Hurricane Rita Bears Down on Florida; A Look at How Cuba Weathers Storms
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we have much more in the next hour of CNN LIVE TODAY. We're tracking Hurricane Rita. That storm is picking up speed and bearing down on south Florida. I'll talk to the mayor of Key West about how his town is preparing. Plus, President Bush makes his fifth trip to the hurricane- damaged Gulf Coast region. A look at efforts to rebuild even as a second storm lies ahead. The second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now. Let's take a look at what's happening "Now in the News." The Florida Keys are already getting a lashing from Hurricane Rita. And the storm is expected to strengthen before making landfall somewhere near Galveston, Texas by Saturday morning. A live update on Rita is just moments away on CNN. We are your hurricane headquarters. President Bush is expressing concern that Rita might hit the devastated Gulf Coast. The president makes his fifth visit to the region today. He's due to arrive in Gulfport, Mississippi within this hour and visit a New Orleans business later today. The president has also tapped a homeland security adviser to look into the White House's Katrina response. More on that in a live report in about 30 minutes. Despite fears that Rita could disrupt oil production in the Gulf, AAA reporting another drop in gas prices. Self-serve regular unleaded is now about $2.79. That is down nearly 2 cents from yesterday. But analysts warn prices at the pump could soar following record prices for crude oil. Separate attacks in Iraq claim eight more American lives. The U.S. military confirms four soldiers assigned to the Marines were killed by roadside bombs in two incidents in Ramadi. And four other Americans died in a suicide car bomber attack in Mosul. One of those victims was a U.S. State Department employee. The other three were employees of a North Carolina-based Blackwater security firm. Famed Nazi-hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal is dead. The Simon Wiesenthal Center Web site says he died in his sleep early today in Vienna. Wiesenthal is credited to bringing more than 1,000 Nazi war criminals to justice, even though he had no criminal justice training. Simon Wiesenthal was 96 years old. Good morning, once again. Welcome back to CNN LIVE TODAY. Just past 10:00 a.m. in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Just after 11 a.m. in Havana, Cuba. And just past 7:00 in Baghdad. From CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Daryn Kagan. Up first, Hurricane Rita lashing the Florida Keys at this hour while the battered Gulf Coast keeps a wary eye on the same storm. Thousands of people responded to a mandatory order and evacuated the Florida Keys. Just a short time ago, Florida's Governor, Jeb Bush, warned residents not to be complacent.</s>GOV. JEB BUSH, FLORIDA: We can't say it enough, all storms, regardless of what category they are, are dangerous. And Floridians, thankfully, the great majority of them, understand this and are being cautious and have prepared. For those that haven't, please take the warnings of local officials and your governor very seriously. This is a very serious storm that is about to hit our state.</s>KAGAN: Galveston, Texas is taking no chances. That city begins voluntary evacuations today. Forecasters say Rita could make landfall near Galveston late Friday or early Saturday. In New Orleans, even a glancing blow from Hurricane Rita could overwhelm levees damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The Army Corps of Engineers says three to nine inches of rain could cause two to four feet of flooding. The mayor of New Orleans has postponed plans to bring people back into the city because of the threat from Rita. Federal officials had already warned against bringing residents back too soon. The military is preparing to move two amphibious warships out of New Orleans tomorrow. The USS Iwo Jima and the USS Shreveport have orders to leave the area if Rita continues on its current track. And so far there are reports of downed trees but no major damage in the Bahamas after Rita blew across those islands. Well, let's get a look at the radar and some expert analysis from our Jacqui Jeras standing by in our Weather Center -- Jacqui.</s>JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Hi, Daryn. The 11:00 advisory just coming in. We don't have the complete advisory, but the wind speeds have increased up to 85 miles per hour. That still keeps it well within the Category 1 strength for intensity. And take a look at the satellite picture here. This is a visible satellite. And it looks like the eye is starting to tighten up a little bit as well. And that is another sign of strengthening. And here's the rest of the advisory from Dave Hennen. Thank you, Dave. One hundred and twenty miles southeast of Key West or about 100 miles east-northeast of the city of Havana. Rita is moving towards the west near 15 miles per hour. So that's different right there. It's been moving west-north or westerly and now it's moving more due west. And that's actually good news, because that could possibly keep it a little farther away from Key West. The farther away we can keep it from the Keys, the better off we're going to be ultimately. But of course you're obviously feeling the impact of it. Tropical storm force winds have been pounding you all morning long. Now we've seen gusts around 35 to 45 miles per hour. And certainly going to see some 50s to 60s, we think, in some of these outer bands as they begin to push in across parts of south Florida. We're