|
Return to Transcripts main page
NEXT@CNN
Extreme Nature
Aired January 15, 2005 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Hello again I'm Fredricka Whitfield at the CNN Center in Atlanta. NEXT@CNN is coming up right after a look at the headlines.
Searchers are back on Utah mountain today trying to find as many as five people believed buried by an avalanche. Rescuers stopped looking last night because they were worried about secondary snowslides. Explosive charges were dropped over night to make the area safer.
California authorities want people evacuated because of a leaking dam to stay away. More than 10,000 cubic feet of water per second from the dam is being released into the Santa Ana River near the city of Corona, 2,300 people were evacuated. Officials say the leak grew after it was discovered.
A group of Palestinian election officials have quit their jobs, complaining about irregularities in the recent election won by Mahmoud Abbas. The 46 election officials say the vote was free and fair, but claimed security services and Abbas' campaigners forced them to extend voting hours. Abbas was sworn in as Palestinian authority president today, saying he extended his hand in peace to Israel, even as Israel cut ties with him over renewed violence.
At Ft. Hood, Texas, army reserve specialist Charles Graner testified today he was only following orders. Graner, the alleged ringleader in the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal took the stand in his penalty face of his court martial today. He says a lot of what happened was wrong and criminal. He could face up to 15 years in prison for abusing detainees at the Iraqi prison. A military jury convicted Graner yesterday.
And let's check in with Dave Hennen in the weather center.
DAVE HENNEN, METEOROLOGIST: I'm meteorologist Dave Hennen in the CNN Weather Center with this weather update. It's still quite cold in much of the upper Midwest today. Minneapolis the forecast tide is not going to make it above zero today. And the cold weather has moved all the way to the south, even in Florida some colder temperatures are recorded.
As we take a look at the forecast for Sunday, we continue with our mess in the Pacific Northwest. Today we are going to see some ice continuing throughout the remainder of the day in Portland, where some icy conditions are forecast to continue during the evening hours tonight before it warms up and changes to rain tomorrow, snow in the interior sections of the west. While some snow begins to develop and this could move into the northeast and produce some snow by late in the day in Boston.
WHITFIELD: All right thanks a lot, Dave. I'm Fredricka Whitfield at the CNN Center in at Atlanta. NEXT@CNN begins right now, keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Hello, I'm Miles O'Brien. Today, a special edition of NEXT@CNN. "Extreme Nature." We'll look at the weeks weather in the United States and its effects from the deadly mudslide in California to 20-foot snow drifts in the Sierra, Nevada, to floods that led to some dramatic rescues.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is do or die, get 'em now.
O'BRIEN: Also a tsunami warning system could have saved thousands of lives in South Asia last month. We'll see how the warning system in the Pacific Ocean works.
And we'll look back at last year's ferocious hurricane season and show you how a Florida town is recovering. All that on more at NEXT.
Hello, I'm Miles O'Brien in for Daniel Sieberg who's on assignment this week. From the disastrous tsunami of December 26 to the overwhelming hurricane season of 2004, to the record snowfall, the devastating mudslide and the torrents of rain this past week, we've all been taking a beating from mother nature over the past year. Aaron Brown takes us to some extremes.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AARON BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): For Californian Jimmy Wallet, the news could not have been worse. The bodies of his wife and three children were found amid the ruins of their home in the coastal town of La Conchita.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just try to be a source of comfort for him, put our hand on his shoulder and let him know he's not going through this alone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We lost some close family, friends of ours yesterday, so, um, it's an emotional roller coaster, but I've got my family, you know, and we'll get through this.
BROWN: Since the mudslide struck the small community on Monday, ten bodies have been pulled from the debris. Residents cried as authorities announced the names of the dead. Michelle Wallet, Paloma (ph) Wallet, Raven Wallet.
BROWN: California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took an aerial tour of the damage, later promising residents the state would help them return to their homes. The mudslide and destruction culminated days and days of rain in southern California. Some of the worst rain since the late 1800s, according to the weather service. The most recent example of weather at the extremes.
