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CNN Live At Daybreak
Latest on Destruction From the Tsunamis; Elections in Iraq Just a Month Away
Aired December 31, 2004 - 05:00 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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Straight ahead on DAYBREAK, half a billion dollars on the way, but that's not even close to what will be needed to help tsunami victims.
Elections in Iraq just a month away, but the campaign really gathering strength is the one to disrupt the vote.
Plus, laser beams at airports? Is the security concern moving from theory to reality?
It is Friday, December 31, the last day of 2004.
This is DAYBREAK.
Good morning to you.
From the Time Warner Center in New York, I'm Carol Costello, along with Chad Myers.
Happy new year to the people of Kiribati Island, way out in the Pacific. At this moment they are ushering in 2005.
Now in the news, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell will be in New York today to discuss tsunami disaster aid plans with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. On Sunday, Powell will lead a U.S. delegation to Southern Asia to assess the damage. Florida Governor Jeb Bush will also be part of that delegation.
More than 160 people were killed after a fire broke out in a Buenos Aires, Argentina nightclub. At least 375 people were injured by the fire and the stampede to get out.
More trouble for the upcoming election in Iraq. An Al Jazeera report says that all 700 election commission employees in Mosul have resigned after being threatened at gunpoint. But a spokesman for the national election commission claims that report just isn't true. We'll hear from Jeff Koinange shortly.
As many as nine deaths are being blamed on strong storms moving through the western United States. At least two Arizona counties have been declared emergency areas and several thousand Californians are without power due to snow and 100 mile per hour winds.
Oh, say the winds have died down now -- Chad.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: A little bit, but not on the ridges, Carol. Right around Lake Tahoe, those winds are still gusting to over 80 miles per hour. This is a very large Pacific storm just blowing in moisture, blowing in moisture like a firehouse. And as that moisture continues to pour onshore, San Francisco right into the Lake Tahoe and Reno area, the snow continues to come down.
(WEATHER REPORT)
COSTELLO: And, Chad, stick around, because right after this story, we have a heartwarming story of a reunion. We have a father and son on the line, so stick around to participate in that.
MYERS: Oh, OK.
COSTELLO: It's a great story.
MYERS: All right.
COSTELLO: First of all, though, let's 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 135,000 people. More than half of the recorded deaths are from the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. The United States plans to attended a U.N. donors conference that's scheduled on January 11. The United Nations is expected to outline the areas of greatest need in the affected areas.
Bad weather in Sumatra is hampering the relief effort, though. The airport in Aceh Province is closed and planes are now grounded.
And amidst all that sadness, there are heartwarming stories. This is what I was talking about. An American father makes a long journey to Thailand to search for his missing son. Upon arriving in Bangkok, he gets word from his wife back home that their son is alive and he's well.
The father and son, Ed Aleo, Sr. and Ed Aleo, Jr., join us live on the phone from Phuket, Thailand.
Good morning.
DR. ED ALEO, SR.: Good morning.
COSTELLO: I know you only have one phone, so am I talking to dad or son?
ED ALEO, SR.: This is Ed Aleo, Sr.
COSTELLO: So I'm talking to dad.
So, tell us, you get on a plane, you to go Thailand to look for your son only to get that call from your wife. You must be absolutely overjoyed at this moment.
ED ALEO, SR.: Well, I didn't get a call from my ex-wife. I got a call from CNN, who patched me through, and that was the first time I heard. I was cued up to get on the airplane to come to Phuket. I was in Bangkok when his mother -- when they hooked me or conferenced me through to his mother, yes. That was very exciting, I have to admit.
COSTELLO: Well, I'm glad we were able to help. That's fantastic.
So take us back to the beginning. Did you know where your son was vacationing, I mean, specifically?
ED ALEO, SR.: Yes, I did. He had called -- my son Eddie called on Christmas morning at 8:00 our time New York from Kopiana, which is an island off of Southeast Asia.
ED ALEO, JR.: Southwest.
ED ALEO, SR.: Oh, Southwest Asia, the southern part of Asia. And then 12 hours later, the tsunami occurred. So I knew where he was, yes.
COSTELLO: And you hadn't heard from him at all. And, of course, you were absolutely frantic.
ED ALEO, SR.: Right. I had not heard from him myself until I got -- as a matter of fact, I was able to reach him as I got onto the plane in Bangkok, Thailand, heading for Phuket. And he was in Krabi, Thailand at the time.
COSTELLO: It must have been difficult to get a plane into Thailand, wasn't it?
