Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live At Daybreak
Saving the Survivors; Laser Beams; Images of Tragedy; Tsunami Disaster
Aired December 31, 2004 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(WEATHER REPORT)
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Back to you.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you, Chad.
Want to take a look at the latest on the destruction from the tsunamis. Thousands of people still missing throughout the region. At this time a day ago, the death toll was around 80,000. It has now zoomed to more than 134,000. More than half of the reported deaths are from the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia.
The United States plans to attend a U.N. donors conference that is scheduled on January 11. The United Nations is expected to outline the areas of greatest need in the affected areas. Bad weather in Sumatra also hampering the relief effort. The airport in Achey (ph) province now closed. Planes are grounded.
And the race is now on to try to keep the survivors alive throughout Southern Asia. Tom McCawley is a journalist who is in Indonesia. He's been at the place known as ground zero.
Good morning to you.
TOM MCCAWLEY, "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR": Good morning.
COSTELLO: So, Tom, tell us, where is ground zero?
MCCAWLEY: Ground zero is called Meulaboh. It's a town about 19 miles north of the epicenter of the quake in the Indian Ocean. It's a town of about 40,000 people. A small city, really, which bore the full brunt of the earthquake and the tsunami. Afflicted by both disasters, both of which caused untold damage. The images were just starting to trickle in to your own station.
COSTELLO: Tell us what it looks like there?
MCCAWLEY: Looks very much like a bomb has been dropped. Up to a kilometer off the coastline there's absolutely nothing left. In many cases, entire villages have been wiped out. There's no trace of human habitation, where up until recently there were quite dense fishing villages and settlements.
The town itself looks like a classic post war city. It looks like virtually an atomic bomb has been dropped. Although yesterday there were signs of life returning to some semblance of normality with some, a few market stores opening to sell vegetables or fish. But tens of thousands of homeless people on the streets carrying their belongings in carts.
COSTELLO: Tom, you're with the "Christian Science Monitor," and I've been reading some of your articles online, and I was intrigued by you know you say that some markets are opening but there is very little food available for people. And when relief comes in, often there are fights for the food between people desperate for it.
MCCAWLEY: Correct. This is something Amikia Sandy Clemence (ph) won a Nobel Prize for pointing out that, actually, in many cases, it's distribution networks which create situations of hunger. And in cases of famine, food not getting to those who most need it.
In the cases of food distribution now being distributed by the Indonesian military, often the strongest people have seized the food and then sold it back to the wounded and the injured and all those that have cash in their pockets left from the disaster at hugely inflated prices. So already there's a market.
Now the weakest and the most affected, people still wounded and people perhaps even still buried, of course cannot get to that food aid, let alone people in very remote areas, because typically the food drops happen right in the center of town.
COSTELLO: And you know typically you would say, oh my gosh, why isn't the military there or the national guard or something, but there are problems with the military, as well, aren't there?
MCCAWLEY: Well actually the military is there. This has been the site of a conflict between separatist rebels and the military. And that is part of the problem, because the area has been closed off to international journalists and international NGOs. And even domestic NGOs have had their movements very restricted by a civil emergency, which was extended in November.
Now when I was able to get in yesterday, the military were good enough to let me accompany them in a convoy. But it made reporting difficult in some cases because I was accompanied by armed soldiers for what was described as my own protection from possible disturbances by the Achey Independence Movement.
I personally think it's very unlikely. I personally think that the independence movement will be as severely afflicted by this disaster as everyone else and that this could have profound consequences for that conflict.
COSTELLO: I think you're right about that.
Tom McCawley from the "Christian Science Monitor" joining DAYBREAK this morning. Thank you so much.
For more on the tsunami disaster, log on to our special Web address at CNN.com/quake. There you can find out where to donate funds, read more eyewitness accounts or even get an update on a loved one. In the past few days, the cockpits of seven commercial airliners were illuminated by laser beams as the planes approached U.S. airports. All the planes managed to land safely, but it's unclear if these incidents were connected. The FBI is now investigating.
