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American Morning
Wisconsin Community Pulling Together After Tragic Accident Involving High School Marching Band; Tropical Storm Wilma Forms in Caribbean
Aired October 17, 2005 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Miles O'Brien. Tropical Storm Wilma forming in the Caribbean just hours ago, the 21st named storm of the year, tying the record. But get this, Wilma has the makings to become a powerful hurricane aimed at the Gulf Coast.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien. A Wisconsin community pulling together after a tragic accident involving the high school marching band. Five people killed, dozens injured in an interstate bus crash. The band was on its way from out-of-town competition. We've got new details this hour.
M. O'BRIEN: And less religion, more resume. The White House relaunching the Supreme Court nomination for Harriet Miers, on this AMERICAN MORNING.
S. O'BRIEN: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody.
M. O'BRIEN: Can you believe we're at Wilma? what a season.
S. O'BRIEN: And Wilma is it, the end of the line as far as the alphabet goes. You move into the Greek alphabet next.
M. O'BRIEN: Which is where we seems to be headed. And the sad fact is, what's going on out there is the makings of a big storm, because the water remains very warm in the Gulf of Mexico.
S. O'BRIEN: It's going to be a mess, no question about that.
(WEATHER REPORT)
S. O'BRIEN: Our other top story this morning, the Wisconsin community of Chippewa Falls is in shock, mourning the deaths of five people who were killed in a bus accident over the weekend. The crash occurred on Interstate 94 near the town of Osseo in Wisconsin. It was a high school outing that turned to tragedy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TANIA RICHTER, PASSENGER ON BUS: There was a lot of sirens. There was probably -- it looked like there was a ton of ambulances.
S. O'BRIEN (voice-over): It happened early Sunday morning on a Wisconsin interstate. A bus carrying Chippewa Falls High School students home from a marching band competition slammed into a tractor- trailer that had just overturned. CAPT. DOUGLAS NOTBOHM, WISCONSIN STATE PATROL: The driver attempted to correct, jackknifed the vehicle, and a motor coach that was also traveling westbound collided with the tractor-trailer unit.
S. O'BRIEN: Five people were killed, including the band director, his wife, their granddaughter and a student teacher and the bus driver. More than two dozen others were taken to area hospitals.
The community is in shock.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As the kids came back, then we talked to them. We let them have access to counselors, and medical folks took a look at them one more time before they were released.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This morning, when I heard the news, I didn't even want to believe it was true, but once I watched it on TV, it hurts.
S. O'BRIEN: Seventeen-year-old senior Tania Richter was a passenger on the bus. She says almost everybody was asleep when the accident happened.
RICHTER: I was mostly in the back. I was a few seats from the back. And I had to crawl out of -- we opened up one of the windows. It was a rescue person down there, he had a ladder, and we had to climb out of the window and down the ladder to get out of there. Everybody had to have shoes on, because there was diesel fuel, and glass and all sorts of stuff on the ground everywhere.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: The principal of Chippewa Falls High School says classes will be held today with special help for grieving students. There is also going to be a news conference held this hour on that crash. We're going to keep you updated on that as well, and we're going to talk to a parent chaperone who was on a trailing bus. That's all just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, I guess you could call it the Miers mulligan. The White House this morning taking another swing at the nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. Suzanne Malveaux live at the White House.
Suzanne, two weeks now. How will they try to relaunch this nomination?
