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INSIGHT

Extreme Weather Worldwide

Aired January 12, 2005 - 23:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: Looked outside lately? Deadly storms in the United Kingdom; Flooding in Central America, South America, South Africa; record snow and deadly mudslides in the United States. What in the world?
Hello and welcome.

Maybe it would just be odd and a little unsettling if people weren't actually getting hurt, but over the last few weeks the weather has been strange and deadly. Landslides caused by heavy rains killed eight people near Sao Paulo, Brazil Wednesday. Landslides in Tijuana, Mexico killed three children a day earlier. And three people, each of them behind the wheel of a car or truck, died in the northern United Kingdom because of the weather. Two of them essentially from gusts of wind overpowering vehicles.

The Asian tsunami was different, incomparable. But coming very quickly after it, strange weather in so many places around the world.

On our program today, something in the air.

We begin in Scotland with Darcy Missoni (ph).

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DARCY MISSONI (ph), ITV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hurricaine force winds batted the west of Scotland, up to 124 miles an hour, uprooting trees, smashing boats against harbor walls and destroying power lines. Over 85,000 people left without electricity.

In Ober (ph), the flood waters rose by four feet.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was just a sign of pure devastation. It was very frightening and scary. Just thought the whole place was going to get destroyed. There was water all over. The road was completely closed. The other parts of the road that were open were very dangerous to pass. I was absolutely terrified.

MISSONI (ph): Tonight a search is on for four people after their car was recovered from waters off the Western Isles. Police found the body of a male in the village of Creagorry on Benbecula this morning. Detectives haven't yet linked the death to the recovered car.

And 180 miles off the Western Isles, a Spanish fishing vessel sent out a satellite distress beacon in heavy seas. She was later located by an RAF Nimrod and a tanker then went to her aid.

And the reason for the extreme weather? The met office says that this swirl of cloud coming in from the North Atlantic caused the pressure to fall to 944 millibars. Forecasters usually deem 950 to be very low. Worryingly, it's predicted that such extreme weather will become more frequent.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The scientific consensus certainly points that way and whether or not we get more rain overall, certainly the evidence of the past few years has been of a greater frequency of more stormy, more energetic events, if you like.

MISSONI (ph): One of the most spectacular examples of those energetic events happened last summer in Cornwall. Eight inches of rain in 24 hours, resulting in 2 million tons of filthy water flowing through Bascastle (ph), demolishing homes and livelihoods.

Today the environment agency told residents that they should be safe to rebuild on the same land.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The majority of buildings can be rebuilt safely, if proper steps are taken and it means that you can't be reckless with it and there will be certain places, I think, where it will be inappropriate to put buildings. We'll treat it on a case by case basis.

Conditions across the country have subsided this evening, but the environment agency still has several flood warnings in place. Residents in the worst hit areas are bracing themselves for the possibility of more to come.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

In the Western United States, torrential rains as well; rains that brought mudslides in California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. At least 28 people have been killed.

Rusty Dornin has this look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Digging in desperation, searching for any signs of life.

In La Conchita, California this neighborhood was destroyed when a hillside that was once a scenic backdrop to this seaside town came crashing down on Monday. Rescue crews worked night and day in a scramble to find survivors. At least 10 people have been pulled out of the mud alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The rescue teams are going in. They're finding voids still in the rubble pile that we believe are large enough that somebody could be in. As long as we're seeing that, then we hold out hope.

DORNIN: The rains came down in torrents for five days in Southern California, causing massive flooding, mudslides and traffic nightmares.

Near Topanga Canyon, this building-sized boulder plopped down on a highway and the only way anyone could make it budge was to blow it up.

In the Sierra Nevada, people are still digging out from the heaviest snowfall since 1916. The fury of the Western storms raged eastward. Here, a house in Santa Clara, Utah crumbles into the river.

In Arizona, it was a similar story. Flood waters trapping people in their homes and making roads impassible.

Water, water everywhere. And as one forecaster put it, the winter is still young.

Rusty Dornin, CNN, La Conchita, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger went to La Conchita Wednesday as he was making the rounds of communities struck by the storms. No Hollywood special effects. The death toll from that one moving mound of earth we just saw in Rusty Dornin's report climbed to 10 Wednesday when crews found the bodies of a woman and her three children in the mud.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA: The mudslides here have obviously devastated this area. 10 people have lost their lives and many people have been injured and are still missing. There are also nearly 2 dozen homes that have been destroyed or damaged. Hundreds of people, many federal, state and local agencies have been working very hard together to coordinate and manage this crisis and to prevent further harm to the people that live here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: And authorities are warning other people who live in the area to leave. They say there will probably be more mud coming down.

But at a meeting to spread information about the dead and the missing, a moment of relief, actually, and some laughter. 10 people were publicly named, identified as unaccounted for and thought to be hidden somewhere under the mud. Four of them immediately stood up and announced that they weren't all that lost after all.