And so is our homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Monday night, the cockpit of a Continental Airlines flight approaching Cleveland's airport was illuminated by a laser beam.
ROBERT HAWK, FBI SPECIAL AGENT: This plane was targeted. It just didn't flash for a moment inside the cockpit. The plane was traveling at about 300 miles an hour, at about 8,500 to 10,000 feet, and it followed the plane inside the cockpit for two to four seconds.
MESERVE: The same night, green lights, possibly lasers, hit the cockpits of two flights landing at the Colorado Springs airport. Pilots have also reported seeing what could have been lasers in Washington, D.C., and Teterboro, New Jersey, a total of at least seven incidents in five days, according to officials. All the flights landed safely.
But a recent FAA report concluded the potential for an aviation accident definitely exists because lasers could impair vision or distract a pilot, making landing difficult, at best. The report also notes that a laser could be quickly deployed and withdrawn, leaving no obvious collateral damage or projectile residue and would be difficult to detect and defend against.
Since the advent of big laser light shows in the 1980s, pilots have been concerned. And over the years, there have been hundreds of incidents involving airplanes and lasers. Commercial lasers strong enough to reach low-level aircraft are not hard to get, though the industry says it is working with government to regulate the strongest ones.
Experts say directing a beam into the eyes of a pilot in a moving plane hardly seems feasible.
RAFI RON, AVIATION SECURITY EXPERT: I don't think, though, at this point that we should consider this a major risk to our flights. And, in terms of our priorities, I think that this should not be on the top of our priorities.
MESERVE: In a bulletin last month, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI said the U.S. intelligence community has no specific or credible evidence that terrorists intend to use lasers, although they have expressed interest in them.
(on camera): An administration official says the recent incidents have not heightened the government's concerns, but the FBI is investigating to determine if they were pranks, accidents or something malicious.
Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: And in the next hour on DAYBREAK, our military intelligence analyst Ken Robinson will have more on these mysterious laser incidents and what they could mean.
Stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.
The week has brought an onslaught of images overwhelming and heart breaking. Some of the most powerful are still photographs. Our Beth Nissen tells the story in pictures ahead.
Also, trying to get aid to remote jungle regions of Indonesia hit by the tsunami. We'll take you inside the struggle to reach the unreachable.
And we want to hear from you this morning. Our e-mail Question of the Morning, what is the most important story of 2004? We want to know, DAYBREAK@CNN.com.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Your news, money, weather and sports. It's 5:40 Eastern. Here's what's all new this morning.
Colin Powell huddles with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York today on relief efforts for tsunami survivors. Secretary of State Powell leads a U.S. delegation leaving Sunday for South Asia.
A fire last night in a disco in Buenos Aries, Argentina has killed 169 people and injured 375. The fire erupted during a rock concert attended by as many as 5,000 people.
In money news, the medical rehab giant HealthSouth has agreed to pay the government $325 million to settle charges it defrauded Medicare. Seventeen people charged in the investigation of HealthSouth.
In culture, the band Linkin Park has donated $100,000 to help tsunami victims in South Asia. And the band has teamed up with the Red Cross to establish a charity to collect even more donations.
In sports, pitcher Randy Johnson may once again be heading for the New York Yankees. A baseball official says the Yanks and Arizona Diamondbacks have reached a tentative agreement on the deal. As you know, a similar deal agreed to two weeks ago fell through at the very last minute.
To the Forecast Center now and Chad.
Good morning.
MYERS: Good morning.
Not enough zeros on the end of the contract or something, I'm not sure.
COSTELLO: Something like that.
MYERS: Good morning.
(WEATHER REPORT)
MYERS: Carol, back to you.
COSTELLO: All right, thank you, Chad.
Those are the latest headlines for you this morning.