ED ALEO, SR.: It took a little work, but it wasn't as difficult as one might think. I thought it would be more difficult, too. But we persisted and American Airlines made it easy for me.
COSTELLO: OK, so where was your son? And should we get him on the phone to tell that part of the story?
ED ALEO, SR.: Sure. I can -- I'll put Eddie on. He can tell you his part and where he was.
Hold on, please.
COSTELLO: OK.
ED ALEO, JR.: Yes, good morning.
This is Eddie.
COSTELLO: Hi, Eddie.
Where were you?
ED ALEO, JR.: Where was I? I was on Kopiana (ph), which is the west coast of Thailand. I was on an island, basically having lunch. And water came in quite fast and rose probably three or four meters. Where I was actually sitting was on the eastern, sheltered side of the island, so it wasn't as bad as the west side. The west side got a little bit more rising water a little bit faster. But there was really, compared to everywhere else in Thailand, it was very mild and they were very lucky there was no serious injuries or deaths on that particular island.
COSTELLO: Were you unable to call your parents?
ED ALEO, JR.: Yes, there was no -- sporadic phone service. I was able to contact the -- I couldn't have called overseas, but I was able to contact a friend in Thailand and he was relaying the message via e-mail. The phone systems and the service wasn't, mobile service wasn't so good on the island and then, you know, with everyone using the phones, you know, it made it very, very difficult.
But as I said, on Kopiana, the damage wasn't significant. I hadn't had outside TV coverage or anything like this, so I knew that people had died and, you know, in beachfront areas and I figured this is, you know, living on a beach and a big wave comes, you know.
COSTELLO: Oh, so television...
ED ALEO, JR.: This is what's going to happen. But I didn't realize the extent of what it was, I mean, India is devastated, Indonesia and these places, and parts of Thailand. But, again, in my microcosm, the water hadn't really done significant damage. So I kind of didn't realize exactly how bad everyone else really had it.
COSTELLO: OK, because that explains it, because we were all saying my gosh, if we didn't call our parents, they would be so angry at us. But you didn't really know the extent of the damage or the extent of this tragedy because you weren't getting news.
So put your dad back on the phone, because I want to ask him what it was like to see you for the first time.
ED ALEO, JR.: OK.
Very good.
Hold on, please.
ED ALEO, SR.: Hello?
COSTELLO: Hi.
So you see your son in person.
What was the reunion like?
ED ALEO, SR.: It was great. You know, I was excited to see him. He -- I think he was excited to see me, But, again, he didn't quite know the extent. He figured out an hour and a half before I got there that I was here. I think he was more stunned by the events, but now has, like he said, a much greater appreciation of how lucky we are as a family compared to other families. Getting off the plane I saw families, it was really heartbreaking to watch people who were looking for their families and a number of their people had died. Many -- about 600 Americans had died in Thailand and probably 4,000 or 5,000 Europeans, Westerners, not to maintain the Thai people themselves.
So it's -- so we're lucky. My son and I are lucky. My family is lucky. And we're very -- I'm -- I can't tell you how happy I am. I'm ecstatic.
COSTELLO: So are you going home now, both of you?
ED ALEO, SR.: No, I don't think I'm going home yet. We're -- I think we're going to, I think I'm going to stay and visit with my son and his fiance. So I'm going to stay a couple of days. My other son was not able to make connections. He was supposed to be here, too, my son Brian. He's in Vietnam. He was going to try to make it with us, but was not able to make those connections. So hopefully we'll have a reunion with him, too.
COSTELLO: All right, well, we're glad that this was a heading for your family.
And thank you for joining DAYBREAK this morning, Ed Aleo, Sr. and Ed Aleo, Jr.
Thanks so much.
It's so nice to report nice stories.
On to the rest of the news now.
The train in Sri Lanka was known as The Queen of the Sea. It took tourists to the beach, local residents to visit families, workers to their jobs. On Sunday, the train had nearly reached its destination when disaster struck.
CNN's Anderson Cooper talked to a British man who was aboard that train. So let's go beyond the sound bite now to listen to his story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHENTH RAVINDRA, TSUNAMI TRAIN SURVIVOR: I heard a lot of screaming and shouting and then an almighty crash and bang. And then I looked toward the sea and the horizon completely changed. A wall of water was basically taking up about 85 percent of the horizon and it was moving very quickly toward us.
As you can imagine, everyone around us starting screaming incessantly and lots of kids like are holding onto me, grabbing any limb that they could find of me.
I basically steadied myself onto the carriage, because I knew that the force of the wave against the carriage was going to be quite tremendous. And as I steadied myself, the water came and hit. It pushed the carriage further inland, to a point where it got wedged against a house and from that point I was able to jump from the top of the train onto the house and up the roof. And I sort of perched myself at the highest point of the house.
