Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Countdown: Discovery; Lost in Lava

Aired July 26, 2005 - 07:33   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Live pictures, the Kennedy Space Center launch pad 39-B, from outside to inside. There you see pilot Jim Kelly getting strapped in by one of the so-called caped crusaders here. Takes a while to get them strapped into that space shuttle ready to go.
Welcome on this AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Miles O'Brien, live from the Kennedy Space Center.

We're going to look at that faulty fuel gauge that forced NASA to scrub the launch two weeks ago. So far in this countdown, those gauges are working just fine. But the head of the space agency wishes they weren't working. We'll explain. Right now let's go to London and Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Miles.

We're coming to you live from Paddington Station this morning. Of course, it's afternoon in London; 100,000 people will travel through here each and every day today. It's a major hub with buses, and trains and the Underground as well.

Coming up this morning, we're going to take a closer look at a man some are calling the 53rd victim of the London bombings. He is the 27-year-old Brazilian national who was gunned down by plainclothes police who thought he was a terrorist. We're going to retrace for you the steps he took the day he died.

Let's go to Carol, who's got a look at the news this morning.

Hey, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Soledad. Thank you. And good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, this just in to CNN. A United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to London was diverted to Boston's Logan Airport. Now this is according to Massachusetts officials. There is word that three passengers were acting suspiciously onboard that plane. The aircraft was searched. Nothing was found. Of course, we'll have more details as they become available.

U.S. and North Korea back at the negotiating table, along with diplomats from four other nations. A new round of multinational talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program now under way in Beijing, China. The north had said it would consider scrapping its nuclear program exchange for aid and diplomatic relations with Washington.

The State Department is urging Americans living or traveling in Egypt to be extra cautious. An American woman was among the 84 people killed in the attacks in Egypt.

Kristina Miller was in Sharm El Sheikh to celebrate her 27th birthday. Her sister talked about how Miller's life was cut short.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANY MILLER, VICTIM'S SISTER: She met her boyfriend who she's currently with, who was also involved in the attack. And, yes, they were planning on getting married, and she was planning on just starting a whole brand new life. She's been the happiest she's ever been the past seven months.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Kristie Miller's family says they're still in shock, but believe she is in a better place.

We could learn more this morning about the deaths of four Boy Scout leaders in Virginia. They were killed Monday in an electrical accident while setting up camp during an event known as the National Jamboree. Three other people were hurt. More than 40,000 Boy Scouts, leaders and volunteers are attending this event. A statement posted on the Boy Scouts Web site called the accident a tragic loss.

And do I need to tell you this? Another scorcher. Temperatures soaring into the triple digits in several cities from Washington to Nebraska. The blistering heat being blamed for a number of deaths this summer. At least 24 people have died in the Phoenix area alone. Heat warnings and advisories are in effect throughout much of the country.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: About three hours to go before the candles are lit, the space shuttle streaks towards the heavens. The launch comes 13 days after the team scrubbed the first attempt due to a faulty fuel sensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They were so close. Suited up, strapped in, the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery stealing themselves for the wild ride to orbit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the vehicle, the ecosensors for some reasons did not pave (ph) today, and so we're going to have to scrub this launch attempt.

O'BRIEN: Instead, they got a leisurely drive in a motor home back to their quarters. The first launch since the loss of Columbia and her crew of seven would have to wait for another day. WAYNE HALE, DEP. SHUTTLE PROGRAM MANAGER: And I think we're all still struggling a little bit with the ghosts of Columbia. And therefore, we want to make sure we do it right. This has -- this has been a very vexing problem.

O'BRIEN: The showstopper cropped up two hours and 20 minutes before they were set to light the candles. The culprit: a faulty hydrogen fuel gauge inside the external tank designed to shut down the shuttle main engines before they run dry. An inoperable fuel sensor system could cause an emergency landing or worse, a catastrophic failure. And so shuttle engineers got to work.

HALE: I would tell you that, based on the last 10 days worth of effort, the huge number of people and the tremendous number of hours that have been spent in testing and analysis, I think that we're coming to the right place.

O'BRIEN (on camera): But they aren't exactly there just yet. NASA's best and brightest remained stumped over what is causing the problem with the fuel sensor.

Is it in fact the sensor itself? This is a spare. Or is it some of the wires that are connected to it? Or is it the black box which actually controls the whole system?

No one can say for certain. And so NASA has decided to change its rules. It used to be they required four of these sensors before they would launch. Now they say three is enough.

MICHAEL GRIFFIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: These sensors are normally not used at all. There has to be at least one failure of our system before these sensors come into play. If they come into play, we need two of them. So if we launch with three, then it would take a second failure to take out one of the sensors and we'd still be OK.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): But it remains a controversial decision. Some engineers inside NASA wonder if the shuttle team could have a case of launch fever and might be making decisions the way it did during the Columbia mission. NASA engineers say they may fly with the problem, but they insist they will know where it is and what it is before they launch the crew.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: It's now about inside three hours into the launch. If you look over my shoulder, you see the countdown clock. It says two hours to launch. Basically, there's just about an hour of hold time built in. That's how they keep themselves on schedule.