All in all, the extremes of nature during the past year have been spectacular, widespread, and deadly. Just a little over a year ago, the world watched as an earthquake leveled a city in southeastern Iran. When the dead were finally counted in the city of Bam, more than 30,000 had perished.
KASRA NALK (ph), BAM, IRAN: The U.S. Government has now joined international efforts here to help the victims of this huge earthquake here in this ancient town of Bam in southern Iran.
BROWN: In the United States, the spring tornado season resulted in relatively few deaths, but don't tell that to the people of Unity, Illinois, where eight died after violent tornados spun through the town.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everything was demolished, nothing was in order, it was just destroyed.
BROWN: On average, the National Weather Service says there are about 1,200 tornadoes in the U.S. every year. In 2004 there were more than 1,700, in part because of the unusually violent hurricane season. Two Atlantic hurricanes spun off about 100 tornadoes each. In late May, heavy rains hit both Haiti and the Dominican Republic 3,000 people died. The casualty toll made worse, experts say, because of the heavy deforestation in both countries.
Five months later, tropical storm Jeanne hit Haiti especially hard. Another 3,000 were killed near the city of Ganayeave (ph). By the time the hurricane season hit its stride, Florida suffered some of the worst damage in years. Hurricane Charley slammed into the west coast of the state, centering on a small town called Punta Gorda. Five weeks later, hurricanes Jeanne and Frances smash into the state with damage estimates running into the billions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These may have been the worst conditions I have seen during any of these four hurricanes over the last six weeks in Florida.
BROWN: Mt. St. Helen erupted again this year, spitting a fair amount, 20 years after the volcano blew its top. This time nobody hurt, but there was lots of smoke and lots to think about.
Then, of course, as the year was ending, one of the biggest natural disasters in the history of the world struck a dozen nations bordering on the Indian Ocean, an enormous earthquake registering 9 on the Richter scale caused damage enough on its own in Indonesia, but the tsunami that followed has resulted in the deaths of more than 155,000 people, the count still going up.
But was 2004 especially unusual when it comes to weather? The extremes were certainly more deadly. We talk about them more, perhaps because we can see the aftermath. More than a quarter of a million people are said to have died in China during the earthquake several years ago, but there were no pictures. There were pictures, of course, this week in southern California where mud destroyed lives, but where the sun is finally shining again.
(END VIDEOTAPE) O'BRIEN: So are scientists as astonished at this weather as the rest of us? CNN meteorologist Chad Meyrs caught up with a government weather expert at the American Meteorological Society meeting which just happened to be going on this week in California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHAD MEYRS, CNN METEOROOGIST: Joining me now is Vickie Nadolski she is the director the national director of the National Weather Service for the western region of the United States. I have to ask you now, this is just a lay-down question -- are we getting soft, or really has the weather been extreme the past couple years?
VICKIE NADOLSKI, DIRECTOR, NWS WESTERN REGION: Well, there have certainly been a number of what you could call extreme events, a very active hurricane season, and of course the weather these last few weeks, particularly in southern California, may lead one to believe we're moving in that direction. However, things certainty aren't what we've seen with El Ninos like a few years ago. Though we have some of that signature apparent, that's not really what's been going on. I think it's just been a busy season, a busy year 2004, there have been a lot of memorable events this past year.
MEYRS: So how much do you feel that maybe technology has something to do with the perception the weather has been so bad? We have instant video from all over the world, where ever we want it we can see the floods, the tornadoes, we can see the snowstorms, is there something going on there with TV and news?
NADOLSKI: Hey, it's amazing, isn't it? You feel like you are right there in it. Certainly the general public has a better view of what is actually going on that we didn't have ten years ago.
MYERS: A lot of folks think that the rain in L.A. and the snow in the mountains will actually alleviate the drought, but in fact I was just looking at Lake Powell near Las Vegas, that is still at 35 percent of capacity, 136 feet below full pool.
