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Florida Gas Stations Running Out of Fuel; CIA Under Fire Over Sexual Assault Allegations; Florida Braces For Hurricane Milton. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired October 09, 2024 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

TONY VENEZIA, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC SAFETY, TAMPA GENERAL HOSPITAL: And, really, what that did for us, we were able to elevate our fuel, our boilers, our generators 35 feet in the air.

We have -- our local power feed runs under the channel by about 80 feet, so it's protected. The patients, we don't expect them to see any different here during the storm or after the storm than they would at any normal day. So that level of care will remain the same.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: That's really incredible.

A lot of meteorologists have been comparing the storm to Katrina. And, obviously, the hospitals were a devastating piece of that disaster. What lessons were learned that you were hoping to apply to this storm response to be able to give those patients the exact same care no matter if there's a hurricane or not?

VENEZIA: Yes, I think it's super important.

One around that is the training that we do with our team. And we also -- at Katrina, the hospitals and generators were in the basement. Obviously, that wasn't great. But we have learned from that all these mitigation efforts that we do, whether it's -- we have a warehouse in Central Tampa that we bring basically 300 pallets of supplies over here, because we understand, during the storm and maybe a few days post-storm, we're going to be on our own.

But we have got fuel, water, food, medical supplies, medical gas, everything that we need to continue to operate like any other day here.

BROWN: All right, Tony Venezia, thank you so much, and thank you to all the brave men and women that are staying behind to help care for the patients at your hospital. It's really incredible. They are doing quite a public service doing that, leaving their families behind to do the work that is essential.

Thank you.

VENEZIA: Thank you. Be safe.

BROWN: Some people in the path of the storm are choosing to stay. We have been talking about that through the show.

My next guest is one of them. Christine Bottger joins us from Largo, Florida. She works with a restaurant in nearby Clearwater Beach. It was slammed by Hurricane Helene nearly two weeks ago. Christine, for her part, is -- an emergency official in Pinellas County, an emergency official said: "For those of you who were punched by Helene, this is going to be a knockout."

Tell us more, Christine, about why you are deciding to stay.

CHRISTINE BOTTGER, FLORIDA RESIDENT: Well, where I live at currently, I'm in a non-evacuation zone.

We were forced to leave the hotel yesterday, I was one of the last few to stay, and pack it up, close it up, lock the doors and leave. So, because of the safety issues and concerns that Milton was bringing, we decided to make sure that all of our employees were safe and can find their way home and/or find a location that they could evacuate to.

BROWN: So...

BOTTGER: And I need to be one of the first to return.

BROWN: You need to be one of the first to return. Tell us about that.

BOTTGER: Yes.

As the general manager of the property of the hotel and the restaurant, I'm one of the first ones back to unlock the building and get the crew back on hand, so that we can get the hotel cleaned up and the restaurant cleaned up and ready to accept guests as soon as it's deemed safe.

BROWN: So where you are right now, do you feel like you're going to be safe in this monstrous storm that's going to be hitting overnight, according to meteorologists?

BOTTGER: I certainly hope so. I think, with each hurricane, we learn more and more with each one. This one kind of scares me a little bit. I mean, I could see the damage that Helene provided and she was offshore, whereas this one is supposed to hit us on a more direct kind of path.

So it's a little alarming.

BROWN: I mean, absolutely.

So why -- I mean, I know you have to get back to the restaurant quickly, as you point out, to get it back up and running again. But are you having second thoughts about staying close by? I mean, is there a part of you that is like, you know what, maybe I should go further away so that I can safely say that I will be safe from this storm?

BOTTGER: No, I feel comfortable in our home. We have a very good, solid home built in a non-evacuation zone, several feet, several, I want to say 75 feet above sea level.

So I feel very, very comfortable here. We made the decision as a family to stay home. And, honestly, as late as it was when I left yesterday, there was no hotel rooms to try to go to. And, safety-wise, to get on the roads wouldn't have been feasible at that point. I feel comfortable where I'm at.

BROWN: You manage 100 employees. What do you know about their plans? Have many of them evacuated?

[11:35:01]

BOTTGER: Most are hunkering down in their homes. Again, most of them live in non-evacuation zones as well.

There are -- we do have a few who did lose their homes during Helene. And they have left the area. They went -- one, I know, is in Atlanta to be with family. And the other one is staying with friends in a safer location.

BROWN: How do you expect this hurricane to impact your job and the jobs of workers that you manage?

BOTTGER: It's hard to tell.

If you could see the hotel after the damage that Helene did, it was very frightening. However, the team pulled together in the last 10 days and really clean that property up, that restaurant up. It's night and day from where it was after Helene passed.

