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| Isaac pounds Gulf Coast; New Orleans levees hold - CBS News Posted: 29 Aug 2012 09:23 AM PDT Updated at 12:10 p.m. ET (CBS/AP) NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans' newly fortified flood protection system was holding up to powerful wind gusts and sheets of rain from Hurricane Isaac after the storm earlier pushed water over a rural levee in southern Louisiana, officials said seven years to the day after Hurricane Katrina. Isaac's gusts reached more than 60 miles per hour, flooding some homes, knocking out power and immersing beach-front roads in Louisiana and Mississippi early Wednesday as it began a drenching slog inland from the Gulf of Mexico. Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman Rachel Rodi said the group expected to be on "high alert" for the next 12 to 24 hours, but they're confident it's going well so far. She said a pumping station at the 17th Street canal -- which was built at the site of a levee that breached during Katrina -- briefly went down early Wednesday, but operators were able to manually get it working again. Isaac's dangerous storm surges and flooding threats from heavy rain were expected to last all day and into the night as it crawls over Louisiana, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami warned. Water driven by the large and powerful storm pushed over the top of an 18-mile stretch of one levee in Plaquemines Parish south of New Orleans, flooding some homes in a thinly populated area. The levee is one of many across the low-lying coastal zone and not part of New Orleans' defenses. "When this is over, I think we need to check the wind speeds because I lost a good portion of my roof, my fence is down, and water is blowing through the sockets in my house from the back wall," Parish President Billy Nungesser said in a phone call to CBS New Orleans affiliate WWL-TV. "That only happened in Katrina." Plaquemines Parish resident Gene Oddo called WWL-TV while riding out the storm with his wife and baby girl in their attic Wednesday morning in Braithwaite, La. He said the water level was up to his house's doorframe.(Watch at left) "The water came up so quick," Oddo told WWL-TV. "It looks like we lost everything. If I have to, I may have to shoot a hole in my attic here to get out on our roof, but it looks like the water's not coming up anymore." Oddo said authorities told him about storm surge going over the levee around 2 a.m. "The threat was for flood, which I knew that, and I'd rather be here to save what I can because the insurance doesn't cover all that much," Oddo said. New Orleans mayor: We're in "hunker-down phase" State officials said about two dozen people were stuck and in need of rescue on the east bank of Plaquemines Parish. Louisiana National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Kazmierzak said evacuations there are beginning. He said reports are sketchy but he's heard there are "quite a few people on a levee waiting to be rescued." Kevin Davis, director of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said the parish's east bank has seen flooding of four to nine feet across 18 miles. He said a levee was overtopped and then breached by scouring. On the parish's west bank, Davis said there are concerns of another levee being overtopped and then scoured like the east side. That area is nine miles south of Belle Chasse, La. "We did have two parish police officers that were stuck in a car there. We just found out they were rescued and are safe," said emergency management spokeswoman Caitlin Campbell. Two other parish workers in a boat rescued them. CBS News hurricane consultant David Bernard reports that the storm is moving northwest across Louisiana at 6 mph, keeping its 80 mph winds moving slowly across the state all day Wednesday. Isaac's path is expected to take it to central Louisiana by late Wednesday or early Thursday. WFOR Miami's interactive storm tracker In Houma, La., about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans, CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez reports that Isaac's slower ground speed dumps more rain while leaving locals and cleanup crews at a standstill with no clear sign of when the storm will clear up or clear out. Bernard reports that areas at Isaac's center may see as many as 15 inches of rain Wednesday. In Gulfport, Miss., CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports Isaac has made many roads unsuitable for driving. Floodwaters prevented firefighters from reaching a house fire in Bay St. Louis, Miss. By the time they arrived, by boat, the vacant house had burned down to the stilts. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning late Wednesday morning for the area in Mississippi including Gulfport and the neighboring Gulf Coast city of Long Beach. As the rain continued and winds pushed across the Gulf Coast, it remained far too soon to determine the full extent of the damage. Isaac was packing 80 mph winds, making it a Category 1 hurricane. It came ashore at 7:45 p.m. EDT Tuesday near the mouth of the Mississippi River, driving a wall of water nearly 11 feet high and soaking a neck of land that stretches into the Gulf. The storm stalled for several hours before resuming a slow trek inland, and forecasters said that was in keeping with the its erratic history. Isaac's winds and sheets of rain whipped New Orleans, where forecasters said the city's skyscrapers could feel gusts up to 100 mph. The National Weather Service said more than 9 inches of rain had fallen in New Orleans in the 24 hours up to 7 a.m. |
