CNN's Special Coverage Of Tropical Storm Florence; Non-Stop Flooding, Heavy Rains and Debris as Florence Batters the Carolinas.
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is CNN TONIGHT I'm Don Lemon. It is the top of the hour. What was hurricane Florence is now a tropical storm. And we're now hearing that it has killed at least five people in this area. This tropical storm is battering the Carolinas tonight. We're told that more than 500,000 people maybe up to 850,000 people are without power right now. They are concerned about major storm surges and also catastrophic flooding in the area. I just want to take you out here on the beach. Because this is where the major problem where storm is rolling in and they're concerned about flooding. This is what we've been seeing all day, the storms rolling in, coming in, moving from the north and then coming south down the shore here. And one of those places that is being hit really hard is where colleague, Miguel Marquez is. He is in Carolina Beach. And Miguel, all day, you have been getting inundated with water and wind. Tell us what you're seeing.</s>MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this has been 36 hours of just hell in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, Don. The wind is still blowing very, very hard. The rain is coming in right now, we're not seeing a lot of rain, but the wind is still very, very heavy here. The electricity is out in Carolina Beach and throughout the county. About 108,000 of the 128,000 customers that they have here are without power tonight. Cell phone service is down. Some roofs have been ripped off. Some walls have collapsed in and around Carolina Beach, but officials still waiting to be able to get out into daylight tomorrow to figure out just how much damage the storm has done. Fortunately, they haven't had those really big bad emergency calls for water rescues and the like. About 600 people of the 6200 people who live in this town decided to stay and tough out this storm. And tonight is the final test. Tide is coming in here in a little bit. There are areas of town that flood on a good day so they are waiting to see how bad it gets tonight. I can tell you in the last 24 hours we have seen incredibly hard rain, lots and lots of wind. And water up to the waist in some places. Also a lot of beach erosion. It's devastating to a town like this that depends on its beach for people who come here to enjoy it. About two feet of sand of beach sand is now gone, and a lot of beach erosion. So, a lot of rebuilding already is very evident here for Carolina Beach. Don?</s>LEMON: Yes, they're going to, Miguel, they are going to have some issues when it comes to beach erosion. Speaking to the spokesperson last night for Myrtle Beach. And they said they were supposed to have a beach restoration project that was supposed to start this week. But instead, this hurricane now tropical storm came through and delayed them. It was going to add hundreds of feet of beach to this area. Not going to happen right now for at least a couple of weeks because of the storm. I want to get to my colleague, Ed Lavandera. Ed Lavandera is in Jacksonville, North Carolina where he has been witnessing some of the things going on. Ed, as I understand you were out with people who were rescuing people earlier. What's happening where you are?</s>ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, we spent the most of our day in the town of New Bern which has been the focus of some of the high water rescues and people being evacuated from their homes there in that town about 300 people having to be more than 300 people having to be rescued from their homes in these neighborhoods. Pockets of neighborhoods where floodwaters rose up overnight and into today. So there was a race to get to these people. And Don, it was very reminiscent what we saw a year ago in Houston during hurricane Harvey where you had private citizens rushing to the scene there and launching their boats to this flood waters to reach the people who were trapped in their homes and wanted to get out. So, it was fascinating to see from that standpoint. We met a gentleman by the name of Jason Wineman who 10 years ago bought an old and a government auction -- an old military vehicle, high vehicle, used to transport troops. He said he bought it for moments like this. So he dispatched himself into the scene there and was driving it through high water that regular cars couldn't get through and able to load people up and bring them to safety. We met a woman Jennifer Morales who was rescued in Jason's truck and brought out. She was with her husband and 2-year-old son. They said that they told us that they had been calling for help for nearly 12 hours before rescuers could get to the home where they were trapped by floodwaters. So, some very dramatic scenes and stories we heard throughout the day today in New Bern, North Carolina. Don?</s>LEMON: All right. Ed Lavandera. Ed, thank you very much. Ed, you've been doing great work all day. This is not the way that most people who live here and the people came into rescue expected to spend their Friday night and their weekends, but they're happy, especially the rescue folks to be here, helping out. We had seen a lot of that. Usually at this hour, right at 11:00, every evening, we had been getting an update on this storm. I want to go to meteorologist, Allison Chinchar who joins us from the CNN Weather Center to give us the very latest. What is happening Allison?</s>ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right so, Don, we've seen a couple of changes in the latest update for starters the sustained winds have dropped down now at 65 miles per hour. Still a tropical storm but the forward movement has actually picked up a little bit. Now it rest southwest at about five miles per hour. Had been moving at three. Both of them still indicate a very slow pace. And that is going to be the concern going forward, because as the storm moves so slowly, it's going to dump rain in the same spots. Two particular bands of rain we've been focused on. This first one here, you can see over Moorhead City, New Port up through Jacksonville. This other one now really starting to ramp up around Wilmington. And notice that skinny line, but it's training over the same spots. A lot of these locations are getting two to three inches of rain an hour. On top of that, you also have a tornado watch in effect for most of the overnight hours and even some active tornado warnings that we have off and on throughout the evening. Now the thing is, as this trek continues to make its way in towards portions of South Carolina and then finally takes off, it's that shift as it starts to begin to push southward, one of the big things we are going to notice is the change in storm surge. Up to this point, it's really only been an issue for areas of North Carolina. But as the low sinks