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CNN Saturday Morning News

Tornadoes Hit Midwest and South; Google is Watching You

Aired March 03, 2012 - 09:00   ET

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

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: First light has brought a startling look at the damage across the Midwest and the South. This is now new video from Paulding County, Georgia, just northwest of Atlanta. It's just one of the many communities torn apart by the tornadoes. At least 31 people are dead in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Alabama.

Before we take you live to Indiana for the latest there, I want to show you an amazing piece of video. Listen to this, it comes to from West Liberty, Kentucky, shot just as the tornado was forming over the town. Listen to the desperate prayers from one woman as she pleads for her safety.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) by god powers in your son's name, take yourself away from our home as you did for Elijah you take -

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Her prayers were answered for that immediate area, but West Liberty was hit hard by the storm, at least three people died there.

There's a state of emergency in effect in Kentucky right now. National guard troops have been mobilized to help some of those in the devastated communities.

Joining me now on the phone in Frankfurt, Kentucky, is Kerry Richardson, spokesperson for Governor Steve Beshear.

What are you seeing right now with these communities and what's your biggest concern?

KERRI RICHARDSON, SPOKESPERSON FOR GOVERNOR BESHEAR (via telephone): Well, David, what we're finding this morning is that one-third of Kentucky's counties have reported damages from tornadoes in the past 24 hours. It's been a terrible time for the citizens of Kentucky and the damage has been widespread from parts of northern Kentucky, eastern Kentucky, along the Ohio River, we are seeing damages in lots of places.

Governor Steve Beshear and Lieutenant Governor Jerry Abramson are both traveling the state today, taking a look at some of the damage, visiting our shelters and determining what sort of assistance that we need to help our communities get whack back on their feet. At this point, we have nearly 300 National Guard troops that are on the ground in five counties that have been heavily damaged to assist with security, with clearing roads, with checking on the security of our citizens.

It's going to be a very difficult few days coming up. And we appreciate the assistance that we've received, not only from our citizens, but also from the media, frankly. The assistance that we've had from your teams to warn our families and warn our communities was a help to get the word out.

MATTINGLY: Well, in terms of getting you more help, what do you need right now?

RICHARDSON: At this point, we're still trying to gather that sort of information. If people feel compelled to donate, we would encourage them to contact their local Red Cross agency to determine what might be needed and their local agency or to donate to the overall organization because those shelters have been set up throughout Kentucky.

For the next day or two, we're going to be determining what sort of immediate needs that we have. We do have four shelters set up statewide and they will be meeting the needs of shelter, food, clothing in the short term. But really this is going to be an on-going process for the next couple of weeks.

MATTINGLY: Now, Kerry, when you have something so big, the devastation so widespread, where do you possibly start? I know you're in the evaluation stage right now, but based on past experience, what have you got to get first to the people in need?

RICHARDSON: Well, unfortunately, David, we have a great deals of experience with these sorts of situations in Kentucky. Just since Governor Steve Beshear had been in office. For four years, we have had 10 federally declared disasters, everything from ice storms to wind storms to tornadoes and flash flooding. So unfortunately we are well versed in determining damage assessments in our counties and our communities and making sure that they have what they need.

The first priority, of course, is life preservation. We want to make sure that our families, our citizens are safe, that their injuries are tended to. That we have checked neighborhoods, part of the work of the National Guard today will checking the damage areas, to make sure no one is trapped in any of the debris. From there, we would go into the damage assessment stage which means taking a look at the monetary damage impact of the damage to public and private infrastructure. And at that point, we will begin counting that up to determine if we're going to meet thresholds to receive federal assistance.

Now, as early as Thursday, Governor Steve Beshear received a phone call from President Obama to make sure that we had what we needed and to pledge his support for federal assistance when that is going to be needed. So our federal partners have been on point with this, as well. We have very strong relationships with FEMA. Again because of those 10 prior federal disasters. So we got boots on the ground. We got a good local emergency management system and as difficult as it is, Kentuckians are resilient. We're going to pull through this. MATTINGLY: Kelly Richardson speaking for the governor of Kentucky, and we wish you the best. You are right about resilience. I'm a Kentucky native, so I know exactly what you're talking about there. Best of luck to you as you go on these next couple of days.

RICHARDSON: Thanks so much.

MATTINGLY: The worst of the damage we've seen is, however, in Indiana. In Henryville, the local high school and elementary school were demolished. You can see that buses were tossed around like child's toys.

CNN national correspondent Susan Candiotti is in Henryville this morning. Susan, every time we go to cover something like this, there's something that we walk away with, some sort of image that says I cannot believe the power of this storm. And it seems like you have a lot of those opportunities there, right there.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Especially now that the sun is coming up. So one of those images is trying to picture how about 80 students or so and we are told by authorities had to pull through the storm by hiding within the offices, the administrative offices of the high school and the elementary school that you see behind me or at least what's left of the school that you see behind me. How those youngsters made it through what had to have been a terrifying experience according to one of their principals with a lot of prayers.

