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CNN Sunday Morning

Latest on Hurricane Jeanne

Aired September 26, 2004 - 11:00   ET

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

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


DREW GRIFFIN, CNN ANCHOR: We want to bring you right up-to-date on Hurricane Jeanne, hours after slamming ashore along Florida's east coast, Hurricane Jeanne is still battering the state. We're going to get the latest from Jacqui Jeras, taking over in the weather center this morning. Jacqui?
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, Drew, the latest on Jeanne just in now, it has weakened significantly again and now is barely a hurricane. Packing winds 75 miles per hour. You have to have 74 mile-per-hour or greater for it to be a hurricane. So we're just barely within that category. It should continue to weaken and will likely be a tropical storm now this afternoon. The location 30 miles east-southeast of Tampa, Florida, and it has slowed down a little bit. This was moving 14 miles per hour when it made landfall, moved down to 12 at the last advisory and now down to ten miles per hour. We don't like to see this trend. We're hoping it's going to be picking up a little bit more forward speed as it starts to turn a little bit more up more toward the north.

There you can see the center of circulation just honing in on Tampa and Tampa really getting plowed at this time with some very heavy rains and some very strong gusting winds. The forecast track has shifted a little bit also slightly off to the east. So not as much of the storm is going to be over open water, but it's going to be kind of grazing along the western coast of Florida here. Still expecting it to stay down at tropical storm strength, though. So we're not expecting this to intensify anymore. A continued gradual weakening trend can be expected. It is expected to then turn back up to the north and to the east. And look at it move across the Carolinas and right over the Charlotte area as a tropical depression.

And while it is good news it's weakening, unfortunately, much of this area already has seen way too much rain and we could see some additional flooding problems, especially into the higher elevations across the Carolinas. This is the current radar picture. There you can see the bright yellows here. That's where the real heavy rain is. Tornado watch also in effect across central northern Florida and then extending up into southern parts of Georgia. We are expecting the chance of tornadoes to increase as we head into the afternoon. Drew?

GRIFFIN: Thank you very much. We're getting live pictures now from WPLG flying over Palm Beach Gardens. This is an area north of West Palm Beach right along I-95 and let's listen in as they describe what they're shooting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...a tennis facility. And, of course, Trent was mentioning earlier, damage caused by tornado or wind. This looks like it's wind. I'm not sure how easy you'll spot this. This is a large ficus tree down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. That's more of a straight line wind event there. Parts of the tree looks like it possibly snapped off. But obviously, that's from a hurricane because the roots are pushed up there. So you're right in your analysis there. Definitely a wind event.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, Trent, we're going to be continuing our trip in a southbound direction and (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As (UNINTELLIGIBLE) continues along, I wonder if we can get to the video we were looking at. Here's more live pictures coming from Palm Beach Gardens. And you can see it looks like roof tiles and debris just strewn all over this neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are mobile homes. There's a roof completely -- well not completely but nearly torn off there. Everything inside exposed. You can imagine there must be just tons of water damage inside of there, obviously. And there's just debris everywhere. Again, very hit and miss. I guess it depends sometimes on the luck of the draw or just the condition of your house, your roof, whatever it might be.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But, again, it's why mobile homes are always the first to be evacuated, why it takes nothing more than strong tropical force winds for us to advise people to get out of these mobile homes. People who live in tornado alley have a superstition that a tornado can find a mobile home like a needle in a hay stack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They call them tornado magnets out in the arid(ph) plains.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right, they do. So, once again, you're looking at live pictures here on our continuing coverage on Local 10. This is coming to us from a helicopter over Palm Beach Gardens as they are surveying the damage.

GRIFFIN: These are live pictures coming in as the storm has passed Palm Beach Gardens very near where Jeanne came ashore overnight. And the local affiliate there, WPLG, able to send up its helicopter now to take a look at the damage. Our Eric Philips still in the path of this storm. He is in Orlando which is being battered right now. Eric?

ERIC PHILIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it certainly feels like it's being battered, right now, too. We've been seeing wind gusts here, I just measured one probably about ten minutes ago, 57 mile an hour winds gusting, coming through here, this area where I'm standing not too far from Walt Disney World, as a matter of fact. But we have seen wind gusts coming through more frequently. Earlier this morning, and we've been out here since about 6:00 this morning. Earlier, we were seeing gusts that would come through every so often, maybe once every 20 minutes or so. Now every now and then, every five minutes or so, you'll see gusts come through, followed by torrential downpours and sort of sideways rain. We sent a crew out to sort of rove around a little bit during one of the lulls to see what they would find in terms of damage.

What they did see was some downed trees, a tree dangerously close to a house, perhaps even on top of the house. And they've seen, obviously, lots of water on the roadways. Officials were worried about flooding here. That was their main concern here in the Orange County-Orlando area, flooding, because the ground is so saturated from what has gone on here in the past few weeks with Hurricane Frances especially and always Hurricane Charley.

But they're telling me that they did not get so far, they have not gotten, and at this point don't expect to get the worst of what they could have gotten here from Hurricane Jeanne because the storm has sort of taken a turn and gone across the state instead of going up the Atlantic coast as it was supposed to do, or at least as it was forecast to do. They're saying they've not gotten the hurricane force winds followed by the rain they were expecting to get here. Nevertheless, as you can see behind me, just from the trees that are waving in the breeze here or in the wind, this is still very much, you've still got some gale force winds coming through here.

This is still a very serious storm that is wreaking havoc on the Orlando area and officials are telling people to make sure that, in fact, they stay indoors. There's still a curfew that is in effect until 5:00 this afternoon. They don't want folks to have a false sense of security because that storm has turned. They want them to stay indoors and even after the storm has passed, give officials a chance to get out, survey the damage and then you can go back to your homes and see what's been done by Jeanne. Drew?

GRIFFIN: Eric, thank you. That change in direction good news for Orlando perhaps but not so good for Tallahassee which may now be moving into the path of this storm. We want to go to Jim Reed. He is a hurricane hunter, I understand, on the phone with us now. Jim is in Vero Beach where he rode out the storm. What was it like for you, Jim?

JIM REED, HURRICANE CHASER: Well, Hurricane Jeanne certainly was a very powerful storm. It was my fifth of this season. And it was a reminder that just because it's hurricane number five doesn't mean it's a big powerful one because this certainly was.

GRIFFIN: Every storm is different. What surprised you or what was different about this particular storm in your overnight adventure?

REED: Well, research meteorologist John Davies(ph), my assistant Catherine Bay(ph) and I were working as a team and I think we were surprised by the strength of the winds and the intensity and how long it lasted. We were getting gusts between 110 and 120 at one point and so structures that weren't damaged during Frances were being affected and, of course, those that were already compromised because of Hurricane Frances were suffering, as well. GRIFFIN: We have been looking at video, Jim, from WPEC taken in Vero Beach along the Indian River, primarily, where we show these flood waters. Can you tell us, was this water being pushed in by the hurricane or is this actual rain flood waters?

REED: I think it's a combination, but we were granted access earlier in the day to go out by the beach for a short time to document the surf action, and the waves were quite high. I would estimate, early on, six to ten feet, and when we saw that, and that was prior to sunset, we were a little bit concerned with the storm surge and in fact, we have witnessed a great deal of street flooding and surge- related water. I spoke to one gentleman who said he had a little bit of water in his house after Hurricane Frances and now he's got more than a foot. So I think this one produced a lot more surge.

GRIFFIN: I have never been to Vero Beach, but there doesn't seem to be extensive mobile home parks in that area, at least from what we're seeing. Is that the case, and is that going to make this different?

REED: Well, depends on how you mean different. I think this hurricane season, quite frankly, will change a number of people's outlook in having mobile homes in Florida. Codes may need to be discussed because we have witnessed a number of mobile homes just absolutely destroyed. And they just weren't meant for violent thunderstorm winds, much less a Category 3 hurricane. A number of the -- I can tell you right now that the Lakewood Village mobile home park in the Vero Beach area sustained considerable damage and also the Village Green community mobile park sustained considerable damage.

GRIFFIN: Very good. Jim Reed, hurricane hunter, in Vero Beach riding out his fifth, and Jim, I hope the last storm of this season for...

REED: I pray you're right. And my heart goes out to everyone in Florida and anyone else that's been affected by this season. We're hoping it's over.

GRIFFIN: Indeed. You're taking a live look at the radar picture of what's left of -- well, what is Hurricane Jeanne even though it's now being downgraded a bit. We'll be back with continuing coverage after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: Downed power lines, streets underwater. Homes have been demolished. Just some of the early damage reports coming in as Florida is suffering through another hurricane. Hurricane Jeanne. Reporter Louis Bolden with affiliate KMG is in Clermont, Florida. You are west of Orlando, kind of in the Winter Garden area right where the Xs are crossing with these hurricanes.