back down, that storm surge is now going to begin to shift into portions of northeastern South Carolina, including Myrtle Beach which expected to get about four to six feet of storm surge. Really over the next 12 to 24 hours that is when you really going to start to see the worst of the storm surge for those locations. In addition to that, again, we've been talking about the flood threat. It's a twofold. You have the rain that is coming down from above and the water that is coming up from below. That is the storm surge. The short-term problem is the flash flooding that is going to take place. The long-term problem would be the tributaries. All of that water has to go somewhere. It goes from those tributaries and in bays and inlets into the rivers and creeks and streams. We're expecting 20 of those rivers to reach major flood stage. And nearly 30 of them to reach moderate flood stage and for a lot of these locations they're not even going to crest until Tuesday of next week. So it's really going to be a long time before we finally start to see that water begin to recede. And already, the Cape Fear River at Wilmington reached that record height today at 8.288 feet. And another location along the northeast Cape Fear River, now this is a little bit further inland, we expect that to end up reaching a record crest, as well, Don, but again, that is not likely to get to that point till well into Sunday and more likely not until Monday. So, again even as the storm begins to make its way inland and push away from the Carolinas, this is going to be a problem they are still going to be dealing with for at least the next five days.</s>LEMON: Allison, it's really unbelievable. I mean, just for the last couple of days, this thing has been just sitting here and pouring water on top of people. And as you said, it is going to be until Tuesday till some of these rivers and tributaries and all this, until the rivers crest. I can only imagine what that means for the flooding situation here. This is we are. I just want to take a little bit of walk out here. You may lose me in the dark a little bit, but the concern was that this water from the beach may start coming up to the berms and flowing in there. It's pretty much high tide. So hopefully that is not going to happen. Where we do not know, because we've been getting so much rain. And then there was -- there is the storm drains here that we have been watching on the beaches. When we first got here, those drains were little trickle, if they were moving at all. Little tiny trickles. And now they've opened up and even some of the water has been flowing from other areas. And expanding those, as well. We've been getting updates, of course, from the National Weather Center, also updates from the National Hurricane Center, as well. Ed Rappaport who has been joining us here every single evening, is going to give us an update now. Ed, do I have you? Can you hear me?</s>ED RAPPAPORT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: Yes, I can. Good evening, Don.</s>LEMON: So give us an update here. I'm in Myrtle Beach. You can see the bands are coming through right now. And we are getting drenched here and the wind is picking up. What's going on?</s>RAPPAPORT: The center is located just to the west of you now. A lot of rain covering eastern part of North Carolina. It is spread to the west. Your correspondent showed an interesting graph just a minute ago. I want to show another version from another river. And what we're looking here is again the rise of the water, but here we are seeing two different peaks and this is near New Bern, North Carolina. And what we see a rise that occurred yesterday and into today and that is because of the storm surge that went up about five feet or six feet. Then starting to come down, but now it is going back up again. That is really -- mostly due to the rainfall. Yes, it's high tide. But now the surge is beginning to recede, but the rainfall that is falling over the river area and up to the west which has to drain out now through there is causing the water level to rise even further. And it's up into the major flood stage already.</s>LEMON: So Ed, listen, the big concern here you know there have been rescuing a lot of people, hundreds of people, has been this area called New Bern. And I'm wondering was it forecast to get that high? Because I don't think that there was a mandatory evacuation have given for New Bern. Was it forecast to get that much water, that much floodwater?</s>RAPPAPORT: Yes, we had talked about how the water was going to rise on the order of ten feet along the coast. And also up the rivers. The Neuse River and Pamlico River indeed. That is what we've seen. May be even a little bit higher in a few places. Now of course, we've got the water coming down the river from the rainfall and so we're going to see flooding there well into next week.</s>LEMON: Yes. Ed, can you explain to me and to our viewers why this thing slowed down and stalled? Because that is a problem here. And it's just stalling. And not moving very quickly. And just producing a lot of water.</s>RAPPAPORT: We talked about a lot of water. But a hurricane is very much like a float in a river. It moves where the currents around it steer it. And fortunately, we were able to forecast pretty well what those currents are going to be for this storm and so we knew days in advance and that is why we had all the flood warnings out. Unfortunately, in this case it turned out the forecast was right. The storm slowed considerably and dropping a lot of rain and we are worried about dropping in essence of record amounts of rain. We've already had 20 plus inches of rain in a few spots near Wilmington, near Moorhead City in New Bern, five to 10 inches farther to the west of North Carolina. And by the time the weekend is over, we are going to see almost all of North Carolina, much of South Carolina having had 5 to 10 inches of rain. Half of that area maybe a swathe of 15 to 20 inches. We had seen already 20 plus inches. Some of those locations will get isolated spots to 40 inches of rain. Tremendous flooding to be expected. As we've said, it's going to occur through the weekend and into next week. .</s>LEMON: All right. Ed Rappaport, thank you very much, I appreciate your time and explaining it to me and to our viewers, as well. Again, check what I said earlier about New Bern. There was a mandatory evacuation ordered for New Bern, not a mandatory evacuation for every place in the Carolinas or at least in north and South Carolina, the coastal areas. The New Bern was one of them. And that is where we saw so much flooding. And a lot of people there did decide to stay. And unfortunately, you see what happened. We are going to continue on with our coverage here on CNN of tropical storm Florence. We're getting new updates as you see. And we will update you on the other side of the break. Don't go anywhere.