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American Morning

Hurricane Dennis: The Aftermath; Space Shuttle Discovery Prepares to Launch

Aired July 11, 2005 - 09:32   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody. Is it just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. And we have special coverage today of Hurricane Dennis and its aftermath.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up, we're going to talk to the head of the Red Cross in northwest Florida, a man who's got his hands full and his work is nowhere near done. Today he has this new disaster zone inside an old disaster zone.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, work never done. Kind of describes the work of all of the people there who've got to clean up, even though Hurricane Dennis, not as bad as predicted and not as bad, certainly, as Ivan, in many cases, there's lots of work ahead.

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Well, Hurricane Dennis came onshore at Nevarre Beach in Florida's Panhandle. That's where the winds were the highest, 121 miles an hour, and that is where you would expect to find the most damage.

Randi Kaye is on board hurricane one in Nevarre, Florida. Hey, Randi. Give us a sense, first of all -- is the damage as bad as we would expect there? And where are you right now?

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Actually, Soledad, we made our way -- we're making our way to Nevarre. We're actually in Pace, Florida, right now. We're at the Pace Volunteer Fire Department. We are in Hurricane One. That way we can bring you all the damage that we see around the area live, right from Hurricane One. This is the Pace Volunteer Fire Department and they definitely have a fire to put out here when they arrive for work possibly today or tomorrow. These are corrugated steel garage doors here.

The two fire trucks are inside. They're OK. They seem to be all in one piece. But the control, the remote control for this garage door, is up on the other side of the building. So these are already broken from the winds of Hurricane Dennis. There's some junk here along the floor. And then all the way over there in the distance, you can see a huge tree that has come down. And luckily, right past that tree is a house, so it's a good thing that that tree went down the way that it did and not on to that house.

We're going to get back in Hurricane One, because we want to take you down Highway 9 here just a little bit and show you -- as we pull our cables here in the car, because we are tethered to Hurricane One, just in case. We want to take you down Highway 9, which is ten miles or so away from our hotel, where we were this morning, the Ramada Inn where we showed you that damage. We're going to get in, show you exactly what's along this highway here for just a moment.

And it's actually -- what's amazing is that it's a fairly sunny day here. It's a very sunny day here, and it's hard to believe some of the damage that we're seeing. And some of the sights along the way have been pretty dramatic. We saw the National Guard outside directing traffic, because the traffic lights still aren't working. Much of the area, still without power. And right over here, we're going to pull in right up there -- wait till you see this.

This we just thought was interesting to show because it's a bit ironic. Here we go. Check this out. This is the All State Car Insurance office. And take a look at it. The roof is down. There's a car, believe it or not, miraculously OK, in one piece, but they're going to need a little bit of insurance work themselves there -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Hey, Randi, let me ask you a quick question. Those fire trucks that are fine, can they open those doors so the trucks can get out if they need to?

KAYE: Yes, I did look at that, went in, checked out the garage. And they -- I think they can open the doors. The one doesn't look as badly injured as the other one, but they can open the doors. The fire trucks need to be in working order. They can get in the trucks and it does appear they can pull those doors up.

S. O'BRIEN: Randi Kaye in Hurricane One, making her way across the land, checking out the devastation there. Thanks, Randi -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Our next guest has survived the last five Florida hurricanes. Of course, it hasn't been too long a period of time for five of them, as you recall, last season. He's Greg Strader, CEO of the American Red Cross of Northwest Florida.

And Greg, you know, they say lightning doesn't strike twice, but I guess hurricanes do because it hit, you know, pretty much where Ivan hit ten months ago. The good news is not as bad a punch.

GREG STRADER, CEO, AMERI. RED CROSS NW FLORIDA: Fortunately, that's true. Ivan was a devastating punch. But there's still very heavily impacted areas in a number of communities in northwest Florida. We're receiving reports that, in some cases, the damage is worse than Ivan in select communities.

M. O'BRIEN: Tell us about that. Where is that and what kind of damage are you seeing there?

STRADER: Those reports are for our Century, Walnut Hill, Milton, Bagdad, San Destin. Gulf Breeze was fairly heavily impacted. So a number of communities in our four county service area northwest Florida.

