and this probably has some winds gusting to 60 miles an hour or better and certainly some heavy rain with that, so conditions around Tampa Bay going downhill rather rapidly.
Forecast has not changed. It will change as we get towards 11:00. They'll have a fresh forecast for us and they may nudge it a little bit farther to the west and what that will do, that will affect folks in Tallahassee. But right now, the forecast is to take it just to the north of Tampa Bay and then out over the northeastern Gulf of Mexico where even if it goes a little farther west, the waters here not all that warm, being stirred up from Ivan the last couple of weeks.
Either way, the forecast does bring it to the big bend area of the panhandle of Florida later on tonight and early tomorrow morning and then rainfall will be spreading across Georgia and the Carolinas. And the potential for flooding is there certainly as we go through the next couple of days.
Tornado watch out with this thing. We haven't seen a whole lot of tornadoes, thank goodness, at least for right now but as the day rolls along, north of the system, with the sun hitting the ground there, we might see a better chance of seeing small tornadoes pop up. It is weakening somewhat, but still a hurricane with 85 mile an hour winds. Back to you guys in the studio.
GRIFFIN: Rob, we get some e-mail questions this morning. One just came in. What changes in November that ends the hurricane season?
MARCIANO: Well, hurricane season starts June 1, ends November 30th. And basically the most basic answer to that is that the waters get cooler. And the other question, the other answer to that is that our jet stream gets a little bit stronger and the inter-tropical convergence drops to the south. Basically, this swath of water gets below 80 degrees and when that happens, you lose the fuel for fire. Has to be at least 80 degrees or above and the water gets just a little bit cooler that time of year.
GRIFFIN: Very good. We'll get back to you Rob.
MARCIANO: Jacqui Jeras, I'm taking off, I'm going home. Jacqui Jeras will be up for the rest of the morning.
GRIFFIN: OK, well, thanks a lot.
NGUYEN: You've been up all night with hurricane Jeanne, thank you. And we do want to hear from you this morning if you are in the path of the storm and if you are able to e-mail us. Send Rob or Jacqui Jeras, who's going to be on deck next, about questions about the storm. All you have to do is e-mail that to wam@cnn.com. Let us know what's happening with Jeanne in your area right now. Again, the address on your screen, wam@cnn.com.
A weaker hurricane Jeanne is passing south of Orlando but it's still carrying drenching rains and flooding is expected to be a big problem. Let's take a look at some of the storm coverage from our affiliate WFTV.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can tell you that an officer with the Sanford police department pretty much said it best when he said Seminole Boulevard is now part of Lake Monroe. That's exactly what's happening here right now. All morning along, the rain has been very steady. The wind has been picking up, then subsided a little bit. You can see what the winds have done to the waves here on Lake Monroe. They're pretty big. I've got to tell you. The other part of the river walk, the center part of the river walk, it's not this bad. But you can see what the wind has done to some of the palm trees here. And you can see what it's doing right now to the sea wall. It's pretty much nonexistent. That's because of the waves that you see right here pounding beyond the sea wall and on to Seminole Boulevard.
Now, I can tell you that some other things have happened here in Sanford. There were some downed power lines. There was an oak tree that fell on a home. But other than that, it's been pretty quiet. But again, the main concern in Sanford is the river walk and this is the eastern portion of the river walk if we can pan over more to your right, Tom, you can come back to me and you can see what I'm talking about here. This is the eastern part of the river walk. We've got homes to my left and we have a park here to my right. But it's pretty intense, Greg.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Boy, the waves, and that's what I'll call them. They are waves. It's white caps out there and they're breaking right there onto the river walk. And if you turn around there and as photographer Tom pans out there, it looks like the sea is behind you, not Lake Monroe. Let's see if photographer Tom can zoom in a little bit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's pretty rough Greg. I'm having a hard time hearing you actually because the wind is pretty strong. But again, the rain has been very steady. I don't know if you can see that the rain is actually going in this direction as opposed to what we're used to. But yes, the waves are crashing. You can see some white spots here. You can see some downed palm trees. You can't see much of the sea wall because that sea wall is pretty much underwater at this point.