I was sort of having to trudge my way through about waist level water and floating on this water was a lot of corpses. So I was having to make my way through that. And the background noise to this was obviously a lot of screaming, a lot of shouting, a lot of panic. I made a conscious effort to look at blank space in front of me, not really focusing on anything. It was a case of just walking dead straight, focused on the plan of getting as far away from the seashore as possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Officials say about a thousand people were on board that train. Just about 200 survived.
You can read more tales of struggle and survival on our Web site at cnn.com. You can also read some of the e-mails we've received from people caught in the tsunamis and the appeals for help in finding missing family members. All that, plus the latest news, can be found at cnn.com, right at your fingertips.
We'll take you live to Iraq just ahead. Elections there just one month away, but in one city things are looking awfully dicey. We'll bring you up to date.
And coincidence? At 38 minutes past the hour, details on the difficult landings of six different airplanes in the last four days.
And at 45 minutes past, we look at some of the most haunting images from this week's disaster in Southern Asia.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(STOCK MARKET REPORT)
COSTELLO: More now on another scene of death and destruction, this one in Argentina. A fire swept through a crowded nightclub during a rock concert last night. Nearly 170 people were killed.
Mary Milliken is with the Reuters News Service and she joins us now live with more -- good morning.
MARY MILLIKEN, REUTERS: Good morning.
COSTELLO: Tell us what happened.
MILLIKEN: Around 11:00 at night, some, anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 young, mostly young people in the Argentine capital where at a nightclub celebrating the new year a little bit earlier. And a flare, apparently, was shot into the ceiling. The ceiling had cloth or foam on it. It was highly flammable. The people, the survivors say that the fire spread very quickly. The smoke was very dense. It was very difficult to breathe. And the latest death toll is 169 dead and 375 injured and they're scattered around 14 hospitals throughout the city.
COSTELLO: So was there no way out of the building? Was that part of the problem?
MILLIKEN: Well, the minister of interior and the mayor of Buenos Aires have both indicated that it appeared that emergency exit doors were blocked. The minister of the interior said that four of the six doors were blocked. And survivors have said the same thing. They said that they could not get out. And firefighters apparently had to break open the doors to get in to rescue people.
COSTELLO: We're looking at video now that's just incredible of people being carried out of that club.
How extensive are the injuries of those who were burned in this fire?
MILLIKEN: It's hard to say. It appears that most of the dead suffered from smoke inhalation and you can see on the video some of the faces were charred. But it appears that smoke was the main problem there.
There were a lot of very young people there -- teenagers, people in their 20s, and we have also heard a very tragic detail, that many of these teenagers are parents and they brought their toddlers and young children and put them in an improvised nursery in the women's bathroom. So that's why we could see very young children in the list of the dead also.
COSTELLO: You know, we're seeing people carried out on makeshift stretchers, it seemed.
Were there not enough ambulances on the scene?
MILLIKEN: There were around 50 ambulances on the scene, but it did not seem to be enough. Some of the injured were taken in normal police cars and vans. I must say, though, it appears that they have taken control of the situation very quickly since then and the Buenos Aires City Hall has set up an emergency center for family overnight and they can go there and they can see the lists of the dead and the injured and they can get psychological and social counseling there.
And so it appears to be quite organized this morning. However, there are a lot of people going to the club, young kids going to the club, and family members going to the assistance center desperately searching for their friends, sons and daughters.
COSTELLO: Oh, Mary Milliken from Reuters, joining us live from Buenos Aires this morning.
Thank you.
Your news, money, weather and sports.
It's 5:20 Eastern.
Here's what's all new this morning.
Viktor Yushchenko is making plans for his inauguration. This after Ukrainian election officials denied the appeal of his opponent. But Viktor Yanukovych's supporters say they plan to take their case to the supreme court.
In money news, Anna Nicole Smith may need to get a real job after all. A federal appeals court threw out, yes, threw out the $88.5 million judgment she got from her late husband's estate. Smith, as you may or may not know, was married to J. Howard Marshall for one year before the 90-year-old oil tycoon died.
In culture, legendary band leader Arte Shaw is dead at the age of 94. Shaw's music became synonymous with the big band era in the 1930s and '40s. But he may be just as well known for his marriages to starlets Lana Turner and Eva Gardner.
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 new deal. A similar deal agreed to two weeks ago fell through at the last minute.
But this one, Chad, seems to be the real deal.
MYERS: Good for him.
