but still, at this point, we seem to be seeing a slower pace of wind now. >> nick paton walsh. o hear from nick the entire show. he's seen some of the worst of the storm. we appreciate you being with us. thank you so much. >> i want to show you live pictures right now coming into us from mexico city and the surrounding areas. these are live pictures of all of the people trying to rescue those trapped in the debris and rubble from that 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck mexico city yesterday, as our rosa flores reported. it was a shallow quake, which is more devastating. again, this coming, the most powerful earthquake they've seen there since, of course, thousands of lives were lost after that 1985 earthquake. >> one of the things we have heard from the mexican president is he wants citizens to stay home if they can today. why? because he wants the rescue crews -- look at that entire team working to dig through that building right now. he wants this crew to be able to get onsight and address the situation as unencumbered as possible. not to mention that these structures at thi

nick paton walsh, st. croix, the united states. >> months and months of work ahead. ck paton walsh. >>> president trump waded into another battle last night. going after nfl players who kneel during the national anthem. sports anchor coy wire is here with that, next. with the pole, and i had to make a claim and all that? is that whole thing still draggin' on? no, i took some pics with the app and filed a claim, but, you know how they send you money to cover repairs and - -they took forever to pay you, right? no, i got paid right away, but, at the very end of it all, my agent- -wouldn't even call you back, right? no, she called to see if i was happy, but, if i wasn't happy with my claim experience, for any reason... ...they'd give me my money back, no questions asked. can you believe that? no. the claim satisfaction guarantee, only from allstate. switching to allstate is worth it. ♪ can i get some help. watch his head. ♪ i'm so happy. ♪ whatever they went through, they went through together. welcome guys. life well planned. see what a raymond james financial advisor ca

we lost nick paton walsh's shot at the moment. we believe we have leyla's up. e and go, as you have been watchng. >> obviously you're going to have transmission issues. it's in the a safety issue. nick paton walsh is okay. laila santiago, negotiating with police to do her shot. what have we seen so far in terms of what was predicted? >> pretty much right on the money. this thing landed on the southeastern coast of puerto rico. the american model and european model had this within five miles. i don't think you can get better than that. let me zoom into this latest satellite picture. if you weren't with us earlier, the radar went out in puerto rico when a heavy band of weather moved right over it. right now that radar sight is there. they don't have time to fix it. they are seeing significant weather. tphubg peyton walsh there. what concerns me about nick, not that we don't have a shot. we send this man he every bad place a hurricane is going to hit. he said today this is the worst he's ever seen. that's a big deal. winds 115 miles per hour. they will last for hou

close to nick paton walsh. we're concerned for his safety.y wind, but we will have surge with this. six to nine feet. i know where he is. i've been there. it is a lowlying area. people need to get away from the ocean. this is no looky loo time right now. >> what does it mean the radar is broken? send me a note so we know how to communicate going forward. chad myers will give us the latest information throughout the morning. ni nick paton walsh is live in palmas del mar. it is the southeastern coast. nick, what's the latest? >> reporter: chris, hi. an interesting time here. the last 10, the wind has picked up, tearing some of the roof. i'll get out of the way so our cameraman can show you some of the clearer images here. what feels like it might be the most intense part of the storm as you hear from our meteorologist comes into land. it has been pretty intense since 3:00 this morning. it may have come a little earlier than anticipated. but this particular hotel we're in, an intense concrete structure that provides us some support, has really t

our coverage in puerto rico, nick paton walsh joining us from san juan. what are you experiencing there right now? looks like it's at least called down. >> the first time, yeah, we've got weather that's not awful, frankly, but it does bring people back out on to the streets. the first time the sun rose and got to see how awful hurricane maria has been to their daily lives. here behind me, people just simply pausing to take stock of what's happened. but, you know, probably the thing that we sort of say under our breath quickly it's affecting people's lives most extraordinary is the electricity. that's probably going to carry on for four to six months. so there's, obviously, a swift [ inaudible ] of generators, but the silence of the normal business of daily life forced on hold because of that. imagine without electricity, a job you would normally turn up to do, that is a challenge and mind you this is a place already in human economic dire straits before hurricane irma caused a billion dollars worth of damage. we're seeing debris around the streets and pla