LOUIS BOLDEN, WKMG CORRESPONDENT: That's right. About 25 miles west of Orlando. And we are getting just very, very high wind. About (UNINTELLIGIBLE) here. We're getting wind gusts of about 95 miles per hour. It's really a tough situation here. And it's not like we are a coastal community. We are very, very far inland. And this is what residents here woke up to. Last night was a pretty calm night for Clermont. But as that system moved through, this is what residents woke up to. Very, very strong -- very, very strong wind gusts. It's actually enough to sort of knock you off your feet.

We're actually at South Lake Hospital here. And one of the things we wanted to show you to give you an idea of how strong the wind is, because we're at a hospital, this is the hospital staff. This is where they parked. And a minute ago, a while ago, we actually saw the wind, you could see the wind bounce the cars up and down. A while ago, there was a car with a manual transmission. They didn't have the parking brake fully engaged, it was only partially engaged. And the wind actually slowly moved that car out to the center of the parking lot. They had to notify the owner and come out and move it. But that gives you an idea of just how strong the wind is. It can actually move a car. It's a tough situation. They've had a lot of power lines down in this area with live wires. Power poles down. And the problem is emergency officials can't even get out. They're getting those calls in about the power lines down in the middle of the street.

Highway 50, one of the main thoroughfares through Clermont, power lines down in the street. And there's nothing they can do about it right now because emergency officials can't even take their vehicles out because the wind is just so strong. So obviously -- obviously -- they don't want residents out in this. It's actually getting pretty bad. You guys, we're going to send it back to you in the studio.

GRIFFIN: Louis, thanks for bringing that to us. Incredible. He is actually in the middle of the state and it's hard to believe the winds are still that strong. This storm far from over. Hurricane Jeanne just raking through Central Florida yet again. We're going to hear a lot of stories in the coming days about how people survived through Hurricane Jeanne. But one of the most incredible so far came from Port Salerno. This is just south of where the eye crossed last night and Kevin Twombly (ph) in Stuart, Florida, helped deliver a baby over the phone. A woman was having a baby. She speaks only Spanish. Kevin, you were on the other end of this call, through a translator helping this woman deliver a baby. Tell us what happened, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct. I answered the 911 line, an extremely vocal excited Hispanic male was asking for help, said the baby was coming, and we essentially guided him and the mother through the procedure. Made sure the baby was breathing and we heard that wonderful cry in the background. That made me feel good. Cleaned and warmed(ph), put him on a towel and the problem was, the winds were so high, we couldn't dispatch rescue ambulance, fire department, anybody to help at the time. So we had to do everything primarily by phone for a period of time.

GRIFFIN: So once you were on the phone line, you knew at that point no help was coming to this couple. You were it. And had you to translate. How did that happen? Who was translating?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had a Spanish-speaking sheriff's dispatcher on the line with me also who was giving the instructions that I was giving her to give to the husband. Essentially, mother nature took care of most of it. We really didn't have to do a whole lot other than guide them and reassure the parents help was coming. I was a little concerned about the bleeding afterwards. But monitored that and got it taken care of. Probably about 10, 15 minutes later, we were able to get an ambulance over to them.

GRIFFIN: And now we understand the couple has made it to Martin Memorial Medical Center, that's in downtown Stewart, and is everything okay.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is correct. That was the very last call we actually sent anyone on last night before we had to shut everyone down and they have a new baby boy and I understand that the mother and child are both fine.

GRIFFIN: All right. Well, thank you so much. Kevin Twombly and certainly a story you will be able to tell about Hurricane Jeanne. The birth of a baby that had to get instructions over the phone basically as Hurricane Jeanne came ashore.

You can help with relief efforts for people affected by this hurricane. All you have to do is contact the American Red Cross for donations. 1-800-HELP-NOW for help and other information, you can go to the response center, which is 1-866-GET-INFO. We also have breaking news out of London. There was a bomb alert on a Greek Olympic passenger airliner. Some British Tornado jets escorted that plane into an airport near London. And as far as we know, everything is okay aboard this flight. But it was diverted, a flight that was headed to the U.S. We're going to have more on that and Hurricane Jeanne when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: This storm is heading towards Tampa Bay. Jeanne is about 30 miles east southeast of Tampa, expected to weaken into a tropical storm later today. Winds right now are just 75 miles per hour. That's Category 1. Assessing the damage, though, early reports of the damage steadily coming in along Florida's eastern coast, the Atlantic side, residents reporting flooding. We've seen it, downed power lines and homes with no roofs. In the dark, hundreds of thousands of Florida residents without electricity. In fact, that number is approaching a million, 938,000 according to the state's largest power company. That's the number of customers that have no power right now. The number again is expected to rise as this goes through.

We want to tell you that more relief efforts at noon, eastern on CNN. We will have Michael Brown, I believe with Wolf Blitzer, who is FEMA director will join Wolf for LATE EDITION for the latest on this. And I also want to just mention, we talked to you about a Greek airliner, that Greek airliner that had an incident on a flight from Athens to New York. It was diverted to London's Stansted Airport. It landed safely. It had to be escorted down about 2:30 p.m. in London, but it is safe and sound. We'll find out what happened on that in the coming hours. Finding out more on this storm and other hurricane information is right at your fingertips. You can go to your computer. Log on to CNN.com/hurricanes. The hurricane season special report includes safety information on the storm's potential path, even what to do if a storm may be headed in your direction. Jeanne knocked out power, as we said, to thousands in Florida. Julie Sumners with CNN affiliate WPLG found one Boca Raton convenience store that did find a way to stay open.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HENRY ABUTINEH, CONVENIENCE STORE: We still have water. We are making coffee. We have cakes and stuff that doesn't go bad still we can sell.

JULIE SUMNERS, WPLG CORRESPONDENT: Now, you got the coffee going off a generator I see in the back.

ABUTINEH: Yes, we're making coffee off of the generator.

SUMNERS: But the generator is not strong enough to power all the refrigeration.

ABUTINEH: Unfortunately it's not, so...

SUMNERS: What happens to all the ice cream and milk?

ABUTINEH: It's going too go bad. Just like the last hurricane, Frances, we lost a lot of ice cream and milk and meats and stuff like that.

SUMNERS: How much of a financial hit is that for you?

ABUTINEH: Probably close to 3 or $4,000 in goods. So -- what are you going to do? I mean, to me, what's important is that we survive. Nothing happened to human beings and everything else can be replaced. I'm really glad for that.

SUMNERS: A lot of those customers are glad for the caffeine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the only place you can find hot coffee.

SUMNERS: It's the only place you can find hot coffee?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

SUMNERS: How many places have you been?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is probably my fifth place.

