Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Sunday

Tropical Storm Barry Expected to Reach Hurricane Strength Before Hitting Shore

Aired August 05, 2001 - 16:00   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.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: We begin with Tropical Storm Barry. The storm is driving north and expected to reach hurricane strength before it hits shore, in about nine hours we think now. Heavy winds and rain are already pelting the Florida Panhandle, signs of a tempest to follow.

Now, in just a minute we will have a live report from Fort Walton Beach, and first, though, meteorologist Chad Meyers here with more on still tropical storm. Hi, Chad.

CHAD MEYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is 70 miles an hour right now. That's so close.

KELLEY: Barely, yeah.

MEYERS: I don't want anybody to let their guard down just because we are calling it a tropical storm. And this thing is now getting huge. The northern cells are past Macon, Georgia. We just had a tornado warning to the west of Jacksonville. It's been raining all day down in South Florida, so it's really now getting a lot larger than it was just 24 hours ago.

Scattered rain showers and thunderstorms now with this system, as it heads right toward that little point right here. Here's Apalachicola, here's Panama City, here's Fort Walton Beach, and all the way back toward Pascagoula.

Now, I know we have had these hurricane warnings from the river all the way back to Pascagoula, but this storm is still headed toward the north and toward the northeast. So, now this new triangle, if you will, this new battle zone for this storm is farther to the north and farther to the east than it was before, rather than farther to the northwest.

Now, I still think there is a potential for this thing to curve a little bit on up here, right toward the Panama City, Fort Walton Beach area, but all those folks from Apalachicola all the way to Tallahassee, you really -- you are under the gun now, because this is that onshore flow. Here are these big storms now heading up your way. It's not just the eye of this system that we are most concerned about now. We are watching the entire breath of this thing get much, much larger. The storm is getting larger, the cloud cover is getting larger now. It's all the way up into Georgia. It's almost down to Cuba. And the thing is now gaining strength.

Yesterday and the day before, we were saying how it was getting sheared apart, how it wasn't growing -- well, now all that sheer is gone and this storm is really now on the road to recovery. It is going to be moving right on up toward the destined area, and in fact, even had some of those ares here, some pictures where we could see some of that flooding, at least the heaviest stuff, in those what we call vacation areas.

We need you to be very careful. If you have vacation plans along the Gulf Coast, you need to call ahead, or possibly even cancel them if you can, because this storm is going to create havoc all the way from Southern Florida on up into the Appalachian mountains, including George, Alabama, Mississippi, and eventually possibly into the Virginias. Donna, back to you.

KELLEY: All right, Chad, thanks very much.

And in the path of the storm is CNN's Ed Lavandera in Fort Walton Beach. Ed, what do you see so far?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Donna, you know, I think folks here in Fort Walton Beach are trying to figure out exactly what to make of this storm. The red danger flags have been put up along the beaches here. And it's not really discouraging a whole lot of folks from heading ashore.

The emergency teams here in Fort Walton Beach have issued an evacuation advisories, just letting people know that it might be a good idea to evacuate, but by no means is that a mandatory evacuation. A lot of the hotels seem to be staying open, keeping guests, and a lot of guests have spent the afternoon just trying to figure out whether or not they should leave.

It's about 50/50 from the folks that we've talked to. Some are packing up and heading north, further inland, to brave the storm there, and others are deciding to stay here. The waves that are coming into the shore now, the tide line has moved in about 20 feet, and the waves seem to be getting a lot stronger and bigger, would guess about six to seven feet.

And over there, the boardwalk here in Fort Walton Beach, you can see a lot of the folks who are braving the storm out here. There are about a dozen surfers trying to catch in a few last waves and enjoy the time before Tropical Storm Barry hits land here -- we estimate around midnight.

The emergency teams here in Fort Walton Beach have set up two clinics, or two evacuation places, where residents from mobile homes can -- shelters -- can -- they can go and spend the evening there, if they'd like. They have set up two in this part of the area. There are 135,000 people that live in the Fort Walton Beach area, and add to that all of the tourists that usually trek down to this part of the country to enjoy summer vacations, and that sort of thing.

So, a lot of folks who have come from other parts of country trying to figure out -- and for a lot of people, it's the first time they've ever been close to a hurricane, and they are kind of getting the sense of what it's like to be here -- Donna.