And then we also hear the story about a diner that is a very short distance from here where seven people hid downstairs in a basement to ride out the storm so that they would be safe. Their homes, as it turned out, were just fine, but the diner was destroyed. Not only that, you had the one-two punch here with both the tornado as well as hail the size of softballs that pounded this area around here, as well.

Late last night, we talked with representatives from the Indiana State Police as well as from the local sheriff's office who told us how hard hit this community is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. JERRY GOODIN, INDIANA STATE POLICE: We have whole communities and whole neighborhoods that are completely gone. And somebody mentioned to me before earlier, it's almost like they just dropped a huge nuclear bomb here and everything is just gone.

SHERIFF DANIEL RODDEN, CLARK COUNTY, INDIANA: The sun is going to shine again and we're going to come out on the other end very well. I just firmly believe that. But it's such a systemic process that we need to do. It's so hard because of all the miles we got to cover.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: And talk about another image, a 20-month-old baby found in a field. They didn't know who it was. A little girl. She was air lifted to a hospital in Louisville, not that far from here, and she is also being treated. Last we heard, in critical condition, but she had been identified.

At this hour, the governor of the state Mitch Daniels touched down and he is currently taking a tour of the area and we hope to talk with him in just a bit as soon as he is done with that. David.

MATTINGLY: The more pictures we see, the more it just seems absolutely amazing that the casualties coming out of this are just weren't greater. Are you hearing that from the people there on the ground as they go through and look through these wreckage?

CANDIOTTI: They're astounded by it. And a lot of them have lived here long enough to go through a very similar tornado back in 1974. And they're saying that it is, indeed, remarkable that every death is a horror story, of course, for the families and those who love them, but they are amazed that the fatality count, quite frankly, isn't much higher. But remember, they are still going house to house here to make sure that everyone is accounted for, David.

MATTINGLY: And let's hope it does not get worse, Susan, thank you so much for that report.

Severe weather continues in parts of the country. We'll check back in with our Bonnie Schneider who is tracking the storm. We'll do that right after the break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTINGLY: We're looking at live pictures right now out of Paulding County, Georgia, outside of Atlanta. More damage from these severe storms that continue to march across the country. Just this week alone, we've seen two rounds of deadly tornado outbreaks.

Meteorologist Bonnie Schneider joins me in the CNN weather center. Are we going to catch a break here? I mean, it's just been going on all morning. It just hasn't stopped.

BONNIE SCHNEIDER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: No, it hasn't. And looking at those pictures of areas north of Atlanta where we saw tornado warnings last night, like in Marietta, I know that sirens went off. A lot of people were frightened to hear that. But I want to draw your attention to the video. And you can see one home completely demolished. And then a little bit further on the corner of your screen, you can see the roof of a home that's unaffected by these storms. So that's really the randomness of tornadoes, the vortex can touch down on one home and completely miss the one next door. So it's hard to know whether or not your home will be impacted by a tornado.

But I can tell you this. If you're under a tornado warning, you always want to take that seriously and take cover. Make sure you have your NOAA weather radio turned on and be prepared to go to the most interior room of your home, your basement, ideally if you have. The problem is in the South, we don't have, unfortunately, a lot of basements here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The storm popped and skipped through Paulding County, leaving some areas virtually untouched and hitting other homes hard. We'll be back shortly we hope. Reporting live from News chopper two, (INAUDIBLE) Channel 2 -

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHNEIDER: You just heard the pilot of the helicopter that's taking those aerial pictures describing what I was just talking about. How you can have one home impacted and the other right next door completely fine but in any case, it's difficult to know where a tornado will hit. So you always want to make sure you're prepared.

Now, here's what we can tell you that's happening right now. We have a tornado watch, and this stretches across parts of Alabama, the panhandle of Florida, back into Georgia. But this time, it's the Southwestern part of the state. Last night, we were all concerned north of Georgia where we had Roswell, Alpharetta, Marietta, all these areas were under tornado warnings but now it's to the Southwest of the state. So Albany, Georgia impacted as well (INAUDIBLE) Tallahassee and Florida and then up into South Carolina, you're also under a tornado watch, as well.

You can see some of the strong storms that we're working our way back towards Alabama improved a bit. We are not seeing the intensity but we are seeing it here. And so you can see one area here right now into the panhandle where we had that severe weather and stretching further off to the north and east we are also tracking some strong storms that are working their way across the mid-Atlantic. These are getting more intense as we go through the morning hours. So keep in mind if you're in Virginia and the coastal areas, you're going to deal with some heavy rain. Light to moderate rain in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, it's not moving too bad right now.

But I mentioned the Carolinas getting impacted. Let's take a look at some pictures now of North Carolina, we can snow you some - what it's been looking like there and you can see plenty of damage and debris across much of this region. So many people not only were their roofs completely torn off, but vehicles were flipped over. You know, a vehicle is one of the worst place to be in a tornado. I know you think, oh, it seems safe, I'm inside something. But remember a tornado can really lift a car right up off the road and we've seen in a lot of video, and this video is coming to us from North Carolina, it can flip it over and jam it right into your house and that's when we can also have damage.