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, you're absolutely right there. The mulligan, as you mentioned, of course, White House insiders, Republican insiders, have been very frustrated here. They don't believe that the administration has had a real clear, coherent message when it comes to Miers. They say they don't care whether or not she is evangelical Christian, whether she is a close friend of the president, they want to hear her qualifications. That is what the White House is focusing on now, really kind of a turn in their strategy, if you will. President Bush later today is going to be meeting with three Texas Supreme Court justices to do just that, to talk about her record. In the meantime, the Democrats have a much different strategy. They want to push Miers forward to the process, before this Senate Judiciary Committee to testify, and then they'll ask the tough questions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CALIFORNIA: I think the way she's been beaten up by the far right is very sexist. I do not believe they would do that to a man. It's true, she is not John Roberts, but then you don't want a court only of John Roberts. And I think what's necessary is for people to hold their fire, give her an opportunity to come before the committee.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: And, Miles, of course, the second part of the White House strategy is, there is really a team of about 20 or so that will be talking very publicly, hitting the airwaves, about what her jobs were, what they actually entitled inside of the White House as a staff secretary, as a White House counsel, exactly what that means. They want to make it very clear that that she wasn't just somebody who was just getting coffee -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Suzanne Malveaux at the White House, thanks -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: In Iraq today, coalition forces say they have killed 70 suspected insurgents in Ramadi. Ramadi is the capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province. In three separate strikes on Sunday, U.S. warplanes dropped bombs, and helicopters fired on suspected insurgents. Two provinces appear to be the only districts where the Iraqi constitution was voted down. Votes, though, are still being counted.
Chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour live for us in Baghdad this morning.
Christiane, good morning to you.
It looks as if the referendum is going to pass, doesn't it?
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTL. CORRESPONDENT: That's what officials are optimistically predicting. The official results have not come out yet, but they're saying that it appears that most of the provinces have voted yes, and that the Sunnis, who in fact did come out this time, most of them voting no, were only able to muster a no vote in two provinces. That would not be enough, if that remains the case, to defeat the referendum. They would have to muster a no vote in three provinces.
So officials are predicting, ahead official results, that this referendum has passed. Now part of the hope of this referendum is that it brings with it not just political stability, but also an end to the insurgency, by bringing the Sunnis into the process and splitting the Sunnis and trying to die off those rejectionists and those who are the core of the insurgents.
As you mentioned, the U.S. said that it did strike in a combination of air and helicopter attacks in the Ramadi area, some 70 insurgents. But as always in these incidents, they are always disputed, and the people on the ground in Ramadi, doctor at a hospital, are saying that all the casualties he's seen are civilians, including a child. So this happens all the time with these attacks and the claims of who was killed and what people are saying on the ground.
In the meantime, another effort to try to damp down the insurgency is to highlight the atrocities of Saddam Hussein, what was committed during his regime. And he will be going on trial to face the first of perhaps several charges of crimes against humanity and genocide. It starts on Wednesday. The first charges will be related to a village called Dujail (ph), a massacre called the Dujail Massacre. That was when that village -- there was an ambush against his motorcade in 1982, and it's alleged that his regime massacred 140 Shiite men in revenge for that -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: That trial officially beginning on Wednesday, and then on Tuesday, we've got those official results from this election.
Christiane Amanpour for us this morning from Baghdad. Christiane thanks -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: In Pakistan, finally a break in the weather. Ever since that terrible earthquake nine days ago, the area has been hit with a ton of rain. Now with some clear skies, a chance to reach survivors.
Paula Hancocks is at an airbase near Islamabad. Paula, tell us what the relief workers are doing there.
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, this certainly a very different picture today than yesterday. Now that the weather has broken, now that the rain has gone away, these helicopters are finally allowed to takeoff again. They're taking aid up to where it's needed in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Now these chinooks here landed a half hour ago. On this particular one, they went up to the Bague (ph) district, and they took food, they took water, they took blankets to the area. And then on the way back, they brought about 50 to 60 survivors. They took a medic up with them who could determine which were the most needy of the people up there. And they brought them back, stretchered them to waiting ambulances and they'd be taken off to hospital.
These guys are saying they're during about three or four sorties a day, as many as they can get in the daylight hours. Now these also landed about half an hour ago. This one's just been refueled, ready to takeoff once again, and ready to go up into the north.
Now you can see that it is a coordination between the U.S. military here and between the Pakistani military. You've got the U.S. hardware and you've got the Pakistani military putting the aid onto these trucks. This, again, food, water, shelter and medicine going up to those most needy areas just by Bague this district.