So I have a staff that is definitely dedicated to getting the hotel back and rebuilt, as well as an ownership group that is standing firm behind us and ensuring that, as soon as it's deemed safe and we can get the workers back and cleaned up and a crew on site to start some of the repairs that are needed, we want to try to get the restaurant and the hotel open as quickly as possible to get all of our employees back to work as quickly as possible.

BROWN: That has to be so hard. They just cleaned everything up and now Milton could undo all of that hard work.

You were born and raised in Florida. What does it feel like to be living through these two historic storms that are back-to-back essentially?

BOTTGER: It's absolutely mind-boggling. I have never in all of my years of living here, which is my whole entire life, born and raised right here in Clearwater, have seen anything like this and the destruction.

And, honestly, the last three years we have been forced to evacuate at least once for a hurricane. And we always come back to the property, and it's picking up a few pieces of tree limbs here and there, clearing the sand out, or picking up some pavers back behind the pool deck. Helene was a completely separate mess. It was walking over two feet of

sand and shell in the restaurant and bricks in the pool, and never seen devastation like this. And ten, on Saturday, when we started seeing the path of Milton, my first comment was, it has to be a sick joke. This can't be happening to us again. So...

BROWN: Yes, that's got to be unbelievably difficult.

I just am thinking about you and your family, Christine Bottger, and all your employees. And we just hope everyone stays safe. Thank you so much.

BOTTGER: Thank you. We hope to have everybody back to enjoy our sunsets out on our restaurant dock again. We're known for our sunsets there. We toast the sunset every night at the restaurant.

So we're -- we can't wait to get back to that point.

BROWN: I imagine. It's a beautiful area. Thank you so much. Best of luck to you.

BOTTGER: Thank you.

BROWN: And I believe we have some live pictures that we can show you here on the screen that I was notified in my ear that we have right here.

Here's St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Florida. This is, of course, right where we're expecting Milton to do a lot of damage. And it hasn't hit yet, but it's expected to hit overnight. We're seeing the outer bands, though, as you see with the rain and everything already hitting the area. This is just a precursor of the expected devastating damage to come right there in that area.

And still ahead, other news we are following today: Women in the most secreted branch of the government are breaking their silence about a deeply rooted problem, a movement in decades of sexual harassment and assault inside the CIA. CNN exclusive new reporting, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:43:38]

BROWN: A CNN exclusive this morning. The CIA is facing its own MeToo movement.

Allegations of sexual assault and harassment at the spy agency have spilled out into the open. And in just one example, a former officer got a 30-year prison sentence for drugging and sexually assaulting dozens of women. '

CNN's Katie Bo Lillis joins us now.

Katie Bo, you broke this story. Tell us about it.

KATIE BO LILLIS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Pam, I have been doing a lot of reporting on some of these allegations of sexual assault that had kind of made their way into public court, both the felony case that you mentioned, as well as a series of cases in misdemeanor court in Virginia.

And I started hearing from some of my sources about some pretty egregious allegations that hadn't yet been made public. One particularly troubling story involved a young female employee who has alleged that a more senior officer came to her home with a gun demanding sexual relations.

That person has since been fired from the CIA, according to my sources. But I got to wondering what the scope of the problem that the agency had was. Did they have essentially the same problem that broader society has, that other sort of large traditional organizations had?

Or did they have a uniquely high incidence of sexual assault and sexual harassment? And I came to find out that the agency had recently done an internal survey. Now, important to note, only 25 percent of the agency's work force responded to this. So there's some limitations to this data. It's better to think of it as sort of a snapshot than the final word.

[11:45:02]

But it found that 7 percent of respondents reported experiencing some kind of unwanted sexual contact or assault during the course of their entire career at the agency, and 1 percent reported that had happened to them in the last year alone, Pam.

BROWN: And what complicated this, in reading through your reporting, was sort of the mixed signals they were getting in terms of going to the police because they had so much pressure to keep their cover, right?

LILLIS: Yes, there's this really unique logistical challenge that the CIA has, which is that, in many instances, not only the accused, but also the alleged victim, are quite often undercover, meaning that their very identities are classified, as well as often the location that the alleged assault has happened.

That creates this big challenge, right, for CIA officers who want to report a crime. And victims have -- some victims have said that the agency has in the past discouraged them from reporting assault to law enforcement.

Now, the CIA has undertaken this kind of big reform effort. And one of the -- over the past year, really. And one of the big things that they have done is put in place a federal law enforcement officer whose job it is to try to facilitate some of those interactions.

And so, at that point, that's one of the -- at this point, that's one of the big things that we're watching, Pam, is to see whether or not that works, whether or not you sort of get to a point where victims at the CIA feel that they understand the process and are being appropriately advised of their rights to go to law enforcement. BROWN: I have done a lot of reporting about sexual assault at the

Coast Guard and it being covered up. How does the CIA compare to other government agencies when it comes to handling of these sexual assault cases?

