New Update on Sandy's Track; State of Emergency in Delaware; Hurricane Sandy Lashes East Coast; Sandy Halts Trains, Planes and Cars; Hurricane Could Affect 60 Million; Hurricane Sandy Lashes East Coast
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good to see all of you. I'm Brooke Baldwin here on this Monday, an incredibly busy Monday for, I know, a lot of you. You are watching CNN's special coverage of Hurricane Sandy. Keep in mind, eight days from the presidential election, one-fifth, one-fifth of the United States is bracing for this gargantuan storm hitting here, all up and down the East Coast. Take a look here as we have pictures all up and down the East Coast. We'll be looking with you. First of all, obviously, you're looking at this. This is from space. This is Sandy there swirling. These are images, thanks to NASA, a little earlier in the day where you can see it is this gigantic storm. Been as big as between basically the swath between Memphis and Los Angeles if you were going to try to map that. Want to move on, though, and tell you, if we have these live pictures here, Atlantic City. These are tape pictures. But you can see, look at the water here. Some cars moving. Atlantic City. We've been looking into Atlantic County, specifically. Something like five feet of water on some of these roads. And, folks, it will get worse. Right now we know of at least 116,000 homes without power. Those numbers will obviously change. But I just want to hit home this point, that everything about Sandy is huge. You see this system. This is on your screen here. The wind field, this is something we'll talk to Chad about, the wind field roughly 900 miles wide. Sixty million people all the way from North Carolina to Maine could be affected by this hurricane. About 61,000 National Guard troops have been deployed. The president making the point that a lot of the resources, as best as they can, have been prepositioned in anticipation of this storm. $87 billion worth of homes reportedly at risk. And in Manhattan, the New York Stock Exchange, closed today. And we know it will be closed tomorrow. Also shut down, Amtrak, subways in New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and in Boston. And at the top of the hour here, we can tell you now that New York's Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn Battery Bridge are shutting down, closing. No traffic there. Not only is Sandy big, Sandy is very slow. And that's part of the problem. It could stick around, possibly 48 hours, and keep people in the dark for as long as 10 days. The bottom line here, as you look at these pictures with me here, government leaders, they say this is not hype, folks. This is real. Sandy has already killed 67 people, and that's outside of the United States.</s>GOV. MARTIN O'MALLEY (D), MARYLAND: There will undoubtedly be some deaths that are caused by the intensity of this storm, by the floods, by the tidal surge, and by the waves.</s>BALDWIN: One important note I want to bring you here. A live briefing. We'll be getting this live briefing from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That should be happening in about half an hour. So we'll be watching for that. Also, we heard from specifically the president just a little earlier today from the Briefing Room. Here's part of what he said.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If the public's not following instructions, that makes it more dangerous for people, and it means that we could have fatalities that could have been avoided.</s>BALDWIN: That was the president earlier today. We have correspondents covering this hurricane up and down the northeast coast here, all the way from North Carolina upward. But I want to go straight to Chad Myers. Chad, just walk on in and let's talk whether -- as we've now gotten this update, this is breaking, the fact it's --</s>CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: That's breaking news right there.</s>BALDWIN: It's moving faster.</s>MYERS: Twenty-eight miles an hour. It is now hauling the mail right toward the coast. Right toward the coast very close to either Cape May, Atlantic City, or maybe it just slides just south of Cape May, right where the ferry would run, and right into Wilmington, Delaware, with a huge surge there. Worried about Wilmington, worried about Philadelphia, even into Baltimore as this thing now moves a little bit faster from -- they're saying northwest.</s>BALDWIN: So walk me through this map.</s>MYERS: I'm seeing -- I'm seeing this a little bit west, northwest, not just -- not this way. More this way.</s>BALDWIN: OK.</s>MYERS: Which puts Washington, Baltimore more in play than let's say Boston, because that's just not going to go there now. This cone is nowhere near the northeast coast, although there are still waves 24 feet high pounding parts of Maine. You said how big it is. That's the issue. There's not really -- we don't even care about the eye with this storm.</s>BALDWIN: What about, in terms of pressure alone, this could be the biggest storm, what, north of Cape Hatteras ever?</s>MYERS: Ever. This is now -- this is now bigger than the Long Island Express. North of that line right through there.</s>BALDWIN: That was in 1938.