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Daylight Reveals Extensive Hurricane Damage Across Florida; Milton Inundates Florida With Dangerous Flooding After Landfall; River Level At Record Heights; Flooding Could Last For Days; Milton Rips Roof Off Tamp Bay Rays' Baseball Stadium; Biden: "Trump Has Lead Onslaught Of Lies" On Hurricane Response; Harris Front And Center In Biden Administration's Hurricane Response. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 10, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash in Washington. And we're following breaking news on the wrath of Hurricane Milton. First responders in Florida are working tirelessly to rescue people still trapped in their homes, amid the storm's trail of destruction. Officials say, they dodged the worst- case scenario, but warn the threat is not over.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JANE CASTOR, TAMPA, FLORIDA: What we are asking you now is please, please stay inside.

SHERIFF CHAD CHRONISTER, HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FLORIDA: There are so many trees and power lines down that we have to literally cut our ways into these neighborhoods to be able to assess just how damaged they are.

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): Please be cautious of hazards. We have post storm fatalities, almost every storm and a lot of these fatalities are avoidable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Dozens of tornadoes touched down in Florida last night. Check out this stunning video. It's one of three twisters to hit St. Lucie County. It happened in less than 25 minutes, and tragically, there were people who died. Officials are reporting multiple fatalities in that area, which is 135 miles from where Milton eventually made landfall.

The devastation across the state is catastrophic. Yesterday, this was a brand-new building. Today, it's rubble. In the Tampa Bay area, record amounts of rainfall triggered a flash flood emergency.

That's where CNN's Isabel Rosales is right now. Isabel, you have been covering the rescue operations all warning. What are you seeing right now? ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Dana. I want an airboat right now with Sheriff Chad Chronister. And we're seeing people like -- right there, if we can push in, you know, up on the second floor of these apartment complexes. We've been seeing people wading through the waters.

Let's switch the camera over here to my other side. Do you see right there, cars underwater. This is all from torrential rainfall. This is not storm surge. This is not an evacuation area. This is something completely unexpected for this area.

Let me introduce you to Sheriff Chad Chronister. Sheriff, 33 years ago, you were a rookie. This was your district, known as university area. Now it's uptown. Have you ever seen anything like this?

CHRONISTER: This is where I started. This is where I fell in love with this community. I've never seen flooding like this. We had people that evacuated here to make sure they were safe. They listened. They came here. 135 elderly, disabled individuals that we rescued earlier. They came here. They were evacuated from Bradenton to stay safe.

This is a neighborhood that doesn't have a lot. They have very little. And the very little they had, they've lost everything. We have water four feet up into their first floor here. This is a heavily Latino community. Their church is gone. Their cars are gone. Again, they don't live paycheck to paycheck. These are people that live day to day, and they have nothing.

ROSALES: I can tell because I've known you for many years. You're getting choked up right now. What are you going through?

CHRONISTER: Your heart shatters for these people. We did a bunch of rescues. We took them to a shelter. The female that you saw that we passed, she was waving me down. I made her promise, if they got too deeper, she got tired, we'd come back and get her. She broke down and hugged me for five minutes.

She goes, I don't have a lot. I take care of my grandmother. I evacuate my -- evacuated my grandmother, and I'm left with nothing. We've lost everything. We have no furniture. There was five feet of water in there. I mean, how does this not shatter your heart?

ROSALES: The assisted living facility, I saw those residents out. A lot of them evacuating with no shoes. Their feet on the concrete. They were cold. They went through so much, hours of waiting in the water. What are the stories that you're hearing?

CHRONISTER: Yeah, you're exactly right. They were literally living in four to five feet of water. And these are individuals that can't walk. They're sitting in chairs in four feet. The panic started to sink in, and they're like, hey, we got to get out of here. They thought the water would subside and it didn't. It's not like storm surge, where it got worse.

[12:05:00] But these flood waters, 16 inches of water, and this is the result and heavily saturated area. The flood waters that we were talking about, that we were so worried about. This water has nowhere to go. Their homes are flooded. They have nowhere to go. And now we'll work with the shelter. And we got them some food and we got them hydrated. And we'll now work on what those next steps are.

Getting emotional because of the men and women of the sheriff's office and Hillsborough County Fire Rescue that never stopped. I'm proud of them each and every day. But if you saw the way they jumped in water, up through their chest, up through their neck and rescuing people, they never stopped. And you see how --

ROSALES: Waiving on the sheriff.

