forces in libya are free tonight. late word of a new kidnapping and last ditch battles that may be linked to moammar gadhafi's escape plan. and cnn goes inside the virginia nuclear power plant near the epicenter of that historic quake. we have a lot of questions about nuclear safety and whether the east coast is prepared if another big one hits. wolf blitzer's off today. i'm joe johns. you're in "the situation room." hurricane irene is bearing town on the bahamas with winds of up to 120 miles an hour right now, and the national weather service warns this category 3 monster could be upgraded, upgraded to a category 4 tomorrow. that means irene could be capable of catastrophic damage when it slams the east coast in the days ahead. the storm has been pounding the turks and caicos and other islands and gaining strength along the way. there are reports of damage but so far no serious injuries. we do have a view from space that gives you an idea of just how big the storm is. it forms a cloud more than 800 miles across, and its powerful winds extend 200 miles from its center. now to irene's latest target, the bahamas. cnn's jim spellman is there. jim, what is the situation now? >> reporter: we're really just starting to get a taste of this, joe. the winds picking up hour by hour, getting some wind squalls here. this place has become all but a ghost town from the usual paradise. many of our viewers are familiar with paradise island and atlantis. all of the cruise ships have left port to get away from the storm, the airport closed earlier today. everyone who could get out got out, everyone who hasn't hunkered down in some of the big hotels here, which are fortified, hopefully built to deal with this sort of thing. if you haven't left yet you're riding this thing out, joe. >> jim, give me some sense, though, obviously tourists can go home, presumably, which doesn't sound real easy because it would probably be hard to get a plane, right? >> reporter: yeah, a lot of people were not able to get flights out. over the last few days people did know this was coming. a lot of people canceled their trip here and did arrange to get out on flights yesterday. not so lucky are some or most of the pa hbahamians that live her. the island is 20 miles long, there's nowhere to run. you're left with hunkering down, plywood, metals over your food and doors, prescription, water, hope for the best, this thing is huge. >> reporter: jim spellman stay in touch. we'll be watching. keep safe. the national hurricane center is issuing a new alert. let's go to severe weather expert chad myers in the cnn hurricane center in atlanta. what are you seeing? >> i see hurricane irene just pounding the southern islands of the bahamas right now. crooked island right there, long island just a little bit up from there. the crooked island just the center went straight over that. the problem is that there are storm surges 15 to 20 feet tall so over our head with water and the islands are only eight feet above sea level. they're a little bit higher not much but jim is right there, jim spellman is right in the way of this advancing hurricane. we have talked about the turn, the right turn that the storm is going to make. well sometimes storms are slow to make that forecast turn, and that's where it was. i drew kind of a straight line. that's where it was. follow the line. i don't see much of a turn yet and that forecast turn is the reason why you still have a cone of uncertainty. if it doesn't turn in time it will be on the left side of the cone, still not approaching florida but still close if it doesn't turn in time it could be over here somewhere. category 4, 135-mile-per-hour storm 50 miles offshore will make huge erosion problems, big waves onshore and flooding along the coast. take you farther to the north up through and over cape hatteras at 115 miles per hour and the outer banks get hid all the time, they're prepared for it. someplace not prepared, this is a category 2, 100 mile per hour potential storm, very, very close to the eastern sections of long island, also massachusetts, maybe even into maine, 100-mile-per-hour storm over long island, the damage could be catastrophic. >> as long as it stays out just over water we're not going to see really a decrease in strength any time soon, right? >> we'd love that big right turn right there, wouldn't we, away from boston, away from the cape. this line right there is the western periphery. it could sneak up the chesapeake to philadelphia or new york city. how about an 85-mile-per-hour sunday over the city? that wouldn't be pleasant. >> so we're basically telling people up the east coast to boston to be on your ps and qs and keep watching cnn? >> as we get closer to the time of arrival the cone will get smaller and smaller and smaller. in 12 hours we can tell you whether it's ten miles left or right. we're talking four days away. the cone is still pretty big. you cannot stop watching this storm. >> chad myers, thanks so much. we'll do that for sure. that's very good advice. the white house says there haven't been any discussions yet about changing the president's vacation plans because of the storm. he's due to stay on martha's vineyard until saturday but administration officials do say they're watching weather reports like the rest of us and tracking the progress of irene very closely. now to libya, where rebel fighters are trading artillery fire with pro-gadhafi forces near the tripoli airport, it's one of the last pockets of resist yans since rebels seized gadhafi's compound yesterday. the loyalists may be trying to clear a route for moammar gadhafi to escape. still no word on where gadhafi is. a libyan businessman now is offering a $2.5 million reward for anyone who captures or kills him. today, some of gadhafi's die-hard supporters released a few dozen international journalists held hostage at a tripoli hotel, including cnn's matthew chance. >> reporter: we've been living in fear for the past five days because we've been, you know, really being held against our will by these crazy gunmen who were in the lobby of our hotel wearing green bandanas waving gadhafi flags, wielding around their kalashnikov assault rifles, they've been very hostile towards us at times, they've often told us about how they think we're spies, nato spies and you know, set up, bent on destroying libya. one of them shouted up to me just yesterday we corralled