So homes are damaged here in North Carolina. They are across the South. When you look at where the tornadoes went and you can see this video in North Carolina, some very large homes there look like they're pretty poorly damaged. But it wasn't just North Carolina, we had reports of tornadoes across much of the Midwest, into the South. It was an unbelievable day, particularly for early March when we would typically see an outbreak like this happen, maybe in May. Not even. Ninety five reports of tornadoes yesterday. 95. A total of 758 reports of severe weather, David. This was an incredible day and, unfortunately, today we still run the risk of severe weather. I don't think it will look like this when it's all said and done. But it doesn't matter. It just takes one tornado to impact you.

So if you were under a tornado watch, keep that NOAA radio turned on, keep CNN turned on and we'll keep you up to date if a warning is issued for your county.

MATTINGLY: That's right, Bonnie. Stay tuned, stay vigilant. Stay alert. We got another story we are following this morning.

Now Google changing the way it gathers information about you. Is there anything you can do to protect yourself? Mario Armstrong will have some tips.

But first, coming up, this week on the "Next List," meet the founder of an economic initiative that serves 60,000 people in some of the poorest communities in Kenya.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I founded community support group to empower the people in (INAUDIBLE) by sharing knowledge and also providing platforms of people to parade their talent. My thinking was that that was another way of breaking the vicious cycle, poverty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: More live pictures to show you, these coming from Paulding County, Georgia. That's just outside of Atlanta. Damage to homes in that county, roofs blown off, all sorts of damage around there. This from severe storms that moved through hours ago. Very similar scenes we're seeing over literally half the country this morning.

These pictures now from Charlotte, North Carolina, looking very similar. These storms dropped out of the sky, did all sorts of damage over multiple states. Everyone now in the morning just beginning to assess the damage and figure out where the greatest needs are to send the most help right now. So a lot, a lot going on this morning. And we'll get back to that for you in just a couple of minutes.

This week, Google changed the way it gathers information about those who use its products. Google's new privacy policy has many concerned about how that information is going to be used. So now HLN's digital lifestyle expert Mario Armstrong joins me from New York with all the answers.

I've got to know this. First, who is going to be impacted by this? Is it anyone who does a search on Google?

MARIO ARMSTRONG, CNN DIGITAL LIFESTYLE EXPERT: Well, that's a really good question there, David, because that kind of clears the air a little bit right from the beginning. Anyone that's already searching on Google is being - excuse me. Is being tracked to some degree already through their searches. However, if you're using Google's free apps, that could be Gmail for their e-mail, Google maps, Picassa, for their photo sharing, YouTube, even, all of these different sites, you can now be tracked across all of these different free services if you are signed into any of those.

So, a quick example, if I'm on YouTube and I do a search for a product, later that day if I'm signed into my Gmail account, which is their e-mail, I may see an ad for that same product show up in my e- mail account later.

MATTINGLY: Now, I know when I use services like Facebook there are sorts of options where you can opt in and out of different levels of security when it deals with your friends and people on Facebook. Do you have similar options to deal with Google when they're watching what you're doing there?

ARMSTRONG: Yes and no. This privacy policy goes across all 70 or so of their Google products. So the first thing I think people should do is go to google.com/dashboard. This is kind of your catch all of all of the different Google products you may be signed up with. Some of these, you may not remember that you signed up with before. And all of you that are using Android devices should definitely check this as well.

In that dashboard, David, you can make some changes to some of the settings. But by and large, the bottom line is this privacy policy says if you're using Google products and you're signed in, we'll be able to track some of those movements throughout those products.

MATTINGLY OK. Mario, I'm not so sure you put my mind at ease, but the information is helpful. Thank you very much.

ARMSTRONG: Yes. I don't think I can put it at ease, David, it kind of is what it is. With these free apps, a lot of times we're paying for the apps with our privacy. There are a couple of other quick steps. One, you can go in and remove your web history. So go to google.com/history and that can remove some of what can be tracked about you. So there are steps that we can take, but we have to understand exactly what's happening.

MATTINGLY: OK. Great. Thanks so much, Mario.

And now we're going to have to get back now to our tornado coverage. Some more live pictures. These coming in from Paulding County, Georgia, a helicopter shot from WSV-TV. You can see them panning across here, this neighborhood, how the storms seem to drop down, hit a few homes then go up and knock over other places.

These pictures here from Henryville, Indiana, a lot of this looks so similar everywhere we go and the story is going to be very much similar today. People trying to put their lives back. Look at that house. That's amazing. That house looks like it was wiped completely off all the way down to the foundation. That might be the cellar underneath it that we're looking at there. That is absolutely amazing.

But we will have much more of this as we continue this morning. Much more tornado damage to look at and the relief efforts to talk about. We'll be back with you shortly. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)