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American Morning
New Orleans Universities Struggle to Recover from Katrina; Naval Hospital Goes Through Disaster Drill; Space Tourist #3
Aired September 30, 2005 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Kelly.
KELLY WALLACE, CNN ANCHOR: And happy Friday, Miles.
O'BRIEN: It is good to be Friday.
WALLACE: It is good to be Friday. And hello, everyone. These are some of those other stories "Now in the News."
After spending 12 weeks in jail, "New York Times" reporter Judith Miller is set to name her source before a federal grand jury today. Miller says she has received permission from a confidential source to testify before a panel investigating the leak of a CIA operative's name. That source is apparently Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Scooter Libby.
A top U.N. public health expert warning that up to 150 million people could die, unless officials act immediately to control the avian flu. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is adding $4 billion to a Pentagon spending bill to head off an outbreak among humans. The bulk of the money is tagged to stockpile the anti-viral drug that has proved effective against the disease.
Some congressional Democrats are calling on former education secretary Bill Bennett to apologize. At issue, remarks Bennett made on his radio program, linking the crime rate with the abortion of black babies.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
BILL BENNETT, FMR. EDUCATION SECRETARY: If you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do. But your crime rate would go down."
(END AUDIO CLIP)
WALLACE: Now, Bennett says his comments were misinterpreted and taken out of context. He said his point was to show how morally reprehensible it was to support abortion to reduce crime.
And in California, mandatory evacuations underway in the southern part of the state. You're taking a look now at some live pictures from our affiliate KTTV-TV. And you see the fires burning there. More than 2,000 buildings are threatened by this raging wildfire. Thousands of firefighters are on the scene, using every possible resource to contain that blaze. So far, 17,000 acres have been burned, but a break in the weather may give firefighters the help they definitely need.
(WEATHER REPORT)
O'BRIEN: New Orleans universities are desperately trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Their buildings damaged, their students scattered across the country, and really no guarantee they'll ever return.
Joining me now to tell us how they're coping, Tulane University president Scott Cowen and Dillard University president Marvalene Hughes. Good to have you both with us this morning. And I know you're so busy. I appreciate you taking some time out for us.
Let me begin with you, Dr. Hughes. More damage to your campus than to Tulane's, correct? Tell us about what exactly you encountered.
MARVALENE HUGHES, PRES., DILLARD UNIVERSITY: That is correct. We had very serious damage at Dillard University. As a matter of fact, we were underwater for about three weeks, about six to eight feet of water. I just returned last evening. I'll have the first opportunity to visit the campus today. I must report that I'm shocked so far by what I see in the city and beginning to realize how much is ahead of us to start up again.
O'BRIEN: I'm sorry to hear that, first of all. Do you have the sense that you can -- you're going to have to bulldoze buildings and start over? Or can you fix what's there?
HUGHES: I think it will be a combination of things. We had three buildings burned down, as you are aware. We are assessing all of the others that stood in water for so long. And we will know, within a week or so, about how serious this is. So it's a little early to determine the nature of the restoration, construction, and reconstruction.
O'BRIEN: And do you have any sense right now when you might be able to get some sort of academic operation underway, whether it's at that location or at some other temporary location?
HUGHES: Well, you may be aware that we encouraged our students to attend other universities so that there was continuity in their academic programs. Most of them did, as far as we know. We are now planning for an activity in January sometime that brings them back together. We're not certain where that will be. We're looking at sites in Louisiana, as well as in adjacent states. So we know that we would like to bring our community back together, with faculty, staff and students, to reconvene the Dillard ideal sometime in January. It is very probable that it will be in the fall of 2006 before we really are fully operable again.
O'BRIEN: Dr. Cowen, fall of 2006. Is that a time frame you're thinking about, and, along with that, if you give us an assessment of the kind of damage you face. You don't have as many buildings underwater as Dr. Hughes does, do you?
DR. SCOTT COWEN, PRES., TULANE UNIVERSITY: First of all, our campus fared relatively well, compared to others in the city of New Orleans. And we announced the other day that we will be open January 17th for the spring semester. And I'm very comfortable, as I speak to you today, that we will meet that date. I was actually here during the hurricane and stayed four days thereafter, and had a chance to see our campus firsthand. We had a lot of debris all over our campus. Several windows were broken out in buildings, as well as some damage to roofs and some tiles around many of the facilities.