NADOLSKI: You know one of the problems, you get all that rain falling in the Los Angeles basin area, and much of it goes right back out into the sea, because that's just the nature of the urban area. On the other hand, we are happy to see that Lake Powell is coming up a bit. We've got some significant rain and snow that has fallen across Utah and Arizona to help with that issue in the Colorado basin area.
MYERS: So one last question. Let's say 2002, 2003, 2004, are we just talking about the stories that we'll tell our grandkids -- oh, when I went to school, there was six feet of snow, we walked uphill both ways? Is it just a story time? Or what are we seeing here?
NADOLSKI: It certainly will be a story time. I don't think any of us will ever forget the tsunami that did cause as much loss of life and damage as it did in Indonesia and some of those territories. So I think there will be a lot of stories to tell your grandchildren. I think there will be more to come in the future.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When we come back, the devastation of the south Asia tsunami wasn't limited to people. We'll look at what it did to the environment.
And later in the show, we'll show you how a tsunami warning system works to save lives.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O"BRIEN: For almost three weeks now, you've been seeing how the Asian tsunami devastated families, resorts and entire towns, but the impact on nature could make rebuilding even more difficult. Gary Strieker reports in this week's "Our Planet" segment.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Beyond the tragic loss of life, suffering, and property destruction, the tsunami caused catastrophic environmental damage that relief officials and scientists are just beginning to land, fisheries, and all are of concern right now.
SUSIE ELLIS, CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL: There are issues of water land fisheries and their all of concern right now.
STRIEKER: There are critical immediate problems directly affecting human health. In many areas, freshwater supplies are polluted by seawater, chemicals and sewage. Without clean drinking water, many survivors could die from disease in the weeks ahead. There are widespread reports of extensive damage to other ecological resources, natural assets supporting fishing communities, farmers and tourism industries.
IAN DUTTON, THE NATURE COMSERVANCY: The most immediate impact is food security, something like 53 percent of all the protein from Indonesians comes from fish. And if those corals are badly affected then it will have an impact.
STRIEKER: Coastal wetlands and rice paddies are flooded with salty sea water. U.N. officials estimate rebuilding agriculture will take at least two years and billions of dollars in aid. Scientists say surging waves in some areas would have taken a heavy toll on marine life up to a mile offshore. In Thailand, dolphins were swept into an inshore lake where they were trapped. Some beaches were reportedly littered with dead marine animals, including corals.
Following a pounding by incoming waves, coral reefs in shallow water were then raked by a powerful backwash carrying heavy debris, including trees and cars then covered with smothering sediments. Coral reefs in the Indian Ocean are major tourist attractions and key habitats for fish. Scientists say it's too early to know how badly they're damaged or what impact this disaster will have on fish populations and the livelihood of fishermen.
ELLIS: The fact that these nursery areas have now been plowed under by mud and have been destroyed will have a long-term effects on fisheries.
STRIEKER: Some experts believe these Indian Ocean coastlines have become more vulnerable to the tsunamis because of the damage humans have caused to coral reefs and to main growth forest. Natural coastal barriers that can buffer the force of tidal waves, but others say this tsunami was far too powerful to be weakened by any natural defense. Mean while authorities report there's no evidence of any major loss of endanger wildlife on land, conforming to age-old beliefs that they seem to sense impending disaster, elephants and other animals sought refuge on higher ground before the tsunami struck.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Although preliminary reports indicate that much of the wild animal population seems to have survived the tsunami, pets and domesticated animals were not as lucky. The International Humane Society reports that many homeless animals are now roaming the streets, scavenging for food and getting sick from drinking contaminated water. Local groups in the region say they're now trying to provide treatment and care for those animals.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just ahead, why would somebody choose to live in a town where they know mudslides are a danger?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: This week's mudslide in La Conchita, California, was not the first to hit the neighborhood at the foot of the hills. Why would somebody choose to live in a place where that kind of threat exists? CNN's Ted Rowlands talked to some La Conchita residents about the place they call home.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN FRANKO, LA CONCHITA RESIDENT: It came right to here, man. I'll tell you, we ran out this way and there was a wall right there.
TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The mudslide came knocking at John Franko's front door. His family and his home are OK, but many of his neighborhoods are now dead or injured.
FRANKO: That's where Charlie Womack lived, and you know, the family and the children, and Charlie. And one more up was John, who they found deceased.
ROWLANDS: John bought the house five years after a slide here in 1995, which destroyed several homes, and he says he knew he was taking a risk.
FRANKO: It's always on the back of our minds, but it just -- never thought it would happen.
ROWLANDS: With a wife and three children, John thought hard about buying the house after the slide of '95, banks were reluctant to buy mortgages, and many of his neighbors had to buy their homes with cash. But John did get a mortgage. A geologist report characterized the risk of a slide damage as low, so unable to resist the lure of La Conchita's shoreline beauty, John and his family moved in.
Don Ski went back to his house that is also intact to get some personal belongings. He too says he too was well aware of the possible danger.
DON SKI, LA CONCHITA RESIDENT: Yes, but I didn't realize, nobody does, nobody thinks it's going to happen to you, you know. And it did. What can I say? I don't know.
ROWLANDS: While it's hard for some to fathom living in a place that faces a high risk of natural disaster, the fact is a lot of people are willing to risk it.
BOB ROPER: We have oceans that cause wave issues on homes, earthquake faults, rivers, and the mountains. It's part of the beauty of the state of California, and I don't believe that there's a way -- really to prevent people from invoking their private property rights and living where they want to.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of memories here.
ROWLANDS: John and his wife Jeri were given a half hour to get some things out of their home. John says unless the hillside is somehow fortified, he'll never have his family live here again.
FRANKO: Not after what I saw, the devastation, loss of life, lots of tears, lots of memories.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Five months ago, nature was on leashing its fury on Florida. Within a month and a half, four major hurricanes swept through the state, leveling communities and lives. Putting the pieces back together has been and still is an enormous undertaking. Here's CNN's John Zarrella.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Over the course of six weeks, Florida was pounded. It was an unrelenting onslaught. Florida was in the crosshairs of four hurricanes. Three of them Charley, Frances and Jeanne crisscrossed the state. And found their way through Wauchula, a rural city nestled in central Florida. Like so many other places Wauchula was wrecked. The scars left behind have been fading slowly, but the spiritual and physical rebirth has gone on since. The junior high marching band played.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One, two, three [ applause ].
ZARRELLA: Dignitaries cut a red ribbon. In Wauchula the grand reopening of the city's only supermarket was a very big deal.
REV. JIMMY MORSE, NORTHSIDE BAPTIST CHURCH: It's a symbolic action that Wauchula is going to come back and be better than it's ever been before. ZARRELLA: For the past five months, the Reverend Jimmy Morris has done a lot of praying and pitching in. Reverend Morris stopped in at Carol Sue Staten's home to see how the rebuilding was going.
CAROL SUE STATEN: This is my beautiful new front porch.
ZARRELLA: Rev. Morris coordinates and helps house the bus loads of volunteers here from all over the U.S. and Canada. A team from the Mennonite Disaster Services is putting Carol Sue's home back together. She didn't have insurance.
STATEN: They are all family men, they all have homes and families that they have left and left their wives and children in charge, and come down here, you know, to help us. God only knows how long they'll be here.
ZARRELLA: The Mennonites expect to be here two years. That is how long rebuilding will take. Kathleen Manicas (ph) came from Michigan to help. She worked for the United Way, she asked for a leave of absence but couldn't get one --
KATHLEEN MANICAS (ph), VOLUNTERR: Quit my job after 18 years, shed a few tears, packed up my car and left.
ZARRELLA: Do you think you did the right thing?
MANICAS (ph): Absolutely, I have no doubt.