ourselves away from them because we didn't want to make too much contact with them because there was so much hostility. one of them shouted up to me yesterday "i suppose you're happy now, aren't you, now that libyans are killing libyans," once again underlining the idea the gadhafi loyalists in control of the pocket of the rixos hotel really held the international media somehow responsible for this crisis in libya, so i can't tell you how pleased we all are and how relieved we all are, and how relieved our families will all be that we've finally managed to get out of that place. >> matthew will join us live in just a second, but we have late confirmation that four italian journalists have been kidnapped in libya presumably by pro-gadhafi forces. members of libya's transitional council are facing a monumental challenge, how they are going to deal with the chaos and rebuild the nation. i'll talk with the man who is in charge of iraq's messy aftermath, ambassador paul bremer. and some of washington, d.c.'s most famous tourist attractions damaged by yesterday's rare and powerful earthquake. we'll show you some of the hardest hit places. beach. ♪ this is our pool. ♪ our fireworks. ♪ and our slip and slide. you have your idea of summer fun, and we have ours. now during the summer event get an exceptionally engineered mercedes-benz for an exceptional price. but hurry, this offer ends august 31st. why did you buy my husband a falcon? 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[ falcon screeches ] two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands. this resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. at our kearl project in canada, we'll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils and that's a huge breakthrough. that's good for our country's energy security and our economy. let's bring in senior international correspondent matthew chance in tripoli. matthew you've had an extraordinarily long day and many of us at cnn, around the world quite frankly are very happy you're free after these days of trial and tribulation. could you give us some idea just how you got away? >> reporter: yes, it was, first of all i'm happy about it, too, and i'm happy for all of my colleagues that were with us in the rixos and their families as well who must be feeling exactly the same as i'm feeling this evening, which is ex-supretreme happy after this terrifying ordeal at times. we've come out of it, nobody's been injured, nobody was killed and it's been a really, really positive, positive outcome and so that's really fabulous. we couldn't be happier, all of us. >> again, though, you had a challenge five days you were being held against your will. you were not free to leave. at the end of the day, what was it that led you to freedom. was it a negotiation or something else? >> reporter: >> reporter: well it was, you know, i think it was this, joe, it was a realization on the part of our captors, because they were captors and we essentially were hostages. we felt like we were being held against our will, our right to leave had been removed from us but it was a realization amongst our captors that, you know, the world outside the perimeter of the hotel had changed dramatically. libya had changed dramatically. colonel gadhafi, the person who has ruled this country for the past 42 years was no longer giving the orders, no longer calling the shots and once they understood that, once these gunmen loyal to colonel gadhafi's regime understood that, there was a seen change in their attitude. at one point they actually surrendered their weapons to us and said "we're sorry, you're free to go." all we had to do was order some cars. the icrc, the international community of the red cross took us to safety behind the rebel lines, about 100 meters or so. it's interesting, joe, this is something the whole country is now, excuse me, undergoing. this sort of transition from this mind-set where colonel gadhafi was the rule, the law of the land, whatever he said was the law, to a country where that's no longer the case. people in tripoli tonight are celebrating their freedom. they're saying that. they're saying we are celebrating our freedom, and i think that was, in a small way that's what we experienced in the rixos with our captors, setting us free. >> tell me, if you know, what was the moment when your captors actually realized the seat change going on, if you will, in libya. i assume news travels slowly. it was very chaotic. at some point the news got to them. how did it get to them and when? >> reporter: well, i mean, i think at some point it just became undeniable that these changes had taken place. remember, all along, since this, these recent military developments started to happen and the rebels really started to push forward, the gadhafi regime has been in denial. it's been saying that these reports that everyone's been hearing about rebel advances are just not true. it's been telling people on state television, telling its loyal carders that in fact colonel gadhafi was on the right, that he was asserting his control back over the country that he had control of the crisis and he'd broken the backbone of the rebels but it obviously reached a point with all the celebrations in tripoli that that lie could no longer be perpetuated and once that sank in, i think to the people in the hotel who i think amongst the real die-hard loyalists of kernel gadhafi, once it sank in, there was no option but for them to surrender their weapons and essentially sink away. >> last question, i know it's probably been very difficult to gather information as it were where you were at this time, last night on this program we had a former d.c. delegate to congress named walter fauntroy, was apparently somehow stranded there and to our knowledge not able to travel. we have not heard from him today, i'm wondering if you know anything about his whereabouts. >> reporter: well, i know that he was in the envoy of cars led by the icrc that i was in when we left the rixos hotel. we didn't leave anything in the hotel. we made sure that we left all together as a group. we left in the same group that we'd been in inside that terrible situation, and walter fauntroy was in that group. he was in libya, of course, on a peace mission, had been here for some time to end the conflict here and the crisis, he was attempting to negotiate some kind of peaceful settlement. obviously