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U.S. Prepares for Matthew. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 6, 2016 - 14:00   ET

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


[14:00:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back, 5:00 p.m., in "The Situation Room." For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is next. For our viewers in North America, "Newsroom" with Brianna Keilar today starts right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hello there. I'm Brianna Keilar.

The warnings could not be more urgent, get out now, this storm will kill you. That is what's being said. That is the word that millions along the nation's southeast coast are hearing as a deadly hurricane, right now, tears its way toward Florida for what officials say will likely be a, quote, direct hit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Awesome! What else?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's not gas whatsoever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our fifth stop for today and every stop I've come to, they were closed like this because, you know, they were completely out of gas.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are you going to do? It's just mother nature. Not a thing you can do. But I'm going to risk - you know, I'll err on the side of caution as opposed to, you know, watch it blow away.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have no patience. Parking lots are insane. People fighting for parking spots. Traffic.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm praying for the best that Matthew will turn east.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, you can go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And as Florida braces, Hurricane Matthew has already killed at least 113 people in the Caribbean. Now it is heading toward the U.S. and it's doing exactly what everyone fears, it's getting stronger. Right now it's a category four. That's on a scale of five. So no wonder Florida's governor issued not just one but two appeals today specifically aimed at people who think they can ride Matthew out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RICK SCOTT (R), FLORIDA: If you're watching and living in an evacuation zone, you need to leave now. So if you're in an evacuation zone, get out. Time's running out. Leave. There's no excuses. The roads are open. You should get out. Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate.

Time is running out. We are preparing for the worst, we're hoping for the best, and no one should take any chances.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And we are awaiting, actually, a press conference from the Florida governor, as well as the governor of Georgia with the very latest.

We also have CNN's Nick Valencia in West Palm Beach for us. That is where weather is getting worse.

First, I want to go to meteorologist Chad Myers.

And, Chad, you have the National Hurricane Center issuing an update just moments ago. What have we learned?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Still 140. We have not had a hurricane hunter in the eye for a couple of hours. And so there's no real update without a plane in it. It seems like the eye is getting tighter, which mean that the winds are likely increasing. The eye may be getting so small, Brianna, that we might -

KEILAR: Hey, Chad, I am so sorry. I'm going to interrupt you just because we're hearing from Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia. We're going to come right back to Chad Myers, but let's get the latest from Georgia.

GOV. NATHAN DEAL, GEORGIA: Six county that are our coastal counties for areas that are east of Interstate 95. For the coastal areas west of Interstate 95, it is still a voluntary evacuation order in place.

I would emphasize, however, that we need to take this situation seriously. It is not something where we should jeopardize anyone's life simply because we don't want to heed the warnings. And I would urge people to do so.

There are a total of 30 counties that are under our emergency declaration. I will not read all of those county names to you, but they are the coastal counties and counties that adjoin them and counties that appear to be in the wake of the hurricane as it moves into our state.

A state of emergency order also includes a suspension of certain federal transportation rules and regulations to insure the uninterrupted supply of emergency or disaster related material, supplies, goods and services to those areas that are affected.

It was also made clear in my executive order that there should be no price gouging during this emergency because that is something that is already against the law in Georgia. Any instances of verifiable price gouging will be investigating and prosecuted appropriately.

As you can see, I have with me the heads of agencies that are directly involved in our preparations. And at this time, I'm going to turn it - the microphone over to Jim Butterworth, who is head of our Georgia Emergency Management Agency and ask him to bring you up to date in more specific detail as to the situation that now exists and as we might predict it will exist in the near future.

[14:05:07] Jim.

JIM BUTTERWORTH, DIRECTOR, GEORGIA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: Thank you, governor.

Good afternoon.

Hurricane Matthew continues to be, at this point, and forecasts to be for a period of time, a category four hurricane. As you probably know, the hurricane is forecast to make landfall on some part of Florida but continue to move north towards the Georgia coast. At that point, it may deteriorate according to the forecast and impact the coastal Georgia counties, as the governor has indicated.

We have prepared for a number of days and continue to prepare for the approach of Hurricane Matthew. We are expecting that category two hurricane to arrive sometime - the tropical storm force winds to arrive sometime late Friday and overnight Saturday. We will continue to move the resources of the entire state agency effort of the emergency management agency and the other agencies that we are working with, those personnel as close to those areas as we possibly can to then assist with the response that is necessary.