COSTELLO: You're still reeling over that Anna Nicole Smith story, aren't you?
MYERS: Whatever.
Good morning, Carol.
(WEATHER REPORT)
COSTELLO: Those are the latest headlines for you.
Thirty days to election day in Iraq and the entire election commission in one major city has resigned because of threats from insurgents.
Let's go live to Baghdad now and Jeff Koinange to bring us up to date -- hello, Jeff.
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello there, Carol.
And it seems like the campaign of intimidation, especially toward Iraqi officials, seems to be having its desired effect. This happened in the town of Mosul, in the north of Iraq, where 24 members and 672 employees all resigned after they received death threats. Gunmen stormed a mosque and told the officials do not take part in these elections.
In fact, these officials went on to post banners at mosquitoes throughout the city saying that they repent for what they were doing.
So, Carol, it seems to be having its desired effect.
COSTELLO: There have been conflicting reports coming out of there, Jeff, that, you know, they say 600 members of this election commission resigned, but some are saying that just simply isn't true.
KOINANGE: That's right. That's what the electoral commission in Baghdad is saying, they're saying we haven't heard anything like that. But, Carol, this comes exactly after a day after a group calling itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, which issued a statement on the Web site saying all electoral officials should stay away from electoral polling sites, Iraqis should not take part in this election because they were going to step up their campaign of attacks on the coalition.
In fact, they issued a three day curfew, saying they were going to increase their attacks. So far, Carol, the last 24 hours have been the most quiet in Baghdad in several days.
COSTELLO: We've been preoccupied with our coverage of the tsunamis, Jeff. So I just wondered country wide how the election process is going.
KOINANGE: Across the country, Carol, attacks upon attacks, mostly upon policemen, Iraqi National Guardsmen, anyone and anything aligned to the U.S. military and this U.S.-backed government. And all across the country, from Tikrit, where a police station was gunned down and the insurgents walked in and calmly executed all the policemen, in Ba'qubah, further south, Iraqi National Guardsmen on patrol running over unexploded devices. And in Baghdad itself, what we're seeing is a stepped up campaign in the form of booby trap attacks. An entire building, after police received an anonymous tip saying that there was a man on a building shooting at residents, when they got to the building, the entire building collapsed.
So definitely there is a stepped up campaign. These insurgents seem to be attacking with an element of coordination and with an element of impunity, as well -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Jeff Koinange live in Baghdad this morning.
Actually, that brings us to our DAYBREAK E-Mail Question of the Day. We were wondering, what do you think the most important story of 2004 was? Was it what's happening in Iraq right now? Was it the election of 2004? Is it the tsunamis? We want to know what you think. The address, of course, daybreak@cnn.com. That's daybreak@cnn.com.
The most compelling stories of 2004, from the war in Iraq to the presidential election, we've got you covered. Coming up, we'll take a walk down memory lane to help you out with our E-Mail Question of the Morning.
You are watching DAYBREAK for the last day of 2004.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: And good morning to you.
Welcome to the second half hour of DAYBREAK.
From the Time Warner Center in New York, I'm Carol Costello, along with Chad Myers.
Now in the news, six days into the tsunami disaster and the death toll just keeps climbing. It's now surpassed 135,000. A 30-member U.S. military team has arrived in Sri Lanka to assess the situation. A delegation led by Secretary of State Colin Powell heads for the region this weekend.
A fire that raced through a crowded nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina killed at least 169 people. As many as 5,000 people were inside the disco when the fire broke out.
The Justice Department is out with a new memo saying torture violates U.S. and international law. It comes days before the Senate considers White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination as attorney general. Democrats plan to question Gonzales about memos he wrote on torture.
In Times Square, three Olympic athletes test the switch that will lift and drop the crystal ball at midnight. One athlete, Ian Thorpe, is using the occasion to tout New York as the site for the 2012 Olympic Games. And there it goes -- Chad.
MYERS: Are you going to be there, Carol?
COSTELLO: I'm going to watch it on television.
MYERS: I thought you and Anderson were going to hook up.
COSTELLO: No, we're not going to hook up.
MYERS: He's doing this big special at 11:00. Did you know this?
COSTELLO: I did know. I'll be watching Anderson.
MYERS: All right.
COSTELLO: I'll be in my nice warm home with my husband, drinking a glass of champagne and watching Anderson freeze.
MYERS: Sounds like -- no, he's not going to freeze. It'll be in the 40s.
COSTELLO: That's still pretty cold, though, don't you think?
MYERS: No, it's a little...
COSTELLO: Especially at night with the wind blowing.
