Atlanta Cleans up Weekend Tornado Damage
LEMON: Real quickly, want to get you back. This is his mother, Portia Paterson, that he's introducing. His dad, Basil, sitting right next to him. He just introduced him just a short while ago. But what's interesting about this, John Roland, is that Basil Paterson is the first nonwhite secretary of state of New York and the first African-American vice chair of the national Democratic Party. So he's accomplished, in his own right. So that's got to be a very proud moment now that he's looking there, you know, looking at his son being sworn in as governor. Now he's introducing his wife and his kids, as well.</s>ROLAND: ... New York City deputy mayor.</s>LEMON: John, say again. Sorry, we didn't have your mike up.</s>ROLAND: Basil Paterson was also the first African-American New York City deputy mayor.</s>LEMON: Yes, and last -- last week, when this was all going on, we talked about this, what a moment this was for Basil Paterson and for his wife. And you -- you actually brought that up. And about the -- how he has served New York state, his dad. And again, talk to me about the moment, watching his son. Probably something that he would like to have done but just didn't -- it wasn't the time for him.</s>ROLAND: Well, you know, he's got -- he's so proud of his son and the way that they raised him. They never, for a second, let him or themselves give in to the fact that their son was born legally blind. They even moved to another town, because the area that they lived in, in Brooklyn, they didn't think that David should go to a regular public school because of his sight problems. So rather than have him be treated special, they moved. And they went to another town, where he was able to go to the public school. And they sent him to public school, and that's how -- he runs in marathons today.</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>ROLAND: The man went to -- he went to Columbia. He got his law degree. They just -- they treated him like just a regular person. And they pushed him and pushed him, and to the point now where look where he is. He is the governor of the state of New York.</s>LEMON: Yes. Yes. John Roland, hey, we really appreciate...</s>ROLAND: It shows you -- you know, it just shows if you work hard, you can accomplish anything.</s>LEMON: Right. In America, right? And especially.</s>ROLAND: Absolutely.</s>LEMON: All right. John Roland, thank you. Hey, we appreciate your perspective so much. John has been pivotal throughout this whole transition in New York. And very important to this story, and we want to thank John Roland, longtime anchor of New York City and now a political consultant. But again, just -- his wife, he's introducing there -- just to give you an idea of the players, Michelle Paige Paterson is his wife. His two children, Ashley and Alex. Ashley entered Ithaca College in the fall of 2006. And Alex attends public school in New York City. So a very interesting, a very proud moment.</s>WHITFIELD: Yes.</s>LEMON: And sort of levity.</s>WHITFIELD: It's a beautiful Cinderella story...</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>WHITFIELD: ... if you will. I mean, and just to add to what John was talking about in terms of his parents, really making sure that he got the right kind of education. He wasn't treated specially. He also refused to learn Braille. So he memorizes most of his material, and he has his aides read him documents, et cetera, so that, you know, he feels like he is just like everybody else.</s>LEMON: And he's got the taster, so when he goes over to Joe Bruno's house....</s>WHITFIELD: Yes. That's the funny one. And he's got a great sense of humor, which we all saw and enjoyed.</s>LEMON: All right. We have other news, though, that we have to get to.</s>WHITFIELD: Yes. All right. Let's begin with this. You heard about all the storms over the weekend in the southeast. Block after block, blown out windows, twisted metal, crumpled roofs and yes, you are looking at the CNN building there. Safety is a major concern now in the aftermath of a powerful tornado in the middle of downtown Atlanta. The historic Cabbagetown neighborhood was especially hard hit Friday night. Huge, old trees ripped up by the roots, destroying homes almost as old. Amazingly, no one was killed in that part of town. The next day, more tornadoes swept across North Georgia. One man was killed by flying debris. A woman died when her home took a direct hit. And as you no doubt heard, the freak tornado hit while Atlanta was playing host to thousands of visitors. A lot of venues are damaged, and CNN's T.J. Holmes is right in the middle of it all to give us some perspective as to how the cleanup is coming along. Not so fast, is it?