lashing new england with powerful winds and rain. hello again, everyone. i m fredricka whitfield. i m brooke baldwin. let s get you caught up on what we know at this hour on this storm. president obama an hour away from making the statement about the storm. he will be doing so 5:00 eastern from the rose garden. we ll bring it to you live as soon as we see the president. irene continues to lose power since making landfall this morning. floodwaters are receding on new york s long island and downtown manhatt manhattan. evacuation orders for low lying areas including the rockaways were lifted just last hour. residents are venturing out to examine the storm damage. the storm has proven to be fatal. at least 15 people across six separate states were killed during the storm. irene s powerful winds toppled trees, knocked down power lines, damaged homes. early wind damage estimates alone are expected to top more than $1 million. more than 4 million people without power. as hom
to countless communities where irene, now a tropical storm, is causing catastrophic flooding this is margaretville, a small village in the catskill mountains, about two and a half hours south of the city. within the past hour president obama addressed the government s response to this natural da disaster. i do want to underscore that power may be out for some time, perhaps days. i want to make sure dhs, fema and other agencies are doing everything in their power to help folks on the ground. reporter: irene is now over central vermont and moving north at 25 miles per hour, it s still got plenty of juice to make life miserable with 50-mile-per-hour winds and torrential rains. some of our best images have come from you, our ireporters. fred moore took this video of irene as it washed over west haven, connecticut. all up and down the coast we are seeing the impact irene has had. more than 15 people have lost their lives in the storm, more than 4 million homes and businesses a
good morning to you all. welcome to this cnn sunday morning, a special edition here. suzanne malveaux joining me, t.j. holmes here with you. we have special coverage of hurricane irene which is getting closer and closer and closer to new york city. anderson cooper is live in greenwich village there. john king on long beach for us this morning as well. already what a morning it s already been. very well foreshadowing the day that s in store for new york and north. an incredibly massive hurricane, rain-making hurricane irene, continuing her trek up the eastern seaboard. take a look at this. still a category 1 storm, 75 mile-an-hour winds. take a look at these pictures, though, the eye could be moving over atlantic city, new jersey right about now. we are keeping a close eye on that. the current track has irene moving towards, of course, new york city. all eyes on new york. they ve seen some flooding in some areas already. a number of power outages at least, 400,000 reported
handing out bottled water and clean up supplies. ma am, a response i got from a viewer when i talked to you earlier, was the cell phone app that people could download this app and find shelters. red cross shelters. describe that for me again. where they can get it and exactly what it is used for. we have a free application for iphones and ipads. it is a shelter app. you can download it from itunes. it will show you where all of the shelters are that we have open. if you are in a location and you feel you need to get to a shelter, pull up an app and get to safety as soon as possible. that is useful information this morning. we will channel that out to our viewers. kate meier, we appreciate you giving us the update. we hope we can continue to call on you as the storm makes landfall. we are at the bottom of the hour here now. i was not supposed to be here in studio with you this weekend for this newscast. i was supposed to be in washington d.c. we were taking our show on
deal. he opened doors for me. i was in the army most of the time that he was leading the crew said against racism. i was in vietnam when he gave the i have a dream speech. i was getting ready to go back to vietnam when he was killed in 1968. so what he did really was not just to help blacks to a better life in america. he held a mirror in front of all of america and said look, is this the country we want to be? is this the people wae want to be? we have to change. he led this second civil war, i like to call it much more peaceful civil war than the first one, but just as important to eliminate racism. his message of hope and reconciliation not just in america but became a worldwide message and still resonates. that s why this new memorial is important. you were a young infinery officer in vietnam on your first tour of duty when he gave the i have a dream speech 48 years ago. and he was also delivering toward the end of his life an anti-war, anti-vietnam war