first, nick paton walsh is in puerto rico. nick, what's the latest? >> reporter: jim, this is the first real close of day sunset and people have been absorbing the new reality that they have. puerto rico is in a bad state, frankly, before hurricane irma hit two weeks ago and now it's had the worst storm in about a century and it is really struggling, i think, to understand the new normal it has with the potential of months ahead without basic services. tonight, more than 3 million in puerto rico are in the dark. potentially without power for four to six months. >> to get the island full power, we're looking at a magnitude of months as opposed to weeks or days. >> reporter: hurricane maria ruining the electricity grid. dozens of families have been rescued from floodwaters and a flash flood warning remains in effect for the whole island as the rain continues to fall. some spots getting 40 inches in just 24 hours. the main priority now, clearing roads and opening the airport so aid can start to flow. >> first priority is going to be saving of lives. not

. >> joining us from puerto rico, nick paton walsh. ck, first let's start with the dam and what we know about that and then broadly the devastation across the island. >> you mention lack of power. that's complicating the evacuation efforts. obviously, 70,000 people were last night potentially affected last night if the dam breaks. it held. roads flooded, cables in the way. overnight some good news, flood warning for all of puerto rico lifted, but still in place the 8,000 most directly affected by the dam. the broader question, of course, is for the outlying areas that had little assistance so far, how do they begin to cope. croix, a u.s. territory, to see the devastation and the sense of despair they feel to some degree left to fend for themselves. >> a remote world of daydreams and caribbean sand. st. croix suffering silently so far. the u.s. aid effort is only just reaching now. >> remain on this frequency. >> that is fema flying over st. croix today. making their assessment. we've just flown in from the east, where damage looks less

we've got nick paton walsh live for us in puerto rico. as we mentioned, although i see lights on behind you, 100% of the island without power. tell me where you are and how bad it is. >> reporter: well, this is obviously hit by the eye of the storm. the first landfall we saw about 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. but the hotel has managed to keep its generators running pretty much nonstop since we've been here. that chandelier a surreal example. if you allow our cameraman to move forward slightly and show you the devastation in front of this hotel, very few trees really left standing there. and of course this has been earlier on today exactly where so much of the force of that hurricane was channelled, blowing vegetation down into the courtway behind me here. this the lobby of a holiday resort literally when we arrived yesterday. 75-mile-per-hour winds were fierce. it got to about 155. for us here at about 6:30 to 7:00 we felt probably the strongest amount of violence of the wind as it seems maria crept ashore here. and then it seemed to come back at a

. >> well, nick paton walsh, cnn's senior international correspondent, is in san juan with a look at e devastation there. and how are the residents there coping, nick? >> reporter: coming back to life here, i mean, yes, this is a city that's had a huge blow to it. you can see the immediate debris, just the vegetation behind me, absolutely obliterated, well, not quite. but enormous amount of damage and devastation brought to it. bear in mind, you know, we look at the things here that have been cleaned up on the surface slowly, the traffic's slowly coming back to life around me, the broader question are the months ahead and that key fact of maybe four to six months without power is led to awful for people here on a daily basis. remember two days ago woke up to a normal life in 2017 in american territory, today everything frankly changed. you know, the 155-mile-an-hour winds have torn electric cables down, thrown trees in the middle of highways, caused flash flooding that means we drove for a mile down a highway where it felt like a river. and taken cell phone signals out. and that's a k

