so right now they are waiting for a damage assessment team to come take a look at the situation and let them know that it is okay, that it is safe to get back on board and continue looking for those four people. they did rescue another 20 people from this crew in the early morning hours sunday. a very difficult mission where some of them were hoisted up into a helicopter. others were lowered, some by fire hose onto boats. now, right now there is concern about how those four people are doing. a lot of people here gathered on the pier wondering that as well. right now it is a waiting game. could be hours, could be days before any of this is resolved. natasha chen, cnn, saint simons island, georgia. natasha, thank you very much. now to the devastation in the bahamas. the death toll continues to rise there. officials say 45 people are now dead, but with hundreds still missing, they expect that number to rise dramatically. rescue teams have been digging through debris fields. they are
already. joining me now by phone, from wilmington is anna mcrae, the assistant emergency management director for hanover county. thank you. i know you guys are busy. give us the conditions on the ground right now, please. so right now we re kind of going through the worst part of storm, passing us just to our east. conditions will be rough for just a little bit now but are going to improve overnight. that s going to allow our damage assessment team to get right to work as soon as the winds settle down on friday, and we ll start to pivot towards recovery as quickly as we can and be able to continue to support our citizens through the recovery effort. anna, we know, and we have some video of this tornado that was captured on video spinning near wilmington. the national hurricane center is also warning of life-threatening storm surge, flash floods tonight. so i know you re concerned about all of it. what are you most concerned about? is it the flooding? yeah, i would say definitely
residents. no one else, now, this does not include key west. from talking to the u.s. coast guard captain there at the nail air station, he says he doesn t know when people will be able to go back to key west because there is no power. there is no sewage. there is no water. there are power lines down. they re stale trying assess the damage. there is a damage assessment team with us in that c-130 that had equipment to assess the damage, to assess structural integrity, to see if it s safe for people to go back in there. at this point they don t know if it s safe for them to go there. now, they re also trying to bring in sonar so that they can figure out if they can open the port to bring in more federal resources, to bring in the dod, to help them assess and to help them increase the pace of the recovery. but it s going to be a slow one, don. you can just tell by driving around, by walking around a bit. we had very few minutes to actually be on the ground and not in rolling vehicles beca
thanks very much. meanwhile, more dramatic video just coming into the situation room, look at this, unbelievably close encounter with an apparent tornado in north dakota. you can see the twister initially forming in the distance, then panic erupts as it gets closer and closer. the video ends with an amazing closeup of the swirling vortex. the two men just barely managed to escape. a damage assessment team from the national weather service is now investigating a very, very close call. coming up, as donald sterling faces nba demands to sell his team, has his wife already found a buyer for the clippers? we have exclusive new information we re working on. and flight 370 families finally get their hands on the satellite data used to hunt for the missing airliner, but will all those numbers and codes really make a difference? if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, like me,
reair it somehow when we have opening day, because it is such a momentous occasion here. yeah. the first time it s made a space walk. all righty. anyway, we wanted to make sure you didn t miss that. we do need to talk about what s going on in the philippines, because the damage there is so severe from what was supertyphoon haiyan, that many towns are only accessible right now by helicopter. yeah, the roads are just washed out. a u.n. damage assessment team arrived on the ground in the coastal province of tacloban early this morning. now, one team member said the last time i saw something of this scale was the aftermath of the indian ocean tsunami. and you remember those pictures. oh, my goodness, yes. we want to take a moment to walk you through some of the new video. take a look at this, we re getting it in from the hardest-hit areas. frightening to see it. one of the cnn crews described the scene in tacloban as being like a tsunami. and you get that by watching this. the st