SUMNERS: Your fifth place and you finally got it. Good job.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now I can deal with the after effects of Jeanne.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: That was Julie Sumners from WPLG reporting about a convenience store that managed to stay open. We're going to take a look at WJXT's live coverage right now. Actually, we're going to take a break actually and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: Our affiliate in Miami, WPLG, flying over Riviera Beach, which is just north of West Palm Beach, Florida. Let's take a look and listen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ...and look, now, does that look like new damage or does that look like a roof that was under construction?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that's got to be new. Because as Walt's showing us there, if pull out a bit, Walt, you've got all the new debris. All those tiles are strewn. You have to figure in three weeks, they would have done some picking up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This area has been hit pretty hard, let me tell you. Well -- but isn't it interesting, that this is season. We're trying to figure out which hurricane did this damage. How crazy does that sound just when we say it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, it's a telltale sign to show you how busy we've all been. Again, this makes three out of four weekends that we've all spent Sunday morning here doing almost this exact same thing. We've gotten familiar with the geography of this eastern coast of Florida.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Walt, give us an idea more specifically where you are so people can pinpoint this neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're at Avenue E in Riviera Beach near 20th Street.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you are east or west of 95?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are west of 95, and I'm sorry, we are east of 95 and we're just east of the -- actually west of the Intracoastal here at Riviera Beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got you. Wow, you know, it's interesting. Here they're flying along and what drew the attention, all the blue dots.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the blue dots. Absolutely. There's just damage everywhere here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's make the point, too, Walt, there is still a lot further to go north where we know the center of the storm came in. We even haven't seen those pictures left.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And look at, Walt, to the left of that shot, there. That's the blue tarp right there in front of you. The blue tarp pulled off that section of the roof.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Correct. Water damage, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And if you tilt up, also look, what's that blue patch right in the middle? Is that where it ripped off?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably so.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at that. Looks like that was the piece of wood used to hold down the tarp.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's a house that has nothing at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, all the tack strips and everything down for the roof.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right. Now, that looks like it was there after the last storm getting ready for a new roof and then this storm came along.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we talked about that, people making plans, constructing new sections and now those plans have to be redone again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And can we tell you how dangerous it must have been and how frightening it must have been to be in this neighborhood last night with that kind of loose flying debris moving around in hurricane force winds?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would have been like a cloud on the roof tiles. Look how many roof tiles we're seeing just absolutely -- that had to be surreal to see that. And again, as you're saying, these are vet vans here, these are folks that went through this three weeks ago and now, here we go again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, let's put out the call. If you're living in the neighborhood we're shooting right now we'd love to hear from you right here at Local 10. If you can give us a call on our news desk we'd love to talk to you live on the air. Our number here is (305) 325-2370. That's our news desk.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our number here is (305) 325-2370. That's our news desk. Let me give you that number one more time. We'd like to talk to you if you're living in this neighborhood. (305) 325-2370.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And this is a little bit north. So if the folks can't hear us, maybe you know somebody that lives up there. You could certainly help us clue in to get an idea exactly what happened. Walt, the two boats that you saw to your left there that's obviously a storage area.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think so too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wouldn't think that those were picked up and brought there. But I see a number of boats stored there but obviously they weren't stored too well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we're not seeing any people walking around. We saw a couple guys up on the roof. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One car. I'm not quite sure where the people are. Obviously, maybe they're still inside their homes on this Sunday morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, they've advised people, really, if you don't have to go out yet, don't. For a lot of reasons. But here's somebody surveying the damage giving the "Hi" sign. He's probably checking on a neighbor here. You got some guys sitting outside and they're probably sharing stories right now of what happened there. Boy, and stories they've got to tell.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Walt, what can you tell us about power lines? Are they pretty much standing in this neighborhood?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we've searched over pretty closely and there's no power lines down whatsoever. In fact, we were looking for any FP&L trucks which may be in the area maybe doing some minor repairs but there isn't anything at all. No power lines down in this area. Just a lot of superficial damage. There are tarps pulled off because of the heavy gusting winds and obviously lots and lots of roof tiles.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, and what's interesting about this neighborhood compared to the other one you showed us just prior to this which was closer to the water, this neighborhood's dry.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very dry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is no standing water here. And you -- how far away were you when you showed us the shot in the barrier islands as the crow flies? Five miles maybe?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably so, yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Walt, if you could slowly pan back to the left there there looked like a large building, a little bit further. Keep going left. Just in front of that building, if you could tilt actually down in the foreground more, it looked like there was a small building that also had blue tarp on it. Right there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That top's missing, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And, again, it looks like there's some repair work done. What kind of a building is that, I was trying to figure out what that -- It almost looks like it might be a church.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like it might be. It may be a school facility. I'm looking for a sign myself.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's a large piece of property.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It sure is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A large complex there. Nobody home it looks like. Clearly this must be an evacuation area because there's very few -- I mean, that building is huge and we see very few cars. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Maybe just an apartment complex actually.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, it's a church.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There you go. So maybe it's a church school.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Curious. I kind of spotted that on the left side there. Wow. Thanks for that. You do take requests. We're all looking at these pictures for the first time together and sometimes one of us spots something, sometimes somebody else does. Once again, this is (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Riviera Beach, continuing to survey damage. It's getting easier and easier to spot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no doubt about that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know if you wan to move further north and give us a chance to see what is happening. We're very anxious to hear from our friends and neighbors in Melbourne to find out what really happened there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, we're going to check out more stuff for you, OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, Walt. Thanks. We're going to monitor you, of course as we do that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As we give Walt a little opportunity to go further north, let's turn it over to our weather folks for just a few minutes so we can talk about where the storm is now and what we can expect in our weather for the rest of the afternoon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure. Again, Diana.

GRIFFIN: Taking a look at the damage there. And moving north to where the damage should be greater, Riviera Beach is south of where the eye came through. We're going to switch over to, this is Fox News 29. I'm not sure where this is, but let's take a look. Oh, this is WSVN, Miami.

CHRISTINE CRUZ, WSVN CORRESPONDENT: ...those areas that were hit by Frances and now have been ravaged again. More specifically now, talking about Dade County, the evacuation order has been lifted and once that happens, the Red Cross starts to close shelters. That means people leave, go back to their homes. So we expect a lot of that to happen, not only in Dade County but also in Broward County. Power outages, one important note on that. A lot of people still without power. Most of those in Broward County, the last update we had from FP&L put that number at 57,400 in Broward. In Dade, the number slightly over 2500 at 2600. If you have a power outage right now, FP&L officials are asking you not to call in for that reason alone. However, if you do see a downed power line in your neighborhood, that can pose an intermediate threat, of course, to people, and that can cost lives. So they want you to call if that's the case. That is the rundown real quickly on what's going on on the updates from the news desk. Any more information we'll be sure to bring to you. For now, I'm Christine Cruz, back to you guys in the studio.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Thanks so much. Christine. And I don't know what to do first, go give these people my business, the shopping malls or head out to "Beauty and the Beast."

GRIFFIN: Let's see what WJXT has to say about -- actually, we've just lost the signal. Do we want to take a break right now? And we'll be back. We'll update you where Hurricane Jeanne is right now right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: Here's some live pictures. We're looking at flooding in a roadway. This is coming out of our affiliate WPLG in Miami. Let's try to listen in and see where this exactly is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Intracoastal right there. The water just came up from the Intracoastal. Obviously -- actually, the barrier islands. So these people, look at all the debris here scattered.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They had something stacked up there. Some sort of materials. Looks like foam padding of some sort. The interesting thing is you see where they had there. Looks like had it buffered, tried to put it behind that building, tried to stack it up in the corner and sadly, that didn't work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you can see the rain's coming down too.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chad, would that be storm surge coming up from the ocean and those waterways and pouring into the road.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to be a combination of both storm surge and the locally heavy rain. The storm surge combined with the rain has obviously put a lot of water in that community. And as it pushed up over the land, it gets up high enough point that obviously that roadway is a little bit lower than the island there from -- if Walt can pan a little bit to the left, to give you a little of an idea. There's the ocean. And then there's land. Once the storm -- The Intracoastal? -- Once the water comes up there, it's got to go somewhere. The ocean and Intracoastal. The water has got to go somewhere and it's going to go back to Intracoastal or to the street. And this case, the Intracoastal is swollen as well. It's a couple of feet above normal level. So the water is going to run in the opposite direction of what it normally would. And it takes the lowest path which in this case, the street forms pretty much a channel that's been dug out for the roadway purposes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you know, you add the rain and then of course you clog a drain and here we are. This is why these guys are doing their best. Look at the whirlpool. Well, sometimes a guy and a rake can get the job done.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not a great idea always to drive through flooded roadways like that. That is not a great idea right there. It can be a very dangerous situation. You want to be careful of that in the coming days. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The other thing too, when you talk about that, is in the residential areas when somebody comes barreling down like that, they throw a wake up into the other houses. Let's listen to Eileen Wigbrun(ph) now in Broward County.

EILEEN WIGBRUN, BROWARD COUNTY OFFICIAL: This morning we still continue to focus our efforts on recovering from the impact of Hurricane Jeanne in our community and we are making substantial progress. I'm happy to say that the National Weather Service has lifted the hurricane warning in Broward County...

GRIFFIN: We're going to leave this news conference. WPLG is covering it in Broward County and go to Tom Korun, he is in Brandon, Florida I believe. Tom?

TOM KORUN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Drew, we're about ten miles from the city of Tampa and about 25 miles to 30 miles from the center of Hurricane Jeanne and obviously, what we've experienced to this stage on the outer bands and some of the periphery bands near the eye of the storm so far, the worst probably yet to come. But as you can see, as you would expect, with all the water we've had here at eastern Hillsborough County and the outlying counties around Hillsborough, this is what you see. Large oak trees down. A plethora of oak trees throughout all of the counties surrounding the Tampa Bay area. Fortunately enough, this one here just hit the corner of the Heismans'(ph) home who, by the way, folks, you talk about a situation where we've already gone through thee hurricanes. These people have moved in from Brooksville, they moved out of a triple mobile home which is about 35, 40 miles north and they moved into this home, what was it three days ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Three days ago. This past Wednesday, we just closed on this house and got moved in Thursday night. That's what we're doing now is trying to get moved in, and then this happened. And I'm beginning to wonder if I should have moved. I think I should have stayed where i was at.

KORUN: Well, as we say, the good news is you are safe and the damage has only been sustained to the overhang of your house. Give us an idea what you experienced. This happened about an hour, hour and a half ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was horrifying when I walked to see how bad the winds really were, it was just like "Oh my God!" and I seen the tree raising up out of the ground and I just took off running because I was horrified. It was unreal, what's next, you know.

KORUN: And certainly at this stage of the game, the power is out in the neighborhood as is about 100,000 people so far. And I'm sure that will be going higher here in Hillsborough County that are without power. But, Jim, as we say this can be fixed and the good news is you and your wife are safe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, that's right. You know, this is all material stuff. You know, as long as we're walking and talking, you know, thank God we're here. That's all I care about. KORUN: As we said, we're about 25 to 30 miles from the center of Jeanne which is in Bartow, Florida, just directly east here of Brandon. So we're going to station ourselves in a much more safer area because the worst more than likely yet to come. Drew, back to you.

GRIFFIN: Tom, actually surprised you're not getting more weather right now.