NGUYEN: Now I do want to remind you, despite the live bug there, that was taped earlier today in Seminole County, Florida, a live report there from WFTV.
GRIFFIN: American Red Cross has established a couple of hotlines that you may be interested in, 1-866-GET-INFO. That's for information only. If you want help, you can call 1-800-HELP-NOW. That's the American Red Cross. Continuing coverage of hurricane Jeanne continues right after this.
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GRIFFIN: Tarrey Codd is with our affiliate WPEC-TV. He's in Vero Beach, the northeast quadrant. This is just north of where the hurricane came ashore and most likely where most of the damage may be found. Terry, are you with us?
TARREY CODD, WPEC-TV CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I can hear you.
GRIFFIN: What's the situation there as now the sun is up and you can see the damage for yourself?
CODD: I apologize if I can't hear you so well. It is still (AUDIO GAP) died down, but you can hear that wind gusting from the northeast at this point. There is still fallout here. There are still -- we're still getting some very, very strong gusts at this point. The story though that we've seen so far this morning out on the streets here in Vero Beach is flooding. We want to show you some of those pictures right now that one of our crew members from news 12 and a Vero Beach resident, a man named Lewis Barton (ph) took earlier today. This is a mobile home park called Fair Lane Harbor right on the Indian River just probably about a half a mile from the Atlantic Ocean and this is Lewis Barton's feed. Lewis, tell us what you saw there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Devastating. There's three or four feet of water even at the (AUDIO GAP) park. Later on, you will see from the riverside that the river has extended right up through the trailer park. It flooded out the majority if not every home in the trailer park. I think there's probably 100 homes.
CODD: And what you're going to see is a shot from a bridge that goes over to the barrier islands and it's very shaky because it's so windy outside. This was about 7:00, 7:30. There's the picture right there. You can see there is actually a sea wall there that is completely gone and it looks like those mobile homes are literally in the river. This area lost five mobile homes during hurricane Frances just three weeks ago. And now we fear what these folks may go back to when they are allowed back in there some point either today, tomorrow, in the next few days. There was some significant water. As you can see, very dramatic pictures of flooding. This also is the Indian River on the barrier island, on the eastern edge going right over to Vero Beach. Lewis, you were telling me the water was about how high there?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eight to 10 feet high, higher than usual. I live in this area, cross this bridge on a daily basis.
CODD: And the water, Lewis, as you said was coming right over the river and making it completely impassable. You can see right there, that is actually a shot east going towards Vero Beach and you can see the debris there on the road that made it completely impassable. These shots also from the Vero Beach area. You can see these street signs, up to about, you know, three, four feet of water right there. That is looking directly over towards the ocean there. You guys could not drive any further. There were some homes that had flooding up three, four, five feet. Right there, that is part of the bridge, the Indian River bridge going over to Vero beach. Lewis, you've lived here a very long time. You went through hurricane Frances. You lost your home, part of your business. Tell us how devastating this has been for.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it makes it very devastating to see what's happening to a lot of our Vero Beach residents and neighbors. Now I can have a feel for what they're going to have to suffer in this. And it's just going to be very, very devastating.
CODD: Now we can tell you that Indian River emergency management officials were prepared for -- or were expecting rather a tremendous amount of rainfall, 12-14 inches of rain. So they knew that this was a possibility. They got some very strong storms here this past week, coupled with the rainfall from hurricane Frances, the ground was extremely wet. There's some other video. I'm not sure we're going to be able to show it to you or not, but a manhole cover with water literally bubbling up from underneath that manhole cover exploding into the roadway.