it didn't come to anything, but you know, nevertheless, this is a man who found himself at the center of developments that were out of his control, and he ended up in a situation with the rest of us and he's quite an elderly gentleman as well, and he was sleeping on the floor, you know, eating the dried biscuits, you know, going without, you know, electricity and running water in the same way that all of us were and i think we all quite liked congressman walter fauntroy, so i hope, wish him well. i know he's okay. >> matthew chance, thanks so much for that. we are so glad that you're safe and we do want to hear more about this ordeal, and i'm sure we'll get an opportunity to hear from you again. thank you. jack cafferty now "the cafferty file." >> that's a special breed of cat for people like matthew chance. whatever awards for people like those that perform like matthew chance, they ought to stack them in front of his door and others like him. in an election where the republican candidate stands a chance in front of a weakened incumbent president so far it's a couple of intellectual lightweight lightweigh lightweights who won the show. two have been sucking up the media's attention mostly for saying stupid stuff. like bachmann's bringing gasoline down to $2 a gallon or rick perry saying ben bernanke's actions were treasonous or the former governor of alaska sarah palin will join the race as well. palin's people are pushing back against the speculation saying that anyone who claims to know about her plans is misleading the american people. palin has certainly been acting like a candidate now, hasn't she, showing up in iowa during the straw poll voting and the political video released ahead of the labor day speech scheduled to take place in iowa, if palin runs we'll have another mensa candidate to join bachmann and perry. there is no doubt this three-some will share the lion's share of the media coverage. there's ron paul who placed a close second in the poll. there's newt gingrich, love him or hate him he's a bright man. bachmann and that's the sad commentary on the state of politics. when it comes to presidential politics why does america seem to be allergic to brains? go to cnn.com/caffertyfile. i just tear myself up, joe, or go to the post on the facebook page. >> you got the whole studio laughing here, jack. do you really think the crazy talk is worse this year than previous election years? >> yeah, i mean we already watched sarah palin ruin whatever chance john mccain had four years ago and she's just beyond the pail. michele bachmann, $2 gas, perry -- there's a few more whack jobs out there. we had ckucinich. perry is out in some poll today getting 29% of the support in some poll, double-digit lead over bachmann, burying mitt romney and way in front. it's a little scary. it's early but scary. >> you bet, great. jack check back with you in a bit. some of the fiercest fighting we've seen in libya has taken place around the airport. do the rebels think gadhafi may be hiding somewhere in that area? and the republicans can't get enough of the newest gop presidential candidate, rick perry's strong start could force a change in strategy for his rivals. discover aveeno positively radiant tinted moisturizers with scientifically proven soy complex and natural minerals. give you sheer coverage instantly, then go on to even skin tone in four weeks. aveeno tinted moisturizers. and see katie before she goes home. [ male announcer ] with integrated healthcare solutions from dell, every file is where dr. ling needs it. now she can spend more time with patients and less time on paperwork. dell. the power to do more. the prospect of rebuilding libya is daunting, given the chaos right now and the fact that the country was ruled with an iron fist for 42 years. libyans may get some valuable lessons from what happened in iraq. we're joined now by the former u.s. administrator in iraq, paul bremer. thank you so much for coming in. >> nice to be with you. >> you watched what's happening in libya. what goes through your mind having been there shortly after saddam was, you know, out of power in iraq? >> well when you see what's happening in libya you see a lot of reflections of what happened in iraq, even in egypt and tunisia. basically there are three problems. rebuilding is not about mortar and bricks. it's about security first and political reform and then economic regeneration. security is job one and we're already seeing some of that now in tripoli, even with the fact that some of the journalists were taken prisoner by who knows who. >> what should the role of the west be? how much involvement should for example the united states have? >> well i think on the whole, the problems there really belong to the people in the region, the arabs and the african countries and the french and the italians and spanish are the largest trading partners with libya and the french and italians have been involved in the nato affair. i this i in the end if the libyans can't provide the security there and i think there is an open question whether they can, some kind of international stabilization force will have to go in, it seems to me those are the countries that should do the work. >> are there some lessons learned from iraq that can be applied to libya that you see right now? >> well the biggest one is security is job one, and really there are two questions. can the libyans do it themselves, and that has two aspects, can they agree, you have obviously different groups from the east and the west, and it's not at all clear, some of them are talking about dismantling militias. whose militia will get dismantled by whom. and do they have the competence, what will be the role, if any, of the old security forces, the army and in particular the police, and those kinds of questions are going to have to get answered by someone. >> because the question is what kinds of allegiances they actually had before the change in power. >> right. >> the other question of the chemical weapons. >> right. >> how should the united states approach that? how should western countries approach the issue of the stockpile of weapons of mass destruction? >> we need to be concerned about that and i'm sure that our intelligence services are paying close attention to where those are. frnl as a result of the overthrow of saddam, gadhafi had given up his nuclear program. as far as we know, what h