KORUN: I think what we have, with these bands coming around, just before we went on, we got a gust of about maybe 40 miles an hour. But as my photographer and I drove out here to the area today, believe me, the gusts were probably 55 to 60 miles an hour. It was coming down pretty good. The rain obviously coming on a very horizontal pattern. Very -- and the other thing too is, is for all the people that may be watching here on CNN at this stage of the game and live mere in the outlying areas of the Tampa Bay area, when you get to the four way stops, there's a lot of power out so you're going to have outages when it comes to stop lights. When you get to those, make sure you treat those as four-way stops. People are not doing that, they are coming in from both directions and certainly we don't want to have any extraneous injuries due to just some silly mistakes.

GRIFFIN: Good advice, Tom. Thanks for your report. Probably the best advice Jacqui Jeras is just to stay home and wait for this to go on by. You can tell us what's going to happen in Brandon, right?

JERAS: Well, Brandon right now actually taking a look, it's right about in this area, so it's kind of in the dropout. They had some heavier bands earlier and there's yet another band going to try and make its way into that area. And that's going to be a little bit stronger I think than the first one. The center of circulation right now has been kind of hovering over toward Lakeland over towards the Winter Haven area. It's continuing to move to the west northwest. I've been kind of eyeballing this and it looks like it might be picking up a little bit of forward speed. Let's really hope that it does this, because it's been slowing down consistently over the last six to 12 hours. We don't want this to slow down any further. It is forecast to pick up a little bit more forward speed.

Also, the strongest of winds are going to be moving across the I- 4 corridor here around Haines City over up towards Polk City at this time. Those wind gusts should be reaching hurricane strength at times. These are some current wind gusts that we've been reporting in the last hour here. Orlando, 67 miles per hour. Daytona Beach up at 51, Tampa Bay itself at 55 miles per hour. These winds are still strong enough to be causing some damage, some pretty decent size tree branches and limbs could be falling across power lines. We may still see power outages.

Tornado warning? Thanks. Producer just handed me a tornado warning for Flagler County. It includes the city of Bunnell or Bunnell, I'm not sure how you pronounce it that, until 12:30. This is a radar indicated tornado about eight miles east of Ormond Beach. It's moving northwest at 40 miles per hour. You do want to take cover now. And, by the way, we think that tornado threat is going to start increasing just a little bit as we head into the afternoon hours. You get a little daytime heating, that creates more instability. So we may see a little bit more rotation into the afternoon. These are some of the peak wind gusts that we've seen so far from Jeanne, Vero Beach the big winner, there, with 122 miles per hour. And there you can see 78 miles per hour in Orlando. Still getting those strong ones. Forecast track is bringing it, kind of scraping along the coast here. It might make its way over open water. But expect it to continue to weaken, Drew, and that's some good news. It's barely a hurricane now with 75 mile per hour winds, it should become a tropical storm this afternoon.

GRIFFIN: All right, Jacqui. That Flagler County north of Daytona Beach which shows you the wide breadth of this thing. As it moves north, what can Tallahassee expect? I guess that's the next major metropolitan area in the path.

JERAS: Well, Tallahassee is going to be getting some decent rainfall certainly out of this. We think the second landfall, if it does completely make its way over water, should be to the east of there. And that would bring Tallahassee on the good side of the storm. So they can expect to see decent gusts, certainly tropical storm force strength. Between maybe 40, possibly as high as 60 miles per hour, but I think it would be more along the 30, 40 mile per hour range for Tallahassee. Rainfall totals maybe on the order of three to six inches at best. So, Tallahassee is going to see some good action but nearly as bad as what they're seeing right now across Central Florida.

GRIFFIN: Jacqui Jeras. Thank you. We'll be right back with our coverage of Hurricane Jeanne.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: Chief Walt Chamberlin is with the fire and emergency center in Melbourne, Florida, joining us now by phone from Melbourne. Chief, your crews have been able to assess the damage. And are there any injuries from the storm?

WALT CHAMBERLIN, MELBOURNE, FL FIRE CHIEF: Good morning. We've had crews out since daylight assessing damage. No reports of any injuries at this time, thankfully. But the obvious, we have power lines down, street lights, street signs, things like that. So we're out doing the damage assessment and hopefully we won't find any injuries.

GRIFFIN: And are there any particular areas that were hit the hardest or something that surprised you about this particular storm?

CHAMBERLIN: No, actually, for what we had, of course, your obvious, the trailer parks and things like that, but most of those people were evacuated. We had did have one of our special needs shelters in Melbourne have a roof start to come off during the middle of the storm. We had to evacuate some 300 plus people out of that shelter.

GRIFFIN: It's something that no injuries were reported. There were reports before this hurricane hit that you were having trouble getting people to evacuate. Obviously the people who needed to evacuate did since there are no injuries.

CHAMBERLIN: Yeah, and it's still early to tell. It's too early to tell. We really haven't made a sweep of the beach side yet. Our winds are still up. They're just at this point getting down where we can safely cross the causeway. So probably within the next few hours, we'll have a real assessment of damage and injuries if there are any.

GRIFFIN: And as far as what to do next, just in case some of your citizens there are watching and able to get this I know power is out, what should they be doing at this moment?

CHAMBERLIN: At this moment, please, we urge you just to stay in your homes. I know after a storm like this, people like to get out and sight see, but there are so many houses. I drove the road this morning for a while. And there are power lines all over this place. There's street signs, there's hazards(ph) in the road. And it just makes our job harder if we have all the traffic to deal with.

GRIFFIN: Chief, I can sense the weariness in your voice. Thanks for joining us and good luck in the coming days. That's Chief Walt Chamberlin with the fire and emergency center in Melbourne last night.

CHAMBERLIN: Thank you.

In Melbourne last night was our Anderson Cooper and Chad Myers up most of the night. In case you haven't seen what Hurricane Jeanne was like when she came ashore, take a look what they did last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you any sense the northern part of the eye wall is going to last in this location?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I think it's going to be there for another 45 minutes to an hour.

COOPER: 45 minutes? Are you kidding?

MYERS: Sorry, but look, they pay you the big bucks. Come on. Suck it up out there.

Now you're protected. Right now you're protected.

COOPER: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I'm protected. 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 picked up like this. And I just happened upon the camera here. A different camera, a 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.

MYERS: We're going to be in it for a while. That's the problem. There's no way to get out of it now that we're in it.

COOPER: I can't even hear what Chad is saying.

Whoa!

MYERS: 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 very hard to do this? And I said about a hundred. And this is pretty darn close to 100.

COOPER: So there's no telling how long, I mean we're always 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: Certainly not good news for us here.

MYERS: This is just mother nature at her worst.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

GRIFFIN: Our intrepid hurricane hunters out last night as Hurricane Jeanne crossed the Atlantic coast of Florida in Melbourne. Relief workers have been busy this hurricane season. The latest storm will keep them working. If you would like to help, you can do that by calling the Red Cross for donations, they're at 1-800-HELP-NOW. For help and other information, you can contact the Response Center, 1- 866-GET-INFO. We've been looking at live coverage from our affiliates up and down the Florida Coast. And let's go to that now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Coming right up along the Volusia County area, the Flagler county area. Let's go right over to Tom Sorrells now. There's a tornado warning, Tom?

TOM SORRELLS, WKMG WEATHERMAN: There is indeed for Flagler County right now until about 12:30. Take a look over my shoulder, you'll see the are we're talking about. It's this band I've been worrying about all morning along. And, sure enough, the Weather Service has decided this could be a developing tornado here in the Flagler County area working its way toward the northwest. They put the sticker on it right now, but no spin, no sheer marker going on. So it didn't show up as sheer twice through on the scan that we did. But, for now, we've going to do the tornado warning for Flagler County. This is moving to the northwest...

GRIFFIN: OK, we're going to break away from this coverage and go to some families reacting in Stewart, Florida. They just are looking at the damage to their homes. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The state of this family's home leaves them speechless. Spared by Frances, destroyed by Jeanne.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was pretty scary. I mean, we have...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her mother and father-in-law will have to live with them while they figure out what to do next.

I'm here at a mobile home park in Martin County and you can see the destruction to most of these homes. This house, the whole front room is gone altogether. No one home right now. Most of the people here rode out the night in the clubhouse. You can literally walk through this person's house. Not a window left intact. And their belongings, soaking wet wet.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was kind of rocky in the office. You could hear things banging against the concrete building, but we made it. You know? There's a reason for it, and this park is really bad right now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Flooding is everywhere. All up and down US 1, businesses took another hit. Frances hurt this town, Jeanne may have crippled them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The thing that's unbelievable is, three weeks ago, we drove out of our house to come here. We were crying the other kind of crying because everything was still here. It was amazing. We couldn't believe it was here. Now it's all gone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But you guys are all right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, we're okay.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

GRIFFIN: Scenes being played out across Florida this morning as Hurricane Jeanne still doing damage to that state. We want to let you know that RELIABLE SOURCES will air. It usually airs at this hour, it's going to air tonight at 5:00. So if you're a fan of RELIABLE SOURCES, that will air at 5:00. Right now let's get a preview of what's coming up on CNN's LATE EDITION at noon eastern. For that we go to Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Wolf?