</s>T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Not so fast. But -- but you know what? It is happening. Certainly, this area is a hub of activity all the time. And a different kind of activity this time around. To give people some perspective, of course, downtown is the heart, the center of Atlanta. But where the tornado hit is the center of that center. This is the area where so many tourists often come and congregate. But we still see tourists out. It's strange, today. But you know, they're here looking at a different type of tourist attraction now. This wasn't the attraction they were expecting when they came to visit Atlanta. A lot of people out taking pictures with their camera phones and whatnot. And this is what they're seeing. We're seeing a whole lot of this down here in downtown. People who were down here parked for several reasons, several different events happening in downtown Atlanta, came out, cars are essentially destroyed down here. Totaled. This is one of the ones that is in better shape than a lot of the other ones. But we -- we've seen a lot of cars being towed away. Just behind this car, this is the Tabernacle. This is the hot hub downtown in Atlanta where they have concerts and things like that. You see what we've seen a lot of places and a lot of buildings downtown, is windows blown out. If you keep moving to my left here, you see a building here. This is a brick building. A lot of old buildings in downtown Atlanta. Well, it's not much of a building left. The inside totally exposed. All of these bricks just laid out on the ground here now. And it seems strange to look up there. You see the staircases inside the building all exposed. You even see exit signs up there in that building. And obviously, now a lot more exits to that building, if you will, given that the walls have been blown out. It is dangerous in downtown Atlanta right now. Police are telling people, don't come down here. You didn't need to call in sick, you could call in tornado to work, if you will. This is part of the reason it's dangerous. You've got power lines and things like this down all over the place. And also, some of those buildings with the busted-out windows, a lot of debris is still falling. It's dangerous just to be walking around in downtown Atlanta. If you keep moving, again, to my left, the camera right here, you come to home for us, the CNN Center. You see the side of that building. At least 50, probably more windows have been blown out by the tornado. And you see them boarded up now. But windows blown out. Also you see that crane that's working there to help replace our ceiling. Our roof up there sustained a good amount of damage. By earlier reports that we were getting from the folks working on that, some $3 million to $5 million damage done to our building, some 65 percent of the roof going to have to be replaced. Now let's show you video we'll go to from other parts of Atlanta -- of downtown Atlanta. Again, Centennial Park was hit. Things strewn about, all over the place, here in downtown. So many of the streets right now still blocked off and all of this cleanup going on. And the Georgia World Congress Center right now closed. Going to be closed all week, as far as we know, because of all of the damage it sustained. They don't know. They're going to do this on a week-by- week basis and figure out when they're going to open again. But for at least now going to be closed. Of course it's a center for so many meetings and so many conferences that happen. And those people not coming in for those meetings mean the downtown businesses are going to be hurt. It means so many of these hotels that were booked for all of those things are going to be hurt as well. Come back here live. I'm trying to give you a little more perspective. A lot of people have been to Atlanta and know the area, but many have not. But what you will know, people, is the Centennial Olympic Park, the site of the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, if you look through here -- you can't see it that well -- but right across the street is Centennial Park, where the bombing happened in 1996, and again, Fredricka, like I said, Atlanta, downtown Atlanta, this is the center. But this area where we are, Centennial Olympic Park, is the center of the center. The tornado could not have picked a more populated and, if you will, a worse spot to hit. But the cleanup is going on, but it's going to take quite some time.</s>WHITFIELD: Yes, and what you don't see because the trees are, of course, in the way in, T.J., right there in Centennial Park, those big, beautiful pillars that are right in the middle of the park that decorate and kind of memorialize the Olympic Park, a lot of those were just torn down as if they were toothpicks. Just kind of evidence of the 130-mile-per-hour winds that we saw.</s>HOLMES: The power. And it's just amazing. Again, it's almost like that tornado had a bull's-eye on the absolute center of activity for all of Atlanta, and this is it right here.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, the cleanup begins. T.J. Holmes, thanks so much, downtown Atlanta, just down the block.</s>HOLMES: All right, Fredricka.</s>LEMON: You dread filling up your gas tank. You cringe when you check out at the grocery store. The markets are a mess. And you can't bear to look at your 401k. We just depressed everybody right there. We find out what you and other Americans are saying in a new poll on the U.S. economy.</s>WHITFIELD: And tragedy in Manhattan. New developments in a deadly crane accident at a construction site there.