CNN Student News - September 21, 2017

cnn 10

Hurricane Maria Devastates Puerto Rico; Hundreds Killed in Mexico; Historic U.S. Library Whose Volumes Are Older Than It Is

Aired September 21, 2017 - 04:00 ET

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


CARL AZUZ, cnn 10 ANCHOR: The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has taken a direct hit from a major Atlantic hurricane and that`s our first report today on cnn 10. I`m Carl Azuz.

Despite its location in the Caribbean, between the Dominican Republic and the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico doesn`t often have hurricanes make landfall. Most of them pass to the north or south of the island.

As you see here, that wasn`t what happened Wednesday with Hurricane Maria. It became the first category 4 storm in 85 years to directly pass over Puerto Rico. Maria`s wind speeds at landfall, 155 miles per hour. A government spokesman says it caused total devastation.

Puerto Rico is about 100 miles long and 35 miles wide. On Wednesday, two thirds of it were blasted by hurricane force winds. More than 3.3 million people live in Puerto Rico. Last night, none of them had electricity.

Well before Maria hit, Puerto Rico had a number of problems. It filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. It`s been in an economic recession for 10 years. Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans have been moving to the mainland U.S. This disaster could only make its economic recovery harder.

While a weakened Hurricane Maria headed towards the Dominican Republic, the Turks and Caicos islands and the southeastern Bahamas, the immediate concerns on Puerto Rico were figuring out how to get help to where it`s needed and how bad the damage is.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Rapid intensification is just like it sounds. A storm, a tropical storm, cyclone, typhoon, hurricane, that rapidly intensifies. Now, the definition is 35 miles per hour or greater in 24 hours.

Now, take Maria. Maria went from a category one to a category five in 15 hours.

For true R.I. or rapid intensification, you need a couple of things: 86 degree Fahrenheit water or greater and no shear.

Also, of course, the water down in the Tropics is very warm. Now, what about this shear thing? We hear about it in tornadic thunderstorms. Those storms want a lot of shear. Winds going in different direction and different speed with height.

A hurricane wants no shear. No wind direction change, no wind speed change with height. It wants to be the only thing out there, making its own wind, not getting blown apart.

So, why is rapid intensification important? Well, you can go to bed one night expecting a tropical storm and have a category two on your doorstep the next morning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: A new national emergency is what Mexico`s president is calling an earthquake that struck his country on Tuesday. It was the second tremor to shake Mexico in less than two weeks.

This one was a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. Its epicenter, the point on the earth`s surface directly above the quake was in central Mexico, about 100 miles southeast of Mexico City and it occurred in a depth of 32 miles, which is considered a shallow earthquake. That`s significant because shallow tremors are usually more destructive.

Damage and deaths were reported across hundreds of miles. At least 225 people were killed in this disaster, across Mexico. But the number could go higher. It`s just too soon to know. The country declared three days of mourning for the lives lost.

This quake struck in the afternoon when people are at work and school. In fact, Mexico`s government says more than 2,000 schools were damaged by the quake -- some of them seriously.

Millions of people have no electricity, and many have moved into shelters with their homes either destroyed or uninhabitable.

The Mexican government says its priorities are rescuing people who are trapped and getting medical help for those who were injured. Residents are helping officials in the search for survivors. That`s going on around the clock. Water and canned foods are being elected at soccer stadiums and

other venues.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUBTITLE: Five things you should know about earthquakes.

MYERS: Number one, an earthquake occurs when two blocks of the Earth slip fast each other. Now, for most of the time, those blocks are together with friction. But they are building up energy because they are moving in different directions. When one block decides to slip, all of a sudden,

that energy is released by seismic waves, kind of like ripples on a pond, creating the earthquake.

Number two, an earthquake can occur very near the surface of the Earth. Those earthquakes are typically very destructive, or as deep as 400 miles down into the crust. Now, where the shaking actually happens, that`s called the hypocenter. But directly above it, on the surface, that`s

called the epicenter.

Number three, the power of an earthquake is called magnitude. Now, the intensity of he shaking can vary depending on the geography, the typography, or even the depth of the quake.

Now, the USGS says there are 500,000 detectable quakes every year. One hundred thousand can be felt and 100 will create damage.

Number four, earthquake themselves actually don`t kill that many people. It`s the natural and manmade structures that fall to the ground during the shaking that injure and kill.

Number five, the majority of all earthquakes and volcanoes happen along plate boundaries. The largest is the Pacific plate and its series of boundaries all along the Pacific Ocean known as the Ring of Fire.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ (voice-over): Ten-second trivia:

Which of these U.S. cities was once named New Orange?

New York, Newport, New Orleans or New Haven?

New York City was temporarily named New Orange in 1673, in honor of a Dutch prince.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ: So, the Big Apple was once a big orange, and before that, it was New Amsterdam, also named by the Dutch. It`s a place where as long as 1643, a Catholic priest counted 18 languages being spoken on the streets. So, history, New York`s got it.

And then a report that`s fitting for a throwback Thursday, we`re visiting the city`s oldest bookstore. It`s not exactly a 17th century relic itself.

This place was founded relatively recently, in 1925. But some of the volumes on its shelves go back much further in time.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL WEIR, cnn CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It`s one of those places you can`t believe still exists, actual books on actual shelves, many bound in actual leather.

This is the story of the Argosy Bookshop.

There are also maps and prints and autographs, six floors bursting with the best of civilization. And it all started with an immigrant named Lou who spent spare and nickel on his beloved books until he had enough to open a store, barely.

NAOMI HAMPLE, ARGOSY BOOK STORE: It wasn`t enough to fill the shelves in the store. So, we put them face out, instead of like this. And --

JUDITH LOWRY, ARGOSY BOOK STORE: So, the shelves wouldn`t look too empty.

HAMPLE: Right.

WEIR: He raised three brilliant girls amid these stacks. And Naomi, Judith and Adina never left, that when he passed in `91, and not now, even though the building he left them is worth a fortune.

(on camera): The place next door has sold for $49 million. What are you three doing here? You can be in a hammock in the Caribbean.

HAMPLE: I`d rather be here. That`s the whole thing.

LOWRY: We really, really love what we`re doing.

HAMPLE: It`s very exciting when your call to look at a library and price each one and put each one in a place where it ought to be. And then people come in and they`re still thrilled to buy it. And they`re happy. I mean, it`s a very wonderful cycle.

WEIR: Do you see the Internet as an asset or an enemy?

LOWRY: Both. It`s an asset because we reach hundreds of thousands more people than we ever could. It`s a detriment and that cheaper books are harder to sell, books that used to sell for $20 or $25, you can find for $2 on the Internet.

But rare books become even more rare as you realize no one else has a copy. We have books on the shelf here that are 100 years old, 200 years old.

Where`s your Kindle going to be in 200 years?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: April Rodriguez is a yoga instructor who also happens to own goats. So, a friend of her suggested, goat yoga.

Rodriguez says her first thought was, who would come to that? Well, when his first class in Berryville, Virginia sold out, she knew she was on to something.

Participants say the animals are fun, they`re calming, they`re therapeutic. They like to position themselves under people doing yoga and reportedly tried to eat hair or chew on toes.

But if a thought of an animal taking off ruminant on your mat doesn`t get your goat, well, maybe this is something you got to try. You see why people would chew the cud over goat yoga. And if it doesn`t make your heart skip a bleat, well, you`ve certainly got plenty of scapegoats.

I`m Carl Azuz and that`s cnn 10.

END