ZARRELLA: For the storm victims like Carol Sue, it's hard to express their feelings. Saying thanks is often left to Rev. Morris.
MORRIS: We want to thank you guys for coming so far and helping us, leaving your families behind. Only eternity will be able to determine what you have done for our county.
ZARRELLA: There is still so much to be done in Wauchula. Everywhere you look there are reminders of the storms.
MORRIS: You look out the rear view mirror that you just take a couple glances of that. Remember where you've been, but in front of you, you have the windshield and the space is wide open. No telling how far we can go.
ZARRELLA: In Wauchula, hope is built on looking forward.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Coming up in our next half hour, what happens when a ski resort gets too much snow.
And we'll show you what it took to rescue some Californians from extreme nature this week. Those stories and a lot more coming up after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN: EXTREME NATURE. You'd think ski resorts would love it when they get a lot of snow, but the recent onslaught in the West has left resort towns saying "enough already." Rob Marciano has more from Squaw Valley, California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERT FROLICH, AUTHOR: You know, coming to Squaw is like tugging on Superman's cape.
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Locals call him "Fro." Arthur Robert Frolich has lived in these mountains for the last 30 years.
FROLICH: But, it gets ugly real quick, it can be in these storm periods.
MARCIANO: Squaw Valley boasts some of the best skiing in North America. It also gets some of the most dangerous winter storms.
FROLICH: We get these big storm systems coming in usually once a decade when the low pressure systems come in, the doors open, it just rocks. You know, you have a series of storms come in like we just had in 14 -- the last 14 days we had over -- close to 160 inches of snowfall.
MARCIANO: Estimates already put the region at the total snowfall at over 21 feet, and winter isn't even half over yet. Sierra Nevada hasn't seen weather like this since 1916. Roads closed leaving commuters stranded in their cars for hours. And businesses suffered significant losses.
FROLICH: They had some record business, I know, around Christmas period, and then all of a sudden it just -- the bottom fell out.
MARCIANO: With this much snowfall, comes the potential for deadly avalanches. The ski patrol has been working around the clock to detonate areas most prone collapse.
FROLICH: In a 14-day period, they had a 75mm Howitzer up on Gunner's Knob and they fired over 100 shells.
MARCIANO: Not just shells, but also hand-tossed explosives.
(on camera): How many -- how many explosives do you think they threw off yesterday?
FROLICH: Well, not yesterday, but in the 14-day storm period, they threw 9,400 pounds of explosives. That's over 4,200 bombs.
MARCIANO: Ski patrolman Will Paden is responsible for keeping the ski area safe for visitors. He took us for a snowmobile ride and explained what to do if you're ever caught in an avalanche.
WILL PADEN, SKI PATROLMAN: But, you want to fight for your life and try to swim for the surface. And, should you feel like you're going to get buried, try to cover your mouth to give you an airway to breathe.
MARCIANO: Fro says people here are ready for a break.
FROLICH: I guess you could compare it to the folks down in Florida that suffered through that series of hurricanes. Here you have the big weather comes in and it just hammers on you, and it finally brakes, you come up for air and think, "oh man, that has to be the worst of it," and the next thing you know, it gets socked in again and you just get your potatoes pealed (SIC).
MARCIANO: For now, the worst may be over and the best on its way, the best skiing of the year, that is.
FROLICH: This weather isn't disastrous, by any means. It's very welcome and ensures a great season for us. It's been more of an inconvenience. I really don't think it's anything more than Mother Nature shrugging its shoulders.
MARCIANO: For some, Mother Nature has been shrugging a little too often.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, how a ride down the freeway turned into a terrifying battle with floodwaters and how rescuers handle the situation.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: The story of the Western deluge is not just about rain, snow and mud. It's also about the determination of first first- responders to save lives. Miguel Marquez reports on a dramatic attempt to get a woman and her baby across floodwaters in Los Angeles County.
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's about as scary as a rescue gets. A mother clutching her two-month-old son, both are swept down a river raging with water, trees, boulders, and mud.