All week we've been telling you the story of the growing global tragedy of the tsunami disaster in South Asia. Let's stop for just a minute to try to put it in some kind of perspective one snapshot at a time.
Here's CNN's Beth Nissen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After all the home video of the tsunami, it is startling to see it in a photograph, to see what witnesses meant by a wall of water, to see captured in a frame what the monstrous waves did to resorts and villages in Thailand, southern India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, to see what the churning water did to people in these places only vaguely remembered from high school geography, Tamil Nadu, Nicobar and Madras and Sumatra, Colombo.
It all happened so fast, the waves and mud and debris burying the old and the young, especially the young, those too small or too weak to hold on to anything as the water surged in or pull themselves to safety before the receding waves pulled them out to sea.
The still pictures could hardly show the scope of human losses in their mounting thousands but they could show the loss face by face. It all happened so fast so little time for ceremony, the marking of a life. Officials struggled to keep records of the dead. Volunteers hurried to build coffins, fill them, close them, and send the enclosed souls onward.
Even days later, so many souls were still missing. Relatives searched for survivors. Survivors searched for their families. Dazed, battered tourists went home to Sweden and Norway, Germany and New Zealand, South Korea and South Africa. Dazed residents were evacuated by the thousands to higher, dryer ground. Those who could stayed where they were in what was left of home, collected water, collected food, stood in line for both and for fuel.
Slowly, rubbled airstrips were cleared. The first of the aid from around the world arrived, emergency water supplies, critical medicines, fat sacks of food, bundles of clothing.
Tent villages were set up for millions of the suddenly homeless. The wounded were treated in hospitals hastily cleared of debris, in open air clinics set up on beaches. Doctors readied for the next wave of the disaster, disease, with tetanus shots, anti-malarials.
There was little anyone could do to prepare survivors for the hardest part of what is to come, simply going on. Millions are still stunned by loss. So much life and hope washed away, so little to hold on to, except faith that those so violently wrenched from the world have found peace, faith that those left behind in the world will again find peace somehow, somewhere, someday.
Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: 2004 has been a tumultuous year, one filled with triumphs, disaster, genocide and war. CNN will look back at some of the top stories of the year in a special report called "CNN's ANDERSON COOPER 366."
Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: The battle for Falluja started before it officially started.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And I remember thinking this is what the end of the world sounds like, crashing all around us, and it continued for days and days. I never thought that anything could be so loud. I never thought that anything could be so violent and still leave anything standing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Very upbeat, thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Former President Bush was in the White House. He kept awake and kept staying up saying we're going to go give a speech, we're going to give a speech, we're going to go give a speech. The president, at one point, went down and found him glued to the TV watching the results. He said damn it, dad, go to bed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is just Mother Nature at her worst.
(END VIDEO CLIP) GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The feeling of standing in hurricane force winds is unlike anything else we experience in broadcast journalism.
MYERS: This hurricane season was one that a lot of folks, especially folks in Florida, are not going to forget. And I certainly won't forget.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're here at the Riyadh camp outside al-Junaynah, the capital of Western Darfur.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
It was imperative for us as CNN, as journalist, who report from Darfur, and it gives meaning to what we do as journalists. Our duty is to go there and tell those stories and try and try and try to make sure that these things either get put right or hopefully don't happen again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: You can watch the Anderson Cooper a year in review tonight at 7:00 Eastern.
And we want to remind you, after that story, about our DAYBREAK e-mail Question of the Day, what do you think the most important story of 2004 was? DAYBREAK@CNN.com. That's DAYBREAK@CNN.com. E-mail us, we want to hear from you this morning, because we feel lonely, frankly. DAYBREAK@CNN.com.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: The human toll from the tsunamis is staggering. In Indonesia alone, nearly 80,000 people are dead, and that's not even close to what the final tally will be. Aid is coming in, but many areas are too remote or too devastated to be reached.
