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American Morning

Violence in France Reaching New Peaks; Battle Rages in Western Iraq

Aired November 07, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Carol Costello, in for Soledad. A developing story out of France. The country inflamed again last night. Violence there reaching new peaks, 1,400 vehicles torched by rioters, who are now firing weapons on police. We're live with that.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And the battle rages in western Iraq. U.S. troops on day three of Operation Steel Curtain, trying to break an insurgent stronghold on this AMERICAN MORNING.

Well, top of the week to you. Good morning. Good to have you with us. I'm Miles O'Brien.

COSTELLO: I'm Carol Costello. Thank you for joining us. And, boy, that fugitive captured, and he was drunk!

O'BRIEN: Too drunk to be questioned. Imagine a guy so equipped with charm and cunning as to get out of a county jail, impersonating himself as a member of an attorney's team for the district attorney or the attorney general's office, right? And then gets so ripped that he gets caught and can't even be questioned.

COSTELLO: He's talking in a telephone booth, and then police arrive, and they try to question him, and he's so drunk they cannot speak to him.

O'BRIEN: In any case, a death row inmate in Texas is now back in custody. And the family members of the victims obviously breathing a sigh of relief. We'll check in on that story all throughout the morning.

And of course our top story, as we mentioned, those tornadoes in Southern Indiana. Parts of Evansville are absolutely smashed by a line of tornadoes that went through yesterday morning. Twenty-two known dead this morning. The search for survivors beginning again this morning. You can see first light there now.

Ed Lavandera is in Evansville, right on the Indiana/Kentucky border.

Ed, what a horrible scene there.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been a long 24 hours, Miles. You can see behind me, this is the mobile-home park where 17 people were found dead here. The last bit of good news to come from this mobile-home park was yesterday afternoon when a young child was found alive wrapped in debris in a ditch. But other than that, it has been a frightening scene for hundreds of people who live in this area. About 250 homes destroyed or completely destroyed here in this area, or in other parts of southern Indiana. Twenty people killed in all, and hundreds injured. In fact, we heard from several of the doctors who treated many of the injured. Many doctors saying people coming in with fractures, lacerations, trauma to the head and the chest. You can imagine all the debris that was flying. The stories that we have heard from the storm victims, saying basically lying in their bed as everything was falling apart around them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was just glass and wood debris flying all around my head, so I had to pull my covers over my head for about 45 seconds to a minute, and then I managed to walk through the ceiling that was on my floor and my bed, and I managed to get down our stairs to the rest of my family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: Now the search-and-rescue efforts will continue this morning. Crews are coming back to this particular scene. There are still about 200 people unaccounted for, officials here say. That doesn't necessarily mean they believe 200 people are trapped in here. Some people might have left on their own, and they just haven't checked in or what have you, but until they can account for all of those people, the search-and-rescue efforts, they say, will continue -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Ed, what about warning? Obviously, dead of night, particularly Saturday into Sunday. A lot of people not following the news as closely. Did sirens blare? Were there a lot of people equipped with those weather radios?

LAVANDERA: The sirens did blare about half an hour before the tornado touched down. However, officials here in the Evansville area say that those sirens probably weren't loud enough to wake up most people. They were designed to help people who were outside. Ideally, what officials would like to see is perhaps a system where at that time of night people's homes would be called, the warnings would go out, but that is just incredibly expensive, and officials here say they haven't had the money to buy a system like that.

O'BRIEN: Ed Lavandera in the Evansville area this morning. In a little bit, we're going to talk to a survivor who said he just woke up and the whole house was falling down around him. He said, I'm almost certain I'm dead. He lived to tell the tale. His nine horses also lived, and we'll check in with him in a little bit -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Miles.

Riots across France are getting worse and worse. For an 11th straight night, police struggled to stop the violence. Fourteen- hundred vehicles burned, 150 people now arrested while President Jacques Chirac is promising a stronger government response. CNN's Chris Burns is live in Paris.

Chris, why can't they get this under control?

CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, it doesn't seem to be working, as Jacques Chirac having an emergency meeting last night with key members of his cabinet, planning further action. Already the government has put thousands of police on the street.

Now a bit of good news. Paris proper, the tourism cash cow jewelry box of France, seemed to be unscathed last night, as opposed to Saturday night. A couple of places were hit around the outer edges.

But it is getting worse in other places. And the government doesn't seem to be able to stop this. It's got much uglier in the sense police had been shot at before, but now they've been hit. In one town south of Paris, in Bini (ph), police were wounded, at least 10 of them. Two enough to be hospitalized. There are also other areas hit where two churches were torched, schools, a day care center, a film studio outside of Paris. A couple of cars were stolen and rammed, one into a police station, another into a housing complex, where it set it on fire. The kid who did it is quoted as saying -- he was arrested and quoted as saying, "This is going to keep on until Nicolas Sarcosi -- the interior minister -- resigns."