MYERS: I guess so.
(WEATHER REPORT)
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Aired December 31, 2004 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Straight ahead on DAYBREAK, half a billion dollars on the way, but that's not even close to what will be needed to help tsunami victims.
Elections in Iraq just a month away, but the campaign really gathering strength is the one to disrupt the vote.
Plus, laser beams at airports? Is the security concern moving from theory to reality?
It is Friday, December 31, the last day of 2004.
This is DAYBREAK.
Good morning to you.
From the Time Warner Center in New York, I'm Carol Costello, along with Chad Myers.
Happy new year to the people of Kiribati Island, way out in the Pacific. At this moment they are ushering in 2005.
Now in the news, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell will be in New York today to discuss tsunami disaster aid plans with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. On Sunday, Powell will lead a U.S. delegation to Southern Asia to assess the damage. Florida Governor Jeb Bush will also be part of that delegation.
More than 160 people were killed after a fire broke out in a Buenos Aires, Argentina nightclub. At least 375 people were injured by the fire and the stampede to get out.
More trouble for the upcoming election in Iraq. An Al Jazeera report says that all 700 election commission employees in Mosul have resigned after being threatened at gunpoint. But a spokesman for the national election commission claims that report just isn't true. We'll hear from Jeff Koinange shortly.
As many as nine deaths are being blamed on strong storms moving through the western United States. At least two Arizona counties have been declared emergency areas and several thousand Californians are without power due to snow and 100 mile per hour winds.
Oh, say the winds have died down now -- Chad.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: A little bit, but not on the ridges, Carol. Right around Lake Tahoe, those winds are still gusting to over 80 miles per hour. This is a very large Pacific storm just blowing in moisture, blowing in moisture like a firehouse. And as that moisture continues to pour onshore, San Francisco right into the Lake Tahoe and Reno area, the snow continues to come down.
(WEATHER REPORT)
COSTELLO: And, Chad, stick around, because right after this story, we have a heartwarming story of a reunion. We have a father and son on the line, so stick around to participate in that.
MYERS: Oh, OK.
COSTELLO: It's a great story.
MYERS: All right.
COSTELLO: First of all, though, let's 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 135,000 people. More than half of the recorded deaths are from the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. The United States plans to attended a U.N. donors conference that's scheduled on January 11. The United Nations is expected to outline the areas of greatest need in the affected areas.
Bad weather in Sumatra is hampering the relief effort, though. The airport in Aceh Province is closed and planes are now grounded.
And amidst all that sadness, there are heartwarming stories. This is what I was talking about. An American father makes a long journey to Thailand to search for his missing son. Upon arriving in Bangkok, he gets word from his wife back home that their son is alive and he's well.
The father and son, Ed Aleo, Sr. and Ed Aleo, Jr., join us live on the phone from Phuket, Thailand.
Good morning.
DR. ED ALEO, SR.: Good morning.
COSTELLO: I know you only have one phone, so am I talking to dad or son?
ED ALEO, SR.: This is Ed Aleo, Sr.
COSTELLO: So I'm talking to dad.
So, tell us, you get on a plane, you to go Thailand to look for your son only to get that call from your wife. You must be absolutely overjoyed at this moment.
ED ALEO, SR.: Well, I didn't get a call from my ex-wife. I got a call from CNN, who patched me through, and that was the first time I heard. I was cued up to get on the airplane to come to Phuket. I was in Bangkok when his mother -- when they hooked me or conferenced me through to his mother, yes. That was very exciting, I have to admit.
COSTELLO: Well, I'm glad we were able to help. That's fantastic.
So take us back to the beginning. Did you know where your son was vacationing, I mean, specifically?
ED ALEO, SR.: Yes, I did. He had called -- my son Eddie called on Christmas morning at 8:00 our time New York from Kopiana, which is an island off of Southeast Asia.
ED ALEO, JR.: Southwest.
ED ALEO, SR.: Oh, Southwest Asia, the southern part of Asia. And then 12 hours later, the tsunami occurred. So I knew where he was, yes.
COSTELLO: And you hadn't heard from him at all. And, of course, you were absolutely frantic.
ED ALEO, SR.: Right. I had not heard from him myself until I got -- as a matter of fact, I was able to reach him as I got onto the plane in Bangkok, Thailand, heading for Phuket. And he was in Krabi, Thailand at the time.
COSTELLO: It must have been difficult to get a plane into Thailand, wasn't it?
ED ALEO, SR.: It took a little work, but it wasn't as difficult as one might think. I thought it would be more difficult, too. But we persisted and American Airlines made it easy for me.