To that end, the governor mentioned the mandatory and voluntary evacuations. We have sheltering available in multiple different locations. The Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency website lists those locations. There are about 3,500 sheltering opportunities for individuals who are looking to -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Should the flooding occur that we expect. It's very important for our residents to understand that this flash flood warning is very important. As you know, we are expecting significant amounts of water, not only from the flooding, but also from rainfall. This can happen very quickly. We're working with the county and the state to make sure that we have adequate resources in place to do water rescues if that becomes necessary, and at the same time we want all of our residents to understand it is very important that if they do decide to stay - and we're not advocating that, as Mark said, we're advocating that they leave the area and heed the evacuation warning and order so that they can be safe and that we do not have to put first responders in harm's way trying to rescue or help people who find themselves in a dire situation.

It's also -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Information hotline for transportation assistance. And we will assist those individuals in getting to an emergency shelter. The Seminole County government has suspended county operations today

and tomorrow, Friday October the 7. Normal operations will resume on October the 10th. All employees, though, are expected to report to work as there are a number of different emergency activities that must take place throughout the county.

Sandbag operations have been extremely busy over the last few days. Over 26,000 sandbags have been given out here in the Seminole County area. Sandbags will continue until 3:00 p.m. today and then they will close down due to the incoming storm.

We have opened up shelters throughout the county. Four general population shelters. Those are at Lyman (ph), Chiles (ph), Midway (ph) and Lake Mary. Lyman High School is a pet-friendly shelter.

There are a couple of special needs shelters that we also have opened and I'm going to leave that to Donna Walsh (ph) with the health department to talk about.

KEILAR: All right, we have been looking at the various states there. Georgia, you had Florida, as well as South Carolina, updating us on what they're expecting there, state officials.

I want to bring back Chad Myers.

And, Chad, I think this just goes to show you, we are looking at press conferences almost simultaneously in all of these states.

MYERS: Yes.

KEILAR: This is an expected huge event.

MYERS: Well, sure. And this is the last minutes that Florida residents will have to take those precautions. There will still be some more minutes for Georgia and for South Carolina, but at point in time, that's it. If you're from Ft. Pierce to Stewart (ph) and all the way up, even into about Cocoa Beach, you don't have any time left because you can't put any sheets of plywood up when you have bands of weather coming in that are bringing 60 mile per hour wind gusts. And that's what we're going to have here for the rest of the day.

The gusts inside the inner eye wall, about 140 miles per hour right now. And it's forecast to either stay that strong or possibly get a little bit stronger when it gets into this Gulf Stream, that water that's very warm, just off the Florida East Coast where all the fish swim up and down. It's 140 miles per hour going to 145.

Our hope - if we could hope for this storm, is that it stays slightly offshore. Even if it's 20 miles, we reduce the damage by billions of dollars. If it's on the left side of the eye, we increase it by billions compared to if it was in the middle, because this storm will be wreaking - it will be tearing up the beaches all the way from Titusville, Cocoa, all the way up to New Smyrna and on up even in Jacksonville, possibly even as far west as Gainesville with some big wind, 45 miles per hour to about 70 miles per hour. Orlando, you could see the same. The villages, you could see the same. Ocala, same story. [14:10:25] There's the eye. This is a forecast model. A lot - we talk

about them. I'm going to show you one. There's the forecast model for 7:00 tonight. Here's what the model thinks at 1:00 a.m. It's a little hard to see if you're on a small TV, but there's Ft. Pierce and the eye wall is on shore very close to Palm Beach.

Moving ahead, into the 4:00 hour, into the 7:00 a.m. hour and then finally by tomorrow afternoon we're finally seeing this storm up to Jacksonville and St. Augustine, but now, look at this. Brian, we're talking about 140 mile per hour storm that has now been on land for about 200 or so miles. That's like an EF-2 tornado that doesn't pick itself up off the ground for 200 miles tough The Plains. But that's not The Plains. There are houses every 60 feet. There are condos every thousand feet. There are so many people in the way of this storm, that's why they all have to get out of the way.

Now, we go - take you up to Georgia, why Georgia is evacuating the counties here east of I-95 because we could see a significant storm surge as the arm bends here. Because the U.S. bends right through here, all this water could get shoved into Savannah, into Tybee, into St. Simons, or, for that matter, a little farther to the north on up into Hilton Head Island. That's the rub. That's the risk of a nine- foot storm surge with this storm as it gets up into Georgia and South Carolina. That's why they're getting people away from that salt water.

Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, so terrible. They're expecting the worst - the strongest storm there on the East Coast that they have seen in decades.

MYERS: Yes.

KEILAR: This is something we cannot overstate.

All right, Chad, I know that you're going to keep an eye on this.

Let's go to Nick Valencia. He is in West Palm Beach.

And, Nick, we just heard Chad talking about the forecast here. This is what West Palm Beach is staring down. They are in the path. Are people there listening? Are they getting out?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The short answer, Brianna, is no. I spoke to the mayor just a couple hours ago, earlier this morning. She tells me the majority of the residents here in West Palm Beach are choosing to stay in their homes, ride out the storm, rather than evacuate, which has been the warning from local officials and state officials. And the problem with that, Brianna, is that it puts these first responders in a very precarious situation.

The mayor tells me that she will not deploy anybody, any from the - anyone from the emergency operations center when these winds start to really get extremely bad. The weather here has sort of ebbed and flowed over the course of the last couple of hours. The rain was much heavier about 45 minutes ago. The wind, though, has sustained pretty strong and we expect the tropical winds to happen this afternoon. The heavier stuff will come in later this evening. But the real big concern is those residents who have chosen not to evacuate.

We actually had to change our position. We were on Palm Beach, the place that Chad was talking about, we had to move for the safety of our crew here to this hotel where a lot of local residents are finding shelter. Those that have evacuated have shown up here. The hotel is saying that they have enough power in case power goes out. They've got a generator. They have backup plans here. The hope is that others who have decided to ride this storm out have their own backup plans. But we saw some really eerie and ominous things yesterday. Walking through the grocery stores, there was no more bread, no more water, generators had been scooped up. A lot of nervous faces, a lot of nervous families going through those aisles. Those that decided to stick out the storm, they might be in for a really bad day.

Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, this is not your run-of-the-mill storm that so many people hunker down for there in Florida.

Nick, thank you so much for that report.

Daytona Beach is one of the coastal area also under a hurricane warning. That is where some massive rainfall and really just a dangerous storm surge could be headed. That's where Boris Sanchez is for us. He is along the Daytona Beach front.

You heard Nick talking about people in West Palm, Boris, and he says that people are not really evacuating there. Are they heeding the warnings where you are?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I would say, Brianna, for the most part they are. But, just a few moments ago, he just walked off, there were two families out here walking their dogs. And I heard Nick talking about the ebb and flow of the weather. We're feeling the same thing up here. Just about two hours ago there was a strong surge of wind and rain that pushed us around as we were walking through our hotel.

We actually have been evacuated from our hotel now. It's boarded up right now and there are sandbags outside. We are the last people left here. And it's like this for dozens of hotels and businesses along the coast here in Daytona.

There are some people, however, that are sticking around. There's actually a family in the hotel next door that has decided they are going to brave through this storm, going against the advice of Governor Rick Scott, who has put out a warning saying that this storm will definitely cause fatalities and that he wants everyone out, especially if you're in a coastal community like this one on a barrier island.

[14:15:05] There's that guy again with his dog.

This is exactly what the governor was warning people about. Partly because as the weather gets worse, it's going to be much harder to get out, so your options become limited and you end up having to stay inside during very difficult conditions.

I spoke with the police chief of Daytona Beach earlier and he said that if people decided to stay home after a certain time, there's nothing that rescue crews can do to help them simply because their amphibious vehicles and their rescue teams cannot sustain hurricane- force winds and the kind of storm surge we're expected to see here. It is expected to be upwards of seven feet in this area. We're expecting flooding. We're expecting debris in the streets and heavy, heavy wind.

We're also expecting, as the governor of Florida said, the lights to go out for at least several days. From what I was told this morning, there was about 2,500 personnel from Florida Power and Light, the electrical company here, that are staged at Daytona Motor Speedway, which is about two miles away. So the preps are ongoing. The hope is, though, that people will listen to the warnings and get out before it's too late, Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Boris Sanchez, keep an eye on things for us there in Daytona Beach.