He is not the only one calling for that. Many a youth we talked to want that, and many people in the leftist opposition, who say that Sacrcosi's tough talk about calling a lot of the youth scum, wanting to clean that all up, was just too much for the youth to stand.

So the government is trying to do this. As Chirac said last night after the meeting, that he wants to reestablish order and fast.

Here is what he said.

COSTELLO: We can't hear, him, Chris. What did Jacques Chirac say?

BURNS: Well, Chirac did say that the absolute priority right now is restoring security, but he also balanced that with saying there must be respect for justice and equality, a gesture toward those who are calling for more government action to fight the unemployment, the discrimination, the police harassment in those areas, mainly immigrant areas of Arabs and Africans, that say that they are mistreated in that area, very high unemployment, and the government needs to address in the long term.

COSTELLO: Chris Burns, live in Paris this morning, thank you.

O'BRIEN: Operation Steel Curtain going strong in northwestern Iraq this morning, 3,000 U.S. troops, about 500 Iraqi fighting insurgents. One Marine is dead. Nine other Americans are wounded. CNN's Aneesh Raman live now in Baghdad.

Aneesh, what sort of resistance are the troops facing there? ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they found a number of IEDs, they found car bombs, they've destroyed them. The military says some 60 to 80 insurgents have been killed, a larger number have been brought into custody. They haven't seen the standoff, a final standoff, by the insurgents, but they're now working their way in and around the city of Husaba (ph), just along the Syrian border.

And the hope here is really in the operation's name, steel curtain. It's meant as a final push against the insurgents in one of its strongest held provinces, Al Anbar, and also meant to really close that Syrian border, prevent the flow of foreign fighters, weapons and cash from coming into Iraq.

Now earlier, we spoke to Lieutenant Colonel Dale Alford, who's in part, dealing with one of the companies. There are some 3,000 U.. forces, and 550 Iraqi security forces in this fight, about what they expected to encounter there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. COL. DALE ALFORD, U.S. MARINE CORPS: Expecting a lot of IEDs, vehicles that were rigged for suicide bomb cars, houses that were rigged, doors when you open them, they're booby trapped, pocket of resistance, anywhere from eight to 10 to 12.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAMAN: Now, as you mentioned, Miles, one Marine has been killed so far, six others wounded. The timing of this operation is deliberate. We are just weeks away from the December 15th general election. The thought is that if they can secure the border and start to find these car bombs before they work their way into the capital, they can prevent attacks leading up to the elections -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Aneesh, give us a sense -- this is an important question, because there is a lot of debate about this. How much of a role are Iraqi troops playing this? Are they operational? Are they combat ready?

RAMAN: Well, there are a very minimal number, 3,000 U.S. forces to 500 Iraqis in this specific operation, but the military says the critical role they will play is when this operation is done. It is the Iraqis, they say, who will set up permanent positions, which has not been done before in the western part of Iraq, in that Al Anbar province.

Yesterday the military said there are now some 211,000 trained and equipped Iraqis. But in terms of independent operations being conducted by Iraqis, that number was just 13 percent in May. It is now currently 25 percent -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Aneesh Raman in Baghdad, thank you very much -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, let's talk about Charles Thompson, the drunken fugitive. In Shreveport, Louisiana this morning, a nationwide manhunt for this fugitive killer is now over. Thompson is supposed to be in court later this morning. He could be extradited to Texas. Thompson fooled his jailers in Houston last week. He was on the run for 78 hours, until police caught up with him in Shreveport last night, and he was absolutely toasted, so drunk that police could not get him to answer questions coherently.

Keith Oppenheim live outside the Harris Country sheriff's department to expound on this.

Good morning, Keith.

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

It was around 8:00 in Shreveport, Louisiana that Charles Thompson was caught. The task force that was looking for him, they started to get tips that were pointing to Shreveport, and then officers went to this liquor store, in front of which they saw Thompson on a pay phone. Police officials here weren't sure who he was speaking with, but they said that he was not sober, that his mode of transportation, a bicycle, was next to him.