M. O'BRIEN: So, in other words, if you go to these specific locations, you might see Ivan-like damage or perhaps even worse, just not as wide an area that was impacted?

STRADER: That's certainly the reports that we've heard and some of the eyes on the ground impact assessment from Red Cross personnel that have actually toured those areas.

M. O'BRIEN: What -- so the immediate needs, I'm gathering, there are some people who are without homes, without roofs, that kind of thing. Are you in a pretty good position to help them out?

STRADER: We're fortunate that we've got 109 emergency response vehicles capable of providing mobile feeding support that are coming to the affected area. We've got a total of 19 kitchens coming in through our partners in Southern Baptist and a number, 23, trailers that are coming in with kitchen supplies. We should have the capability of feeding some 200,000 meals a day, which is going to be essential because there are still some 215,000 customers without power, based on reports from yesterday evening.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. And just quickly -- we're just about out of time -- the shelters will stay open for how long, do you think?

STRADER: The shelters will remain open for as long as needed and then we'll be prepared to provide assistance to individual families.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Greg Strader, keep up the good work. You and your team do great work and we appreciate your efforts on their behalf. We hope they're back on their foot soon. Greg Strader is the CEO of American Red Cross in Northwest Florida.

Let's get another check on the headlines now. Kelly Wallace is looking at things for us from the New York news room. Hello, Kelly.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, Miles, and good morning to all of you. Here are some of those other stories "Now in the News."

New developments to tell you about regarding last week's bomb attacks in London. British police now confirming death toll in those attacks has risen from 49 to at least 53 people killed. Police are now trying to identify the bodies. They're also looking for clues, calling on people to send in pictures and video taken with digital cameras and mobile phones at the bomb sites. Some 700 people were injured in the attacks. Dozens remain missing. Prime Minister Tony Blair is set to address the British parliament later today.

President Bush saying that the attacks in London are fresh proof for the need to stamp out terrorism. The president is set to deliver a progress report on the war on terror. He will speak next hour at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia. CNN will have live coverage of the speech at 10:40 a.m. Eastern here on a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING.

Hundreds of Americans will soon be heading to Afghanistan. CNN has learned that 700 U.S. Army troops from the 82nd Airborne division are expected to head out within the next few weeks. The additional forces being sent ahead of the September 18th parliamentary elections in that country. And hundreds of firefighters in southern Colorado are working to tame an 8,000-acre wildfire. Strong winds and high temperatures are hampering relief efforts. Thousands of people have been evacuated, but there are no reports of any injuries. Still, Colorado's governor has declared a state of emergency. That gets you caught up. Now back to Miles and Soledad, reporting from Atlanta today.

M. O'BRIEN: We will see you in New York tomorrow.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, we'll be back there tomorrow.

Kelly, thanks.

And back to our top story. Next, the aftermath of Hurricane Dennis, live reports from Florida, as residents now assess what's left. Damage is expected to total as much as $2.5 billion.

M. O'BRIEN: And somewhere in the midst of that storm, the countdown began for the Space Shuttle Discovery set to launch on Wednesday afternoon. The first flight since Columbia, a look at what NASA has done to make sure the mission is a success.

Stay with us for an inside look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Florida National Guard troops are being deployed to provide aid to areas struck by Dennis. For some of them, it's a familiar mission. Many were sent to help with recovery efforts in the aftermath of last year's hurricane season.

Colonel Jerry Vaughn, the chief of staff of Florida's Army National Guard, is in Tallahassee, Florida today.

Nice to see you, colonel. Thanks for talking with us.

Just how many troops do you have deployed today.

COL. JERRY VAUGHN, FLA. ARMY NATL., GUARD: Well, thank you, and good morning.

We have approximately 2,600 Florida National Guardsmen, army and air, soldiers and airmen deployed in support of this hurricane. Currently we have...

S. O'BRIEN: Forgive me for interrupting, I was just going to ask you, where their efforts are focused.

VAUGHN: We have 1,000 soldiers and airmen as post of Task Force 164, which is taking care of what we think is the center gravity probably of the storm, which is Santa Rose, Escambia and Oppoloosa (ph) counties. We also have another approximately 1,000 soldiers moving into what we call the yellow zone, which will be those counties east of that, in west Florida.