We have over 200 people working on our campuses as I speak today. I had an opportunity to tour the campuses yesterday. We'll do some more inspection today. And the amount of progress within one month has been remarkable. And part of our campus right now looks like it did before the hurricane itself. So based on everything that I am seeing and the work on our campuses, I am very optimistic that we will open up January 17th, as we had originally planned to this spring.
O'BRIEN: Of course, a lot of other pieces have to fall into place before a university can open up. There are all kinds of issues related to just the city in general. In the meantime, your students have moved on to other campuses, as well. You have encouraged them to do so. You're not offering any sort of refunds on tuition, though. Why?
COWEN: First of all, that's not a correct statement. We are offering refunds in tuition, in certain cases. We crafted our tuition policy based on guidance given by nine higher education associations. And our policy is stated on tulane.edu. There are many options that students can follow, some of which would have them get a refund of their tuition.
In addition to that, we announced the other day that we're going to be offering a lanyap (ph) semester in May and June, which would be tuition-free, to those students who wound up paying their tuition in the fall and spring. So I really do encourage people who want to understand our tuition policy to go to tulane.edu and see all the options we have there, because many of those options do allow them to get refunds.
O'BRIEN: So how many students, then, will get refunds who want them?
COWEN: It all depends. They have to really self-select to get a refund. And what we've said is if you are attending a university somewhere around the country, you are free to withdraw from our institution. We'll give you up to November 1st, in which case we'll give you a full refund. And we certainly welcome you to reapply in the spring if you'd like to return in the spring.
O'BRIEN: Are you concerned about the viability of Tulane?
COWEN: Not at all. As a matter of fact, I can tell you the number of people who have asked for withdrawal is very, very small. We have about 13,000 students at Tulane University and less than 100 have shown any indication that they don't want to come back in the spring. So right now, we are much more optimistic about the number of students who will be back in the spring than we were a couple of weeks ago.
O'BRIEN: Scout Cowen and Marvalene Hughes, the presidents of Tulane and Dillard Universities respectively. Thank you for your time, and good luck.
COWEN: Thank you.
HUGHES: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: After the hurricanes, first responders across the country are evaluating how well they would do in an emergency. That was quite a trial run they got for real, in a way, through the hurricanes. In Bethesda, Maryland, on Thursday, a master disaster drill put emergency teams to the test.
CNN's Jeanne Meserve has that story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There are enraged people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need help! Please! Somebody please!
MESERVE: And wounded, and dead, at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, during a mass casualty disaster drill. A delivery truck slams into pedestrians, crashes, explodes and releases a gas eventually identified as toxic anhydrous ammonia.
MESERVE (on camera): Any indication at this point in time that it could be terrorism?
PATRICK FLEMING, ASST. FIRE CHIEF, MEDICAL CENTER: I don't believe so, ma'am. With the security here on this facility, and a routine delivery truck, that comes every day like this, I don't believe so.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two three, lift!
MESERVE (voice-over): The gas drifts over a nearby school, exposing students. With eight hospitals and 600 actors participating, this is a huge exercise.
REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), MARYLAND: The events of Katrina and Rita have highlighted the importance of being prepared, and there's no substitute for being prepared than practicing together the kind of emergency that we may face.
MESERVE: Though New Orleans had conducted an exercise involving a major hurricane hitting this city, systems failed when the real event occurred. Organizers of this exercise say they won't just identify problems, they will correct them.
LT. COL. CHRIS GILLETTE, NATIONAL NAVAL MEDICAL CENTER: We need to learn before the realtime event and improve on this.
MESERVE: This drill reflects a new agreement among the Naval Hospital, the nearby National Institutes of Health, and privately owned Suburban Hospital, which allows them to share facilities, personnel, equipment and medicine in an emergency.
VICE ADM. DONALD ARTHUR, NAVY SURGEON GENERAL: The confluence of all of those assets gives us the ability to respond to whatever might happen if it's a chemical, or a biological or just a blast injury.
MESERVE: Similar collaborations are being struck up elsewhere to maximize medical resources in the hope that the next crisis will not be like the last one.
Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Bethesda, Maryland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: More than 4,000 staff members from the National Naval Medical Center participated in the mass casualty drill, making it the largest the hospital has ever held.
Stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.
Ahead on AMERICAN MORNING, the ship they call Comfort. It is an apt moniker for the Navy's sophisticated hospital ship. We'll find out how this floating hospital really works.
Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're here on board the main deck of the USNS Comfort. I'm here with the public affairs officer onboard this ship, Lieutenant Bashon Mann.
Lieutenant, tell us, people come off those elevators, patients arrive on the helicopter above, ambulance below, they come off that elevator, then what happens?
LT. BASHON MANN, PAO, USNS COMFORT: Well, that's correct. We have a very deliberate methodology here. Patients come off that elevator, go right to our patient administration, get checked onboard, then they're here seen by our active duty corpsmen, our casualty receiving nurses and diagnosed by our docs, and then begin treatment. We call this casualty receiving, but it would also be called an emergency room on a civilian hospital.
So as we continue to walk through, our patient-flow process, it moves from a forward portion of the ship to the rear portion, what we would call aft.
COHEN: And this P.R. here, You can handle anything here land- based hospital can handle? MANN: That's correct. The way we have this casual receiving set up, we have our trauma patients that are seen in these beds right here. OB/GYN toward the rear. And then as we move aft, rear of the ship, this is where we can see ambulatory patients.
COHEN: OB/GYN, you can handle births here. People can give birth here.
MANN: That's correct. We can handle a birth here aboard the ship, anxiously awaiting to see if that's going to be something that happens while we're here in New Orleans, of course. As you see, our active-duty foremen, our casualty-receiving nurses, are all very busy. (INAUDIBLE) receiving patients sometime this morning.
COHEN: Something this morning.
Now this is bigger. This has more beds than most regular hospital ERs?
MANN: That's correct. This entire casualty-receiving facility is a 50-bed capacity, so it is indeed larger than some of these civilian hospitals you would see ashore.
COHEN: You're accepting patients. There aren't any here yet, but when this gets going, it must really be pretty incredible?
MANN: That's correct. Everyone knows their job, foremen, nurses, docs, all very well trained. We've been training the whole time that we've been here at sea. We're all ready in anticipation of receiving patients. Everyone is ready to do their job.
COHEN: OK, now tell us where we're headed now.
MANN: Well, with this patient-flow process, we start here in casualty receiving. We move toward the rear of the ship. We're going now into what is called aft-casualty receiving. If a patient should say, have, say, a leg injury, broken femur, tibia, fibula fracture, you would go into casualty receiving, going into radiology to get an X-ray. We have a CAT scan man further down, toward the rear of the ship. Again, past that, bloodbank, followed by our O.R. Twelve operating rooms here aboard the USNS Comfort, and we actually have four of those operating rooms standing by in case we need to perform a surgery here aboard the ship.
COHEN: So twelve operating rooms, you have a CAT scan, you can deliver babies. Is there anything you can't do on this ship?
MANN: Actually, yes, that's a very good question. We cannot treat cancer patients here aboard the ship, nor can we do open-heart surgery here aboard the Comfort.
COHEN: And is there anything -- this mission is unusual. Usually this ship is helping people in wartime.
MANN: That's correct.
COHEN: Is there any special training that folks have had on this ship to handle the situation in New Orleans?
MANN: Yes, that's true. Since we departed from Baltimore, the folks here, the foremen, the casualty-receiving nurses, our docs, have all been working together, getting training on the types of injuries that we're going to see here in New Orleans, specific to the injuries that you would see in a disaster such as this.
COHEN: Well, thank you, Lieutenant Bashon Mann, onboard the USNS Comfort.
We'll be back with more AMERICAN MORNING after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Oil drilling in the Gulf Coast about at a standstill right now. A report on the overall economic impact on the hurricanes. Must be Andy Serwer time. Hello.
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: Hello, good to see you. We've got some bad news and some good news. What a surprise.
We'll start off with the bad news this morning, Miles. Problems still vexing the oil and gas industry in the Gulf region. Still about 99 percent of oil production in the Gulf is offline, about 80 percent of natural gas. Now, what are the problems? What's going on here? Well, not enough workers. Workers are having a very difficult time getting down there, living, moving around. You can understand those problems. Not enough helicopters. Not enough equipment. All very complicated logistics in that part of the world.