Now they're doing this as quickly as possible. The turnaround for these sorties really is quite amazing. They're trying to get as many of these chips in as possible. Now the fact that the weather has broken is crucial. On Sunday, we did have torrential downpours, and we also had snow on the mountains in the Himalayan region. Now the villages haven't been got to yet. They haven't been reached. They haven't had that first wave of aid, and they are victim to harsh elements and falling foul of nature. So inevitably they want to get as many of these helicopters out as possible before the weather breaks again -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Paula Hancocks in Islamabad, thank you very much.
There are other earthquakes to tell you about, one off the coast of Greece earlier this morning. The 5.2-magnitude quake struck in the Aegean Sea, about 150 miles east of Athens. Schools on some of the Greek isles had to be evacuated, though it doesn't appear this particular quake did too much damage.
And off the coast of Southern California, yesterday afternoon, a 4.6, this one centered about 30 miles southeast of San Clemente Island, 75 miles west of San Diego. No reports of injury or damage there -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: A little bit of good news there.
Well, authorities in California are investigating the death of Pamela Vitali. She's the wife of prominent criminal defense attorney Daniel Horowitz. Vitali was found dead in the couple's home near San Francisco on Saturday.
CNN's Peter Viles has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The sheriff's department in Contra Costa County says defense attorney Daniel Horowitz called Saturday evening to report that his wife was dead and that the body of 52-year-old Pamela Vitaly was found in the couple's remote home in the hills of Lafayette which is east of Oakland.
JIMMY LEE, CONTRA COSTA COUNTY SHERIFFS DEPT.: We had Lafayette police officers respond to the scene. They arrived. They found a deceased 52-year-old female at that location. We do have our homicide investigators on scene right now. We're treating this case as a homicide.
VILES: The sheriff's department won't say how the woman was killed. A spokesman telling CNN no one is in custody and no one has been identified as a suspect. Horowitz told the "San Francisco Chronicle" quote, "I can't talk. I can't. It's beyond words."
Horowitz has appeared often as an unpaid legal analyst on cable TV commenting on high-profile cases including the Scott Peterson murder trial.
DANIEL HOROWITZ, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: He's in prison for the rest of his life.
VILES: As a defense attorney he's been involved in numerous high profile cases currently defending Susan Polk who is accused of murder in the stabbing death of her husband, a case closely watched in the bay area.
Last year he helped defend the former prime minister of Ukraine Hasel Assarenko (ph) who was convicted in federal court in San Francisco on numerous counts of financial fraud.
Local news reports indicate Horowitz's wife was a former marketing executive and worked for him at his law firm.
The sheriff's department says that 20 investigators are working the case. An autopsy will be performed Monday.
Peter Viles for CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: According to a friend, Horowitz had been concerned for his safety. He had a gun at his home and a surveillance camera monitoring the property.
M. O'BRIEN: Still to come on the program, we are tracking Tropical Storm Wilma as it churns through the Caribbean, possibly headed for the Gulf.
S. O'BRIEN: Also this morning, what went wrong? A bus full of children from a high school band crashing in Wisconsin. We'll talk to the school principle and a parent chaperone just ahead.
M. O'BRIEN: And getting back to business in New Orleans, why some store owners are opening back up despite huge obstacles. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: There is shock and sadness this morning in the city of Chippewa falls, Wisconsin. Five are dead, 30 others are injured after a charter bus carrying a marching band crashed yesterday. It happened on Interstate 94 near the town of Osseo, Wisconsin.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: John Tulman's daughter was on the trip. He was a chaperone. He was on the bus two buses behind. He joins us from Chippewa Falls this morning.
Mr. Tulman, our condolences to you this morning.