Apparently we do not have Wolf just yet. We'll take a break and we'll come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired September 26, 2004 - 11:00   ET
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DREW GRIFFIN, CNN ANCHOR: We want to bring you right up-to-date on Hurricane Jeanne, hours after slamming ashore along Florida's east coast, Hurricane Jeanne is still battering the state. We're going to get the latest from Jacqui Jeras, taking over in the weather center this morning. Jacqui?
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, Drew, the latest on Jeanne just in now, it has weakened significantly again and now is barely a hurricane. Packing winds 75 miles per hour. You have to have 74 mile-per-hour or greater for it to be a hurricane. So we're just barely within that category. It should continue to weaken and will likely be a tropical storm now this afternoon. The location 30 miles east-southeast of Tampa, Florida, and it has slowed down a little bit. This was moving 14 miles per hour when it made landfall, moved down to 12 at the last advisory and now down to ten miles per hour. We don't like to see this trend. We're hoping it's going to be picking up a little bit more forward speed as it starts to turn a little bit more up more toward the north.

There you can see the center of circulation just honing in on Tampa and Tampa really getting plowed at this time with some very heavy rains and some very strong gusting winds. The forecast track has shifted a little bit also slightly off to the east. So not as much of the storm is going to be over open water, but it's going to be kind of grazing along the western coast of Florida here. Still expecting it to stay down at tropical storm strength, though. So we're not expecting this to intensify anymore. A continued gradual weakening trend can be expected. It is expected to then turn back up to the north and to the east. And look at it move across the Carolinas and right over the Charlotte area as a tropical depression.

And while it is good news it's weakening, unfortunately, much of this area already has seen way too much rain and we could see some additional flooding problems, especially into the higher elevations across the Carolinas. This is the current radar picture. There you can see the bright yellows here. That's where the real heavy rain is. Tornado watch also in effect across central northern Florida and then extending up into southern parts of Georgia. We are expecting the chance of tornadoes to increase as we head into the afternoon. Drew?

GRIFFIN: Thank you very much. We're getting live pictures now from WPLG flying over Palm Beach Gardens. This is an area north of West Palm Beach right along I-95 and let's listen in as they describe what they're shooting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...a tennis facility. And, of course, Trent was mentioning earlier, damage caused by tornado or wind. This looks like it's wind. I'm not sure how easy you'll spot this. This is a large ficus tree down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. That's more of a straight line wind event there. Parts of the tree looks like it possibly snapped off. But obviously, that's from a hurricane because the roots are pushed up there. So you're right in your analysis there. Definitely a wind event.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, Trent, we're going to be continuing our trip in a southbound direction and (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As (UNINTELLIGIBLE) continues along, I wonder if we can get to the video we were looking at. Here's more live pictures coming from Palm Beach Gardens. And you can see it looks like roof tiles and debris just strewn all over this neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are mobile homes. There's a roof completely -- well not completely but nearly torn off there. Everything inside exposed. You can imagine there must be just tons of water damage inside of there, obviously. And there's just debris everywhere. Again, very hit and miss. I guess it depends sometimes on the luck of the draw or just the condition of your house, your roof, whatever it might be.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But, again, it's why mobile homes are always the first to be evacuated, why it takes nothing more than strong tropical force winds for us to advise people to get out of these mobile homes. People who live in tornado alley have a superstition that a tornado can find a mobile home like a needle in a hay stack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They call them tornado magnets out in the arid(ph) plains.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right, they do. So, once again, you're looking at live pictures here on our continuing coverage on Local 10. This is coming to us from a helicopter over Palm Beach Gardens as they are surveying the damage.

GRIFFIN: These are live pictures coming in as the storm has passed Palm Beach Gardens very near where Jeanne came ashore overnight. And the local affiliate there, WPLG, able to send up its helicopter now to take a look at the damage. Our Eric Philips still in the path of this storm. He is in Orlando which is being battered right now. Eric?

ERIC PHILIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it certainly feels like it's being battered, right now, too. We've been seeing wind gusts here, I just measured one probably about ten minutes ago, 57 mile an hour winds gusting, coming through here, this area where I'm standing not too far from Walt Disney World, as a matter of fact. But we have seen wind gusts coming through more frequently. Earlier this morning, and we've been out here since about 6:00 this morning. Earlier, we were seeing gusts that would come through every so often, maybe once every 20 minutes or so. Now every now and then, every five minutes or so, you'll see gusts come through, followed by torrential downpours and sort of sideways rain. We sent a crew out to sort of rove around a little bit during one of the lulls to see what they would find in terms of damage.

What they did see was some downed trees, a tree dangerously close to a house, perhaps even on top of the house. And they've seen, obviously, lots of water on the roadways. Officials were worried about flooding here. That was their main concern here in the Orange County-Orlando area, flooding, because the ground is so saturated from what has gone on here in the past few weeks with Hurricane Frances especially and always Hurricane Charley.

But they're telling me that they did not get so far, they have not gotten, and at this point don't expect to get the worst of what they could have gotten here from Hurricane Jeanne because the storm has sort of taken a turn and gone across the state instead of going up the Atlantic coast as it was supposed to do, or at least as it was forecast to do. They're saying they've not gotten the hurricane force winds followed by the rain they were expecting to get here. Nevertheless, as you can see behind me, just from the trees that are waving in the breeze here or in the wind, this is still very much, you've still got some gale force winds coming through here.

This is still a very serious storm that is wreaking havoc on the Orlando area and officials are telling people to make sure that, in fact, they stay indoors. There's still a curfew that is in effect until 5:00 this afternoon. They don't want folks to have a false sense of security because that storm has turned. They want them to stay indoors and even after the storm has passed, give officials a chance to get out, survey the damage and then you can go back to your homes and see what's been done by Jeanne. Drew?

GRIFFIN: Eric, thank you. That change in direction good news for Orlando perhaps but not so good for Tallahassee which may now be moving into the path of this storm. We want to go to Jim Reed. He is a hurricane hunter, I understand, on the phone with us now. Jim is in Vero Beach where he rode out the storm. What was it like for you, Jim?

JIM REED, HURRICANE CHASER: Well, Hurricane Jeanne certainly was a very powerful storm. It was my fifth of this season. And it was a reminder that just because it's hurricane number five doesn't mean it's a big powerful one because this certainly was.

GRIFFIN: Every storm is different. What surprised you or what was different about this particular storm in your overnight adventure?

REED: Well, research meteorologist John Davies(ph), my assistant Catherine Bay(ph) and I were working as a team and I think we were surprised by the strength of the winds and the intensity and how long it lasted. We were getting gusts between 110 and 120 at one point and so structures that weren't damaged during Frances were being affected and, of course, those that were already compromised because of Hurricane Frances were suffering, as well. GRIFFIN: We have been looking at video, Jim, from WPEC taken in Vero Beach along the Indian River, primarily, where we show these flood waters. Can you tell us, was this water being pushed in by the hurricane or is this actual rain flood waters?

REED: I think it's a combination, but we were granted access earlier in the day to go out by the beach for a short time to document the surf action, and the waves were quite high. I would estimate, early on, six to ten feet, and when we saw that, and that was prior to sunset, we were a little bit concerned with the storm surge and in fact, we have witnessed a great deal of street flooding and surge- related water. I spoke to one gentleman who said he had a little bit of water in his house after Hurricane Frances and now he's got more than a foot. So I think this one produced a lot more surge.

GRIFFIN: I have never been to Vero Beach, but there doesn't seem to be extensive mobile home parks in that area, at least from what we're seeing. Is that the case, and is that going to make this different?

REED: Well, depends on how you mean different. I think this hurricane season, quite frankly, will change a number of people's outlook in having mobile homes in Florida. Codes may need to be discussed because we have witnessed a number of mobile homes just absolutely destroyed. And they just weren't meant for violent thunderstorm winds, much less a Category 3 hurricane. A number of the -- I can tell you right now that the Lakewood Village mobile home park in the Vero Beach area sustained considerable damage and also the Village Green community mobile park sustained considerable damage.

GRIFFIN: Very good. Jim Reed, hurricane hunter, in Vero Beach riding out his fifth, and Jim, I hope the last storm of this season for...

REED: I pray you're right. And my heart goes out to everyone in Florida and anyone else that's been affected by this season. We're hoping it's over.

GRIFFIN: Indeed. You're taking a live look at the radar picture of what's left of -- well, what is Hurricane Jeanne even though it's now being downgraded a bit. We'll be back with continuing coverage after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: Downed power lines, streets underwater. Homes have been demolished. Just some of the early damage reports coming in as Florida is suffering through another hurricane. Hurricane Jeanne. Reporter Louis Bolden with affiliate KMG is in Clermont, Florida. You are west of Orlando, kind of in the Winter Garden area right where the Xs are crossing with these hurricanes.