RICK ARTWOOD, L.A. COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT: It was as shocking as anything I could ever imagine. I did not think we were going to go swimming that day. I really did not.
MARQUEZ: Rich Atwood, a Los Angeles Urban Search and Rescue Firefighter was in the raft with the mother and son. He says he was responsible for their safety. When that raft flipped, what did he feel?
ARTWOOD: For that short period of time the terror in my -- you know, my heart was being torn apart thinking -- you know, I have two small kids at home -- you know, how would you feel? How would you feel? Just brutal. We had over half the boat flooded, and in a matter of seconds, less than that, we're in the water swimming. You go under water, I pop up, my first thing is, where is the mother? Where is the child?
MARQUEZ: The firefighter was immediately separated from the mother and son. Atwood now had to concentrate on saving himself while Captain Larry Collins made the split-second decision to run along the river to track the mother and son until he had an opportunity to act.
CAPT. LARRY COLLINS, L.A. COUNTY FIRE DEPT.: I was seeing this as do or die, get them now, especially get the baby now before another wave come -- a wave or flood surge comes in and washes her off that sandbar.
MARQUEZ: Collins was in charge of the entire operation. He finally got to the mother and the boy after they washed up on a sandbar.
COLLINS: This baby was crying pretty vigorously, weakly, but vigorously. He was very cold and shivering. He was -- you know, clearly hypothermic, he was kind of a gray pallor.
MARQUEZ: The baby can be heard crying as he's carried to a waiting ambulance.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, can you tell me how long they were in the water?
MARQUEZ: The baby's cries are music to firefighters' ears. The team that specializes in rescues almost saw one go very badly.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Firefighters almost saw another attempt went wrong in a flooded creek in suburban Los Angeles. Miguel Marquez also has that story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: C'mon now, c'mon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, he's in the water!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's in the water!
MARQUEZ: It was a rescue that almost didn't happen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's coming faster. He's coming faster. He's coming faster. Tell him to get ready.
MARQUEZ: The minutes leading up to the rescue are an example of traing, ingenuity, sweat, and pure luck.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got him, we got him. I think we got him. He's out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Woo! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yea!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Woo-hoo!
MARQUEZ: The man on top of the BMW is William McCrea (PH), an eye surgeon from central California. He and his Beemer are floating down rain swollen drainage canal called Coyote Creek in suburban Los Angeles. How he got there is a story in itself.
CAPT. THOMAS MCGAULEY, SANTA FE SPRINGS FIRE DEPT.: We had a vehicle traveling northbound on one our local freeways that had gone through the barricade and had fallen into the Coyote Creek reservoir.
MARQUEZ: The car stayed still long enough for his 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.
CAPT. MARK TUBBS, SANTA FE SPRINGS FIRE DEPT.: 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 normally would 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 McCrea was headed south, his car now a boat.
TUBBS: 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're trained to do, firefighters said up 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 pylon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right in the center, Thomas.
TUBBS: 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've trained for swift water rescue, but the typical scenario is you know you have someone in the river and they're coming down stream, you go ahead 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: Hold on!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get off the car!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on dude!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where'd he? MARQUEZ: Firefighters set lines on the bridges front and backside 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. We're going to pull you up. Pull it, pull it, pull it. We got it! 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: He's hanging on for dear life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pull.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where is he?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on back, we've got him, we got him. Jesus Christ. Don't -- 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 McCrea literally at the end of the rope as firefighters desperately try to pull him to waiting hands the rope ran out.
CAPT. MIKE YULE, SANTA FE FIRE DEPT.: Right about the time that we were attempting to stop the pull on the rope and grab him was when he let go. He just didn't have the strength any longer.
MARQUEZ: McCrea is able to grab a life vest tethered to the rope on the far side of the bridge.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey John, put that other vest behind him, float it behind him in case he loses it.
MARQUEZ: McCrea rides the river as though on a boogie board. Rescuers inch him to the side. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah! Yeah! Right on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: McCrea asked first about her daughter and her friend.