COSTELLO: OK, so where was your son? And should we get him on the phone to tell that part of the story?
ED ALEO, SR.: Sure. I can -- I'll put Eddie on. He can tell you his part and where he was.
Hold on, please.
COSTELLO: OK.
ED ALEO, JR.: Yes, good morning.
This is Eddie.
COSTELLO: Hi, Eddie.
Where were you?
ED ALEO, JR.: Where was I? I was on Kopiana (ph), which is the west coast of Thailand. I was on an island, basically having lunch. And water came in quite fast and rose probably three or four meters. Where I was actually sitting was on the eastern, sheltered side of the island, so it wasn't as bad as the west side. The west side got a little bit more rising water a little bit faster. But there was really, compared to everywhere else in Thailand, it was very mild and they were very lucky there was no serious injuries or deaths on that particular island.
COSTELLO: Were you unable to call your parents?
ED ALEO, JR.: Yes, there was no -- sporadic phone service. I was able to contact the -- I couldn't have called overseas, but I was able to contact a friend in Thailand and he was relaying the message via e-mail. The phone systems and the service wasn't, mobile service wasn't so good on the island and then, you know, with everyone using the phones, you know, it made it very, very difficult.
But as I said, on Kopiana, the damage wasn't significant. I hadn't had outside TV coverage or anything like this, so I knew that people had died and, you know, in beachfront areas and I figured this is, you know, living on a beach and a big wave comes, you know.
COSTELLO: Oh, so television...
ED ALEO, JR.: This is what's going to happen. But I didn't realize the extent of what it was, I mean, India is devastated, Indonesia and these places, and parts of Thailand. But, again, in my microcosm, the water hadn't really done significant damage. So I kind of didn't realize exactly how bad everyone else really had it.
COSTELLO: OK, because that explains it, because we were all saying my gosh, if we didn't call our parents, they would be so angry at us. But you didn't really know the extent of the damage or the extent of this tragedy because you weren't getting news.
So put your dad back on the phone, because I want to ask him what it was like to see you for the first time.
ED ALEO, JR.: OK.
Very good.
Hold on, please.
ED ALEO, SR.: Hello?
COSTELLO: Hi.
So you see your son in person.
What was the reunion like?
ED ALEO, SR.: It was great. You know, I was excited to see him. He -- I think he was excited to see me, But, again, he didn't quite know the extent. He figured out an hour and a half before I got there that I was here. I think he was more stunned by the events, but now has, like he said, a much greater appreciation of how lucky we are as a family compared to other families. Getting off the plane I saw families, it was really heartbreaking to watch people who were looking for their families and a number of their people had died. Many -- about 600 Americans had died in Thailand and probably 4,000 or 5,000 Europeans, Westerners, not to maintain the Thai people themselves.
So it's -- so we're lucky. My son and I are lucky. My family is lucky. And we're very -- I'm -- I can't tell you how happy I am. I'm ecstatic.
COSTELLO: So are you going home now, both of you?
ED ALEO, SR.: No, I don't think I'm going home yet. We're -- I think we're going to, I think I'm going to stay and visit with my son and his fiance. So I'm going to stay a couple of days. My other son was not able to make connections. He was supposed to be here, too, my son Brian. He's in Vietnam. He was going to try to make it with us, but was not able to make those connections. So hopefully we'll have a reunion with him, too.
COSTELLO: All right, well, we're glad that this was a heading for your family.
And thank you for joining DAYBREAK this morning, Ed Aleo, Sr. and Ed Aleo, Jr.
Thanks so much.
It's so nice to report nice stories.
On to the rest of the news now.
The train in Sri Lanka was known as The Queen of the Sea. It took tourists to the beach, local residents to visit families, workers to their jobs. On Sunday, the train had nearly reached its destination when disaster struck.
CNN's Anderson Cooper talked to a British man who was aboard that train. So let's go beyond the sound bite now to listen to his story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHENTH RAVINDRA, TSUNAMI TRAIN SURVIVOR: I heard a lot of screaming and shouting and then an almighty crash and bang. And then I looked toward the sea and the horizon completely changed. A wall of water was basically taking up about 85 percent of the horizon and it was moving very quickly toward us.
As you can imagine, everyone around us starting screaming incessantly and lots of kids like are holding onto me, grabbing any limb that they could find of me.
I basically steadied myself onto the carriage, because I knew that the force of the wave against the carriage was going to be quite tremendous. And as I steadied myself, the water came and hit. It pushed the carriage further inland, to a point where it got wedged against a house and from that point I was able to jump from the top of the train onto the house and up the roof. And I sort of perched myself at the highest point of the house.