CNN's Atika Shubert is in Medan, Indonesia where as many as half of the city's residents may have been lost.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To understand the level of devastation here, see it from the air, more than 80 percent of the structures destroyed. Because of its location, this was the first area to be hit. Because of its isolation, it was the last to receive help.
We flew in with two private planes that hoped to deliver food and water by being the first to land on the last one-quarter of the town's airstrip still intact. It was close, but they made it. There are few words to describe the total devastation on the ground, multi-story buildings reduced to cement foundations, markets, schools, demolished. Bodies swell in the baking sun. Death toll estimates are anywhere between 10,000 to 20,000, sparking fears that anywhere between a quarter to one-half of the town's population may have been killed.
This survivor was so bewildered, so desperate, he turned to visiting journalists for comfort.
"Everything is gone," this man cries. "All my children are gone."
Aid is finally trickling in by sea and by air. Now that pilots know they can safely land on the damaged airstrip, more will come. An army helicopter has arrived with aid and a Navy ship unloads supplies in the harbor. Because of the insurgency, there were already a lot of military personnel in the region. They are the only infrastructure left. Everything else has been destroyed.
Soldiers distribute what they can, despite dwindling fuel supplies. They too have been hard hit, hundreds of their colleagues missing, believed dead, many of their wives and children gone.
But the biggest surprise in this isolated and decimated town is the will to survive. Surrounded by death and destruction, with little or no aid from outside up until now, survivors still manage to pick through what is left, looking for anything that will help them to carry on.
Atika Shubert, CNN, Meulaboh, Indonesia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: Traveling for the New Year's Eve celebration? Find out what airlines are doing to avoid a repeat of the Christmas travel mess. And you know it's still a mess. It's not over yet.
And the biggest stories of the year measured in minutes. See if what you think are the biggest stories match how much coverage they actually got from the networks.
You are watching DAYBREAK.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: It is the end of another year, so let the partying begin. The Big Apple getting ready for tonight's New Year's Eve festivities in Times Square. Olympic athletes were on hand to test the switch that drops that famous crystal ball. The athletes are drawing attention to New York's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. So there's a method to their madness here.
Massive crowds expected in Times Square tonight. Security will be extremely tight. The NYPD will be using brand new technology, including helicopters that have infrared sensors. So do not be afraid when you see them fly overhead.
Chad.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: It is time to read some e-mail.
MYERS: I'm ready.
COSTELLO: Our Question of the Day, what is the most important news story of 2004? Do you want to begin?
MYERS: Lance (ph) and Judy (ph) thinks that the fact that you got married was the most important news story of the year from Oklahoma.
But from Paul (ph), also thinks that Mother Nature showed a lesson in strength. Obviously the earthquake and tsunami are the most important and most significant occurrence in 2004.
And one more quick one, Carol, did you know that 2004 had a record number of tornadoes ever, 1,717 tornadoes. The old record was 1,400 tornadoes set back in 1998. So maybe Mother Nature is flexing her strength.
COSTELLO: Was that e-mail from you -- Chad Myers?
MYERS: Actually, no, it was from Greg Hernandez of NOAA.
COSTELLO: OK. Thank you for that.
This is from Jim. I'm going to read it off my computer. He says the most important story of 2004 was the re-election of George Bush. The Iraqi election situation will play itself out over the next month. There is the real story when that happens. I have Iraqi friends, he said, who recently came back from spending a month there. I asked how long they thought it would take for things to finally settle down over there. Their response, about 20 years. Well we hope that's not true, that's for sure.
This is from Morgan (ph) in Seattle. The tsunami, conflict in the Middle East, he says, not exactly unprecedented, sadly.
And let's see, finally this one from Buakman (ph). Being a native New Englander, my top story of 2004 is the Red Sox finally winning the World Series. Now we can all die in peace he said.