WILLIAM MCCREA, RESCUED: Are the girls OK?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
MCGAULEY: 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 -- you know, kiss my wife and the kids and tell them, "You know what? We did a great job today."
TUBBS: It's an unusual feeling. I mean, that'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.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, the technology exists to warn that a tsunami is coming. We'll show you how it works.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: The Pacific Ocean and volcanic ring of fire around it are considered more vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis than most of the world's oceans, but of course the horror of December 26 took place in the Indian Ocean. Around the Pacific, the countries most at risk have had an early warning system for years. Could the same system work in other places? Giarmo Arduino (PH) reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GIARMO ARDUINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The horrific devastation caused by this tsunami may be the worst natural disaster in memory; so many densely populated areas, so many vulnerable communities. If only they had seen it coming.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I looked at the data, I realize that it's going to be a very large tsunami. I didn't have to run my models to know that.
ARDUINO: Half a world away, Vasily Titon did see it coming. He's one of the research scientists who's helped develop a real-time tsunami warning system for the Pacific Ocean.
VASILY TITON, NOAA TSUNAMI PROGRAM: The source tells us the general story. It's going to be a very large tsunami. How large and what exact areas that's going to be hit, that's what the models was telling me and that's what I was trying to do. CHRISTIAN MEINIG, ENGINEERING LEADER NOAA: Why don't I show you where we build and test them?
ARDUINO: Christina Meinig is lead engineer at NOAA Seattle Lab, where the heart of the warning system, the tsunamimeters, are assembled.
MEINIG: What we have the tsunami meter is made up of a buoy and seafloor unit. The buoy is there to relay the message from the seafloor to the satellites. The actual sensor is actually down on the seafloor. And this can be in depths as deep as 6,000 meters. The heart is really in this titanium pressure housing here.
ARDUINO (on camera): It's like a computer.
MEINIG: Yeah it is. It's a microcomputer designed here that was designed here at the lab, at PMEL, that acts as the communication device, but in essence, this is computer is working 24/7 down on the seafloor, constantly looking for tsunami and pressure information.
ARDUINO: Tsunami, not an earthquake? Not moving on the ground?
MEINIG: Well, that's a good point. It can pick up both. If the ground shakes, the sensor will feel like it's a change in pressure as well. The system will wake up, go to its high rate mode, as well. It can't tell whether it's an earthquake or a tsunami.
ARDUINO: Something abnormal is going on?
MEINIG: Something abnormal is going on.
ARDUINO (voice-over): How much does a tsunamimeter cost? $250,000. There are seven employs in the system, but NOAA would like to expand that to 20 for adequate cover.
It is an inexact science now, but these devices wake up when a tsunami passes over. The data they transmit will be used to predict a tsunami's course and destructive power.
TITON: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the ocean, that so that we will be able to measure a tsunami while it's propagating, and then we can put together the models in real time before the tsunami wave would arrive on the coast, we would know how high it's going to be. Is it going to be dangerous?
(UNINTELLIGIBLE) that's the challenge, how high it's going to be?
TITON: That's a huge challenge.
ARDUINO: The Pacific network of stations monitor wave and earthquake activity is able to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) potential targets within minutes.
MEINIG: The whole timeliness here, since these waves can mover very quickly. We've set goals in the United Stats for how fast this information needs to travel. So, for instance, if we look at this data path from the seafloor to the buoy, to the satellite, and then back down to Hawaii, this entire data bath takes less than two minutes, so very quickly you can understand, get the data in front of decision-maker, that, do we have a question?
ARDUINO: Frank Gonzalez says there are three simple signs to look for.
FRANK GONZALEZ, NOAA OCEANOGRAPHER: One, none or all of them may occur, the first is if you're close it and the earthquake occurs, that's very obvious. People feel that shaking. The other is the recession of the water. You can be sure that if you're on the coast and the water recedes in such a manner, there's probably going to be a very large tsunami behind it. And finally there's a very strange phenomena that we don't completely understand that is frequently reported by people, and that's a loud roar that accompanies a tsunami.