LOUIS BOLDEN, WKMG CORRESPONDENT: That's right. About 25 miles west of Orlando. And we are getting just very, very high wind. About (UNINTELLIGIBLE) here. We're getting wind gusts of about 95 miles per hour. It's really a tough situation here. And it's not like we are a coastal community. We are very, very far inland. And this is what residents here woke up to. Last night was a pretty calm night for Clermont. But as that system moved through, this is what residents woke up to. Very, very strong -- very, very strong wind gusts. It's actually enough to sort of knock you off your feet.

We're actually at South Lake Hospital here. And one of the things we wanted to show you to give you an idea of how strong the wind is, because we're at a hospital, this is the hospital staff. This is where they parked. And a minute ago, a while ago, we actually saw the wind, you could see the wind bounce the cars up and down. A while ago, there was a car with a manual transmission. They didn't have the parking brake fully engaged, it was only partially engaged. And the wind actually slowly moved that car out to the center of the parking lot. They had to notify the owner and come out and move it. But that gives you an idea of just how strong the wind is. It can actually move a car. It's a tough situation. They've had a lot of power lines down in this area with live wires. Power poles down. And the problem is emergency officials can't even get out. They're getting those calls in about the power lines down in the middle of the street.

Highway 50, one of the main thoroughfares through Clermont, power lines down in the street. And there's nothing they can do about it right now because emergency officials can't even take their vehicles out because the wind is just so strong. So obviously -- obviously -- they don't want residents out in this. It's actually getting pretty bad. You guys, we're going to send it back to you in the studio.

GRIFFIN: Louis, thanks for bringing that to us. Incredible. He is actually in the middle of the state and it's hard to believe the winds are still that strong. This storm far from over. Hurricane Jeanne just raking through Central Florida yet again. We're going to hear a lot of stories in the coming days about how people survived through Hurricane Jeanne. But one of the most incredible so far came from Port Salerno. This is just south of where the eye crossed last night and Kevin Twombly (ph) in Stuart, Florida, helped deliver a baby over the phone. A woman was having a baby. She speaks only Spanish. Kevin, you were on the other end of this call, through a translator helping this woman deliver a baby. Tell us what happened, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct. I answered the 911 line, an extremely vocal excited Hispanic male was asking for help, said the baby was coming, and we essentially guided him and the mother through the procedure. Made sure the baby was breathing and we heard that wonderful cry in the background. That made me feel good. Cleaned and warmed(ph), put him on a towel and the problem was, the winds were so high, we couldn't dispatch rescue ambulance, fire department, anybody to help at the time. So we had to do everything primarily by phone for a period of time.

GRIFFIN: So once you were on the phone line, you knew at that point no help was coming to this couple. You were it. And had you to translate. How did that happen? Who was translating?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had a Spanish-speaking sheriff's dispatcher on the line with me also who was giving the instructions that I was giving her to give to the husband. Essentially, mother nature took care of most of it. We really didn't have to do a whole lot other than guide them and reassure the parents help was coming. I was a little concerned about the bleeding afterwards. But monitored that and got it taken care of. Probably about 10, 15 minutes later, we were able to get an ambulance over to them.

GRIFFIN: And now we understand the couple has made it to Martin Memorial Medical Center, that's in downtown Stewart, and is everything okay.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is correct. That was the very last call we actually sent anyone on last night before we had to shut everyone down and they have a new baby boy and I understand that the mother and child are both fine.

GRIFFIN: All right. Well, thank you so much. Kevin Twombly and certainly a story you will be able to tell about Hurricane Jeanne. The birth of a baby that had to get instructions over the phone basically as Hurricane Jeanne came ashore.

You can help with relief efforts for people affected by this hurricane. All you have to do is contact the American Red Cross for donations. 1-800-HELP-NOW for help and other information, you can go to the response center, which is 1-866-GET-INFO. We also have breaking news out of London. There was a bomb alert on a Greek Olympic passenger airliner. Some British Tornado jets escorted that plane into an airport near London. And as far as we know, everything is okay aboard this flight. But it was diverted, a flight that was headed to the U.S. We're going to have more on that and Hurricane Jeanne when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: This storm is heading towards Tampa Bay. Jeanne is about 30 miles east southeast of Tampa, expected to weaken into a tropical storm later today. Winds right now are just 75 miles per hour. That's Category 1. Assessing the damage, though, early reports of the damage steadily coming in along Florida's eastern coast, the Atlantic side, residents reporting flooding. We've seen it, downed power lines and homes with no roofs. In the dark, hundreds of thousands of Florida residents without electricity. In fact, that number is approaching a million, 938,000 according to the state's largest power company. That's the number of customers that have no power right now. The number again is expected to rise as this goes through.

We want to tell you that more relief efforts at noon, eastern on CNN. We will have Michael Brown, I believe with Wolf Blitzer, who is FEMA director will join Wolf for LATE EDITION for the latest on this. And I also want to just mention, we talked to you about a Greek airliner, that Greek airliner that had an incident on a flight from Athens to New York. It was diverted to London's Stansted Airport. It landed safely. It had to be escorted down about 2:30 p.m. in London, but it is safe and sound. We'll find out what happened on that in the coming hours. Finding out more on this storm and other hurricane information is right at your fingertips. You can go to your computer. Log on to CNN.com/hurricanes. The hurricane season special report includes safety information on the storm's potential path, even what to do if a storm may be headed in your direction. Jeanne knocked out power, as we said, to thousands in Florida. Julie Sumners with CNN affiliate WPLG found one Boca Raton convenience store that did find a way to stay open.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HENRY ABUTINEH, CONVENIENCE STORE: We still have water. We are making coffee. We have cakes and stuff that doesn't go bad still we can sell.

JULIE SUMNERS, WPLG CORRESPONDENT: Now, you got the coffee going off a generator I see in the back.

ABUTINEH: Yes, we're making coffee off of the generator.

SUMNERS: But the generator is not strong enough to power all the refrigeration.

ABUTINEH: Unfortunately it's not, so...

SUMNERS: What happens to all the ice cream and milk?

ABUTINEH: It's going too go bad. Just like the last hurricane, Frances, we lost a lot of ice cream and milk and meats and stuff like that.

SUMNERS: How much of a financial hit is that for you?

ABUTINEH: Probably close to 3 or $4,000 in goods. So -- what are you going to do? I mean, to me, what's important is that we survive. Nothing happened to human beings and everything else can be replaced. I'm really glad for that.

SUMNERS: A lot of those customers are glad for the caffeine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the only place you can find hot coffee.

SUMNERS: It's the only place you can find hot coffee?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

SUMNERS: How many places have you been?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is probably my fifth place.