Our special coverage of the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery -- we hope it's a launch -- begins at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time right here at CNN. Launch, once again, 39 minutes later. We hope you'll stay with us for that.

Now back to Soledad in London. Good morning again, Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: (INAUDIBLE)

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Clearly, we've lost the audio with Soledad. We'll try to get that rectified. Let's do a quick picture. I want to show you Soichi Noguchi about to get on the Space Shuttle Discovery, as he gives a sign. He's sending out -- what does it say? "Out to Launch." "Out to Launch" it is.

We'll be back with more of our coverage of the Space Shuttle Discovery, its launch imminent, as well as coverage from London.

Stay with us for a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Police here in London are continuing the man hunt for the suspects in last week's bombing attacks. More details coming out now, though, about that terrible tragedy, the mistaken shooting of an unarmed Brazilian man.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): He's being called the 53rd victim of the London terror, another commuter in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Jean Charles de Menezes was killed by police last Friday, more two weeks after the deadly terrorist bombings.

(on camera): To piece together the last minutes of this man's life, you have to begin here, at the apartment he shared with his two cousins on Skosher (ph) Road. It's blocked off with police tape now.

He walked out at 10:00 on Friday. He was unaware the building was under surveillance. He was wearing a heavy jacket. It was zipped up on a warm day. Police thought that stuck out and so they followed him.

(voice-over): The building had been under surveillance, one of the apartments inside a possible terrorist hideout. But Menezes wasn't a terrorist. He was an electrician, a 27-year-old Brazilian immigrant on his way to work.

He walked a few blocks to a bus station in Tulse Hill. Plainclothes police followed, keeping out of sight. He got on the bus heading to the Stockwell subway station, police still watching his every move.

At Stockwell Station, chaos. Exactly what happened is up for dispute. Police say they yelled at Menezes to stop, but instead he ran on to a train. Everyone agrees the officers tackled him and shot him eight times at close range as he crouched on the floor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He looked horrified, though, absolutely. I caught sight of his face for a split-second. He looked horrified -- absolutely horrified. And then -- and then he was on the floor and dead. S. O'BRIEN: And it was all a horrible mistake. Today, Brazilians rallied at the site of the shooting.

LUIS DE SAUZA, FRIEND OF JEAN DE MENEZES: We are victims of a state of terror.

S. O'BRIEN: Among them, Luis De Sauza, Menezes' friend. His thoughts, he tells us, are with the victim's impoverished parents.

DE SAUZA: It's just a shock, because of -- you can't imagine the family. We're -- we're just thinking about the family, how far they are.

S. O'BRIEN: In Brazil, Montesino (ph) and Maria de Menezes mourn their son. Maria had begged Jean to return to Brazil after the recent bombings.

MARIA DE MENEZES, MOTHER OF JEAN DE MENEZES (through translator): This is the worst suffering of my life, something I never thought would happen.

DE SAUZA: I needed to find an electrician to do the light fixtures. And then someone introduce me to Jean.

S. O'BRIEN: Luis De Sauza owns Brazil By the Kilo, a popular Brazilian restaurant. Jean Menezes was a regular and a friend. But Luis says Jean's heart was always in Brazil.

DE SAUZA: Very homesick. All the time, he's talking about his family.

S. O'BRIEN: He remembers one of their last conversations, about a week ago.

DE SAUZA: He went to send some money to -- for his parents. And he said -- I remember exactly what he said like that. I got to work another two years, make a little bit of money, and go.

S. O'BRIEN: Instead, he was caught up in the hunt for suicide terrorists, where police believe they sometimes have to shoot first and worry about the consequences later.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: The Brazilian community in London is pretty small and quite tight. Last night, we had the chance to sit down with some of the Jean's friends, who say they miss him terribly. We'll talk to them about their fears and their concerns in the wake of his shooting. That's coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.

Let's get back to New York and Carol Costello. Hey, Carol.

COSTELLO: Such a sad story. Soledad, thank you.

Let's talk a little business now. Maybe it's not too late to get into real estate. I think everyone's in real estate right now. We've been hearing it over and over again. The housing market is hot. Andy Serwer is here "Minding Your Business." But we're also hearing the bubble is going to burst.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: We keep hearing this, Carol. We keep hearing experts saying that the housing market is going to cool, but so far, the experts are wrong. Look at these numbers that came out the other day. First of all, existing home sales up. That's fine, 2.6 percent. But the big number here is the annual rate of homes, 7.3 million. That is a record. The median home price, $219,000, another new record. We haven't seen that jump since 1980. Can you say unsustainable?