The National Hurricane Center is predicting catastrophic damage. You've heard our reporters talk about this. If this storm is a category four when it hits Florida, and that means that well-built frame homes will see severe damage to roofs, also to some exterior walls. Trees will be snapped or uprooted and power outages will last for not days, for weeks. And most of the area could be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

What, though, if your home is a boat? Rosa Linda Roman and her family live on a 45-foot catamaran. It is docked in West Palm Beach, Florida. They moved there from Albuquerque just three months ago. So the thought of a monster storm had this family a little uneasy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROSA LINDA ROMAN, EVACUATED CATAMARAN IN WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA: I was just updating everyone about the current situation. We are now officially under hurricane watch. We are prepping the boat. We're trying to decide - I'm waiting on a call from a marina that we used to be at in Ft. Lauderdale because the problem is our boat is really, really wide. We are 25 feet wide - sorry, I'm getting emotional. There goes "La Dolce Vita." (ph) There they go. She's a friend of mine who said she was never leaving and was going to ride the storm out and she's leaving. So that scares the hell out of me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, with no luck finding a place to safely store their boat, Roman and her husband, three young children and dog have driven clear across the state and they are staying in a hotel in Ft. Myers.

And Rosa Linda Roman is joining us now.

First, Rosa Linda, tell us how you're doing. How is your family doing?

ROMAN: Well as well as anyone can be expected to be doing when you're sitting in a hotel watching and waiting and wondering if you'll have a home to get back to. Living on the boat was our major dream and something we've been preparing for, for a long time. And now we - we just don't know what's going to happen, as, obviously, so many people in Florida on the east coast are facing right now.

KEILAR: The important thing, that you were able certainly to take with you, we see sitting next to you. Tell us who we're seeing there sitting next to you.

ROMAN: All right. That's - that's exactly right. Thank you for mentioning that. So the - this, right here, is Ajava (ph). You can introduce yourself, actually?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.

ROMAN: What's your name?

KEILAR: Hi, Ajava.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm Ajava and I'm 11 years old.

ROMAN: OK. All right. And over here is?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ziva. I'm Ziva and I'm nine years old.

ROMAN: And over on the other bed - we're sitting on the bed in the hotel, sorry, Samuel, can you say hi? And there's my husband, Nathan.

Hey, Samuel?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi.

KEILAR: Nathan and Samuel. So -

ROMAN: Yes, Samuel is five. And he's more into the electronics than the storm right now, which is probably a good thing.

KEILAR: We - we see that. He's certainly distracted there. But what were you able to take with you and tell us about - about your boat. And you said you're worried about it being there, obviously, when you get back.

ROMANS: Well, I mean, the reality is, we are directly in the path of the storm. There's no - you know, there's not - there's nothing between us and the ocean. There's a little bit of the inlet. We're right inside Lake Orth (ph) inlet. And because of our - the nature of our boat, it's wide and the mast is so tall, we couldn't go under certain bridges and we also couldn't fit in a lot of the marinas. So we had to leave it where it was and that meant tying across - we have a floating dock, and that floating dock, you know, if the storm surges high enough, the whole marina will be lost.

So just as far as what we are expecting for the boat, we don't expect much. And that meant having to have the hard conversation with the kids about what - you know, what can we do and what are we going to come back to. And we decided, and one of the things Ziva here, Samuel's here too now - one of the things Ziva said is - can you tell them what - what did we take with us from the boat?

[14:20:08] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My stuffies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything I had.

ROMAN: Everything that you had. Now, let - Ziva, seriously, Ziva, what did you say was the most important thing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The people.

ROMAN: Yes. And they're right here, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Uh-huh.

ROMAN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Us.

ROMAN: Us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that black thing on my face, that's Nutella.

KEILAR: Nutella.

ROMAN: (INAUDIBLE).

KEILAR: Well, you know what, you need that at a time like this, I think, to keep yourself happy.

Rosa Linda, Ajava, Ziva, Samuel and Nathan, thank you so much to all of you.

ROMAN: (INAUDIBLE).

KEILAR: We are thinking of you. We are praying for you -

ROMAN: Thank you.

KEILAR: And we're glad that you are in a safe place. Thank you so much for joining us.

ROMANS: We are. And I appreciate the time and we are watching like the rest of us just waiting and wondering and hoping. Our puppy, Nala, is still back with our babysitter in West Palm Beach. So hopefully she'll make it out OK, too.

KEILAR: Yes, we certainly hope so as well. We're seeing a lot of animal there is in the path of this storm as well. Thank you so much, Rosa Linda, for talking with us today.

And next, I'm going to speak live with one couple in Jacksonville. They are hunkering down. They are not leaving like the family that we just spoke to.