A lot of the roads, the side roads along one of the main roads here in the Indian River county area completely flooded out. There was not a tremendous amount of structural damage that we could see. There was damage from hurricane Frances where roofs lost shingles and roofing paper and people were trying to repair those roofs up until the last minute. A lot of those tarps are completely gone. They completely blew away in the storm.
And now what it looks like is possibly some of that rainfall may have come back in through the tops of those roofs plus the flooding that came in from underneath and into the first floors of those homes. These folks may be getting a double whammy here this morning. Rainfall from the top going in through the damaged roof and there's that manhole cover where you can see the water literally just bubbling up. That is a great illustration of the type of flooding and water that has just come into this area, not only from hurricane Jeanne but as we mentioned over the last few days.
Now, we do want to mention that there have not been any reports of any deaths in the Indian River county area, thank God. We have been told that they do not have any reports of any major injuries at this point. But of course, it may be some time before the folks are able to get emergency management officials are able to get out into these communities and the words that they are stressing to folks that live here, stay where you are. Stay where you are. That's what folks are waking up to here today in Vero Beach, a tremendous amount of flooding. That's the situation out here. Back to you in the studio.
GRIFFIN: Terry, we've been looking at your video all morning, thanks for putting that in context with some very bad flooding there along the Indian River. We can see there's going to be a lot of cleaning up to do particularly in that mobile home park. Betty.
NGUYEN: Tremendous flooding there. We want to go to the northeast or the northwest of Vero Beach in Orlando where CNN's Eric Philips is there. It was raining when we spoke with him earlier. You're getting a lot of Jeanne coming your way right about now, Eric.
ERIC PHILIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning here in Orlando. I can tell you that the situation has certainly deteriorated as the morning has gone on. At first, what we were seeing were gusts of wind coming through, very strong gusts of wind every now and then. But now it's becoming more often, more often you're feeling these strong gusts coming through.
You can see right behind me that the trees here in the Orlando area, we're not too far from Walt Disney world as a matter of fact, but the trees here have been trying to sustain the wind all day long. These young saplings over here obviously couldn't take it. Wind speeds up to 50-60 miles an hour here in Orlando. Officials telling us they experienced a gust at the Orlando airport of about 78 miles an hour. Just got off the phone with them a little while ago. What they're telling us is that the power outages here at the Orange County, Orlando area are still very sporadic. Right now they're saying about 175,000 people without power.
Of course, you've got a lot more people across the state without power at this point. And they're saying that those curfews are still in effect. The curfew from 11:00 last night until 5:00 this evening. With the storm moving through and making that west move towards Tampa, they're saying that it could be that the curfew will be lifted earlier than 5:00 p.m. But that they say is still a long way off. Right now, they're just concentrating on telling people to hunker down, stay safe, and realize that as this storm passes through, it could certainly become much more dangerous before it gets better. Back to you.
NGUYEN: Good information there Eric Philips in Orlando this morning. Thank you for that.
If you were sleeping overnight as hurricane Jeanne blew through Florida, Anderson Cooper was not sleeping. He was out in it all wet and this is what he saw several hours ago.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you have any sense of how long the northern part of the eye wall is going to last at this location?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I think you're going to be in it for another 45 minutes to an hour.
COOPER: 45 minutes? Are you kidding?
MYERS: They pay you the big bucks. Come on. Suck it up out there. Now you're protected aren't you? Right now you're protected?
COOPER: Yes, I'm not sure how protected I am. I didn't really intend to -- I was just walking away from the place where we were, and then all of a sudden, the winds just picked up like this and I just happened upon the camera here. We're at a different camera, different location. So I figured, you know, I should get on air as quickly as possible. But this is definitely the worst we've seen so far. And it's obviously very hard to stand. Our equipment keeps breaking down. The cameras keep getting water inside them. This is just relentless nonstop, just brutal winds.