nick paton walsh is following the story for us from london.ice sharing very much, anything at all, about these suspects? >> reporter: well it's extraordinary how police in the past decade have managed to keep such tight a lid on what they learn in their investigations, but yes, we did know ten minutes to midnight, a 21-year-old was arrested in west london, that is the second arrest after an 18-year-old man was picked up in the southern port of dover, the gateway really to mainland continental europe france, the suggestion perhaps he was trying to escape the country, the area partially evacuated during that arrest and as a result there have been two addresses in surrey that have been searched as well. the two arrests appear to have given law enforcement officials a greater degree of confidence they're getting their hand on the scope of this cell. amber rod saying it's clear this wasn't a lone wolf, there was some sort of cell but the fact they've chosen today to downgrade the threat level from critical where it suggests an attack is imminent to

nick paton walsh, thank you so much. so will maria have an impact on the u.s.? cnn meteorologist allison chinchar is watching the current computer models. the 2:00 p.m. hurricane briefing came out whachlt are you learning? >> pam, we did see a slight increase in the winds. here you can see the storm. it's starting to finally begin to push to the north of the dominican republic, but they're still getting incredibly heavy rain from some of those outer bands. winds are now up to 120 miles per hour gusting to 140. the good news is this is a weaker storm for the dominican republic that it was crossing over places like dominica and puerto rico, however has potential to increase a little more before ends up making its way towards the turks and caicos, however it moves further north and eventually hits warmer water. we expect to see this thing weaken pretty quickly because that cooler water really doesn't help hurricanes at all. and we're going to see a big difference. it's going from upper 80s now to mid 80s, then low 80s, then eventually into the upper 70s. that's rea

nick paton walsh, cnn, st.ix, the united states. >> it's just island after island after island, all the same things we're hearing. so let's get the latest on the strength and position of the hurricane because maria is still traveling on. >> theater. our meteorologist karen maginnis live with that. we were talking about the bahamas, turks and caicos just the other day. these islands are in bad shape. >> they've been devastated. everything that the residents there know has been in upheaval. there's no electricity, there's no food, at least not enough for everyone. take a look at this scene in dominica. there's a gentleman walking the streets strewn with debris, another gentleman with rocks all around, upturned trees trying to dry out or clean a mattress as best he can. and then this view, a street view, what looks to be a salon chair as people look on thrown into the street. dominica, one of those islands devastated. there are about 73,000 people that live on dominica. now for hurricane maria, i have a lot of inf

let's begin with cnn's nick paton walsh live in san juan, puerto rico. nick? >> reporter: chris, every dawn brings a new series of discoveries and tragedies for the people of puerto rico. they will be without power for months ahead. they were still bracing themselves after hurricane you ma left 46,000 people without electricity then. and even right now as we speak, the city of san juan is under an emergency flash flood warning. we saw the devastation as we traveled yesterday from the eye of the storm where we were with you yesterday to here, san juan. puerto rico ravaged. after taking its first direct hit from a category 4 hurricane in nearly a century. the governor imposing a curfew each night for puerto rico's 3.4 million residents. the entire island in the dark after the power grid was completely knocked out. >> we're looking at four to six months without electricity. >> reporter: roofs ripped off buildings. homes reduced to rubble. streets swallowed by floodwaters, littered with debris. gas stations under water. the aoeyisland's already fragi n infrastruct

let's begin with nick paton walsh live in puerto rico. what's the latest, nick? >> reporter: still under a flash flood warning in the capital of san juan. people are beginning to take the boards down they put up to fend back the worst of the storms, perhaps getting a better glimpse of the devastation around them. it is staggering. four to six months they could see themselves without electricity. slowly waking up to devastation that hurricane maria brought in a matter of hours. puerto rico, ravaged. after taking its first direct hit from a category 4 hurricane in nearly a century. the governor imposing a curfew each night for puerto rico's 3.4 million residents. the entire island in the dark after the power grid was completely knocked out. >> we're looking at four to six months without electricity. >> reporter: roofs ripped off buildings. homes reduced to rubble. streets swallowed by floodwaters, littered with debris. gas stations under water. the island's already fragile infrastructure decimated. the governor asking president trump to declare the island a disaste