| Budget hawk Ryan to take center-stage at Republican convention | - Reuters Posted: 29 Aug 2012 09:26 AM PDT  TAMPA, Florida | (Reuters) - Paul Ryan takes his turn in the spotlight on Wednesday for the biggest speech of his political career when he accepts the nomination as Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate at the Republican National Convention. With the convention shifting into high gear, delegates kept a wary eye on Hurricane Isaac as it pounded the Louisiana coast. There was concern that televised images of political revelry in Tampa, Florida, could provide a jarring contrast to the storm's onslaught. Heading the list of speakers on Wednesday is Ryan, a conservative budget hawk from Wisconsin. That will set the stage for Romney's acceptance of his party's nomination on Thursday night, launching him into the final 10-week sprint of the election campaign. Careful not to emulate predecessor Sarah Palin, who fell from grace quickly after bursting onto the 2008 campaign as John McCain's running mate, Ryan has made a cautious start to the presidential race. It is still unclear whether he will help Romney draw support from undecided voters who may be the critical factor in the November 6 election pitting the Republican ticket against President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Polls show a mixed picture. "Tonight, the American people -- millions who may not know a lot about Paul Ryan, other than the headlines that they've read -- are going to get to know Paul Ryan the way many of us know him: as a serious policy thinker," Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio told ABC's "Good Morning America" program on Wednesday. Rubio, who represents swing state Florida and its many elderly residents, defended Ryan's controversial budget plan to cut government spending deeply and overhaul the government-run Medicare health insurance program for older Americans. Ryan has energized conservatives in a way Romney was unable to do during the long months of the Republican primary battle, when he faced a number of conservative challengers. The Obama campaign, hoping to steal some of Ryan's thunder, released an online video accusing him of harboring "out-of-step views from a bygone era" that would hurt the middle class, threaten Medicare and undercut women's abortion rights. Despite criticisms of his budget plan, the boyish 42-year-old Ryan, a fitness fanatic, has shown himself to be an affable asset to Romney so far. He has helped generate large crowds when the pair has campaigned together, and some conservatives who were not that excited about the former governor of Massachusetts are now ready to work hard for him with Ryan on the ticket. Ryan also helps put in play Wisconsin, which has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. A Romney victory there could alter the electoral map in a way that could hurt Obama's hopes for re-election. LITTLE KNOWN OUTSIDE WASHINGTON Ryan's place in prime time on Wednesday offers him the chance to introduce himself to millions of Americans who are just starting to tune in to a presidential race that is too close to call with 70 days left until the voting. While Ryan, chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee, is well known in Washington, he is little known elsewhere. Democrats are portraying Ryan as a conservative ideologue whose budget proposal in the House would "end Medicare as we know it" and are using his budget plan against him in states like Florida, with its large population of retirees, and in Virginia, where thousands of government employees populate the suburbs adjoining the capital. Romney can ill afford to lose either of those two states. A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday found that exactly half of Americans approve of Ryan and the other half disapprove of him. Speaking before Ryan will be Condoleezza Rice, who served as secretary of state under former Republican President George W. Bush. She is expected to take aim at Obama on foreign policy, which has taken a back seat to economic concerns, both at the convention and in the overall election campaign. McCain, taking the podium in Wednesday's session, was also likely to critique Obama's record on the international stage. "There is no doubt that the United States' voice has been muted. When the United States' voice is muted, the world is a more dangerous place," Rice told CBS' "This Morning" program when asked what Obama had done wrong in global affairs. While Romney says Obama has weakened America's position in the world, the White House contends that the president has improved a U.S. image damaged by the Bush administration's perceived go-it-alone approach. Rice told CBS she would not accept a position in Romney's administration if he won the election. Other speakers at the Republican convention have sought to put a human face on the often robotic Romney and enhance his likability. On Tuesday, there was no better advocate for him than his wife, Ann Romney. She admitted to reporters she had never used a prompting device to read a speech, but during the actual delivery she seemed at ease as she painted a personal portrait of Romney, who Democrats denounce as an out-of-touch wealthy elitist. Mrs. Romney spoke of the early years of their marriage when the high school sweethearts dined on cheap meals of tuna and pasta, saying her husband was "not handed success" as Romney's opponents charge. Rubio, who is scheduled to introduce Romney ahead of the Republican presidential nominee's speech on Thursday, said such soft details about Romney are unlikely to come from Ryan's remarks. "If I know Paul Ryan, we're going to get a policies speech that's also inspiring," he told CBS. Romney, who was on hand for his wife's speech, planned to deliver a speech to the American Legion in Indianapolis before returning to Tampa. (Writing by Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Alistair Bell and Jim Loney) |
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