CNN Student News - September 11, 2017

cnn 10

Hurricane Irma Makes Landfall in the Continental U.S.; Earthquake Devastates Mexico; The Terrorist Attacks of September 11,2001

Aired September 11, 2017 - 00:04:00 ET

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


CARL AZUZ, cnn 10 ANCHOR: We welcome our viewers worldwide to this Monday, September 11th edition of cnn 10. My name is Carl Azuz. We`re glad you`re watching.

Our coverage today centers on two natural disasters and the anniversary of a terrorist attack that changed a nation.

First, Hurricane Irma has made landfall in the United States. It came ashore yesterday morning in Cudjoe Key, off the southern tip of the state of Florida. Irma was a category four hurricane at that time with 130 mile- per-hour winds, capable f catastrophic damage.

And unlike forecast last week, which predicted the storm would hit Miami directly and then move north along the east coast, right through the center of Florida, Irma shifted a little to the west over the weekend. And last night, it was making its way up the west coast of Florida.

The cone you see here indicates how the hurricane could still move east or further west. Either way, the cities of Naples, Fort Myers and Tampa were in its path. Tampa`s mayor said his biggest concern was the storm surge.

Here`s what that looks like. It`s a rise in sea levels blown inland by a hurricane and Irma was forecast to hit Tampa during high tide, which could make it worse.

As Florida and George brace for Irma`s impact, people in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba were taking stocks of the damage after the storm landed there Friday. It was a category five hurricane then. Throughout the Caribbean, Irma killed at least 24 people as it passed and some areas saw complete destruction.

With some uncertainty about where exactly Irma was going and how much damage it would do, the story is just beginning for the Continental U.S. where Irma`s intensity is being felt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, cnn CORRESPONDENT: We`re safe where we are here in terms of what might on us. It may not look that way, but it is. Otherwise, I wouldn`t be here. But these gusts, this is intense what is coming down these corridors right now. And you can see it behind me. And the pictures tell the story.

ED LAVANDERA, cnn CORRESPONDENT: You can see the water. You can`t even see 50 yards anymore to our right now. The amount of water that`s being pushed along the street and filling up here, and we`re in one of -- we understand, one of the higher areas here in downtown Naples. The water in other parts of the neighborhoods that we were able to survey this morning and throughout the day yesterday have to be incredibly dangerous situation.

The good news is we reported over the last days that many of the people here in Naples evacuated this area. We didn`t see but a handful of people out and about throughout the day yesterday. So that is a good sign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ: Moving to another coast now. Rescuers are scouring homes in southern Mexico. They`re looking for survivors after a tremendous earthquake struck about 74 miles offshore on Thursday night. With a magnitude of 8.1, the tremor was capable of destroying entire towns.

On average, the world only sees about one quake this powerful every year. Mexico hasn`t had a tremor like this for a century. It struck an impoverished area. There were multiple aftershocks. And government officials say it killed dozens of people. Many in the region were asleep when the quake struck near midnight.

It was felt hundreds of miles away, in places like Mexico City, in Guatemala City, and it generated a tsunami, a massive ocean wave that measured almost six feet in one area. Mexico`s military and police are helping the search for survivors and distribution of medical supplies.

Memorial ceremonies are being held across America today, 16 years after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Americans are honoring the thousands who were killed and the police, firefighters and other rescuers who died trying to save them.

The assault was carried out by the al Qaeda terrorist group, a radical Islamic organization based in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nineteen al Qaeda members hijacked four U.S. passenger planes on September 11, 2001. They crashed two of the planes into the Twin Towers, the skyscraper that formed the World Trade Center in New York City, both of the massive buildings collapse soon afterward.

A third plane was crashed in Washington, D.C. It hit the Pentagon. The headquarters of the U.S. Defense Department and a fourth flight crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, reportedly after its passengers and crew tried to take back control of the plane.

Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven people were killed in the September 11th attacks, and just over a week later, U.S. President George W. Bush declared a war on terror.

The southeast Asian country of Afghanistan was giving al Qaeda a place to live and train at that time. And on October 7, 2001, after Afghanistan`s Taliban rulers refused to turn over al Qaeda`s leader to the United States. America led attacks against targets in Afghanistan. The conflict there continues today.

There are many Americans who clearly remember the horrors of the September 11th attacks. In this look back, we`re bringing you the perspective of a journalist whose first on-air assignment for cnn was to cover them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN STELTER, cnn SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: And this is one of the most memorable shots from that day. This is Aaron Brown in a roof of cnn`s old bureau in midtown Manhattan. Everyone has a 9/11 story. Mine starts with hearing the words what channel is cnn on. We turned on the television and never turned it off.

Aaron Brown helped me and so many other people feel a little less afraid that day. He anchored all the way until midnight, until 1:00 in the morning and he was never even supposed to be on that air that day at all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AARON BROWN, FORMER cnn ANCHOR: There has just been a huge, explosion. We can see billowing smoke rising. And I can`t -- I`ll tell you that I can`t see that second tower. And we see this extraordinarily and frightening scene behind us of the second tower now just encased in smoke.

What is behind it, I cannot tell you. But just look at that. That is about as frightening a scene as you will ever see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: You must have known through that smoke there was nothing there, but you couldn`t see it yet with your own eyes.

BROWN: I felt in that moment profoundly stupid.

STELTER: Why?

BROWN: I -- I will tell you, because -- I will tell you that a million things had been running through my mind about what might happen. About the effect of a jet plane hitting people above where the impact was, what might be going on in those buildings, and it just never occurred to me they would come down.

And I thought -- it`s the only time I thought maybe you just don`t have what it takes to do a story like this, because it just had never occurred to me.

STELTER: Let me look at one other moment. This is the second tower falling. When you did seem more prepared for what we were seeing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: There is a large fire at the Pentagon. The Pentagon has been evacuated. And there, as you can see, perhaps, the second tower, the front tower, the top portion of which is collapsing.

Good Lord. There are no words.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: Silence is what you used in that moment. When you see it now, what stands out to you?

BROWN: First of all, from the moment the first tower fell, there was a clock ticking. And it was ticking in my head, it was ticking in the heads of hundreds of millions of people in America and a billion people around the world who were watching it because if the first tower fell, the second one was going to fall, too.

In that in that moment there were men, mostly men, firemen and policemen, who were running into that building that was collapsing, and knowing that they were never going to come out.

And I think when that building fell, I understood better than at any other point in my life, before or since, what the word hero meant. It`s not that we didn`t try to tell that story great. It`s that the story itself is too great to tell.

STELTER: We`re at the point now where this really is history.

BROWN: Yes. It was something that I was fortunate professionally to do, and painful as an American to live through. It`s a weird contradiction that journalists live with.

STELTER: Right.

BROWN: The ambivalence of, on the one hand, loving the big story, and on the other hand, hating the fact that that story is happening.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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