Evacuating our city, now is the time to leave. You need to do so immediately. If you re planning to ride it out, again make sure you hunker down. If all of this sounds ominously familiar, ida is expected to make landfall on the same date, august 29th, that hurricane katrina devastated a large portion of the gulf coast 16 years ago. Mandatory evacuation orders in effect in parts of louisiana and as you can see right there on your screen, highways are already backed up with people trying to leave and we re tracking this storm from all angles. Cnn s van is down there but begin with allison chinchar in the cnn weather center. You ve been following this very dangerous storm. What s the latest forecast on ida? what can you tell us at this hour? we got the latest update moments ago. Winds up to 100 miles per hour sustained now officially makes it a category two storm. Movement to the northwest at just about 16 miles per hour. Now, we anticipate it to rapidly intensify over the next 24 hours b
President said the threat remains very high, could be the highest now as it s been in this entire evacuation mission given that there are still thousands of u. S. Troops on the ground. So the president has continued to be updated every single day this week by his national security team. This morning was no different. They spent about an hour and a half in the situation room. And the white house readout of that meeting is pretty blunt, saying that the president was told that right now the threat of an attack is, quote, highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours. He said the situation on the ground continues to be extremely dangerous and of course the threat of terrorist attack still remains high. That s something they re monitoring very closely as they continue the evacuations. It s not clear how long the evacuations will go on, they ve said they will go on until the end but we re told they will be reduced while they pull out resources and weaponry. That will be the next big phase of this
20,000 people still waiting to be evacuated. Plus, the fda could give full approval to a covid vaccine for the first time today, and it can t come soon enough with deaths and hospital admissions rising in the u. S. And from deadly floods in tennessee to tropical storm henri, hitting parts of the u. S. Northeast. We will discuss the impact climate change is having on extreme weather. Well, a week after the fall of kabul, close to 20,000 people are still waiting to be evacuated out of the afghan capital s airport. A source says new restrictions means only americans and u. S. Green cards and nato citizens are being admitted into the airport, while special visas are not. This comes as joe biden says there is active talk about extending u. S. Troop presence in the country past the deadline at the end of this month. But it s not clear if the taliban will play ball. We are working diligently to make sure we have increased the ability to get them out. We have changed the gate operations and th
Our top story this hour, more than 50 million people across the northeastern u. S. Are under hurricane or tropical storm warnings right now. Hurricane henri has been building strength over the atlantic, and landfall is expected in the coming hours on either long island or southern new england. The national hurricane center has a stark warning, especially for those in areas under a storm surge warning, saying plainly, this is a lifethreatening situation. And we are already seeing signs of danger. As you can see, cnn just obtained this video of flooded streets in downtown new jersey. This is part of a rain system already hitting parts of the northeast. In connecticut, both mandatory and voluntary evacuations have been posted across several coastal cities. The state s governor is encouraging others to shelter in place. In fact, across the northeast, millions of residents have now been preparing for the storm for days. And emergency personnel and disaster response teams are on high alert a
Dodged a bullet. Some houses were not able to dodge the bullet. This is one of them on montague avenue. A large tree behind me came down on this house here. If you can see, it s almost embedded in the roof up there. And another part of the tree came downright here as well. And you ve got some downed lines here. I m told this is a cable tv line probably. But there are power lines downright around this house. So i ve got the owner of the house here. Nate, you were here when this happened. Tell us what it was like. There was a thud. I was upstairs. I felt a shudder. I knew it was probably a tree. I looked out and could see that tree down there. But the funny thing is, i think the house built in 1895 is to sturdy. Even though it built up speed and hit the covered por. It broke off a piece of the tree. There s no damage other than the tront of the porch. Were you thinking i got to get out of here? no. I went outside to see where the damage was. I was more worried about the powerline which c