KELLEY: Ed Lavandera in Fort Walton Beach, thanks very much.

And down the road just from you a little bit is our Mark Potter. He has been on the road and he has just pulled into Panama City, Florida, and he is on the phone with us to tell us what's going on there -- Mark.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Donna, right now we are under gray skies. There has been a steady rain here, but it's been light. In fact, it pretty much has let up, at the least for now. The wind is calm right now. There is other weather to come, but right now it looks like a typical rainy Florida day.

The officials here have not issued any evacuation advisories or orders, and say they don't plan to. They have opened two shelters, but those are purely to be used on a voluntary basis. One is set up for special needs residents.

The biggest concern here is that there will be some inland flooding in the low-lying areas, with the rainfall here expected by the time this storm has passed through to be somewhere in the upper reaches of 10 inches. They do expect to have some flooding. They are not -- they are urging people here to respect this storm, but they are also asking them not to panic. They are not urging people to get on the road, they're just saying, stay in your homes and take care of yourselves and your families overnight.

We are not, frankly, seeing very many people boarding up. A lot of people are still out on the roads, driving around. We saw a number of surfers out in the water, as Ed saw in the Fort Walton Beach area. This is being treated as a minimal storm. And again, authorities here are urging people to respect the storm, but they are reminding them and are reminding us that they are treating this as a minimal storm, not as if it were in the category three or upward range.

One bit of good news, according to the chief of emergency services here, is that when the storm is expected to hit somewhere in the midnight area, we will be at low tide, and that will be good for people along the beaches. The storm surge will have a lesser impact, of course, than if they were at a high tide.

So, everyone is aware that a storm is coming in, but they are not panicking, and seem to have the attitude that they have seen this sort of thing before. There have been other storms, bigger storms to hit Panama City, and they are treating this one for what it is, a minimal storm, and not doing very much about it, actually. Back to you.

KELLEY: OK. Mark Potter in Panama City, thanks very much for the latest from there. We will have more on Tropical Storm Barry from the National Hurricane Center, and that interview is just about five minutes away.

A lot of folks in Florida are bracing for the worst, and joining us on the phone is Nancy Retherford from the Red Cross Rapid Response Team in Pensacola, Florida. Nancy, any evacuations going on there?

NANCY RETHERFORD, RED CROSS RAPID RESPONSE TEAM: The evacuations that emergency management has called has been primary voluntary at this point, and mostly tourists are the ones who are taking advantage of them. We do have shelters open up and down the Panhandle and in Alabama for the barrier islands that -- where people are leaving. But at this point, we don't have a lot of people in the shelters.

KELLEY: Yeah. The rapid response team, what is your job, what do you help people with?

RETHERFORD: Our job is to make sure, first of all, that people know what to do in this instance, and we are here trying to help people know what to take with them. If you are actually called for evacuation, that you leave immediately. If you get into a flood situation that you know -- you know, if you see water ahead of you on the road, turn around and go in the other direction.

Take important things with you, like your papers, identification, medications. If you need to go to a Red Cross shelter, take something comfortable to sleep in, bedding, extra change of clothing, flashlights with batteries, those kinds of things, and be careful with flooding in this instance.

KELLEY: Do you help with transportation?

RETHERFORD: Yes.

KELLEY: You do. You can actually go out if somebody called in and said, help, can you come get me?

RETHERFORD: We work with emergency management on making sure that people who are trapped will get out. If they are in that situation, they are probably going to need a helicopter or something, but we definitely have resources at our disposal to help them.

KELLEY: Have very many people called you, or have you had very much response to see if people are getting ready to come to a shelter, or are ready in case they have to?

RETHERFORD: The Red Cross chapters here in the Panhandle have help lines, where people have been calling and asking if there in the evacuation area, what they need to be doing. We have gotten a lot of phone calls into those help lines. So, we know that people -- some people are taking this seriously.

Our Red Cross poll that we did at the beginning of hurricane season showed that only about 60 percent of people are taking storms seriously. So, you know, it's really important that people not take for granted that this is not a huge storm, because we look at Allison and we see that it can do a great deal of damage.

KELLEY: Right, with a lot of rain you got. Nancy Retherford, from the Red Cross Rapid Response Team in Pensacola, thanks very much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com