Tell us what you saw and what unfolded on that highway. JOHN TULMAN, PARENT CHAPERONE: When our bus driver saw the accident in front of us, he pulled up. His name if Gordy. He got out and just started walking up. In front of us, there was our second bus. That was the bus that my daughter was on. That was toward our left, and on our -- straight ahead of us was the overturned truck, and then beyond that was our first bus, the bus that had been involved in the accident. Gordy walked forward a little bit, took a glimpse at the number one bus, and then he ran back and said, come on, we need to get going up there, they're going to need some help. We started coming up, and then when we got really close to the bus, realized that there is no rear door on that bus and there was no entrance on that bus from the front since that whole door had been compressed in.
We came back to Gordy's bus. Underneath he had an A-frame ladder. We ran back with it, got it up against the windows and started extricating students and some of the support staff off the bus.
M. O'BRIEN: The people on the bus, the students, the teachers on that bus, what did they tell you about what happened?
TULMAN: They didn't. We weren't talking. We were concentrating on getting them to get off the bus. There was a lot of glass on the highway. There was spilled fuel. We wanted to make sure that we could get them off and into safety. Some of them were injured and need to be carried off. Others didn't have shoes on, and it was 2:00 in the morning. A lot of them were sleeping when the accident occurred.
M. O'BRIEN: What is your understanding about what happened then?
TULMAN: The truck, the tractor-trailer had gone off the road. You could see its tracks very clearly. My understanding is that in trying to correct and come back on the road, he oversteered and he jackknifed. The cab separated from the trailer, and, well, both of them overturned. The cab went into the median and the trailer was lying on its side, its contents spilled. I'm not sure what part of the truck hit the bus. In fact, talking to the kids afterwards, they said that there were two impacts, but I don't know what the dynamics are. That will be for the state patrol to calculate that out.
M. O'BRIEN: Mr. Tulman, we are just about running out of time. How is everybody doing there this morning?
TULMAN: Most everybody is sleeping, fortunately. It's still pretty early here. The healing process started last night. We had a gathering service. The school was just jam-packed, with not only current students and parents, but alumni as well.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: That was John Tulman, a chaperone, whose daughter was on that trip, in not the bus that crashed. This morning, of course, there will be grief counselors at the school. The bandleader who was killed, a beloved person there at the school. S. O'BRIEN: Granddaughters just 11 years old traveling with them. What a terrible story, and they're going to update us hopefully with some more information on exactly what happened later this morning.
M. O'BRIEN: We'll keep you posted.
S. O'BRIEN: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, if you're thinking about filing for bankruptcy, there's now a whole new set of rules. Andy is going to join us to help sort it out. He's "Minding Your Business," coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Out with the old, in with the new. When you're talking about bankruptcy laws, Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business." It's a new year, so to speak.
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Yes, the New bankruptcy laws went into effect.
S. O'BRIEN: Tougher.
SERWER: They are tougher. And, boy, I think people really picked up on that, Soledad. On Sunday, they went into effect, and courts around the country were swamped as the deadline approached. We have some pictures. The lines are around the block. I mean, this is really startling. That is people in Denver, Colorado, lining up to file for bankruptcy on Friday. Same thing true in Los Angeles, just swamped. In New York City, they were waiting in the rain. You can see here, the volume, 10 to 20 times higher than normal; 200,000 Americans, it is estimated, filed for bankruptcy last week before the deadline; 30,000 is normal. That's on top of a hundred thousand the week before.
S. O'BRIEN: What's changed with the new laws now? Because anybody who files today, you got to go with the whole new rules.
SERWER: That's correct. And basically, it's more expensive, it's more complicated, and the real important part is that you won't be forgiven for your debts on the most part. And you really are going to have to enter into a rescheduled payment. So you know, you can see there are people who had mostly medical debts. That's the thing. People say, oh, they went crazy on credit cards. For the most part, it's people who have $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 of medical bills they can't pay. Those were wiped clean previously. Now, you're going to have them rescheduled, which is very difficult.
S. O'BRIEN: That's tough. All right, Andy, thank you very much -- Miles.
SERWER: You're welcome.
S. O'BRIEN: Still to come on the program -- we're going to pay some bills -- storm warnings in the Caribbean as Tropical Storm Wilma gains strength. After that, where will she go next? That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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