I was sort of having to trudge my way through about waist level water and floating on this water was a lot of corpses. So I was having to make my way through that. And the background noise to this was obviously a lot of screaming, a lot of shouting, a lot of panic. I made a conscious effort to look at blank space in front of me, not really focusing on anything. It was a case of just walking dead straight, focused on the plan of getting as far away from the seashore as possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Officials say about a thousand people were on board that train. Just about 200 survived.
You can read more tales of struggle and survival on our Web site at cnn.com. You can also read some of the e-mails we've received from people caught in the tsunamis and the appeals for help in finding missing family members. All that, plus the latest news, can be found at cnn.com, right at your fingertips.
We'll take you live to Iraq just ahead. Elections there just one month away, but in one city things are looking awfully dicey. We'll bring you up to date.
And coincidence? At 38 minutes past the hour, details on the difficult landings of six different airplanes in the last four days.
And at 45 minutes past, we look at some of the most haunting images from this week's disaster in Southern Asia.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(STOCK MARKET REPORT)
COSTELLO: More now on another scene of death and destruction, this one in Argentina. A fire swept through a crowded nightclub during a rock concert last night. Nearly 170 people were killed.
Mary Milliken is with the Reuters News Service and she joins us now live with more -- good morning.
MARY MILLIKEN, REUTERS: Good morning.
COSTELLO: Tell us what happened.
MILLIKEN: Around 11:00 at night, some, anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 young, mostly young people in the Argentine capital where at a nightclub celebrating the new year a little bit earlier. And a flare, apparently, was shot into the ceiling. The ceiling had cloth or foam on it. It was highly flammable. The people, the survivors say that the fire spread very quickly. The smoke was very dense. It was very difficult to breathe. And the latest death toll is 169 dead and 375 injured and they're scattered around 14 hospitals throughout the city.
COSTELLO: So was there no way out of the building? Was that part of the problem?
MILLIKEN: Well, the minister of interior and the mayor of Buenos Aires have both indicated that it appeared that emergency exit doors were blocked. The minister of the interior said that four of the six doors were blocked. And survivors have said the same thing. They said that they could not get out. And firefighters apparently had to break open the doors to get in to rescue people.
COSTELLO: We're looking at video now that's just incredible of people being carried out of that club.
How extensive are the injuries of those who were burned in this fire?
MILLIKEN: It's hard to say. It appears that most of the dead suffered from smoke inhalation and you can see on the video some of the faces were charred. But it appears that smoke was the main problem there.
There were a lot of very young people there -- teenagers, people in their 20s, and we have also heard a very tragic detail, that many of these teenagers are parents and they brought their toddlers and young children and put them in an improvised nursery in the women's bathroom. So that's why we could see very young children in the list of the dead also.
COSTELLO: You know, we're seeing people carried out on makeshift stretchers, it seemed.
Were there not enough ambulances on the scene?
MILLIKEN: There were around 50 ambulances on the scene, but it did not seem to be enough. Some of the injured were taken in normal police cars and vans. I must say, though, it appears that they have taken control of the situation very quickly since then and the Buenos Aires City Hall has set up an emergency center for family overnight and they can go there and they can see the lists of the dead and the injured and they can get psychological and social counseling there.
And so it appears to be quite organized this morning. However, there are a lot of people going to the club, young kids going to the club, and family members going to the assistance center desperately searching for their friends, sons and daughters.
COSTELLO: Oh, Mary Milliken from Reuters, joining us live from Buenos Aires this morning.
Thank you.
Your news, money, weather and sports.
It's 5:20 Eastern.
Here's what's all new this morning.
Viktor Yushchenko is making plans for his inauguration. This after Ukrainian election officials denied the appeal of his opponent. But Viktor Yanukovych's supporters say they plan to take their case to the supreme court.
In money news, Anna Nicole Smith may need to get a real job after all. A federal appeals court threw out, yes, threw out the $88.5 million judgment she got from her late husband's estate. Smith, as you may or may not know, was married to J. Howard Marshall for one year before the 90-year-old oil tycoon died.
In culture, legendary band leader Arte Shaw is dead at the age of 94. Shaw's music became synonymous with the big band era in the 1930s and '40s. But he may be just as well known for his marriages to starlets Lana Turner and Eva Gardner.
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 new deal. A similar deal agreed to two weeks ago fell through at the last minute.
But this one, Chad, seems to be the real deal.
MYERS: Good for him.
COSTELLO: You're still reeling over that Anna Nicole Smith story, aren't you?