Plus, as the storm hits, Donald Trump, tonight, is holding a town hall to serve as a rehearsal for Sunday's rematch with Hillary Clinton. Hear what reportedly happened when he watched the video of the first debate. This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:25:21] KEILAR: Welcome back.

We have our eye on Hurricane Matthew. What is expected to be the largest and the strongest storm to hit the east coast of Florida in decades. This is a frightening category four storm. It has claimed the lives of more than 100 people in the Caribbean. It's now closing in on the Florida coast headed northward.

And we have CNN meteorologist Jennifer Gray. She is in Palm Bay, Florida.

Set the scene for us there because we've also been hearing from different communities there up and down Florida, Jennifer, some people are evacuating and some people are completely disregarding that and they're staying.

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, it's really scary, Brianna. Actually, we're in Melbourne. And just behind me, across Indian River, there's Melbourne Beach. Now, there were mandatory evacuations for that stretch of coast. That's a barrier island. We just hung up with emergency officials and we asked, do you think that people got off those barrier islands or are they still there? And she really said, "there's no way to know. We're really not going to know how many people took advantage of leaving until the storm gets really bad and they start getting phone calls and hearing that there are people still out there.

I can tell you, though, the bridge right behind me, a couple of moments ago, you couldn't even see it. We had one of those rain bands come across. The winds were extremely gusty. The rain was so heavy, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. And I promise you, you're not going to want to be driving across that bridge a few hours from now when this storm gets closer.

So if you are still on one of these barrier islands, please get off. We are expecting anywhere from five to nine feet of storm surge in this area. All of these rivers, the lagoons, the intercostal waterway, there will be a surge of water coming inland and so areas that don't normally flood will be inundated with water. In fact, we're going to stay here as long as we can, but we are going to have to move because water will be above my head within the next 12 hours or so.

But hopefully people took advantage, they got out and - but now is the time, if you are inland and you are staying in your home, now is the time to finish up those preparations because we are expecting conditions to deteriorate rapidly right around dusk and then the storm brushing on shore by the time we get into the wee morning hours.

But, Brianna, it's going to be very interesting because depending on where this storm makes landfall is going to make all the difference in the world where you're talking about impacts because those hurricane force winds extend about 40 miles from the center. That's 74 miles per hour plus. And those 100 mile per hour plus winds extend about 10 miles from the center. And so we - but the fact that it's brushing north across the entire coast, we could see an entire line of devastation, which could just be horrible for the east coast of Florida, Brianna.

KEILAR: And you said it there, Jennifer, you are standing on land now that is going to be underwater in a matter of hours and we're talking to you in between the outer bands there of Hurricane Matthew.

Thank you for that report. We know you'll keep an eye on things.

There are millions of people who are along Florida's east coast and they have been urged to get moving inland right now. They should have done it already, but they're still being urged to get out. One Jacksonville resident, though, is not listening.

Joining me now from his condo turned shelter bunker is Brian Wilhelm. Seems pretty happy about his situation there. But you just about eight miles from the coast. That's certainly important. You're riding this hurricane out. But, you know, you're still in an area that's very vulnerable. So why aren't you and your loved ones getting out?

BRIAN WILHELM, RIDING OUT HURRICANE IN JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: We are in a situation, Brianna, where my fiance is a nurse at a local hospital here. So she is at the hospital until at least 8:00 tonight. So we're really monitoring the roads now. When we decided to ride it out, it - there was a category two, maybe a three, coming in 50 miles off the coast. Now what we're seeing is, it's really going to be almost on top of us. So minute by minute we may actually end up cutting out of here, 10:00 tonight, just depending on traffic. The last thing we want to do is be stuck on the road, though.

KEILAR: Certainly. So you were ready for a cat two or cat three. This is looking like it could be a strong cat four. If you do not - are you leaning towards cutting out, or is there a possibly you stay. And if you stay, what are you doing for precautions?

WILHELM: So if we stay, we're loaded up. We've got over 100 bottles of water. That should last us four or five days. We've got food, canned goods, freezer packed with 40 pounds of ice, flashlights, batteries. I mean we're - we can - we could probably handle five, seven days without electricity here. But it's more - we're look - I'm looking at the winds right now.

[14:30:00] KEILAR: Yes.

WILHELM: It's getting a little more scary.

KEILAR: Yes, we're hearing 140 to 145 miles per hour possible there. And how many people are in your position, where they are planning to stay around you, or is it really just you there in your neighborhood?

WILHELM: There's a full parking lot here.