Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Portman Tapped as New Budget Director; 100th Anniversary of Deadly San Francisco Quake

Aired April 18, 2006 - 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: The bird flu, are we ready? What is inevitable might be a problem for some big city hospitals. We'll check in in Los Angeles and see what their big concerns are as a pandemic looms.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: And we are marking the centennial of the great San Francisco earthquake. We'll tell you how one expert says another quake is likely on the way. Can you believe it? And the outcome could be much worse.

O'BRIEN: Good morning. We're glad you're with us. I'm Miles O'Brien.

NGUYEN: And I'm Betty Nguyen, in for Soledad today.

O'BRIEN: Some breaking news for you from the White House. A staff change to tell you about. Let's get right to our White House correspondent Ed Henry. Ed, you said there could be something today. Sure enough.

ED HENRY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. It's going to be the first big move from White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten will be today. We're now told he's focusing on his old position, the vacant post of White House budget director. The announcement coming at 9:20 a.m. this morning in Rose Garden.

And CNN has learned that it will be Rob Portman, the current U.S. trade representative. Portman used to be a Republican congressman from Ohio. He's someone who's widely respected, not just in the Republican party, but in both parties on Capitol Hill. That could be a big plus for this president, who has seen his agenda stalled on Capitol Hill. Portman has only been the trade rep for just about a year. As I mentioned, before that, he represented Ohio in Congress and was credited with helping President Bush win that pivotal state in his 2004 re-election battle.

Also, Portman served in the House Republican leadership and that could be important, because relations have really frayed between this White House and the congressional Republican leadership, specifically the controversy over that Dubai ports deal. More recently, the immigration reform debate that has split the Republican party. Nobody doubts there will be more changes, but we can now report the first change happening just about an hour from now in the Rose Garden. Rob Portman will be the new White House budget director, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, what's your gut tell you? Is that it for today?

HENRY: I think that's probably it for today, but one never knows. There are a lot more shoes that could be dropping, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Ed Henry will be there until they put the lid on, as they say there at the White House. Thank you very much. Betty?

NGUYEN: Zacarias Moussaoui and the jury in his life or death trial due back in court in just about an hour from now. Yesterday, it really centered on his mental condition. That's what all the talk was about. One expert says he is schizophrenic.

Justice correspondent Kelli Arena is outside the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. Good morning, Kelli. What do you think the focus is going to be today?

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, today we expect the defense to start calling about a dozen September 11th family members of relatives of those who died on September 11th. They know it's not too early, Betty. I did say the defense will call them. These are folks who will not go out and say they're opposed to the death penalty, but they'll probably offer testimony like life has gone on, that they have recovered somewhat. You know, just to put a little bit more of a positive spin to try to counteract all of those horrible stories that we heard when the prosecution had its turn.

And as you said, the crux of yesterday's argument was that Moussaoui is mentally ill and that he had a very abusive childhood.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): A clinical psychologist who studied Zacarias Moussaoui for four years told jurors Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic and suffers from delusions. Xavier Amador says the causes of the disease are largely genetic. And according to a clinical social worker who testified, both of Moussaoui's sisters are diagnosed schizophrenics. They are being treated and take multiple anti-psychotic drugs.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I also suffer from psychosis, with schizophrenic tendencies.

ARENA: In taped interviews played for the jury, his sisters also described their impoverished childhood with their violent, alcoholic father Omar.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): He almost killed me. He tried to kill me.

ARENA: Omar Moussaoui is now hospitalized in France for mental illness. Jurors heard how Moussaoui was placed in five orphanages by the time he was six, how his father beat his mother and sisters and how the family didn't have enough to eat. But Moussaoui's sisters and high school friends describe the younger Moussaoui as fun-loving and friendly, the little sweetheart of the family whose hero was Martin Luther King.

"I am a Jew, he is an Arab," Giles Cohen told jurors, "and we were best friends."

GILES COHEN, FORMER MOUSSAOUI FRIEND: He was a very kindly man. All the time smiling and joking.

ARENA: Jurors also heard that as Moussaoui embraced radical Islam in London, he withdrew from family and friends and even called one a sister a whore for dressing in Western-style clothing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): It was bizarre how he was. I no longer enjoyed having long discussions with him like before. He was tiresome.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: There was some talk yesterday about Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. He may be adding some light to this. Are we going to hear from him today?

ARENA: Well, we'll hear -- we're expecting to hear lawyers read a written summary from Reid. If you remember, Moussaoui, when he checked the stand, he said that Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was supposed to be on a fifth plane with him that was supposed to target the White House. And so, we can only surmise that Reid will say that he had nothing to do with September 11th, that he didn't know anything, that he wasn't even in the country to try to counteract what Moussaoui said on the stand.

NGUYEN: Kelli Arena in Alexandria, Virginia, for us today. Thank you, Kelli.

ARENA: You're welcome.