SUMNERS: Your fifth place and you finally got it. Good job.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now I can deal with the after effects of Jeanne.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: That was Julie Sumners from WPLG reporting about a convenience store that managed to stay open. We're going to take a look at WJXT's live coverage right now. Actually, we're going to take a break actually and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: Our affiliate in Miami, WPLG, flying over Riviera Beach, which is just north of West Palm Beach, Florida. Let's take a look and listen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ...and look, now, does that look like new damage or does that look like a roof that was under construction?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that's got to be new. Because as Walt's showing us there, if pull out a bit, Walt, you've got all the new debris. All those tiles are strewn. You have to figure in three weeks, they would have done some picking up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This area has been hit pretty hard, let me tell you. Well -- but isn't it interesting, that this is season. We're trying to figure out which hurricane did this damage. How crazy does that sound just when we say it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, it's a telltale sign to show you how busy we've all been. Again, this makes three out of four weekends that we've all spent Sunday morning here doing almost this exact same thing. We've gotten familiar with the geography of this eastern coast of Florida.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Walt, give us an idea more specifically where you are so people can pinpoint this neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're at Avenue E in Riviera Beach near 20th Street.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you are east or west of 95?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are west of 95, and I'm sorry, we are east of 95 and we're just east of the -- actually west of the Intracoastal here at Riviera Beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got you. Wow, you know, it's interesting. Here they're flying along and what drew the attention, all the blue dots.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the blue dots. Absolutely. There's just damage everywhere here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's make the point, too, Walt, there is still a lot further to go north where we know the center of the storm came in. We even haven't seen those pictures left.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And look at, Walt, to the left of that shot, there. That's the blue tarp right there in front of you. The blue tarp pulled off that section of the roof.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Correct. Water damage, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And if you tilt up, also look, what's that blue patch right in the middle? Is that where it ripped off?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably so.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at that. Looks like that was the piece of wood used to hold down the tarp.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's a house that has nothing at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, all the tack strips and everything down for the roof.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right. Now, that looks like it was there after the last storm getting ready for a new roof and then this storm came along.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we talked about that, people making plans, constructing new sections and now those plans have to be redone again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And can we tell you how dangerous it must have been and how frightening it must have been to be in this neighborhood last night with that kind of loose flying debris moving around in hurricane force winds?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would have been like a cloud on the roof tiles. Look how many roof tiles we're seeing just absolutely -- that had to be surreal to see that. And again, as you're saying, these are vet vans here, these are folks that went through this three weeks ago and now, here we go again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, let's put out the call. If you're living in the neighborhood we're shooting right now we'd love to hear from you right here at Local 10. If you can give us a call on our news desk we'd love to talk to you live on the air. Our number here is (305) 325-2370. That's our news desk.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our number here is (305) 325-2370. That's our news desk. Let me give you that number one more time. We'd like to talk to you if you're living in this neighborhood. (305) 325-2370.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And this is a little bit north. So if the folks can't hear us, maybe you know somebody that lives up there. You could certainly help us clue in to get an idea exactly what happened. Walt, the two boats that you saw to your left there that's obviously a storage area.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think so too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wouldn't think that those were picked up and brought there. But I see a number of boats stored there but obviously they weren't stored too well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we're not seeing any people walking around. We saw a couple guys up on the roof. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One car. I'm not quite sure where the people are. Obviously, maybe they're still inside their homes on this Sunday morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, they've advised people, really, if you don't have to go out yet, don't. For a lot of reasons. But here's somebody surveying the damage giving the "Hi" sign. He's probably checking on a neighbor here. You got some guys sitting outside and they're probably sharing stories right now of what happened there. Boy, and stories they've got to tell.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Walt, what can you tell us about power lines? Are they pretty much standing in this neighborhood?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we've searched over pretty closely and there's no power lines down whatsoever. In fact, we were looking for any FP&L trucks which may be in the area maybe doing some minor repairs but there isn't anything at all. No power lines down in this area. Just a lot of superficial damage. There are tarps pulled off because of the heavy gusting winds and obviously lots and lots of roof tiles.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, and what's interesting about this neighborhood compared to the other one you showed us just prior to this which was closer to the water, this neighborhood's dry.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very dry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is no standing water here. And you -- how far away were you when you showed us the shot in the barrier islands as the crow flies? Five miles maybe?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably so, yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Walt, if you could slowly pan back to the left there there looked like a large building, a little bit further. Keep going left. Just in front of that building, if you could tilt actually down in the foreground more, it looked like there was a small building that also had blue tarp on it. Right there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That top's missing, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And, again, it looks like there's some repair work done. What kind of a building is that, I was trying to figure out what that -- It almost looks like it might be a church.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like it might be. It may be a school facility. I'm looking for a sign myself.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's a large piece of property.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It sure is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A large complex there. Nobody home it looks like. Clearly this must be an evacuation area because there's very few -- I mean, that building is huge and we see very few cars. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Maybe just an apartment complex actually.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, it's a church.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There you go. So maybe it's a church school.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Curious. I kind of spotted that on the left side there. Wow. Thanks for that. You do take requests. We're all looking at these pictures for the first time together and sometimes one of us spots something, sometimes somebody else does. Once again, this is (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Riviera Beach, continuing to survey damage. It's getting easier and easier to spot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no doubt about that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know if you wan to move further north and give us a chance to see what is happening. We're very anxious to hear from our friends and neighbors in Melbourne to find out what really happened there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, we're going to check out more stuff for you, OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, Walt. Thanks. We're going to monitor you, of course as we do that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As we give Walt a little opportunity to go further north, let's turn it over to our weather folks for just a few minutes so we can talk about where the storm is now and what we can expect in our weather for the rest of the afternoon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure. Again, Diana.

GRIFFIN: Taking a look at the damage there. And moving north to where the damage should be greater, Riviera Beach is south of where the eye came through. We're going to switch over to, this is Fox News 29. I'm not sure where this is, but let's take a look. Oh, this is WSVN, Miami.

CHRISTINE CRUZ, WSVN CORRESPONDENT: ...those areas that were hit by Frances and now have been ravaged again. More specifically now, talking about Dade County, the evacuation order has been lifted and once that happens, the Red Cross starts to close shelters. That means people leave, go back to their homes. So we expect a lot of that to happen, not only in Dade County but also in Broward County. Power outages, one important note on that. A lot of people still without power. Most of those in Broward County, the last update we had from FP&L put that number at 57,400 in Broward. In Dade, the number slightly over 2500 at 2600. If you have a power outage right now, FP&L officials are asking you not to call in for that reason alone. However, if you do see a downed power line in your neighborhood, that can pose an intermediate threat, of course, to people, and that can cost lives. So they want you to call if that's the case. That is the rundown real quickly on what's going on on the updates from the news desk. Any more information we'll be sure to bring to you. For now, I'm Christine Cruz, back to you guys in the studio.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Thanks so much. Christine. And I don't know what to do first, go give these people my business, the shopping malls or head out to "Beauty and the Beast."

GRIFFIN: Let's see what WJXT has to say about -- actually, we've just lost the signal. Do we want to take a break right now? And we'll be back. We'll update you where Hurricane Jeanne is right now right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: Here's some live pictures. We're looking at flooding in a roadway. This is coming out of our affiliate WPLG in Miami. Let's try to listen in and see where this exactly is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Intracoastal right there. The water just came up from the Intracoastal. Obviously -- actually, the barrier islands. So these people, look at all the debris here scattered.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They had something stacked up there. Some sort of materials. Looks like foam padding of some sort. The interesting thing is you see where they had there. Looks like had it buffered, tried to put it behind that building, tried to stack it up in the corner and sadly, that didn't work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you can see the rain's coming down too.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chad, would that be storm surge coming up from the ocean and those waterways and pouring into the road.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to be a combination of both storm surge and the locally heavy rain. The storm surge combined with the rain has obviously put a lot of water in that community. And as it pushed up over the land, it gets up high enough point that obviously that roadway is a little bit lower than the island there from -- if Walt can pan a little bit to the left, to give you a little of an idea. There's the ocean. And then there's land. Once the storm -- The Intracoastal? -- Once the water comes up there, it's got to go somewhere. The ocean and Intracoastal. The water has got to go somewhere and it's going to go back to Intracoastal or to the street. And this case, the Intracoastal is swollen as well. It's a couple of feet above normal level. So the water is going to run in the opposite direction of what it normally would. And it takes the lowest path which in this case, the street forms pretty much a channel that's been dug out for the roadway purposes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you know, you add the rain and then of course you clog a drain and here we are. This is why these guys are doing their best. Look at the whirlpool. Well, sometimes a guy and a rake can get the job done.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not a great idea always to drive through flooded roadways like that. That is not a great idea right there. It can be a very dangerous situation. You want to be careful of that in the coming days. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The other thing too, when you talk about that, is in the residential areas when somebody comes barreling down like that, they throw a wake up into the other houses. Let's listen to Eileen Wigbrun(ph) now in Broward County.

EILEEN WIGBRUN, BROWARD COUNTY OFFICIAL: This morning we still continue to focus our efforts on recovering from the impact of Hurricane Jeanne in our community and we are making substantial progress. I'm happy to say that the National Weather Service has lifted the hurricane warning in Broward County...

GRIFFIN: We're going to leave this news conference. WPLG is covering it in Broward County and go to Tom Korun, he is in Brandon, Florida I believe. Tom?

TOM KORUN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Drew, we're about ten miles from the city of Tampa and about 25 miles to 30 miles from the center of Hurricane Jeanne and obviously, what we've experienced to this stage on the outer bands and some of the periphery bands near the eye of the storm so far, the worst probably yet to come. But as you can see, as you would expect, with all the water we've had here at eastern Hillsborough County and the outlying counties around Hillsborough, this is what you see. Large oak trees down. A plethora of oak trees throughout all of the counties surrounding the Tampa Bay area. Fortunately enough, this one here just hit the corner of the Heismans'(ph) home who, by the way, folks, you talk about a situation where we've already gone through thee hurricanes. These people have moved in from Brooksville, they moved out of a triple mobile home which is about 35, 40 miles north and they moved into this home, what was it three days ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Three days ago. This past Wednesday, we just closed on this house and got moved in Thursday night. That's what we're doing now is trying to get moved in, and then this happened. And I'm beginning to wonder if I should have moved. I think I should have stayed where i was at.

KORUN: Well, as we say, the good news is you are safe and the damage has only been sustained to the overhang of your house. Give us an idea what you experienced. This happened about an hour, hour and a half ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was horrifying when I walked to see how bad the winds really were, it was just like "Oh my God!" and I seen the tree raising up out of the ground and I just took off running because I was horrified. It was unreal, what's next, you know.

KORUN: And certainly at this stage of the game, the power is out in the neighborhood as is about 100,000 people so far. And I'm sure that will be going higher here in Hillsborough County that are without power. But, Jim, as we say this can be fixed and the good news is you and your wife are safe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, that's right. You know, this is all material stuff. You know, as long as we're walking and talking, you know, thank God we're here. That's all I care about. KORUN: As we said, we're about 25 to 30 miles from the center of Jeanne which is in Bartow, Florida, just directly east here of Brandon. So we're going to station ourselves in a much more safer area because the worst more than likely yet to come. Drew, back to you.

GRIFFIN: Tom, actually surprised you're not getting more weather right now.