We're going to be in it for a while. That's the problem. There's just no way to get out of it now that we're in it. And I can't even hear what Chad is saying. Whoa! And at this point in time, it is hard to stand up. Remember, you asked me about 20 miles an hour ago when is it going to be hard to do this. And I said about 100. And this is pretty darn close to 100.
So there's no telling how long, I mean Rob was saying it might last for 45, 50 minutes.
MYERS: It sure could and if the storm continues to turn right, which it's not doing yet, we could be in the eye wall for an even longer time.
COOPER: Wow. Not good news for us here.
MYERS: This is just Mother Nature at her worst.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN: A couple of guys having a good time last night aren't they? They're drying out now.
NGUYEN: I don't know about a good time but they stayed standing despite all of that wind and rain coming at them. Of course we will have the latest on hurricane Jeanne, where she is right now with Jacqui Jeras right after this short break.
ANNOUNCER: Before Ivan, Gilbert was one of the strongest hurricanes ever seen in the western sphere. The 1988 storm devastated Jamaica with winds clocked at 184 miles per hour, leaving 20 percent of all Jamaicans homeless. Property damages on the island totaled more than $1 billion. Days later, Gilbert was downgraded to category three, but struck the Mexican coast south of Brownsville, Texas, with a ferocious one-two punch. Heavy rains and more than 29 tornadoes were reported.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Hurricane Floyd formed into a powerful category four on September 14th, 1999. It ravaged portions of the Bahamas. Watch its destruction as Floyd tore apart a pier as it hit Daytona Beach, Florida. As Floyd turned north, it weakened a bit after hitting land again near Cape Fear, North Carolina. The high rainfall created massive inland flooding. Floyd is responsible for one death in the Bahamas but claimed 56 lives in the United States.
GRIFFIN: We're back with live coverage of hurricane Jeanne, a changing of the guard in the weather department and Jacqui Jeras joins us now for the next, I don't know, what do you think, 18 hours.
JACQUI JERAS, METEOROLOGIST: You know, as long as you need me I'll be here.
GRIFFIN: All right. What's going on?
JERAS: Orelon's coming in at 4:00. Anyway, well, the inner core of Jeanne is now getting pretty close to Tampa at this time. I don't know if I'd really call it an eye wall anymore but you can see some of these darker returns just starting to push into the Tampa Bay area. So the worst of the weather is going to be arriving here pretty shortly with some very heavy downpours. Those winds are going to be increasing. It's moving west northwest at around 12 miles per hour at this time. Also Orlando getting caught pretty good with some of the very heavy rains at this time. The wind gusts, check them out, Orlando 70 mile an hour gusts at the top of last hour, 55 mile an hour gusts at Tampa. Fort Myers getting in on the action too, a tropical storm force at 44 miles an hour. Still pretty strong at West Palm Beach. We haven't been getting any reports out of Fort Pierce or Melbourne. Daytona Beach looking at wind gusts around 51 miles per hour, so still very strong out there.
This is our forecast wind field which goes along with the forecast track. And you can see that it's staying very strong as it moves up to the west northwest. We're expecting it to continue to weaken. Right now it's a category one, 85 miles per hour. We'll probably just a tropical storm later on for today. It should be kind of scraping along the coastline, possibly making its way all the way into the Gulf of Mexico, but not anticipating much re-intensification here. So that's some good news. But the track is making it a little bit farther on off to the west. Landfall if you remember for Frances was around St. Marks and it looks like this one is going to be chose to that as well and unfortunately that would bring it into the Carolinas and bring more heavy rain there. We're going to talk more about the rain threat coming up in just a little bit. Betty and Drew.
NGUYEN: Lots of rain expected from this one. All right. Thank you Jacqui. That is all for us here at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta. But CNN's coverage of hurricane Jeanne will continue.
GRIFFIN: As a matter of fact, Jeanne Meserve is going to take over from our studios in Washington, D.C. for about an hour as we keep track of this fourth hurricane to hit Florida this season. That is a record. We'll be back with continuing coverage after we take a break.
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