MYERS: Kind of odd that all those stories and no one mentioned $40 billion in damage with hurricanes. So obviously much bigger stories than that, but that was a big one as well.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 31, 2004 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(WEATHER REPORT)
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Back to you.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you, Chad.
Want to take a look at the latest on the destruction from the tsunamis. Thousands of people still missing throughout the region. At this time a day ago, the death toll was around 80,000. It has now zoomed to more than 134,000. More than half of the reported deaths are from the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia.
The United States plans to attend a U.N. donors conference that is scheduled on January 11. The United Nations is expected to outline the areas of greatest need in the affected areas. Bad weather in Sumatra also hampering the relief effort. The airport in Achey (ph) province now closed. Planes are grounded.
And the race is now on to try to keep the survivors alive throughout Southern Asia. Tom McCawley is a journalist who is in Indonesia. He's been at the place known as ground zero.
Good morning to you.
TOM MCCAWLEY, "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR": Good morning.
COSTELLO: So, Tom, tell us, where is ground zero?
MCCAWLEY: Ground zero is called Meulaboh. It's a town about 19 miles north of the epicenter of the quake in the Indian Ocean. It's a town of about 40,000 people. A small city, really, which bore the full brunt of the earthquake and the tsunami. Afflicted by both disasters, both of which caused untold damage. The images were just starting to trickle in to your own station.
COSTELLO: Tell us what it looks like there?
MCCAWLEY: Looks very much like a bomb has been dropped. Up to a kilometer off the coastline there's absolutely nothing left. In many cases, entire villages have been wiped out. There's no trace of human habitation, where up until recently there were quite dense fishing villages and settlements.
The town itself looks like a classic post war city. It looks like virtually an atomic bomb has been dropped. Although yesterday there were signs of life returning to some semblance of normality with some, a few market stores opening to sell vegetables or fish. But tens of thousands of homeless people on the streets carrying their belongings in carts.
COSTELLO: Tom, you're with the "Christian Science Monitor," and I've been reading some of your articles online, and I was intrigued by you know you say that some markets are opening but there is very little food available for people. And when relief comes in, often there are fights for the food between people desperate for it.
MCCAWLEY: Correct. This is something Amikia Sandy Clemence (ph) won a Nobel Prize for pointing out that, actually, in many cases, it's distribution networks which create situations of hunger. And in cases of famine, food not getting to those who most need it.
In the cases of food distribution now being distributed by the Indonesian military, often the strongest people have seized the food and then sold it back to the wounded and the injured and all those that have cash in their pockets left from the disaster at hugely inflated prices. So already there's a market.
Now the weakest and the most affected, people still wounded and people perhaps even still buried, of course cannot get to that food aid, let alone people in very remote areas, because typically the food drops happen right in the center of town.
COSTELLO: And you know typically you would say, oh my gosh, why isn't the military there or the national guard or something, but there are problems with the military, as well, aren't there?
MCCAWLEY: Well actually the military is there. This has been the site of a conflict between separatist rebels and the military. And that is part of the problem, because the area has been closed off to international journalists and international NGOs. And even domestic NGOs have had their movements very restricted by a civil emergency, which was extended in November.
Now when I was able to get in yesterday, the military were good enough to let me accompany them in a convoy. But it made reporting difficult in some cases because I was accompanied by armed soldiers for what was described as my own protection from possible disturbances by the Achey Independence Movement.
I personally think it's very unlikely. I personally think that the independence movement will be as severely afflicted by this disaster as everyone else and that this could have profound consequences for that conflict.
COSTELLO: I think you're right about that.
Tom McCawley from the "Christian Science Monitor" joining DAYBREAK this morning. Thank you so much.
For more on the tsunami disaster, log on to our special Web address at CNN.com/quake. There you can find out where to donate funds, read more eyewitness accounts or even get an update on a loved one. In the past few days, the cockpits of seven commercial airliners were illuminated by laser beams as the planes approached U.S. airports. All the planes managed to land safely, but it's unclear if these incidents were connected. The FBI is now investigating.