We take a break, but are you wondering why all of this is happening? So is everyone else.

We'll talk about that when we come back. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Pounding storms struck Northern Europe over the weekend, contributing to the deaths of 16 people and cutting power to more than 1/4 of a million homes and businesses. It was the worst weather to hit the region in 40 years. Oddly enough, until the weekend some areas of Europe had been enjoying a milder winter than they're accustomed to.

Welcome back.

Knowing what we do about global warming, it's easy to be suspicious about strange weather. Is there a trend in the weather we've been seeing? And if so, is there an explanation?

Joining us to talk about that is Daniel Lashof, a former U.S. government environmental scientist who is now at the Natural Resource Defense Council, an activist organization that studies the environment.

Thanks so much for being with us.

A leading insurance company based in Europe said that 2004 was the most expensive year for weather destruction on record. Now, that's putting a dollar cost on it. Let me ask you as someone who studies the environment, is there a trend in the weather that's being seen?

DANIEL LASHOF, NATURAL RESOURCE DEFENSE COUNCIL: Well, there's definitely a trend in the climate. The earth is getting warmer. The polar icecaps are melting. Sea levels are rising. And storms are becoming more intense.

We are putting heat trapping and pollution into the atmosphere and that -- carbon dioxide and these other gases that trap heat cause water to evaporate more rapidly from the ocean's surface. That means that water has to land somewhere, so we're seeing more intense storms and more intense droughts, because when it's not raining water is evaporating more rapidly.

MANN: Now, you're making a very obvious and familiar conclusion, that it's global warming, made-made pollution, that is to blame. Some scientists say that the earth has moved through periods where it's gotten colder for an awfully long time and then it's gotten warm, and this is the kind of thing that the earth just does and would be doing weather we were all here or not.

LASHOF: Well, certainly there is natural variability in the weather, and there are very long-term climate cycles. But the pollution that we put into the atmosphere from power plants and automobiles in particular are beginning to overwhelm those natural cycles.

So there really is no longer a debate about whether humans are contributing to climate change. The debate now is what are we going to do about it, and we have lots of opportunity. Some natural disasters are always going to take place, but the not so natural disasters that may be linked to global warming, we can start to address by reducing the pollution responsible.

MANN: Let me once again ask a skeptical question. There are people who would say, you're absolutely right. There is global warming gong on. It's not controversial. But in any given year, there is going to be a certain variance to the weather. There are going to be a certain amount of years that are just dreadful and others that are quite nice. And so there's no way in any particular year, and there's no way on any particular occasion, to point to one weather system or one weather disaster and say that that particular event is the result of global warming.

LASHOF: I think that's absolutely right. The issue is that long-term trends -- there are certain events that are so unusual, like the heat wave that killed so many people in Europe last year, that scientists are able to say the likelihood of that happening without global warming is so small that we can say with a lot of confidence that global warming played a role in it.

Other events, say the storms last week in Europe or the mudslides in California, we really can't say for a particular event. That's correct.

MANN: Does anyone know what impact on the environment the tsunami had? Obviously, that wasn't a meteorological phenomenon, but it did move a lot of water. Presumably it changed the temperature of the water. And when the water temperature changes, the air temperature changes and there can be havoc. Is any of what we're seeing today the result of that event just a few weeks ago?

LASHOF: I don't think so. And certainly the tsunami has nothing to do with global warming. That obviously was caused by an earthquake and a completely distinct event.

So there are lots of natural disasters, as I said, but there are certain types of events, like more intense hurricanes, which we expect in the future due to global warming, that we can address and we should be taking action where we can to reduce the pollution that is responsible for those kinds of events.

MANN: You have been saying this since we started our conversation, so let me get to that point then. Are people, are countries around the world, doing the right kinds of things?

LASHOF: Well, I think the Kyoto Treaty, which Europe and Japan and Russia are moving forward with, is a very important step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the United States is not participating in that, and not only not participating in Kyoto, but really has no policies in place to curb its emissions.

So we need to do a lot more and, as I said, Kyoto is just the first step. We really need to do a bigger effort to put in place clean technology that can reduce the pollution that is contributing to global warming.

MANN: Let me ask you about whether one aspect of this is inescapable, and that is there are more people on the planet than there used to be, and we have better communications, and as a result there are more of us living in places that are prone to disaster and even those less far away hear about the disasters that occur much more quickly and much more intensively than we used to. How much of all of this weather-mania that many people are wondering about now is really the result of demography and communications -- we just know more and we live in more places around the world?

LASHOF: Well, certainly cable news makes people more aware of weather disasters around the world. But that's not responsible for the trend of rising global temperatures or for melting icecaps.

