CNN10 2024-10-15




CNN 10

Floridians Return Home to Clean Up From Two Hurricanes, With Gas and Power in Short Supply; SpaceX Launches Starship Test Flight 5; The Fastest Animal in the World. Aired 4-4:10a ET

Aired October 15, 2024 - 04:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: What's up, sunshine? Rise up. I'm Coy Wire. This is CNN 10. Hope you're having an awesome day.

Now remember, tomorrow is #YourWordWednesday, so submit your vocabulary word and the definition in the comment section of my most recent post @coywire on social, and we're going to pick a winner to work into tomorrow's show.

Now, it's time to fuel our minds and get you your 10 minutes of news. First, let's head to Florida, where folks are facing the task of cleaning up the damage left by Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene, which was two weeks before that. Milton was a major Category 3 when it made landfall on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

The storm dumped 16 inches of rain on some areas, and areas far from the storm's path experienced powerful tornadoes that did major damage.

Gas and power shortages have severely held back recovery efforts in the Tampa and St. Petersburg area. That's where more than three quarters of gas stations were completely out. Folks waited in long lines that stretched for blocks. Officials opened three public fuel sites where customers can receive 10 gallons of gas each for free.

Power is gradually being restored, with hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity. That's actually down from a peak of nearly 3 million after the storm.

And officials are working around the clock to clear debris from both Milton and Helene's aftermath. The federal government is covering the full cost of debris removal for city and county governments affected by the storms for 90 days.

President Joe Biden visited Florida over the weekend touring hard-hit St. Pete Beach and announcing $612 million in funding for electric grid resilience projects.

Ongoing flooding issues after Milton have been a major obstacle to recovery as floodwaters recede slowly and in some places continue to rise.

CNN's Allison Chinchar gives us a better look at what some places there are facing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Hurricane Milton may be over, but the state of Florida is still reeling from some of the impacts. When you look at the scope of the video, this shows all of that water. The concern here is that that water takes time to recede.

So in a lot of these instances, that water has nowhere to go. This is a look at where the heaviest rain was across the state of Florida. That white line indicating where the storm itself, Milton, crossed over the state.

The heaviest rain being on the north side. You can see that widespread swath of pink color indicating at least 10 inches of rain across a very wide swath of the state.

Now here's a look at river flooding. All of those purple squares and purple dots that you see there on the screen, those are river gauges that are still at or above major flood stage.

Now two specific rivers to talk about. Many of them on the western coast of Florida have finally crested and are going to start going down in the coming days. But it's quite a different story for some of the rivers on the eastern half of the state that are still going up.

So here's a look at one of those rivers on the western side. You can see again really starting to go back down now and expected to finally get below major flood stage very early Monday morning.

On the eastern half of the state though, quite a different story. This specific river, the St. Johns, this one is not expected to crest reaching its peak until very late in the day on Wednesday. So those rivers are still going to continue to swell and cause flooding in those local communities until we reach that point.

Part of the problem that Florida has is that Florida is an incredibly flat state. So the rivers do not recede very quickly like they would say in a mountainous terrain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE: Now to an incredible feat of engineering as SpaceX successfully launched its latest Starship test flight of the most powerful rocket system ever constructed. The demo mission maneuvered the 232-foot-tall rocket booster called a Super Heavy to a massive landing structure after it burned through most of its fuel and broke away from the upper Starship spacecraft.

It was successfully caught mid-air with a pair of massive metal pincers that SpaceX calls chopsticks. Recovering and rapidly reflying Super Heavy boosters and Starship spacecraft for future missions is a feat that SpaceX is testing as the company considers quickly reusing rocket parts essential to efficiently getting cargo to space.

Pop quiz hot shot! What is the fastest animal found in the world?

Pronghorn antelope, peregrine falcon, cheetah, or marlin?

Ding ding ding! If you said peregrine falcon, you are correct, which has a diving speed of over 200 miles per hour.

The peregrine falcon can be found on every continent except Antarctica, and they were commonly found in the U.S. until the apex predator became severely endangered several decades ago.

Now, a U.S.-based conservation group has brought the falcon back from the brink of extinction. Take a look at how they were able to save the species and the wild steps they take to keep tabs on them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Bluff Country, an area in the Midwest U.S. along the Mississippi River known for its steep cliffs and rugged landscape. Part of the Mississippi Flyway, one of the largest North American bird migration routes, it's also where one particular keystone species had almost vanished.

JOHN HOWE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, RAPTOR RESOURCE PROJECT: Monitoring raptors, and specifically here peregrine falcons, is very important right now. We've basically succeeded in bringing back a population of raptors that was nearly gone from the continental United States.

There are other threats that are coming out right now. We've got climate change that's creeping up. Monitoring, I think, is key in making sure that is this population that we successfully brought back, is it doing well?

CHATTERLEY: The widespread use of the pesticide DDT during the mid-20th century was one of the biggest culprits in the decline of the apex predator's population.

HOWE: DDT and its metabolite DDE led to the thinning of the eggshells and crushing of eggs before they could even hatch.

CHATTERLEY: In 1970, the peregrine falcon was one of the first to be listed as endangered on the Endangered Species Conservation Act, and two years later, DDT was banned.

In the 1980s, conservationist Bob Anderson established the Raptor Resource Project and began to reintroduce the peregrine falcon to the Midwest.

HOWE: There was a breeding project where they released 18 falcons down at Effigy Mounds National Monument. It was from a rock-lined hack box, so it was used to simulate the bluffs that they wanted the falcons to come back and find. So they did that in 1998 and 1999.

CHATTERLEY: The project was deemed a success, and today the group is back to check on them.

HOWE: We're ready.

CHATTERLEY: And hopefully place ID bands on the young falcons, which can be a precarious task.

AMY RIES, STAFF, RAPTOR RESOURCE PROJECT: So we're going down to find the young, get them, put them in a kennel and haul them up top to band them up a little bit more safely than we'd be able to do on the cliff.

All right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll pull the kennel rope over.

DAVID KESTER, FIELD RESEARCHER, RAPTOR RESOURCE PROJECT: We put the bird banding lab, federal marker band on it, which is like a social security number for each bird individually. And then we also put an auxiliary marker on there. It's just a way of knowing who's where, as this population has been growing.

CHATTERLEY: Once banded, the babies are then returned back to their nest.

While the peregrine falcon was removed from the federal endangered species list in 1999, continuing to monitor them helps to keep a pulse on the surrounding ecosystem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE: Today's story, getting a 10 out of 10, one of the most gorgeous times of the year, pumpkin season. These zoo animals at Brookfield Zoo Chicago got a special Jack-o'-lantern treat to munch on over weekend. And look at them go.

Lucky visitors got to see a pygmy hippo, a bear, an orangutan chowing down on delicious fall delights. It's all part of a program to physically and mentally stimulate the animals they care for.

All right. We have a special shout out today for all our friends up at Oostburg Middle School in Oostburg, Wisconsin. Rise up.

And I also want to give a shout out to all those wildcats, those wily wildcats at East Cobb Middle right here in Georgia. What's up, Nora? Thank you for spending part of your day with us here on CNN 10.

Remember tomorrow is #YourWordWednesday, so bring it. Have an awesome Tuesday, everyone.

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