CHRONISTER: Yeah. You see how grateful this community is. How can you not take this personal.

ROSALES: Sheriff, to my understanding, are you still -- are you still rescuing people out here?

CHRONISTER: We are. We have some people were convincing to leave. Not everybody was ready to leave. They thought the water would rescind, and now that they're realizing it's not -- now they're -- I guess they're making a better choice. And I get this.

They thought it would go down and they'll do cleanup. Cleanups not coming anytime soon because this water is not going anywhere. So yes, we're out here in full force to make sure that when they say, hey, listen, I'm ready to go, they pack their maybe a couple of vital items. They have their loved ones that we're here to make that that happen for them.

ROSALES: And one more thing, if I can point out to you, Dana. If we shoot the camera that way. This is the great American assisted living facility. This is where deputies came out in the Sherp, these amphibious vehicles to get them out of these flood waters that they told me, came so suddenly. So shocking, that they were in those cold waters for hours overnight, until help arrived.

And help has arrived, and they're going to need more help to get -- to turn the other page and get past this terrible situation that nobody anticipated in this area of Hillsborough County. And we've heard so many other stories like that of Milton reaching, these floodwaters, just rainfall, reaching to levels they never anticipated. You expect this in the gulf. You expect this in the bay, not in areas inland like this.

Sheriff, thank you so much for your time and telling us, you know, what the good work that you guys are doing to get people the help that they need. I appreciate it.

CHRONISTER: Thank you.

ROSALES: Thank you, sir. Dana? BASH: And Isabel, before I let you go, as you were talking to the sheriff, we saw that there were people who were waving to him. What is their status? I know that all morning you have been with him and with his team as they were rescuing people. I think she lost me.

ROSALES: I lost I have people.

BASH: OK.

ROSALES: Hopefully that was OK.

BASH: All right, she thought she lost me, which is understandable given the situation that she is in. Thank you to Isabel, and of course, to the -- to the sheriff there, who is doing remarkable work along with his team.

So, let's talk now to Pinellas County Commissioner Brian Scott. Pinellas includes St. Petersburg, which was battered by massive winds. And as I come to you, Sheriff, I'm showing our viewers the roof of the chop Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, home to the Tampa Bay Rays. It was ripped to shreds. This stadium was supposed to be a refuge for thousands of first responders. Tell us where things stand right now. What is the situation on the ground?

BRIAN SCOTT, PINELLAS COUNTY, COMMISSIONER (voiceover): So, Pinellas County, I think St. Petersburg took the worst front of Hurricane Milton. The big concerns that we had going into the storm was the storm surge. I mean, with Hurricane Helene, we ended up getting about 6.7 feet of storm surge, which is -- which is significant. That flooded the barrier islands got absolutely devastated and almost completely destroyed in that.

So, that was the really big concern going in because Hurricane Milton, we were expecting 10 to 15 feet of storm surge. That fortunately didn't really occur. So, the -- because of that, the barrier islands are now open. All the roads in Pinellas County are open with the exception of some local road closures. And all the bridges, the Cross Bay bridges that link Tampa and Pinellas County are also open.

But St. Petersburg, they were the closest to the storm and they really took the brunt of it. The -- there were cranes. There were two cranes in downtown St. Pete has a tremendous amount of construction going on right now. There were two cranes that toppled over and hit buildings. I don't know if they went completely over, but they -- but they knocked into buildings.

I've never -- I mean, the pictures of Tropicana Field with basically top -- topless without a roof is beyond belief. I've never -- I've lived in Pinellas County for 42 years, and I've never seen anything like this. I mean, to get a one two punch like that from first Helene, then we got basically all of the bad things. You know, Helene didn't even hit us. It was 100 miles offshore, but he gave us this incredible storm surge, which just completely wiped out the barrier islands.

[12:10:00] And Milton turned in to be a wind and rain event, but a very serious wind and rain event. We have some areas with 17 inches of rain. Wind like, I've never -- I've never seen here before. So, we got in two weeks' time, we went -- you know, basically for three weeks now. We went from Hurricane prep to hurricane recovery, back to hurricane prep, and now we're back to hurricane recovery.

I mean, I don't -- you know, when Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida. This is probably the most significant event that hit the state of Florida since that point in time. We get a one two punch like this is just unbelievable.

BASH: Wow. And you know you mentioned again the Tropicana Field roof just being ripped off. We are looking at pictures of that, images of that right now. And as I mentioned, coming to you, this is supposed to be where first responders and cleanup personnel staged.