And so is our homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Monday night, the cockpit of a Continental Airlines flight approaching Cleveland's airport was illuminated by a laser beam.
ROBERT HAWK, FBI SPECIAL AGENT: This plane was targeted. It just didn't flash for a moment inside the cockpit. The plane was traveling at about 300 miles an hour, at about 8,500 to 10,000 feet, and it followed the plane inside the cockpit for two to four seconds.
MESERVE: The same night, green lights, possibly lasers, hit the cockpits of two flights landing at the Colorado Springs airport. Pilots have also reported seeing what could have been lasers in Washington, D.C., and Teterboro, New Jersey, a total of at least seven incidents in five days, according to officials. All the flights landed safely.
But a recent FAA report concluded the potential for an aviation accident definitely exists because lasers could impair vision or distract a pilot, making landing difficult, at best. The report also notes that a laser could be quickly deployed and withdrawn, leaving no obvious collateral damage or projectile residue and would be difficult to detect and defend against.
Since the advent of big laser light shows in the 1980s, pilots have been concerned. And over the years, there have been hundreds of incidents involving airplanes and lasers. Commercial lasers strong enough to reach low-level aircraft are not hard to get, though the industry says it is working with government to regulate the strongest ones.
Experts say directing a beam into the eyes of a pilot in a moving plane hardly seems feasible.
RAFI RON, AVIATION SECURITY EXPERT: I don't think, though, at this point that we should consider this a major risk to our flights. And, in terms of our priorities, I think that this should not be on the top of our priorities.
MESERVE: In a bulletin last month, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI said the U.S. intelligence community has no specific or credible evidence that terrorists intend to use lasers, although they have expressed interest in them.
(on camera): An administration official says the recent incidents have not heightened the government's concerns, but the FBI is investigating to determine if they were pranks, accidents or something malicious.
Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: And in the next hour on DAYBREAK, our military intelligence analyst Ken Robinson will have more on these mysterious laser incidents and what they could mean.
Stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.
The week has brought an onslaught of images overwhelming and heart breaking. Some of the most powerful are still photographs. Our Beth Nissen tells the story in pictures ahead.
Also, trying to get aid to remote jungle regions of Indonesia hit by the tsunami. We'll take you inside the struggle to reach the unreachable.
And we want to hear from you this morning. Our e-mail Question of the Morning, what is the most important story of 2004? We want to know, DAYBREAK@CNN.com.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Your news, money, weather and sports. It's 5:40 Eastern. Here's what's all new this morning.
Colin Powell huddles with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York today on relief efforts for tsunami survivors. Secretary of State Powell leads a U.S. delegation leaving Sunday for South Asia.
A fire last night in a disco in Buenos Aries, Argentina has killed 169 people and injured 375. The fire erupted during a rock concert attended by as many as 5,000 people.
In money news, the medical rehab giant HealthSouth has agreed to pay the government $325 million to settle charges it defrauded Medicare. Seventeen people charged in the investigation of HealthSouth.
In culture, the band Linkin Park has donated $100,000 to help tsunami victims in South Asia. And the band has teamed up with the Red Cross to establish a charity to collect even more donations.
In sports, pitcher Randy Johnson may once again be heading for the New York Yankees. A baseball official says the Yanks and Arizona Diamondbacks have reached a tentative agreement on the deal. As you know, a similar deal agreed to two weeks ago fell through at the very last minute.
To the Forecast Center now and Chad.
Good morning.
MYERS: Good morning.
Not enough zeros on the end of the contract or something, I'm not sure.
COSTELLO: Something like that.
MYERS: Good morning.
(WEATHER REPORT)
MYERS: Carol, back to you.
COSTELLO: All right, thank you, Chad.
Those are the latest headlines for you this morning.