LILLIS: Yes, well, look let's start with broader society, right?

The incidence rate over the course of women's lives in the United States nationwide is just under 6 percent. So that's the 7 percent figure that you're comparing that to of agency employees reporting over the course of their whole career.

Across the federal government, the U.S. military is probably the best comparison point here. It's another large National Security Agency that's really publicly struggled with the issue of sexual assault in its ranks. In the last -- in 2023 alone, active-duty women in the U.S. military reported experiencing just under 7 percent -- just under 7 percent of active-duty women in the U.S. military reported experiencing some form of assault or unwanted sexual contact in 2023 alone.

So that's the best comparison for that sort of 1 percent figure of CIA officers who are -- or CIA employees who have reported experiencing assault in the last year.

BROWN: All right, Katie Bo Lillis, really important, impactful reporting there. Thank you.

We will be right back.

LILLIS: Thanks so much.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:52:01]

BROWN: And let's get to Elisa Raffa in the Weather Center, as a serious tornado threat exists for South Florida. Nearly a quarter of all Florida gas stations have run out of fuel as well. So, there's a lot of issues going on there in Florida.

Let's go to Elisa to bring us the latest.

We're already seeing the impact of Milton, even though it hasn't made landfall.

ELISA RAFFA, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes.

For landfall, you're just talking about the eye getting on land. You have a whole half of a hurricane to get through before that even happens tonight. And we're seeing those impacts already because we have these outer bands that are coming on shore.

This is very common in hurricanes. These outer bands will run into friction on the land and then start to spin up some of these tornadoes. And we have seen multiple tornado warnings across Alligator Alley here, all of these pink and purple boxes.

But what's really remarkable is, these cells are just so discrete and they're dropping pretty large tornadoes for a tornado threat in a hurricane. They are tagged as considerable damage observed on the ground. We are seeing some of these funnels.

Typically, with tornadoes in a hurricane, they're usually pretty skinny, pretty brief, and pretty weak. But some of these are really packing a punch and are incredibly dangerous. And, again, you see multiple of them here across the Florida peninsula across South Florida.

This threat continues through the day until 9:00 this evening, as we continue to pull in these outer bands along the peninsula. So this is one that we will need to watch closely through the day today -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, thanks for bringing us the latest there.

And I mentioned that fuel situation, which is making it really hard for people who are evacuating. In fact, more than half in the Tampa- St. Petersburg area have no gas. That's especially troubling as people try to get out of Milton's path before tonight.

CNN's Matt Egan joins us now.,

Matt, Governor DeSantis says there is enough fuel in the state, but the challenge is getting it to the pumps right now, right?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: That's right, Pamela, because demand has just been through the roof.

And it's up because, obviously, a lot of people are listening to the evacuation orders. But it's also up because people are filling up tanks because they want to power their generators. So, as of the last update from GasBuddy at 9:30 this morning, 23 percent of the gas stations across Florida had no fuel.

But, as you mentioned, this is even higher in some of those areas that are bracing for direct hits from the hurricane; 59 percent of the gas stations in Tampa-St. Petersburg had no fuel, about one in three in Fort Myers, Naples and Gainesville, also an issue in Orlando as well.

Now, GasBuddy says that, if you're searching for gas, your best bet is to go to some of those large chains or rest stops. Now, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, he stresses that the state is doing everything they can to surge emergency fuel supplies where it's needed.

Take a listen to Ron DeSantis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There is no, right now, fuel shortage. However, demand has been extraordinarily high, and some gas stations have run out. To be able to help ameliorate that, the Florida Highway Patrol has facilitated 106 long-distance fuel tanker escorts with sirens getting through traffic, totaling almost a million gallons of gasoline.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:55:13]

EGAN: So, all of this is happening before the storm even comes.

Now, after the storm passes, one of the big things to watch is how much damage the Port of Tampa sustains, because this is where 40 percent of all of the fuel that goes into Florida ends up coming. And so it is very critical to see how much damage is done here, because, obviously, if this port is down for any significant amount of time, that's going to cause even more problems here -- Pam.

BROWN: And we just won't know yet until Milton makes landfall and sees -- we see what kind of damage it might cause to that port.

Matt Egan, thank you. I know you will be bringing us very latest on that front.

And, before we go, we're getting word that there was a call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Biden that has just ended, especially notable because, in Bob Woodward's book that we have been reporting on, "War," Biden, according to the book, made some disparaging comments about Netanyahu.

We're learning they talked today. Hope to bring you more details on that later.

Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Pamela Brown. You can follow me on Instagram, TikTok, and X @PamelaBrownCNN.

Stay with us. "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" starts after a short break.