So demographics is a factor. More people are living near the coastline and are more vulnerable to intense hurricanes and to rising sea levels, but what we're doing to the climate by adding pollution to the atmosphere is also an important factor.

MANN: Daniel Lashof, of the Natural Resource Defense Council, thanks so much for this.

LASHOF: Thank you.

MANN: We take another break, when we come back, one man's remarkable escape from the flood waters in California. You'll want to see it.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANN (voice-over): In a rain-soaked creek in California, a rescue that went wrong. Not far from Los Angeles, emergency crews were using a raft to bring a two-month-old boy and its mother to safety when the raft tipped over.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My biggest concern is, where is my -- you know, where is my victim, where is the baby. As soon as I went in the water, it's like, oh, my God. Where are they at. I'm looking around, trying to find them, and things went crazy. I didn't know they were being extracted by another team, a backup team, downriver. So I was feeling pretty darn bad at that time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Welcome back.

Both mother and son suffered in the cold water, but were rescued essentially unhurt. Theirs was hardly the only harrowing rescue story.

CNN's Miguel Marquez has a look now at another family caught unexpectedly in the water. One man, a BMW that became a boat and a few wrenching moments working the ropes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on now, come on now, come on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's in the water!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's in the water.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a rescue that almost didn't happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no. He's coming fast. He's coming faster. He is coming faster. Tell them to get ready.

MARQUEZ: The minutes leading up to the rescue are an example of training, ingenuity, sweat and pure luck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got him. I think we got him. I think we got him. He's out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah!

MARQUEZ: The man on top of the BMW is William McCree (ph), an eye surgeon from Central California. He and his Beemer are floating down a rain-swollen drainage canal called Coyote Creek in suburban Los Angeles. How he got there is a story in itself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had a vehicle that was traveling northbound on one of our local freeways, that had gone through the barricade and had fallen into the Coyote Creek Reservoir.

MARQUEZ: The car stayed still just long enough for McCree's (ph) 11-year-old daughter and her 12-year-old friend to be hoisted to safety by people passing by and firefighters who only had seconds to act.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a bunch of people up top holding on to an old piece of nylon rope and another line that they had fastened together with just tying knots into straps that would normally be used for tying down furniture in a moving van. And I didn't have a lot of faith in that equipment.

MARQUEZ: The equipment held, but now McCree (ph) was headed south. His car now a boat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn't have a lot of hope for him at that point. I felt that he would be lost in the vehicle going down the river.

MARQUEZ: As they are trained to do, firefighters setup a secondary position at the next bridge, about a mile down the creek.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's in the center, in the center.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right in the center of the pilon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've done a lot of rescues, but I don't think any of us in this department have ever seen anything like this before. We train for swift-water rescue, but the typical scenario is that you know you have someone in the river and they're coming down stream, you get there ahead of them, you follow prescribed procedures.

MARQUEZ: With minutes to act, they only had time to improvise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Grab the rope! Grab it tight! Grab it tight!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got a runner, you guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on, dude!

MARQUEZ: Firefighters set lines on the bridges front and back side in case the man fell. He held tightly to the first rope, the water rushing so fast it pulled his pants down around his ankles.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go! Go! Go!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to pull you up. Pull him! Pull him! Pull him! We've got him. Keep coming. Keep pulling. Don't let go!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did he drop it?

MARQUEZ: For a moment, firefighters think they lost him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't see him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, he's hanging on to the side.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where is he?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on back, we got him! We got him! Jesus Christ. Keep -- everybody.

Come on now, come on now, come on.

MARQUEZ: And then they do lose him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's in the water!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's in the water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Vest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Grab a vest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go. Hold on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on! Hold on!

MARQUEZ: A closer view shows McCree (ph) literally at the end of the rope as firefighters try desperately to pull him to waiting hands, the rope runs out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right about the time that we were attempting to stop the pull on the rope and grab him is when he let go. He just didn't have the strength any longer.

MARQUEZ: McCree (ph) is able to grab a life vest tethered to a rope on the far side of the bridge.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good job. Put that other vest behind him. Float it behind him, in case he loses it.

MARQUEZ: McCree (ph) rides the river as though he were on a boogie board. Rescuers inch him to the side.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah! Yeah!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right on.

MARQUEZ: McCree (ph) asks first about his daughter and her friend.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The girls are OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll be talking about this for a long time. We'll critique our actions, we'll try to do better, we'll improve. But it was just a great day. It's a once in a lifetime career incident and I can't wait to go home and kiss my wife and the kids and tell them, you know what, we did a great job today.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's an unusual feeling. I mean, it's not something we feel in this line of work a lot. Even now, I feel a little emotional about it, you know. But it's a joy that you can't really describe.

MARQUEZ: Miguel Marquez, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: And that's INSIGHT. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

END

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