SCOTT: Right.

BASH: Do you know if anybody was injured because this was supposed to be kind of a safe area?

SCOTT: To my knowledge, there are no reported injuries or deaths in Pinellas County at this point. Now, I don't know, you know, that -- you know, obviously, is a moving target and the situation is changing, and we still have a lot of recovery and I'm sure a lot of search and rescue operations still going on. But as of my understanding, we -- that is the situation right now and knock on what I hope it stays that way.

BASH: 400,000 north of 70 percent of customers are without power in Pinellas County now. Is there any indication of when that can be restored?

SCOTT: Well, I'll tell you this. With Hurricane Helene, I'll take the barrier islands as an example. That power grid had to be rebuilt. It wasn't like the power was just out. It was gone. OK. And I have to say that Duke Energy, they had their power crews. They were -- they got that power on in back in record time.

I mean, within about four or five days, everybody had -- pretty much everybody had power back, which is just incredible. And they had to, like I said, completely rebuild that, that infrastructure. So as of this morning, Duke Energy was assessing the damage, coming up with their operational plan, and they're pushing crews out now as we speak.

I mean, on my area right now has no power, has no internet, as most of Pinellas County doesn't right now. You know, Duke is really good at what they do. What it's going to be, it's going to be some time. I mean, you know, they're going to go through and they're going to hit their priority areas first, which are basically going to be, you know, your hospitals, your senior living centers, your long-term care facilities.

Those are the ones that are going to get the service first. And then they're just going to kind of go down the line until they get everything done. But it's probably going to be a better part of a week before everybody has power down.

BASH: Well, thank you so much for joining us and telling us the situation on the ground. And most importantly, for what you do for the people of your county. It's not easy, as you described at the beginning, just over and over and over again. Brian Scott, appreciate it.

SCOTT: Thank you very much.

BASH: And as we've been hearing, Hurricane Milton was brutal. In case you missed it, my brave and talented colleagues were out in the elements all night long to cover this important story.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're coming to you from Bradenton. We have just gotten word that Hurricane Milton, the eye has made landfall in Siesta Key.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got the slop. We got so much more of the rain. Let's push --oh, that was the hat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now it's really gusting. That was a monster. That was a take your breath away. Whoa, watch out. Watch out. Now we see signs starting to fly, boys. Back up, back up, back up. There's a construction sign that just is about to blow through this intersection.

You get a sense of just how fast the wind is moving there. You can see it in the light there. It is now just whipping off the Manatee River. It's coming in from kind of the north, I guess, northeast. And the water now is really starting to pour over. If you look at the graph, oh, OK, that wasn't good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm in downtown Tampa on Howard Avenue, and it is -- it's been all night. You can see the violent of this storm right around me. It's starting to flood the street. We've had six inches of rain in the last couple of hours. We're going to get another five to eight inches of rain in the next, probably five hours here. And just look at this. I mean, it is -- the word is violent.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a look at this. This is a tree that has been uprooted. The roots are still the path to ground it was in, is still connected. There's actually like a water pipe that's, I guess, in part of the root system that is now still connected and pouring water out of the pipe, but the tree is almost completely knocked over. That's been knocked over by the wind.

[12:15:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But Anderson and I years ago, we covered Katrina at the same time, and that was the kind of once in hundred years, sort of lifetime storm that there were Prime Time concerts and specials and fundraisers. The whole country was focused on that disaster for so long. But now these storms come, and we don't have time to absorb the last one.

BASH: Thank you to Bill, and Anderson, and Brian, and all of the CNN teams who have been reporting on this 24/7. Coming up. It's un- American. President Biden is blasting Donald Trump for telling lies about how FEMA is handling the hurricane response. Even some Republicans say, his misinformation is spreading too many lies and it goes too far. My panel of political reporters is here, next.

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[12:20:00]

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BASH: As Hurricane Milton brought life threatening conditions to Florida, Donald Trump spread new lies about the Hurricane Helene aftermath. What you are about to hear from the Republican nominee for president is not true.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Families desperately tried to escape the rising floodwaters, and they climbed onto roofs. They did anything they can to live, but Kamala didn't send any helicopters to rescue them. And when people sent helicopters, they turned them back. It was disgraceful what they did. So, she didn't send anything or anyone at all. Days passed, no help as men, women and children drowned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: New false claims come shortly after President Biden called Trump out by name again for days of misinformation. He said is hurting the very people who need help.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Over the last few weeks, there's been reckless and irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies about what's going on. It's harmful to those who most need the help. Quite frankly, these lies are un-American. And there's simply no place for them, not now, not ever. Former President Trump has led this onslaught of lies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want to bring in an excellent group of political reporters, Laura Barron-Lopez of PBS NewsHour, CNN's MJ Lee, and Hans Nichols from Axios. Hello everybody.