MYERS: Whatever.
Good morning, Carol.
(WEATHER REPORT)
COSTELLO: Those are the latest headlines for you.
Thirty days to election day in Iraq and the entire election commission in one major city has resigned because of threats from insurgents.
Let's go live to Baghdad now and Jeff Koinange to bring us up to date -- hello, Jeff.
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello there, Carol.
And it seems like the campaign of intimidation, especially toward Iraqi officials, seems to be having its desired effect. This happened in the town of Mosul, in the north of Iraq, where 24 members and 672 employees all resigned after they received death threats. Gunmen stormed a mosque and told the officials do not take part in these elections.
In fact, these officials went on to post banners at mosquitoes throughout the city saying that they repent for what they were doing.
So, Carol, it seems to be having its desired effect.
COSTELLO: There have been conflicting reports coming out of there, Jeff, that, you know, they say 600 members of this election commission resigned, but some are saying that just simply isn't true.
KOINANGE: That's right. That's what the electoral commission in Baghdad is saying, they're saying we haven't heard anything like that. But, Carol, this comes exactly after a day after a group calling itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, which issued a statement on the Web site saying all electoral officials should stay away from electoral polling sites, Iraqis should not take part in this election because they were going to step up their campaign of attacks on the coalition.
In fact, they issued a three day curfew, saying they were going to increase their attacks. So far, Carol, the last 24 hours have been the most quiet in Baghdad in several days.
COSTELLO: We've been preoccupied with our coverage of the tsunamis, Jeff. So I just wondered country wide how the election process is going.
KOINANGE: Across the country, Carol, attacks upon attacks, mostly upon policemen, Iraqi National Guardsmen, anyone and anything aligned to the U.S. military and this U.S.-backed government. And all across the country, from Tikrit, where a police station was gunned down and the insurgents walked in and calmly executed all the policemen, in Ba'qubah, further south, Iraqi National Guardsmen on patrol running over unexploded devices. And in Baghdad itself, what we're seeing is a stepped up campaign in the form of booby trap attacks. An entire building, after police received an anonymous tip saying that there was a man on a building shooting at residents, when they got to the building, the entire building collapsed.
So definitely there is a stepped up campaign. These insurgents seem to be attacking with an element of coordination and with an element of impunity, as well -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Jeff Koinange live in Baghdad this morning.
Actually, that brings us to our DAYBREAK E-Mail Question of the Day. We were wondering, what do you think the most important story of 2004 was? Was it what's happening in Iraq right now? Was it the election of 2004? Is it the tsunamis? We want to know what you think. The address, of course, daybreak@cnn.com. That's daybreak@cnn.com.
The most compelling stories of 2004, from the war in Iraq to the presidential election, we've got you covered. Coming up, we'll take a walk down memory lane to help you out with our E-Mail Question of the Morning.
You are watching DAYBREAK for the last day of 2004.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: And good morning to you.
Welcome to the second half hour of DAYBREAK.
From the Time Warner Center in New York, I'm Carol Costello, along with Chad Myers.
Now in the news, six days into the tsunami disaster and the death toll just keeps climbing. It's now surpassed 135,000. A 30-member U.S. military team has arrived in Sri Lanka to assess the situation. A delegation led by Secretary of State Colin Powell heads for the region this weekend.
A fire that raced through a crowded nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina killed at least 169 people. As many as 5,000 people were inside the disco when the fire broke out.
The Justice Department is out with a new memo saying torture violates U.S. and international law. It comes days before the Senate considers White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination as attorney general. Democrats plan to question Gonzales about memos he wrote on torture.
In Times Square, three Olympic athletes test the switch that will lift and drop the crystal ball at midnight. One athlete, Ian Thorpe, is using the occasion to tout New York as the site for the 2012 Olympic Games. And there it goes -- Chad.
MYERS: Are you going to be there, Carol?
COSTELLO: I'm going to watch it on television.
MYERS: I thought you and Anderson were going to hook up.
COSTELLO: No, we're not going to hook up.
MYERS: He's doing this big special at 11:00. Did you know this?
COSTELLO: I did know. I'll be watching Anderson.
MYERS: All right.
COSTELLO: I'll be in my nice warm home with my husband, drinking a glass of champagne and watching Anderson freeze.
MYERS: Sounds like -- no, he's not going to freeze. It'll be in the 40s.
COSTELLO: That's still pretty cold, though, don't you think?
MYERS: No, it's a little...
COSTELLO: Especially at night with the wind blowing.
MYERS: I guess so.
(WEATHER REPORT)
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