</s>MYERS: Now we are down to 940 millibars on the last update. That is the lowest pressure ever north of that line. And the pressure means there's a difference -- the difference between the low that's here and the high that's here will cause winds to howl. Buffalo, even into Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and all the way down even to Charlotte as it continues to spin. It's not going to be a hurricane for very much longer. It is going to be this coastal low --</s>BALDWIN: OK.</s>MYERS: A nor'easter, that hits land.</s>BALDWIN: Don't go too far. We have so much to talk about.</s>MYERS: I won't go.</s>BALDWIN: The trajectory, wind, flooding, snow. So just join me here through the next two hours. Do me that favor.</s>MYERS: Sure.</s>BALDWIN: I want to move along, though, and tell you that the brunt of Sandy is supposed to hit, as Chad was mentioning here, supposed to hit somewhere from Delmarva, that where Delaware, Virginia, and Maryland meet, to the Jersey shore. And just a couple of hours ago, the governor of New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, scolded those who ignored any kind of mandatory evacuation orders. Here he was.</s>GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, NEW JERSEY: But there are some towns in Atlantic and Ocean Counties that are only 50 percent evacuated from reports that I've gotten. I read some joker in the newspaper this morning saying, you know, I've never run away -- in his fatigues saying he's never run away from one of these, he's not going to run away now. Well, you might wind up under it, not running away from it. This is not a time to be a show-off.</s>BALDWIN: Chris Christie this afternoon. I want to go straight to New Jersey to Maggie Lee. She's in Asbury Park for us, which is on this mandatory evacuation list. I can see the rain, I can see that wind there, Maggie. Tell me exactly where you are and how bad it is from what you can tell.</s>MAGGIE LAKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brooke, we are on the Boardwalk. Just the shadows of the historic convention center here in Asbury Park. And this is -- if we can swing around, Tom (ph), exactly what Governor Christie is concerned about. We have a family out here who came to the boardwalk to check it out despite the fact that there are police riding up and down, trying to tell people to get to safety. The conditions are definitely worsening from this afternoon. That is not a good position to have your family in right there. We've got horizontal rain, hail coming. The only thing I will say is that in terms of tide, we had a high tide this morning, most of the beach covered. If we could swing around out here, we are starting to see that come back up. You can just see a little bit of the beach. Earlier last hour --</s>BALDWIN: Maggie, you OK?</s>LAKE: They lost us.</s>BALDWIN: No, we've got you.</s>LAKE: They lost us.</s>BALDWIN: We've got you, Maggie. Keep going. We see you. Or perhaps she lost us. But, again, Asbury Park, New Jersey. Maggie just holler if you can hear me. If not, we'll just have to go back to her. But they're getting reports apparently of parts of that historic boardwalk collapsing. Let's move on. Where shall we go? OK. Let me show you an image from Chesapeake Bay. Chesapeake Bay. This is Kent Island, Maryland, just across the bay from Annapolis. And we'll look at the video here in just a second. Here it is. Look at these waves. This came off our feed just about an hour ago, waves crashing into Chesapeake -- this is Kent Island, Maryland, hours before landfall. We showed you the president within just this past hour. The president declared a state of emergency in the state of Delaware. So up and down Delaware's coast, flooding has started in earnest this morning. And CNN's Brian Todd is there. Brian.</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're here in Lewes (ph) Beach, Delaware, where the storm surge from Sandy is pretty heavy, as you can see. The beach is several hundred yards that way, but the surge is taking the water toward the beach right now, I guess just because of the way the winds are blowing in the storm. You can see just how deep it's getting. Almost to my knees here. And the wind is pretty heavy. The flooding goes on down this street just several hundred yards for as far as you can see on the beaches near here. We've been at Rehoboth Beach and up along this area just south of here. They're really worried about beach erosion. They're getting a lot of it right now. They had some beach replenishment earlier this year where they expanded the beach 200 to 300 feet toward the ocean. They say right now that is saving the coastal buildings and the businesses that are right along the boardwalk. If that replenishment had not taken place, those buildings might be destroyed already. But you can see the surge from Sandy already starting to cause some pretty heavy flooding over here. Our photojournalist, Chris Turner (ph), panning to my right, to your left. You can see that street completely flooded over there. Some businesses already being threatened. Residences being threatened. The governor has ordered a mandatory evacuation for everyone about three-quarters of a mile from the beach inland. The city manager for Rehoboth told me a short time ago he believes about 90 percent of the people got out. Brian Todd, CNN, Lewes Beach, Delaware.</s>BALDWIN: Brian Todd, thank you. As we continue to cover this breaking story here, in anticipation this evening of landfall, Hurricane Sandy, we're going to talk about potential record-breaking storm surge, specifically the high tide surge. That's next. CNN, back in a moment.