up the east coast all the way to canada. this is a huge storm, folks. just check out the view from the international space station. we re all over irene, where it is, where it s going. we ve got jim spellman riding out the storm in the bahamas. john zarrella is in wrightsville beach, north carolina, and jacqui jeras here in the hurricane headquarters. jim, let s start with you. what s the situation there? reporter: good morning. the winds have been blowing like this for hours now. about an hour and a half ago they really picked up a lot. you can see the sea is being blown over the sea walls here, a lot of the low-lying roads along the coastal areas already have water on them. fortunately so far we have yet to see any major damage to structures. reports coming in just within the last hour of widespread power outages across the island, as you may expect, as lines get blown down. so far they have avoided that main blast. just about all of the tourists in the area that could ge
but the controlled flood plan could swamp smaller communities. some pretty desperate times for a lot of people along that mississippi, residents of one small bayou town have been told to evacuate. ed lavendera when they learned the reasons why, 15 feet of water bearing down on their community. tucked away in the shade of louisiana cypress trees and back water creeks, you ll have a hard time finding butte la rose, but it s pierre water myers dance floor. i put that sign up about two months ago, i have always wanted to name is camp last dance. the music has stopped and pierre i don t know why i m locking it. reporter: is packing up before the floodwaters wash over butte la rose.
new orleans and baton rouge would be saved. also mirroring arizona, the second state with some stiff immigration laws. the governor nathan beale signed that law yesterday. the author will be here with me in the studio live and also someone who s against it. you want to hear the conversation. also another conversation you ll be interested to hear, a rare interview with hank aaron, talking about baseball, how it s letting down the black community. also talking about who the real home run king should be. from the cnn center, this is your cnn saturday morning. glad you could spend part of your day here with us. it s 7:00 a.m. in morgan city, louisiana. all eyes on morgan city today. let s talk about this flooding, major flooding has swamped the upper mississippi and ohio river valley is now making aim at lower mississippi. later today the army corps of engineers could open the morganza spill way in louisiana. it has not been opened in more than 40 years. w450i why would they
this is the last thing you want to do is try to cross any water covered roadway. even six inches of water can dislodge your vehicle. the flood plan is opening the gates for the spillway later this morning. it should alleviate some pressure but remember this is a very fast-moving current of water. 2 million cubic feet per second. one second, the water could fill a 44-foot stadium in one second. when you look at the mississippi it doesn t look like it s moving that fast. the last time this happened, april 29th, 2008. the spillways open here so the water can flow into lake pontchartrain. it does alleviate the pressure. that may not be enough. if the morgan za is opened, seven parishes could be covered with 25 feet of water, five home in mouma in the southeastern extreme parishes of louisiana and morgan city. opening the flood ways will help
this system of hef vlevees we h. we re talking about 3,700 miles overall. where the river has crested here in the boot heel of missouri. we re going to zoom in. we already heard about the first levee explosion that took place at bird s point. that was up in missouri. these aren t levees that we re going to explode. these are going to be, like, gateway systems and spillway systems they re going to open up to move that water. the first one, this has already been approved. the bonnet carre spillway. tomorrow morning around 8:00 a.m. they re going to open this up. this is the mississippi river right here. this is lake pontchartrain. when they open this up the water is going to flood into this area and move into lake pontchartrain. the whole idea of this is, yes, to spare new orleans. the flood plan, basically what it s going to do when they open up these gates, they think it s going to help to relieve some of the pressures and stresses as well. waters are still going to be