When police officers confronted him, we're told, Thompson said, you know who I am. And he was pretty cooperative apparently when he was arrested. An employee from the liquor store, called Daiquiris Unlimited, saw all this and described what he saw when the arrest was made.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEBRAN SIDDIQUI, DAIQUIRIS UNLIMITED EMPLOYEE: He was, like, real composed, you know. He wasn't acting, you know, crazy, or scared or nothing. And as he was being taken into the car, you know, he was just grinning, looking around. So it looked like he was in intoxicated, like deeply, because he was just, you know, taking in the moment as if it wasn't a big deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OPPENHEIM: Seventy-eight hours means it was last Thursday when Charles Victor Thompson made his escape from the Harris county Jail. What he did, according to police here, he went into an attorney inmate booth. A media room that he was having a meeting with a lawyer. In that room, he changed into civilian clothes that he was using for court appearances, then came out and posed as an investigator for the attorney general's office, conned deputies on the inside into believing that's who he was. They made the big mistake of escorting him into the lobby, and he walked out the front door. We'll see whether or not he actually waives extradition today, Carol, or not. The hope here is that he will. He might not do that, and it could be a couple of weeks before he gets back to Texas.

Back to you.

COSTELLO: So many questions unanswered. Keith Oppenheim, live in Houston this morning.

We're going to talk to a deputy U.S. marshal about how this man was able to escape in the first place, and then he's found riding a bike and drunk in a phone booth outside of Daiquiris Unlimited. So we're going to have many questions for our U.S. marshal, and we'll be getting to that shortly.

O'BRIEN: I should say.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COSTELLO: Coming up on AMERICAN MORNING, more on the tornadoes in the Midwest. We'll talk to one man who lost about everything. He'll tell us what it was like when the twister hit.

O'BRIEN: Also, you're on a cruise, sunshine, the endless buffet. What about a pirate attack? Happened off the African coast. This is real, folks. One passenger will tell you what he saw.

COSTELLO: It is really one strange and scary story.

And later, the stranger who dove into murky waters to save a little boy's life after his family's SUV plunges off a bridge. All that and more ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Take a look at these pictures from Evansville, Indiana. It happened in the overnight hours, Saturday into Sunday, 2:00 a.m. Sunday. Most people asleep, most people not too terribly plugged into the news over the weekend. Sirens blared, but of course many people slept through if their windows were shut. And as a result, Tremendous damage and the death toll now numbering 22 could go higher, 200 injured, and there are many that are missing still. When we say missing, we don't necessarily believe them to be beneath rubble, just not accounted for at this hour.

Joining us now, Dale Naylor, he is the incident commander for the on-site search-and-rescue operation there. He is with the Knight Township Fire Department.

Mr. Naylor, good to have you with us. Tough morning there. Just bring us up to date on the search for people. Are you optimistic that there are survivors possibly under the rubble at this point?

DALE NAYLOR, KNIGHT TOWNSHIP, INDIANA F.D.: When we concluded our search last evening, we had pretty much exhausted all of our avenues. We had searched by hand, mechanical operation throughout the day, and finally we brought in Task Force One out of a Mirriam (ph) County in Indianapolis, and they kind of backed up all of the efforts that we had done throughout the day with all of their technical rescue team and their dogs.

So at this time, you know, we don't believe there are any survivors at this point. So we are going to continue this morning in a recovery operation as we need to.

O'BRIEN: All right, recovery operation. You have quite a few people who are still unaccounted for one way or another. Do you believe it is likely you will find more victims?

NAYLOR: We're 99.9 percent sure that, you know, we don't have anybody left, you know, within the complex itself. What happened was we had so many people that walked out on their own, people that got rides from other people, so at this point in time, you know, it's still up in the air. But we're pretty confident we won't find any more survivors, or even bodies at this point.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk a little bit about warning. This is particularly difficult case, because the timing of this tornado, people weren't necessarily paying much attention to the watches and warnings and of course were asleep when the sirens finally blared. Do you think there will be a re-evaluation in how people are warned in your part of the world in case of tornadoes?

NAYLOR: You know, I'm not sure. I think everything was in place. The sirens, when -- I heard the sirens myself. There was a warning. You know, it's just a bad situation, you know, 2:00 in the morning, you're sleeping, and you know, a lot of people have a hard time hearing their alarm clock, so I'm not sure what the best situation and the best answer would be.

O'BRIEN: What do you think about these weather radios we've just been talking about? Do you think that's a wise thing for people to have in their households?

NAYLOR: I mean, I think that's almost next to like your smoke detector. I think it's imperative that -- especially if your live in an area that is affected by severe storms, that flood, hurricane, tornado, that you have one of these. They're just an amazing piece of technology.

O'BRIEN: Mandatory would be a good idea, I think, Dale Naylor.

Dale, we're going to let you get back to work. He's with the Knight Township Fire Department, the incident commander there as they go through the rubble. He says 99.9 percent sure that there won't be any additional fatalities discovered underneath that rubble.