So we'll probably have saturated in that area, probably 2,000 soldiers and airmen today. And in addition, at Duke Field, we're setting up a logistical staging area to receive mass quantities of food, water and ice to make distribution down to what we call points of distribution in those affected counties.

S. O'BRIEN: So those soldiers and airmen, et cetera, what exactly are they doing?

VAUGHN: Well, we're doing security operations. We're doing humanitarian operations. We're doing search-and-rescue operations.

S. O'BRIEN: Have you had many calls for search and rescue? The word that we've gotten is that, thankfully, nobody was killed in the storm. Are you getting many calls about people who are missing?

VAUGHN: No, but the assessments are still ongoing. It's kind of a little too early to -- we may have some pockets we haven't uncovered. So that assessment's going on.

S. O'BRIEN: And you talked a little bit about security. Obviously, looting can be a big problem in the wake of disasters like this. Have you had a problem about looting that you've heard about?

VAUGHN: No, even last year, we had some minor looting, not really a big thing. Most of the people, citizens in that area, are really focused on the recovery and response operations.

S. O'BRIEN: You talked...

VAUGHN: We have some minor, but not much.

S. O'BRIEN: You talked a little bit about last year, and as we mentioned, coming in to you, many of the soldiers actually have done this before. They were called out a lot last year to help out in those storms. Any lessons learned in past year that you were able to apply this year?

VAUGHN: Well, our lessons learned is, hey, get here quickly and get here with a lot. And what we would rather do is respond to our citizens with an overwhelming response. It's much easier for us to draw down than it is to try to build back up. So our lesson here is, hey, we want put as much as support, troops, and not just the Florida National Guard, but our entire state agency and federal agencies. This is one team, one fight, into that operation, and just saturate that area and suppress whatever issues there are, and we'll right size when it's right for us to do so.

S. O'BRIEN: How long do you expect that you'll all be deployed in hardest-hit areas, and even the less hard-hit areas?

VAUGHN: It's hard to tell you that right now. It can be a week. It could be two or three weeks. And the reason for that is that the assessments -- we've got preliminary assessments, but now we're getting more defined and detailed assessments, which will probably help define how long we're going to be in that area, and those assessments will probably be sometime later on today, we should get a better feel for, you know, how long that we'll be staying in that impacted area.

S. O'BRIEN: Sure to be a busy day today. Colonel Jerry Vaughn, the chief of staff of Florida's Army National Guard, thanks -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Coming up on the program, the shuttle countdown is under way. Wednesday afternoon is a big day for NASA, assuming the weather goes well, a big day either way, but we hope for a launch. What has NASA learned from the Columbia disaster, now two-and-a-half years ago? We'll take a look inside things from two people who really have important positions. Sort of back on the hot seat, they'll be. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Clock is ticking backward at the Kennedy Space Center. The countdown to launch the Space Shuttle Discovery began last night. Discovery is scheduled to launch at about 3:51 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, weather permitting, technicalities permitting, of course. It's been two-and-a-half years since the Columbia disaster. At NASA, they say confidence is high, but of course, the memories of that awful day, February 1, 2003, are still raw.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN (on camera): Is it hard to look at still?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I mean, it's tough. I mean, I've probably seen this picture 10,000 times.

M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): NASA engineer Armando Oliu looks at a lot of images like these. High-speed, high-resolution film of the space shuttle as it rockets towards orbit. His job is to look for trouble, anything unusual. And that is precisely what he saw on January 16, 2003, plain as day.

ARMANDO OLIU, NASA: It was obvious that we had the largest piece of debris come off the external tank that we'd ever had. And it was the largest piece of debris that we had ever seen strike the orbit.

M. O'BRIEN: So Oliu notified the shuttle management. But foam hitting an orbiter was old news for them. It had (INAUDIBLE) spacecraft from day one, a maintenance headache, but not seen as a real threat. NASA engineers held a series of meetings to try to guess how much damage the foam might have caused.

OLIU: And I knew some of those engineers -- I was confident that that data was valid. I was confident that the debris event wasn't going to catastrophic hit to the vehicle. It was going to be a damage site, but it was going to be survivable.