let's begin with nick paton walsh on the southeast coast of puerto rico. we do not have communication with him right now because of all the conditions. he is getting the worst of those and let's see what is happening with him. cnn's raffaele romo is going to join us from puerto rico's east coast. what are you seeing? >> reporter: alisyn let me show you what this hotel had to do to prevent catastrophic damage. they had to tie ropes to their front doors because they were afraid at one point that the air currents were so strong they would completely destroy the lobby, and in a way that has already happened. let me show you what flying debris has done to the lobby. they broke the glass above me and right now the lobby is taking great amounts of water, and the reason why i am here, alisyn, is because our team, ourselves, had to be evacuated because conditions were so dangerous and precarious at one point. take a look outside. all of that debris came down in the last three hours. that's when we could experience the strongest winds here in bough cardozo. you have

nick paton walsh, cnn, puerto rico. that gentleman with the wheelbarrow early on was saying simply we are alive, we are alive. and i think the accepts of that people come out open mouthed at times looking at the devastation remarkable to them in fact, but it hasn't had an impact on their sense of mortality, but there's a very uphill task ahead of them, don. this is a territory without electricity most likely for the next four to six months. just imagine how that would transform your daily life, your employment, your health care, education for those who you know, people haven't been able with the absence of cell phone networks to find out how their loved ones are. a huge change in basic daily living circumstances here in puerto rico coupled with the fear it may be sustained rather than short term. this infrastructure here has taken an enormous hit. >> let's talk more about that. let's talk about food and water now. how are they able to survive? how are they dealing with not having enough food and water? >> actually, we'r

it took about five hours to go all the way from palmos delmar, where our nick paton walsh is, to thesan juan, as it's going to exit into the ocean. so there you go. this is what happened, though, to st. croix in the overnight hours. a direct hit or very close, with the northern eye wall here, just on the southwest tip of the island. and that's where the significant damage, i believe, will be. the farther you get toward the east, slightly less. but really, we're talking about 145-mile-per-hour compared to 120 miles per hour. so, big damage happened there, still trying to get crews in contact with that island there. here we go. as it made landfall around 6:00, and i would love to show you the radar from puerto rico, but at this exact point is where the radar failed. so we have been blind when it comes to radar over puerto rico all day.showing you the satellite. but i believe the eye to be right there. right in the yellow spot. not the blue spot. 140-mile-per-hour winds still at that advisory at 11:00, moving offshore eventually and then beginning to get to the dominican republic, with

nick paton walsh joins us in san juan. what can you tell us? you were in the middle of it yesterday and now you're amid the damage. >> well, it is amazing to see the city try and bring itself back to life, but i mean just behind you you can see the extent of the trees torn down and it's important to bear in mind, you know, we're hearing this entire state will be without power for four to six months possibly. now you can hear possibly the noise of generators in the background. that's how people are trying to get life going. look down here about what this means. this is incredibly quiet for a city center, and, you know, walgreens does appear to have its own generator and people down the street are trying to get their cafe going. people walking around assessing exactly what it means for their daily life because this is the first dawn they've really had to actually take stock of what that damage means. there's possibly more rain to come, but, you know, you look down here, this in itself is a good couple of days work, simply to get rid of the debris

as we're tracking this, i want to go to nick paton walsh because he's in puerto rico where the pinhole eye is expected to slam into the island just hours from now. and what are you feeling right at this moment. >> well, you can see obviously the rain has begun here in the last hour or so. really picked up as the sky has darkened. we're still 12 hours away from pretty much right behind me on the coast here, the east coast is where i am in puerto rico where we're supposed to see first landfall, potentially 165 miles per hour, the storm, as you were hearing. and potentially will leave all of its energy on puerto rico at this point. it's supposed to go right across the land, through san juan capital and begin potentially to slow as it leaves the island itself. but you mentioned hurricane irma. there is a billion dollars of damage. 46,000 people still now without power two weeks after that hit. that caused a glancing blow. this is going to go straight through the island itself. we have seen water being rationed, queues for gas at this stage. boards on hotels. i'm in a seaside resort cleared