All week we've been telling you the story of the growing global tragedy of the tsunami disaster in South Asia. Let's stop for just a minute to try to put it in some kind of perspective one snapshot at a time.
Here's CNN's Beth Nissen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After all the home video of the tsunami, it is startling to see it in a photograph, to see what witnesses meant by a wall of water, to see captured in a frame what the monstrous waves did to resorts and villages in Thailand, southern India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, to see what the churning water did to people in these places only vaguely remembered from high school geography, Tamil Nadu, Nicobar and Madras and Sumatra, Colombo.
It all happened so fast, the waves and mud and debris burying the old and the young, especially the young, those too small or too weak to hold on to anything as the water surged in or pull themselves to safety before the receding waves pulled them out to sea.
The still pictures could hardly show the scope of human losses in their mounting thousands but they could show the loss face by face. It all happened so fast so little time for ceremony, the marking of a life. Officials struggled to keep records of the dead. Volunteers hurried to build coffins, fill them, close them, and send the enclosed souls onward.
Even days later, so many souls were still missing. Relatives searched for survivors. Survivors searched for their families. Dazed, battered tourists went home to Sweden and Norway, Germany and New Zealand, South Korea and South Africa. Dazed residents were evacuated by the thousands to higher, dryer ground. Those who could stayed where they were in what was left of home, collected water, collected food, stood in line for both and for fuel.
Slowly, rubbled airstrips were cleared. The first of the aid from around the world arrived, emergency water supplies, critical medicines, fat sacks of food, bundles of clothing.
Tent villages were set up for millions of the suddenly homeless. The wounded were treated in hospitals hastily cleared of debris, in open air clinics set up on beaches. Doctors readied for the next wave of the disaster, disease, with tetanus shots, anti-malarials.
There was little anyone could do to prepare survivors for the hardest part of what is to come, simply going on. Millions are still stunned by loss. So much life and hope washed away, so little to hold on to, except faith that those so violently wrenched from the world have found peace, faith that those left behind in the world will again find peace somehow, somewhere, someday.
Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: 2004 has been a tumultuous year, one filled with triumphs, disaster, genocide and war. CNN will look back at some of the top stories of the year in a special report called "CNN's ANDERSON COOPER 366."
Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: The battle for Falluja started before it officially started.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And I remember thinking this is what the end of the world sounds like, crashing all around us, and it continued for days and days. I never thought that anything could be so loud. I never thought that anything could be so violent and still leave anything standing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Very upbeat, thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Former President Bush was in the White House. He kept awake and kept staying up saying we're going to go give a speech, we're going to give a speech, we're going to go give a speech. The president, at one point, went down and found him glued to the TV watching the results. He said damn it, dad, go to bed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is just Mother Nature at her worst.
(END VIDEO CLIP) GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The feeling of standing in hurricane force winds is unlike anything else we experience in broadcast journalism.
MYERS: This hurricane season was one that a lot of folks, especially folks in Florida, are not going to forget. And I certainly won't forget.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're here at the Riyadh camp outside al-Junaynah, the capital of Western Darfur.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
It was imperative for us as CNN, as journalist, who report from Darfur, and it gives meaning to what we do as journalists. Our duty is to go there and tell those stories and try and try and try to make sure that these things either get put right or hopefully don't happen again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: You can watch the Anderson Cooper a year in review tonight at 7:00 Eastern.
And we want to remind you, after that story, about our DAYBREAK e-mail Question of the Day, what do you think the most important story of 2004 was? DAYBREAK@CNN.com. That's DAYBREAK@CNN.com. E-mail us, we want to hear from you this morning, because we feel lonely, frankly. DAYBREAK@CNN.com.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: The human toll from the tsunamis is staggering. In Indonesia alone, nearly 80,000 people are dead, and that's not even close to what the final tally will be. Aid is coming in, but many areas are too remote or too devastated to be reached.