M. O'BRIEN (on camera): Over the years, shuttle managers convinced themselves the ever-so light foam that covers the shuttle's external fuel tank was essentially not a threat and that the piece that came off of Columbia's fuel tank was tantamount a styrofoam cooler blowing off of a truck on the interstate -- startling, perhaps, but essentially harmless.

(voice-over): And that is what Columbia flight director Leroy Cain had concluded on the morning of February 1st.

LEROY CAIN, NASA FLIGHT DIRECTOR: When we came in that morning, it was like any other entry that I've ever been associated with.

M. O'BRIEN: But then the troubling calls from his team began filling his headset. This one at 8:52, from the controller in charge of maintenance, mechanical and crew systems, or Max (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: FYI, I've just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle, hydraulic (INAUDIBLE) temperatures. Two of them on system one, and one in each system two and three.

M. O'BRIEN: Two minutes later Colombia's computers moved control (INAUDIBLE), then fired rockets to compensate for the added drag on the left wing. Temperature sensors went up or completely failed. Then at 8:59 and 13 seconds...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pressure on (INAUDIBLE) of both tires.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Colombia Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is it instrumentation, Max (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Out by Max, those are also...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger.

M. O'BRIEN: That was the last anyone heard from Columbia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Colombia Houston, com check.

M. O'BRIEN: What began as data turned to raw emotion, sadness and grief.

CAIN: None of us wanted to personally or professionally fail. None of us wanted to personally fail a crew. These were friends and neighbors of ours. You know, their kids go to school with our kids, that kind of thing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two, one, zero.

M. O'BRIEN: And as that subsided, the shuttle team went back to work, doing what engineers do, understanding the problem. Their assumptions were wrong. The foam blasted a huge hole in the leading edge of the wing. Despite all that, Leroy Cain will be back in flight director's seat when Discovery launches and lands.

(on camera): So you don't dread going back to it?

CAIN: I don't dread it at all, no. I couldn't have predicted it back then, but I had to get to a point, get myself to a point of being able to say, I'm still about doing this job and being in this business or I'm not. And if I am, is it for all of right reasons?

OLIU: This is the new digital and computer room.

M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): And Armando Oliu will be back as well, manning his new and improved post at the Cape, watching for trouble in ways he could only imagine before. NASA has spent millions to add new shuttle tracking cameras, many more images, much clearer, nothing out of focus.

(on camera): Can you say fairly categorically, if something falls off, one way or another, you're going to see it?

OLIU: Well, we'll definitely either see the event -- the debris coming off, or see the evidence of the debris coming off.

M. O'BRIEN: Look likes night and day.

OLIU: It's night and day. Night and day.

M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): The hope is everything at NASA is now like night and day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Let's take a look at what's going on in the Florida peninsula. Of course, as you know -- do a little geography class -- that is Florida's Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canavarel, which kind of juts out there. Picture's actually quite nice today. And as a matter of fact, what I'm told is -- you know, of course, there was some initial concern that Hurricane Dennis might head in that direction. Of course, it did not.

And so what is happening now is, believe it or not, what tends to happen when hurricanes come through is they kind of clear out the air. And the hope is that, come Wednesday, the weather will be good. As a matter of fact, the prediction is 70 percent go on the weather side of things. Now, 4:00 p.m. July, Florida. I'm not a weather forecaster, but I'd say maybe some thunderstorms in the mix, but you never know.

S. O'BRIEN: I'm not, either, but I say good chance of thunderstorms. When will you head out to go?

M. O'BRIEN: Going to head out tomorrow. I'm losing track of days here.

S. O'BRIEN: Tomorrow's Tuesday.

M. O'BRIEN: Tomorrow is Tuesday. We'll fly out in the afternoon and on Wednesday morning, we'll have some special coverage on AMERICAN MORNING, which will begin the day. The tanking of the shuttle begins that morning.

S. O'BRIEN: Great.

M. O'BRIEN: So it's pretty exciting stuff.

S. O'BRIEN: Excellent.

M. O'BRIEN: All right.

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, more on our top story, the aftermath of Hurricane Dennis. Our special extended edition of AMERICAN MORNING returns in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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