Meanwhile, we're learning that reliable electricity is a problem in the Gulf Coast region, restarting the refineries. We thought that that wouldn't be a problem. Apparently, it is. The administration also warning that oil and natural gas, heating oil and natural gas prices for Americans will be 50 percent higher this winter. You really might want to take a look at your budget and start saving. I mean, that might be a bit an exaggeration, but, you know, it really is a problem here.
O'BRIEN: I'm going to go to Central Park and start chopping down some trees, you know.
SERWER: That's illegal.
O'BRIEN: Oh, that is illegal?
SERWER: He just moved to the city. The administration also next week is going to be announcing a conservation program. The "Wall Street Journal" noting this is ironic, because this is the same administration that earlier said there was no need to have such a program. They're going to be doing that on Monday, apparently.
Meanwhile, here's the good news. The Congressional Budget Office is saying that the damage from the hurricanes not as bad as anticipated. What? Especially...
O'BRIEN: Say what?
SERWER: I'm not sure what they're doing. These people said that it was going to impact GDP, the nation's economy, reduce it by one full percentage point. They said that on September 6th. Now they're saying it's only half a point. Excuse me, but Rita occurred during that period. You know, I'm not sure what they're talking about, so I would not take too much stock in that estimate.
Let's talk about the markets a little bit, Miles. Yesterday, a good one down on Wall Street for investors. A lot of excitement about technology stocks, actually. And all three indexes rose. You can see the Nasdaq, on a percentage basis, rose the most. And today, of course, is the last trading day of the quarter. And it will also have been a good one for investors. Energy stocks really propelling the stock market.
O'BRIEN: I would imagine, yes.
SERWER: And we'll have more on that later in the program.
O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, Andy Serwer.
SERWER: You're welcome.
O'BRIEN: All right, you got $20 million?
SERWER: No, I don't. No, I can't.
O'BRIEN: You're not going to space then, sorry.
SERWER: Sorry.
O'BRIEN: A cool $20 million is what will get you a ride of a lifetime. Scientist and businessman Greg Olsen scheduled to lift off overnight for 10-day journey to space. But don't call him a tourist. Matthew Chance reports from Moscow.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's the ticket of a lifetime. Twenty million dollars for the trip, and 60-year-old U.S. businessman Greg Olsen is only the third space tourist to fork out the cash.
GREG OLSEN, SPACE "PARTICIPANT": I had three reasons. One was just the joy of being in space, weightlessness and so on. I still hope to bring my infrared camera up on board. And three is to share the experience with kids.
CHANCE: For months, he's been immersed in Russian cosmonaut training, having a flight seat cast in the exact shape of his body and fitted with a flight suit for the journey.
He'll be launched into orbit on board a Russian Soyuz rocket, then dock for just over a week at the International Space Station, a highly trained U.S. and Russian crew at the controls. CMDR. WILLIAM MCARTHUR: Well, Larry and I have done a significant amount of training just as a two-person crew. And so integrating a third person for us just gives us more capability. And so we're very confident that having Greg with us, even in an emergency, will be an asset.
CHANCE: It's the same journey taken in 2001 by U.S. entrepreneur Dennis Tito, the first paying space tourist. Mark Shuttleworth, a South African, became the second a year later. The U.S.-based company organizing the trips says it plans to expand space tourism, even offering a flight around the moon for $100 million.
ERIC ANDERSON, SPACE ADVENTURES: Over the next five or ten years at Space Adventures, we will fly more people in space as commercial passengers, as tourists and private explorers, than have flown in space in the history of mankind. Over the next five or ten years. And long-term, it will definitely be private companies, alongside governments, that really open up the space frontier and make it something that the rest of humanity can benefit from.
CHANCE: For now, though, commercial space flight remains the preserve of an adventurous and extremely wealthy few.
Matthew Chance, CNN, Moscow.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: That's quite a ride.
Besides performing some support functions, Olsen will also be test subject for a European space agency study on the effects of micro gravity on the human body. And that explains why he prefers to be called a space participant rather than a space tourist. Despite what you see right there, that is what he doesn't like, OK?
All right, in a moment, today's top stories, including that massive wildfire out west. We'll get the latest on efforts to contain it in a live report, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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