CNN's Atika Shubert is in Medan, Indonesia where as many as half of the city's residents may have been lost.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To understand the level of devastation here, see it from the air, more than 80 percent of the structures destroyed. Because of its location, this was the first area to be hit. Because of its isolation, it was the last to receive help.
We flew in with two private planes that hoped to deliver food and water by being the first to land on the last one-quarter of the town's airstrip still intact. It was close, but they made it. There are few words to describe the total devastation on the ground, multi-story buildings reduced to cement foundations, markets, schools, demolished. Bodies swell in the baking sun. Death toll estimates are anywhere between 10,000 to 20,000, sparking fears that anywhere between a quarter to one-half of the town's population may have been killed.
This survivor was so bewildered, so desperate, he turned to visiting journalists for comfort.
"Everything is gone," this man cries. "All my children are gone."
Aid is finally trickling in by sea and by air. Now that pilots know they can safely land on the damaged airstrip, more will come. An army helicopter has arrived with aid and a Navy ship unloads supplies in the harbor. Because of the insurgency, there were already a lot of military personnel in the region. They are the only infrastructure left. Everything else has been destroyed.
Soldiers distribute what they can, despite dwindling fuel supplies. They too have been hard hit, hundreds of their colleagues missing, believed dead, many of their wives and children gone.
But the biggest surprise in this isolated and decimated town is the will to survive. Surrounded by death and destruction, with little or no aid from outside up until now, survivors still manage to pick through what is left, looking for anything that will help them to carry on.
Atika Shubert, CNN, Meulaboh, Indonesia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: Traveling for the New Year's Eve celebration? Find out what airlines are doing to avoid a repeat of the Christmas travel mess. And you know it's still a mess. It's not over yet.
And the biggest stories of the year measured in minutes. See if what you think are the biggest stories match how much coverage they actually got from the networks.
You are watching DAYBREAK.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: It is the end of another year, so let the partying begin. The Big Apple getting ready for tonight's New Year's Eve festivities in Times Square. Olympic athletes were on hand to test the switch that drops that famous crystal ball. The athletes are drawing attention to New York's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. So there's a method to their madness here.
Massive crowds expected in Times Square tonight. Security will be extremely tight. The NYPD will be using brand new technology, including helicopters that have infrared sensors. So do not be afraid when you see them fly overhead.
Chad.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: It is time to read some e-mail.
MYERS: I'm ready.
COSTELLO: Our Question of the Day, what is the most important news story of 2004? Do you want to begin?
MYERS: Lance (ph) and Judy (ph) thinks that the fact that you got married was the most important news story of the year from Oklahoma.
But from Paul (ph), also thinks that Mother Nature showed a lesson in strength. Obviously the earthquake and tsunami are the most important and most significant occurrence in 2004.
And one more quick one, Carol, did you know that 2004 had a record number of tornadoes ever, 1,717 tornadoes. The old record was 1,400 tornadoes set back in 1998. So maybe Mother Nature is flexing her strength.
COSTELLO: Was that e-mail from you -- Chad Myers?
MYERS: Actually, no, it was from Greg Hernandez of NOAA.
COSTELLO: OK. Thank you for that.
This is from Jim. I'm going to read it off my computer. He says the most important story of 2004 was the re-election of George Bush. The Iraqi election situation will play itself out over the next month. There is the real story when that happens. I have Iraqi friends, he said, who recently came back from spending a month there. I asked how long they thought it would take for things to finally settle down over there. Their response, about 20 years. Well we hope that's not true, that's for sure.
This is from Morgan (ph) in Seattle. The tsunami, conflict in the Middle East, he says, not exactly unprecedented, sadly.
And let's see, finally this one from Buakman (ph). Being a native New Englander, my top story of 2004 is the Red Sox finally winning the World Series. Now we can all die in peace he said.
MYERS: Kind of odd that all those stories and no one mentioned $40 billion in damage with hurricanes. So obviously much bigger stories than that, but that was a big one as well.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