KORUN: I think what we have, with these bands coming around, just before we went on, we got a gust of about maybe 40 miles an hour. But as my photographer and I drove out here to the area today, believe me, the gusts were probably 55 to 60 miles an hour. It was coming down pretty good. The rain obviously coming on a very horizontal pattern. Very -- and the other thing too is, is for all the people that may be watching here on CNN at this stage of the game and live mere in the outlying areas of the Tampa Bay area, when you get to the four way stops, there's a lot of power out so you're going to have outages when it comes to stop lights. When you get to those, make sure you treat those as four-way stops. People are not doing that, they are coming in from both directions and certainly we don't want to have any extraneous injuries due to just some silly mistakes.

GRIFFIN: Good advice, Tom. Thanks for your report. Probably the best advice Jacqui Jeras is just to stay home and wait for this to go on by. You can tell us what's going to happen in Brandon, right?

JERAS: Well, Brandon right now actually taking a look, it's right about in this area, so it's kind of in the dropout. They had some heavier bands earlier and there's yet another band going to try and make its way into that area. And that's going to be a little bit stronger I think than the first one. The center of circulation right now has been kind of hovering over toward Lakeland over towards the Winter Haven area. It's continuing to move to the west northwest. I've been kind of eyeballing this and it looks like it might be picking up a little bit of forward speed. Let's really hope that it does this, because it's been slowing down consistently over the last six to 12 hours. We don't want this to slow down any further. It is forecast to pick up a little bit more forward speed.

Also, the strongest of winds are going to be moving across the I- 4 corridor here around Haines City over up towards Polk City at this time. Those wind gusts should be reaching hurricane strength at times. These are some current wind gusts that we've been reporting in the last hour here. Orlando, 67 miles per hour. Daytona Beach up at 51, Tampa Bay itself at 55 miles per hour. These winds are still strong enough to be causing some damage, some pretty decent size tree branches and limbs could be falling across power lines. We may still see power outages.

Tornado warning? Thanks. Producer just handed me a tornado warning for Flagler County. It includes the city of Bunnell or Bunnell, I'm not sure how you pronounce it that, until 12:30. This is a radar indicated tornado about eight miles east of Ormond Beach. It's moving northwest at 40 miles per hour. You do want to take cover now. And, by the way, we think that tornado threat is going to start increasing just a little bit as we head into the afternoon hours. You get a little daytime heating, that creates more instability. So we may see a little bit more rotation into the afternoon. These are some of the peak wind gusts that we've seen so far from Jeanne, Vero Beach the big winner, there, with 122 miles per hour. And there you can see 78 miles per hour in Orlando. Still getting those strong ones. Forecast track is bringing it, kind of scraping along the coast here. It might make its way over open water. But expect it to continue to weaken, Drew, and that's some good news. It's barely a hurricane now with 75 mile per hour winds, it should become a tropical storm this afternoon.

GRIFFIN: All right, Jacqui. That Flagler County north of Daytona Beach which shows you the wide breadth of this thing. As it moves north, what can Tallahassee expect? I guess that's the next major metropolitan area in the path.

JERAS: Well, Tallahassee is going to be getting some decent rainfall certainly out of this. We think the second landfall, if it does completely make its way over water, should be to the east of there. And that would bring Tallahassee on the good side of the storm. So they can expect to see decent gusts, certainly tropical storm force strength. Between maybe 40, possibly as high as 60 miles per hour, but I think it would be more along the 30, 40 mile per hour range for Tallahassee. Rainfall totals maybe on the order of three to six inches at best. So, Tallahassee is going to see some good action but nearly as bad as what they're seeing right now across Central Florida.

GRIFFIN: Jacqui Jeras. Thank you. We'll be right back with our coverage of Hurricane Jeanne.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: Chief Walt Chamberlin is with the fire and emergency center in Melbourne, Florida, joining us now by phone from Melbourne. Chief, your crews have been able to assess the damage. And are there any injuries from the storm?

WALT CHAMBERLIN, MELBOURNE, FL FIRE CHIEF: Good morning. We've had crews out since daylight assessing damage. No reports of any injuries at this time, thankfully. But the obvious, we have power lines down, street lights, street signs, things like that. So we're out doing the damage assessment and hopefully we won't find any injuries.

GRIFFIN: And are there any particular areas that were hit the hardest or something that surprised you about this particular storm?

CHAMBERLIN: No, actually, for what we had, of course, your obvious, the trailer parks and things like that, but most of those people were evacuated. We had did have one of our special needs shelters in Melbourne have a roof start to come off during the middle of the storm. We had to evacuate some 300 plus people out of that shelter.

GRIFFIN: It's something that no injuries were reported. There were reports before this hurricane hit that you were having trouble getting people to evacuate. Obviously the people who needed to evacuate did since there are no injuries.

CHAMBERLIN: Yeah, and it's still early to tell. It's too early to tell. We really haven't made a sweep of the beach side yet. Our winds are still up. They're just at this point getting down where we can safely cross the causeway. So probably within the next few hours, we'll have a real assessment of damage and injuries if there are any.

GRIFFIN: And as far as what to do next, just in case some of your citizens there are watching and able to get this I know power is out, what should they be doing at this moment?

CHAMBERLIN: At this moment, please, we urge you just to stay in your homes. I know after a storm like this, people like to get out and sight see, but there are so many houses. I drove the road this morning for a while. And there are power lines all over this place. There's street signs, there's hazards(ph) in the road. And it just makes our job harder if we have all the traffic to deal with.

GRIFFIN: Chief, I can sense the weariness in your voice. Thanks for joining us and good luck in the coming days. That's Chief Walt Chamberlin with the fire and emergency center in Melbourne last night.

CHAMBERLIN: Thank you.

In Melbourne last night was our Anderson Cooper and Chad Myers up most of the night. In case you haven't seen what Hurricane Jeanne was like when she came ashore, take a look what they did last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you any sense the northern part of the eye wall is going to last in this location?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I think it's going to be there for another 45 minutes to an hour.

COOPER: 45 minutes? Are you kidding?

MYERS: Sorry, but look, they pay you the big bucks. Come on. Suck it up out there.

Now you're protected. Right now you're protected.

COOPER: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I'm protected. 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 picked up like this. And I just happened upon the camera here. A different camera, a 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.

MYERS: We're going to be in it for a while. That's the problem. There's no way to get out of it now that we're in it.

COOPER: I can't even hear what Chad is saying.

Whoa!

MYERS: 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 very hard to do this? And I said about a hundred. And this is pretty darn close to 100.

COOPER: So there's no telling how long, I mean we're always 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: Certainly not good news for us here.

MYERS: This is just mother nature at her worst.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

GRIFFIN: Our intrepid hurricane hunters out last night as Hurricane Jeanne crossed the Atlantic coast of Florida in Melbourne. Relief workers have been busy this hurricane season. The latest storm will keep them working. If you would like to help, you can do that by calling the Red Cross for donations, they're at 1-800-HELP-NOW. For help and other information, you can contact the Response Center, 1- 866-GET-INFO. We've been looking at live coverage from our affiliates up and down the Florida Coast. And let's go to that now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Coming right up along the Volusia County area, the Flagler county area. Let's go right over to Tom Sorrells now. There's a tornado warning, Tom?

TOM SORRELLS, WKMG WEATHERMAN: There is indeed for Flagler County right now until about 12:30. Take a look over my shoulder, you'll see the are we're talking about. It's this band I've been worrying about all morning along. And, sure enough, the Weather Service has decided this could be a developing tornado here in the Flagler County area working its way toward the northwest. They put the sticker on it right now, but no spin, no sheer marker going on. So it didn't show up as sheer twice through on the scan that we did. But, for now, we've going to do the tornado warning for Flagler County. This is moving to the northwest...

GRIFFIN: OK, we're going to break away from this coverage and go to some families reacting in Stewart, Florida. They just are looking at the damage to their homes. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The state of this family's home leaves them speechless. Spared by Frances, destroyed by Jeanne.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was pretty scary. I mean, we have...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her mother and father-in-law will have to live with them while they figure out what to do next.

I'm here at a mobile home park in Martin County and you can see the destruction to most of these homes. This house, the whole front room is gone altogether. No one home right now. Most of the people here rode out the night in the clubhouse. You can literally walk through this person's house. Not a window left intact. And their belongings, soaking wet wet.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was kind of rocky in the office. You could hear things banging against the concrete building, but we made it. You know? There's a reason for it, and this park is really bad right now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Flooding is everywhere. All up and down US 1, businesses took another hit. Frances hurt this town, Jeanne may have crippled them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The thing that's unbelievable is, three weeks ago, we drove out of our house to come here. We were crying the other kind of crying because everything was still here. It was amazing. We couldn't believe it was here. Now it's all gone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But you guys are all right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, we're okay.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

GRIFFIN: Scenes being played out across Florida this morning as Hurricane Jeanne still doing damage to that state. We want to let you know that RELIABLE SOURCES will air. It usually airs at this hour, it's going to air tonight at 5:00. So if you're a fan of RELIABLE SOURCES, that will air at 5:00. Right now let's get a preview of what's coming up on CNN's LATE EDITION at noon eastern. For that we go to Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Wolf?

Apparently we do not have Wolf just yet. We'll take a break and we'll come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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