North America Correspondent, Lisa Millar, in New York

Print Email

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 01/11/2012

Reporter: Tony Jones

Live cross to North America correspondent Lisa Millar in New York for the latest of the recovery efforts.


TONY JONES, PRESENTER: We're joined by North America correspondent Lisa Millar who's near New York's LaGuardia Airport, which has been reopened in the last hour.

Well we just heard this story in Craig's report about the second New York hospital being evacuated. What you can tell us about that?

LISA MILLAR, NORTH AMERICA CORRESPONDENT: It's a process that's still going on in fact. There are 500 patients, some of them prisoners, some of them from the psych ward, and with anything that's happening at the moment here in New York, Tony, it is a slow process. In fact what they're doing with some patients is simply discharging them if they think they're able to go home. So, not yet finished. Another chore for New Yorkers today.

TONY JONES: Yeah, people are trying to get on with their lives two days after this. What are the biggest obstacles?

LISA MILLAR: Well in this particular area I can tell you it is the gridlock. We in fact got stuck in it last night ourselves. It took almost four hours to travel 15 kilometres. They're now putting in rules that only cars with three people in them can actually use any of the bridges to travel into Manhattan. What's happening is hundreds of cars turning up at petrol stations, many of them closed or have simply run out of fuel, so that's the next issue as well. It is quite chaotic and they still have hundreds of thousands of people without power, Tony, so no sign of when that might happen. Subways still closed, although with a very limited service today. This is going to be just such a slow process and as each day goes by you just become more understanding of how extraordinary this storm was.

TONY JONES: Yeah. The election's only days away. President Obama's about to start campaigning again. Is it clear that he will get a poll bounce out of the way he's handled the storm?

LISA MILLAR: We get dozens - (clears throat) excuse me, Tony - we get dozens of polls every day and it'll be interesting to see when they start polling post-storm because the ones we've seen haven't taken that into account, those pictures yesterday of the president and Chris Christie appearing to show this bipartisan boost. We do know that Barack Obama hitting the campaign trail today is going to give a more affirmative message. He's going to perhaps return to those hopeful themes of four years ago. And Mitt Romney we saw in that story from Craig McMurtrie that he's muted his criticism. Well it was interesting to note that he was trying to use those images of Mitt Romney - of Chris Christie and Barack Obama and say that that's what he used to do as governor of Massachusetts. So he understands how important it is to have that bipartisan relationship. But it is a tricky area for Mitt Romney now given the fact that Barack Obama took three days off the campaign trail, but led the news in this compassionate commander-in-chief and he's gonna have to find a way to try and overcome that in these last critical few days.

TONY JONES: How intense are they gonna be, the campaigning over the next few days? I mean, Obama presumably will hit the ground running.

LISA MILLAR: He's doing three states today alone. There are roughly six swing states now that they'll be concentrating on. Mitt Romney's heading to Virginia today. Barack Obama Nevada, Colorado, Ohio. You can imagine that they will pretty much be doing laps around those states over the next few days and we'll attempt to follow them as much as we can.

TONY JONES: Thanks for that, Lisa. We'll see you soon.

LISA MILLAR: Thank you.


Search Lateline

Sort by:

Got a news tip?