Boy, this is not a fun thing to cover. I mean, it's just -- it's kind of hard to wrap your mind around the lengths to which Republicans are going right now on this issue of just total misinformation, which is amplifying and echoing a lot of misinformation online that we don't know where it's coming from, maybe some bots.

I mean -- I asked the vice president yesterday, she said she can't confirm that any of this is happening now. But we know when the fires in Maui a year ago, there were reports that it was foreign adversaries who were helping to push misinformation.

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, and during -- literally a life and death situation, like with the hurricanes that we've had. You know, the head of FEMA joined the White House press briefing again yesterday. And I was so struck. She was taking a couple of questions about misinformation, disinformation, about the storms.

And she said, actually, one of the biggest ways in which we are seeing this effect on the ground is that there are residents who should be asking the government for help, simply not coming to us to get the assistance. And she said, you know, for example, some of these things that are not true, that are being said.

The idea that if you ask for help, the government is going to confiscate your land. She said, that is simply not true. But she said this to illustrate the sort of general idea that people are confused when they hear these kinds of things about the role of government. And I think it was just a good reminder, at least for me, that, you know, we talk about misinformation, disinformation.

Not always, is it this sort of farfetched, crazy sounding idea about migrants eating pets or whatever. Sometimes it is just the effect of, you know, having people distrust the government, distrust the system that is around them. And again, in a situation like this, I mean, it can be -- it can have a really dangerous effect.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWSHOUR & CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Again, I've been talking to a lot of people in North Carolina right now because we're planning to go there. And so many of them are still recovering from Helene. And I talked to a woman today who said that almost immediately she was able to get help from FEMA.

And I talked to an election's director in Republican county in western North Carolina who was crying on the phone with me, saying that, you know, that the conspiracy theories are just exhausting, and that ultimately she's going to be able to put on her election. Is it going to look the way that it was going to before? No, she's going to have to have some portable precinct voting sites. But she says that, she's already in talks with FEMA to make sure that she's able to get those portable voting sites.

BASH: Meanwhile, just on the politics of this, you have Kamala Harris and her team scrambling to put her -- make sure that she is involved in the briefing, for example, that we showed that happened live on this program yesterday. Acting as -- an acting commander-in-chief (inaudible) being a leader.

[12:25:00]

And now they're using paid advertisements to show that as a contrast with what they say happened in the Trump administration, specifically an allusion to Olivia Troye, who was White House Homeland Security advisor, and she also worked for Vice President Pence.

And Kevin Carroll, senior counsel for DHS. Talking to then President Trump, when he was in the White House about the need to send help to California disaster help. And apparently, he said, I don't want to because it's a blue state, and they had to tell him, no. Let's just listen to part of that.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: Hans, you know, former president denies that that is a conversation that happened.

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: To me it shows how nimble the Harris campaign is on trying to -- I mean, we can be clear. They want to seize an opportunity here, right? And they are trying to use what can be some of the most devastating criticism of Trump, and that is from his former advisers, make the case against him.

Now, I don't suspect it's going to be really make a huge difference with the Democrats that are already, like, pretty excited to vote against Donald Trump. But it's a permission structure for independents that's saying, oh, look, even some of Trump's own advisers are questioning him here. And that's, you know, all campaigns do it. That's basically what endorsement campaigns are about.

But this seems to me, like they're trying to be on the news, and they're trying to -- they're trying to get into the news cycle, which they've clearly successfully done and they're trying to see something. I don't think President Biden helped Harris a whole lot yesterday, when he went out of his way and said something nice about Ron DeSantis, and complimented DeSantis and almost took his side, not quite on his back and forth with the vice president. But hurricane politics are tricky.

BASH: They are tricky. I don't know. I think it used to be that having a political spat during a hurricane was bad for the people involved in it. I still think for someone like Kamala Harris and the president to get together and show governance is probably the best way to show leadership, but I don't know. We're living in the upside down. So, who knows -- who knows what the impact is going to be of any of this.

Up next, Hurricane Milton did cut a wide swath through Central Florida. We're going to get a damage report from Congressman Maxwell Frost, who represents a hard-hit Florida district.

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