We're going to do some work to get Casey Lockhart connected with us right now. And while we do that, I want to show you his house. Take a look at that house in Evansville. And it's hard to imagine precisely how he could of gotten out of that. He said he awakened, and literally the house was falling apart all around him. He thought for certain he was dead. And managed to -- when the dust settled, to climb his way back out and has lived to tell the tale. There are a few stories like that in the wake of this tornado, and this was a very powerful tornado. I don't know if you're familiar with that scale, the Fujita Scale. It's an F-3, which means winds were whipping at 158 miles an hour.

Now it's interesting, fall is generally not the hurricane season. But any time you can have powerful thunderstorms, tornadoes can develop out of them. So while we generally think of the spring as being the most susceptible time for them, they do happen, obviously, in the fall, and people still need to be kind of tuned in. And you just heard Dale Naylor say the sirens did blare, but of course lots of people these days, especially this time of year, would sleep with their windows closed and wouldn't necessarily here those sirens. And for that matter, they might have a hard time awakening to the sound of an alarm. Let's bring in Casey now that we have him hooked up.

Casey, What a story. Why don't you just walk us through it. You awakened. You must have thought it was a wild dream or something.

CASEY LOCKHART, SURVIVED TORNADO: Well, when I woke up, the -- it sounded like hail hitting the window, and then all of a sudden, the whole house just exploded, and then I was spun around a couple of times and all of the roof and all of the debris come in on top of me, and took me about half an hour to dig myself out. I finally got out of it.

O'BRIEN: I'm sorry. So you awakened to the hail hitting the windows? You didn't hear anything before? no sirens, no thunder, no nothing?

LOCKHART: Oh, no. I live out in a rural community. There was no nothing. I woke up and the house was exploding actually. And all the house come in...

O'BRIEN: What was your thought?

LOCKHART: The house come in on top of me.

O'BRIEN: The house came in on top of me.

What was your thought at that time?

LOCKHART: Living. Just staying alive.

O'BRIEN: So what did you do then?

LOCKHART: I tried to cover my head up and keep the debris from hitting me in the head, and then, all of a sudden, it was over just as fast as it started. And three people across the street from me got killed in the same accident, or same tornado.

O'BRIEN: And you were not severely injured at all?

LOCKHART: I had a lot of cuts, and minor bruises and stuff like that, but nothing real serious.

O'BRIEN: Well, I suspect you consider yourself pretty lucky to be alive this morning?

LOCKHART: Well, with your whole house laying on top of you and you have to dig yourself out, yes, I'd say I've been pretty lucky.

O'BRIEN: You have nine horses. Your horses made it through?

LOCKHART: One horse got cut up a little bit and the rest of them are real good.

O'BRIEN: Final thought here. We've been talking about these weather radios. Are you going to get one?

LOCKHART: Wouldn't have done any good. Wasn't anyplace to go.

O'BRIEN: Wasn't anyplace to go. Well, you had no shelter?

LOCKHART: Well, I had a basement, but I'd been dead if I'd been in the basement or anyplace else in that house, I'd of been a dead man.

O'BRIEN: Really?

LOCKHART: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: All right. Casey, congratulations on making it through that storm. And good luck rebuilding there. You've got a big task ahead of you I know. And we wish you well.

O'BRIEN: I thank you very much.

LOCKHART: Casey Lockhart, survivor of that tornado in Indiana -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Unbelievable.

Coming up, another airline files for bankruptcy, and this time, it's a discount carrier. We'll find out what that means for you, if you want to book cheap seats. That's next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: We're talking football. We have to stop now, though.

It's time to talk business with Andy Serwer. Maybe Independence Air shouldn't have offered those really cheap tickets?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Yes, no, this is pretty Amazing that a discount carrier has filed chapter 11. Independence Air, which is based our Dulles in Northern Virginia, filing for bankruptcy early this morning. A low-cost carrier done in again by high fuel costs and very, very tough competition, as is always the case here, or usually the case, they're going to continue flying, 220 departures in 36 cities. Used to be Atlantic Coast Airlines, you may remember, Carol.

And you can see this coming, though. They have warned about this. The CFO, the chief financial officer, resigned in October. They had an on-air promotion. They were selling $49 seats. The computer had malfunctions, and the seats ended up going for zero, and they had to honor those tickets, so there's some problems that they had there.

And of course you really need a scorecard in this business nowadays. Of course we have Northwest Airlines bankrupt, Delta Airlines bankrupt, United bankrupt. U.S. Air came out of bankruptcy just recently. And so this is just a tough business, and I think it's fair to say another one bites the dust this morning. Only way to put it, right? SERWER: I guess. It's harsh, but you're right.

COSTELLO: It's true.

SERWER: Yes -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much.

Coming up, what was it like onboard that cruise ship attacked by pirates Saturday? This is news for the 18th century here this morning. A passenger who watched the terrifying ordeal unfold right before his very eyes will join us ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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