going to zoom in on some of these for you. We're doing a lot better now in Miami and up towards Miami Beach, into Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. You can see the outer bands now extending a little farther up to the north and heading on towards Coral Springs. It's this outer band that we're most concerned about that's producing the heaviest of rainfall. Certainly limiting visibility. One to two inches per hour. We may get a little bit of flash flooding on the roadways here. So not a great time to go out and travel right now. Wait until these thunderstorms pass. You're looking OK right now in Miami and into the downtown areas. We've also seen some of the heavier rains a littler farther down south into the Keys. Plantation Key just got nailed with a very strong thunderstorm. But these are moving so quickly, so it's kind of splash and dash. It's hitting you and then it's moving on out. Forecast track, let's take a look at this, this is the updated track. There you can see the Category 1 as it moves near the Keys, through the Florida Straits, into the Gulf of Mexico. And looks to me, just by eyeballing this, I'll have to crunch the numbers and take a closer look, but it looks like it's definitely staying much farther south than the earlier forecast tracks, and then curving back on up to the north. It looks like the ultimate position, however, is relatively the same, with landfall probably late on Friday or early Saturday morning -- Daryn.</s>KAGAN: And landfall being clearly the coast of Texas, but what city are we looking at?</s>JERAS: You know it's really -- it's still three, four days away, Daryn, so I hate to pick an exact city; but you know go ahead and look at it. But also keep in mind how large this storm is. Even if it does make landfall well off to the west here of Houston, remember they're going to be on the backside of the storm and they could still get a good lashing. And we could also see some good rainfall into western parts of Louisiana. Right now New Orleans is looking OK. We're not ruling you out altogether, but it's looking less and less likely that they're going to be seeing a big impact from this storm.</s>KAGAN: That's just as well. We're already seeing, even though it's kind of over the Keys, we're seeing it well into Fort Lauderdale and the southern part of Palm Beach County.</s>JERAS: That's right.</s>KAGAN: So don't get so focused on the center of the storm. Thank you, Jacqui. Well the Florida Keys are feeling the effects of Rita. Thousands of people heeded the warnings. They did leave the island. For those who didn't, the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, saying stay where you are. John Zarrella beginning our coverage from Key West. John, good morning, once again.</s>JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Morning, Daryn. Well that's exactly right, now is not the time to be moving about down here as the worst of the weather is expected to start rolling in to Key West in the next few hours, certainly by mid-afternoon. Yet, we have seen a number of people out here on the streets, riding their mopeds, riding bicycles. You look down Duvall Street (ph), which, on a normal day, would be packed with tourists and the shops open. It is still deserted, by anyone's standards deserted, but enough people walking up and down the streets, and again, riding bicycles and motorcycles and cars that probably should be inside somewhere, because we do expect, as the storm is intensifying and still moving fairly close to Key West. Although what Jacqui was saying is certainly good news, if that track holds to the south, but we're going to be on the north side of it. But because Key West is further to the west as the island chain moves, we're getting some of the worst of the weather later in the day than they are in the middle Keys and the upper Keys. For example, about 70 miles north of here in Islamorada, the police are already reporting, the state patrols, state troopers reporting some overwash on the road, the overseas highway there, and are urging motorists to stay off the road up there. Those are the kinds of conditions we expect to see here as we move on into the day and the potential for that storm surge of several feet to be moving over the lower Florida Keys again as the eyewall of this storm moves just to the south of us. Hopefully just to the south and not over the top of us. But again, still several hours away. We've seen some squally weather, windy weather, constant rain showers now blowing in and those tropical storm force gusts that we've had. But right now, everyone here, city officials, county officials, are breathing a little bit easier that it is not as bad, at least now, as was expected -- Daryn.</s>KAGAN: All right, John Zarrella, thank you. From Key West, we're going to head north to the other end of the Keys. Dan Lothian joining us now live from Key Largo.</s>DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn. I just got back a few minutes ago from taking a tour around the Key Largo area. Pretty much deserted, although, if you can imagine in these conditions where we have these bursts of rain and high winds, there were a couple of people who were still boarding up some windows or putting up their shutters. Apparently they may have been waiting, since it was a tropical storm that became a hurricane, they thought it was serious enough to start preparing their businesses and their homes. We drove through</s>KAGAN: And that is our Dan Lothian clearly having a little bit of trouble because of the storm passing through. But we'll go ahead and work on getting him back. Meanwhile, Key West did plan for a worst case scenario from Hurricane Rita. The mayor anticipating a possible storm surge of six to nine feet. The mayor, Jim Weekley, is with us live from Key West. Mr. Mayor, good morning, a soggy one, I realize.