originally from south carolina. you re not familiar with tsunamis and earthquake and you find yourself in the middle of the situation. military guys and gals tough, is this a scary situation for you? it is for me, yeah. i m used to thunderstorms but that s about it. uh-huh. uh-huh. cody, the uss abraham lincoln is part of a huge force presence in the pacific. i imagine that the u.s. forces are going to be asked to help out in the area. is that something you re anxious to do? yes, sir. if they need our help, i would love to go there and help because what i see on tv so far, it s been pretty rough over there. where are you coming from? where is the uss abraham lincoln coming from? we re from everett, washington. that s where you just left to come here? we are coming back from a deployment. well, washington state is one of the areas that is under a tsunami warning, the warning is all the way from canada down
about earlier that was having a cooling problem. and they said no radiation had been released but it was an emergency situation. now 2,000 residents living near that nuclear plant urged to evacuate. you know, just to my personal twitter account, somebody said that same story you have and that military is walking in there with full chemical suits. i have that as well. that s coming in from the firsthand perspective of what s happening from the personal level on this devastation earthquake. meanwhile, the death toll continues to rise now. we have officially the death toll at 60 with 56 missing. i think we have 63 now. joining us on the phone is a u.s. navy seaman, cody prewitt. his ship the uss abraham lincoln was in the pacific and forced to shore and the crew have been told to stay in their hotel rooms until further notice. cody, what a harrowing 24 hours you ve had? it s been pretty crazy. we put in this morning and we are out enjoying the beach and
higher floors. they re calling it a vertical evacuation. we re told if we re on the third floor or lower to go up higher. and right now, i m on the 11th floor. so you re in somebody else s room. yes, sir. it s better there. it s safer up there. you got tv? say again? you got the tv? do you have electricity? everything people around you have power? yes, sir, everything is good so far. all right. cody prewitt with the ship uss abraham lincoln is in the pacific but now has been diverted. he s in hotel rooms until further notice. i want to bring you up to date. alerts coming across the wire system now that the tsunami wave is moving like a jetliner. 500 to 600 miles per hour and now it s saying that the first waves to hit hawaii, six feet in height expected to be about 3:00 a.m. local time which is 9:00 a.m. now east coast time. it seems to be shifting somewhat litter later and then predicted to hit the western coast of the
there s still fires that are blazing out of control all over the place. tokyo, the surrounding states to it. i was watching on your broadcast some of the pictures. you had an airport that was up there. that was actually the airport that is a very, very new airport that was built, that s right on the ocean line there. that s why it was so devastated. we re showing the video that came into our newsroom a little while ago. you can see the pacific ocean in the background and the tsunami wave and this is mid wave, you can see if you re looking at h.d., screen left, part of the runway still not covered. don t exactly know where any of the airplanes are. maybe there was a bit of a warning. how long was the warning, tom, between the time the earthquake hit at 2:46 p.m. local time and it was an 8.9 magnitude. largest that started there in japan. how much warning between the earthquake hitting and the tsunami hitting did the people have to get out of way? yeah, well, i know it s in