Reporter: Less developed nations have such urgent problems to attend to that worrying about low-probability events is not a priority. In this case, the Indian Ocean had not been hit by a big tsunami in a century.
GONZALEZ: It is shocking but understandable. If you're dealing with a low-probability event, but with very high consequences, and officials all over the world have to struggle with the resources that are available.
TITON: It's a rare event, but as this event showed, it's in effect is...
(on camera): Can be catastrophic.
TITON: It can be catastrophic and it can be avoided with a very small investment, if you think about it. And it's so simple to avoid a tsunami. Just go away from the coast.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: The U.N. said this week; it plans to put a global tsunami warning system in place within two years. And the U.S. government says it will build a warning system for the Atlanta coast and Caribbean.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: When we come back, meet a man who loves extreme weather, at least the snowy variety.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Wherever you live, you are at risk from some of nature's extremes, whether it's earth quakes in California, tornadoes in the Midwest, or hurricanes on the East coast. Most of us just grit or teeth and cope the best we can, but there are a few people who really enjoy the worst nature can dish out. Jason Bellini introduces us to one of them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Norm Saylor knows snow.
NORM SAYLOR, OWNER, DONNER SKI RANCH: When you push the snow, it doesn't take the air out of it.
BELLINI: Norm lives in northern California. Norm knows most of his customers don't love snow the way he does.
SAYLOR: I will get them there. They'll be there in the morning. All right. God (bleep) that guy.
BELLINI: First at the summit of the Donner Pass, few, if any, towns in the Sierra Nevada Mountains get as much snow as Norton, ten to 15 feet of it this past week along.
SAYLOR: Maybe it's such a big storm, somebody will have to open an arm and a leg restaurant, because people will eat each other to survive.
BELLINI: His off-color joke a reference to the "Donner Party." In the winter of 1846-1847, half the Donner party perished trying to get over the mountains, some of the group resorting to cannibalism. Norm believes the Donner party got trapped in a snowstorm right here in Norton.
SAYLOR: You can almost get the feeling and the sensation of being with those people.
BELLINI: In 1866, the first transcontinental railroad was built through Donner Pass. Forty feet of snow that winter made it the most difficult section to build. Decades later, motorists on Interstate 40, the first highway linking the East and West coasts, ran into trouble here.
SAYLOR: It was a lot harder then, because we didn't have the equipment that we have today. That's the main thing. Today it's a piece of cake to go out there and go to work because the equipment is so good, it's so strong, so powerful.
BELLINI: Even so, over this past weekend, California had to close the modern road west running through here, Interstate 80. Norm knows in the end he'll benefit from the epic snowstorm. He owns the Donner Ski Ranch.
BELLINI (on camera): Kind of funny, the owner of the ski mountain's out plowing the parking lot.
SAYLOR: Well, that's because the owner of the ski resort has fun plowing the parking lot.
BELLINI (voice-over): Norm also knows of all things, snowboarding. He says his was the first resort to welcome snowboarders.
All I wanted was his $10. I didn't care what he was on a snowboard or whether he had skis, or what he was on. I just wanted his money and that's how snowboarding truly got started.
BELLINI: At 71-year-old Norm tries with his albums and stories to keep the history of his mountain and of Donner Pass from being buried, a history of snow.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: That's all time we have for now. I'm Miles O'Brien in for Daniel Sieberg who's on assignment. You can see Daniel, myself, and CNN reporters from around the globe all next week in our "Defending America" series. Stay tuned day and night to CNN for reliable news about your security, including on next week's NEXT.
We'll meet a man whose mission in life is to hunt down computer viruses. We'll find out how he does it and what makes him tick, and pick.
All that's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at NEXT@CNN.com or visit us on the web at cnn.com/next.
Thanks so much for joining us; we'll see you "next" time.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
|