</s>MAYOR JIM WEEKLEY, KEY WEST, FLORIDA: Good morning -- Daryn.</s>KAGAN: Are you happy with how the evacuation went for your town?</s>WEEKLEY: Yes, we're pretty pleased. We probably had somewhere between 40 to 50 percent of the population that evacuated, which kind of surprised all of us, I think. We supplied some transportation with buses, of which we transported about 250 people to Florida International University up in Miami, which is a shelter, plus there were some other individuals that have been transported as well. So we're quite pleased, like I said, between 40 and 50 percent of the population actually did evacuate.</s>KAGAN: So you're surprised at the high numbers?</s>WEEKLEY: Yes, we are, because in the past we got somewhere around 25 percent of our population would evacuate. We think because of Katrina because it's still fresh in everyone's mind and them seeing the devastation that occurred in New Orleans. Early on, when this was being forecast as a Category 2 or 3 hurricane, I think a lot of people decided they needed to seek safe haven somewhere else.</s>KAGAN: So not at the expense of other people's misery, but I'm sure you appreciate more people heeding the warning and getting out?</s>WEEKLEY: Absolutely.</s>KAGAN: Any kind of adjustments you make as mayor there when you've seen the difficult relationship that we've seen between the mayor of New Orleans and federal and state officials or are things working pretty well for you there in Key West?</s>WEEKLEY: Well I think we've all learned something from what occurred in New Orleans. And you know we kind of experience this a little more frequently than they do in New Orleans, because we're kind of right in the center of the hurricane path, I guess. And we're mandated by the state to have a 24-hour evacuation of Monroe County, which is approximately 83,00 residents. And we do it in a phase, starting with the lower Keys and Key West first, and then we move gradually up the Keys with our evacuation. One of the things also is because we have to have a plan in place, we can implement it right away, and we have the support of the state government in our implementation of our plan.</s>KAGAN: I know you're a lifelong resident of that part of the world. Your respect for Mother Nature and what she's able to produce, does it just get even higher as time goes on?</s>WEEKLEY: Absolutely. You know because Mother Nature has its own mind and she's going to do whatever she wants to do and we just have to be able to put ourselves in a position to combat that the best way we can.</s>KAGAN: Well we wish you well in riding out Hurricane Rita. That is Mayor Jim Weekley of Key West. Thank you -- sir.</s>WEEKLEY: Thank you now.</s>KAGAN: And I think we were able to go ahead and fix our technological problem, or at least the little weather blip that we had, and Dan Lothian in talking to him in Key Largo. There you are looking even better than ever.</s>LOTHIAN: I'm back again. And not sure exactly where I left off, but what I was saying was that we went through several neighborhoods, they were pretty much deserted. But we did see, amazingly, in these bad conditions, there were some people who were shuttering their windows, nailing up windows, apparently waiting until the storm was upgraded to a hurricane to go out and start doing that work. We also saw a couple of U-haul trucks coming out, not confirmed, but it appeared that they were moving out. They were headed north, apparently evacuating under these conditions. Now I got off the phone a few minutes ago with the sheriff's department for this county, the county that is over the Keys here. And an official there told me that there is a section, mile marker 73.5, they said it was, it's south of here on the way to Key West, where the water has now come over the road. It's impassible. You cannot go from here to Key West on Highway 1, U.S. 1, which runs from Homestead all the way down to Key West. They told me there's about a foot-and-a-half of water and it's rising there. There's not only water, but they said sand and a lot of debris. So it's impassible there. They also told me north of where we're at right now there's another area, too, where the water is rising. They believe that that area as well will be impassible. So there are various chunks of the Keys will be cut off by that main road that comes through here. Of course, the governor earlier this morning was talking about if you had not evacuated at this point, if you didn't take off yesterday when they were offering buses to get you out of this area, then it's pretty much too late. It's time to just hunker down and ride out the storm. But as John mentioned, people were expecting to perhaps get hit with something of upwards of a Category 2, perhaps even more. It's a Category 1, so there is a little bit of relief. But as we know with these storms, it's pretty unpredictable. Back to you.</s>KAGAN: All right. Dan Lothian, we'll be checking back with you. Thank you.</s>LOTHIAN: OK.</s>KAGAN: Well this storm, Hurricane Rita, is gaining strength and gaining ground. The Gulf Coast region bracing for another round of rough weather. Some are wondering could the U.S. learn something from Cuba when it comes to weathering a storm? We'll take a closer look at that. Plus, President Bush is heading back to the hurricane zone for the fifth time today. Details on his trip just ahead.