And we've been talking, of course, over the past couple of weeks about how the bubble, or extremely hot housing prices -- mostly on the coasts, in the Northeast and in California. But here we're seeing the Midwest and the South also had big jumps in prices as well. Low interest rates continue to fuel this rise, Carol.

And one interesting point, I think, that we should make is that rents right now are a really good value. In other words, if you're thinking about buying versus renting, moving to a new place, renting may be the way to go because the gap now between what it would cost to rent the same condo or apartment or even house is huge right now. So renting is a better value.

COSTELLO: A better value. Plus, if you want to buy a home to invest in later, live in later, you can rent where you're working and then buy where you're going to retire.

SERWER: That's right.

COSTELLO: That's my dream, Andy.

SERWER: Makes sense to me, Carol.

COSTELLO: Me, too. Thank you, Andy.

SERWER: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, the Texas hiker who was lost for five days in an Hawaiian lava field before he was rescued. We'll meet him, as well as the teenager who helped save his life. That's next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: His trip to paradise included a brush with death. Texas hiker Dewey Gaedcke was lost for five days on a lava field near Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano. Just as rescuers were calling off the search on Friday, he was spotted by a teenager on a helicopter tour.

Dewey Gaedcke joins us live from Houston. And also his rescuer, Peter Frank, joins us as well from Pasadena, California. Welcome to you both.

DEWEY GAEDCKE, RESCUED FROM LAVA FIELD: Good morning. COSTELLO: Oh, we have to start with you, Dewey. So you get out of your car one day and decide to go into the lava fields. How did you get lost?

GAEDCKE: Well, I was looking at a map that wasn't very detailed and I thought I could walk straight back to the road and the car and the parking lot along the coast. And the road didn't end at the coast. And it was dark because, that's the best time to see the lava, so I got turned around.

COSTELLO: And, you know, a lava field, everything looks pretty much the same. So did you ever think you'd be out there for five days?

GAEDCKE: I sure hoped not.

COSTELLO: Tell us how hot it was.

GAEDCKE: Well, near the steam -- near the lava, the steam vents, it was quite hot. Other than that, it just, you know, sun on the rocks kind of tropics hot. And then at night it was very cold.

COSTELLO: And there's no shade, either, so as you become dehydrated, you become disoriented. I have heard that you squeezed water from moss to survive because you had no water with you.

GAEDCKE: Yes. There's no place where water gets captured out there. And I was -- just got lucky. I was crawling through this dense jungle, licking drops of water off the leaves, and I put my hand on a tree and found something, it felt spongy. And that ended up saving my life.

COSTELLO: Did you know previously that if you squeezed moss that water would come out and be drinkable?

GAEDCKE: No. I just felt it. I accidentally put my hand on it and it felt moist, like a sponge. I had already -- I'd been a day and a half without water, and I had experienced how disoriented I had gotten and how bad my judgment had gotten. And so I felt like, you know, getting sick from bad water in two or three days was better than dying in a day from no water. So I went ahead and risked it.

COSTELLO: But you had a pretty strong constitution because you happened to have a mirror, right?

GAEDCKE: I had a camera case with a mirror on it that I used every day to try to signal the helicopters.

COSTELLO: And you signaled more than one helicopter, and they flew by. That had to make you feel terrible.

GAEDCKE: Oh, yes. Eight or ten a day I tried to signal. But I could never -- the sun was never in the right place, or the helicopter was never in the right place, or there was clouds over the sun, and they were too high, et cetera. So it was frustrating.

COSTELLO: So then came along the helicopter with Peter inside. Peter, what did you see from way up there?

PETER FRANK, SPOTTED LOST HIKER: It just looked like a little flash, like sun glinting off something metal. Pretty much.

COSTELLO: And so what did you say to the helicopter pilot?

FRANK: Well, I picked up the cabin microphone, and I just asked him if he knew what that flash down on the lava field was, and he said he didn't.

COSTELLO: Did he believe -- I mean, did it take some convincing for you to say, you know, I think somebody's in trouble down there?

FRANK: Well, I didn't immediately jump to somebody's in trouble. I was more curious about what would be reflective down there. But he took me seriously, and he volunteered to -- and then we just went down and got a closer look.

COSTELLO: And they found Dewey down there. Dewey, what would you like to say to Peter at this point?

GAEDCKE: I just want to thank him for being so observant, for saving my life. And just really grateful to him. He's a great kid.

COSTELLO: He certainly is. Dewey Gaedcke, Peter Frank. Thank you for joining AMERICAN MORNING this morning.

GAEDCKE: Thank you.

FRANK: Thank you.

COSTELLO: All right, let's head out to the Kennedy Space Center and Miles once again. Isn't that a great story?

M. O'BRIEN: Unbelievable story. Great survival story, and I'm sure there'll be a book and a movie coming soon.

Still to come on this split edition of AMERICAN MORNING, a glimpse into the future. We'll get a sneak peek at what lies ahead as NASA thinks about what happens after the space shuttle. Stay with us for that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com