NGUYEN: And you'll want to stay tuned to CNN both day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

(NEWSBREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: The bird flu is winging its way across the planet, and it really is just a matter of time before migrating birds bring it to our shores. How ready will the U.S. be should it be here, and more ominously, more importantly, should it mutate so that it can spread among humans? The federal government is finalizing its plan. In the meantime, let's check in with one major city, one major medical center, one health system, see how they're doing.

Jonathan Fielding is director of public health for L.A. County. Good to have you with us, Dr. Fielding.

DR. JONATHAN FIELDING, L.A. COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH DIR.: Thank you for having me. O'BRIEN: Generally speaking, you know, this is one of those stories we keep telling people it's coming, it's coming, it's inevitable. Is it difficult -- because it moves sort of slowly in our direction. Is it difficult to keep people focused on this problem?

FIELDING: Well, I think it is very likely that we will have avian flu, the H5N1 strain in poultry in the United States sometime this year. On the other hand, we don't know the likelihood that it will mutate so it will be easily transmittable from person to person. So, while we always have pandemics every so -- you know, so many years, we don't know exactly if we're going to have one year, five years, 10 years, 20 years from now. So there's a difference between thinking it's going to be here in poultry and thinking it'll be here in human beings. But we're in public health, so we have to be prepared.

O'BRIEN: How do you prepare for something like this? When you start looking at the numbers that could be affected if it mutates in a way that it goes human to human in particular, it could very quickly overwhelm your system and every other health system in this country.

FIELDING: Well, we're a lot better prepared than we were. We have better surveillance systems. Hospitals have surge plans. We have a laboratory that can now detect H5N1. We've looked at ways of extending hospitals. We've looked at ways of having neighborhood help centers at different parts around our county of 10 million people, and there's anti-viral medications being stockpiled by the federal government. We have some. There's some stockpiling of masks and gowns going on.

Having said all that, it is also likely that if we have pandemic flu, it will be a crisis in every locality worldwide, and that it will exceed the surge capacity of hospitals. So we have to plan for that, and we knew that there will be a lot of illness burden and there will be a lot of excess deaths, and our job is to try to minimize them, but it wont' be possible to prevent all of them.

O'BRIEN: That's pretty scary when you put it that way.

There's a survey of the county that was recently released. It said only one in three hospitals there has a plan right now. Are you going to change that?

FIELDING: Well, hospitals are, I think, now becoming very sensitive to this issue. We're working with a lot of them. I think they understand the increasingly the importance of this, but we also know that one of the problems of having pandemic flu is that a lot of people will be sick. We already have shortages in the number of categories. For example, nurses of health care professionals, so it's going to challenging just to get enough people. We've developed a reserve corps that has doctors and nurses, but we're training a lot of our people within our department to be public health first-responders. And we know there will be a lot of volunteers that will come forward, but there will also be a lot of fear and misinformation. But a lot of what we have to do is make sure that communication is accurate. And also letting people know what they as individuals can do. Two things to do. One is they can have an emergency plan, meaning they have extra food, they have extra prescription medication. They have a family emergency communication plan, and the other is they have to remember what they were taught in grade school about respiratory hygiene. That means you want to cover your cough, cover your sneeze, wash your hands frequently. Don't touch your nose, or your mouth or your eyes. Don't go to work if you're sick. Don't send your kids to school if they're sick. All those are important. And we're also looking at issues of quarantining, isolation, and other ways to get people to not have too much interaction.

Nonetheless, that will not prevent it from coming if it starts anywhere in the world.

O'BRIEN: Just a final thought here. I think Katrina taught us a lesson that individually we have to be responsible for our own families.

FIELDING: That is exactly right. We have to think of what we're going to do if it happens in our family. And I think if everybody thinks that way, we'll be a lot better prepared.

O'BRIEN: Dr. Jonathan Fielding, who is public health direct for Los Angeles County. Scary talk, but important we discuss it. Thank you very much.

FIELDING: My pleasure.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MARKET REPORT)

O'BRIEN: There may be new hope in the fight against breast cancer, and it comes from an old drug used to fight another common disease. That's coming up.

And a hundred years ago this morning, San Francisco awakened to devastation. The great earthquake, a part of history, or part of the future? Are we ready? That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: A hundred years ago at this time, the city of San Francisco awakened to this. Look at this scene. An epic disaster. Small fires quickly spreading, fueled by ruptured gas lines in the wake of that earthquake that registered about eight on the Richter scale.

Simon Winchester the author of a wonderful book called "A Crack in the Edge of the World." He is one of the few people who can put together a narrative, along with actual knowledge about geology, and has a stunning tale of how this all played out. He joins us from Lotta Park, where they're spending a few moments here, somber moments, really, remembering what happened a hundred years ago.

Simon, good to see you again.

SIMON WINCHESTER, AUTHOR, "A CRACK IN THE EDGE OF THE WORLD": Good morning.

O'BRIEN: You know, a couple of things to think about here. First of all, whenever these anniversaries come up, in particular the centennial, there's always talk of what lies ahead. What happens if something like this happens again? And we've talked about this before. You know, your thoughts are that it could be rather devastating for the city of San Francisco.

WINCHESTER: I think it will be. And there was a report issued yesterday, saying that if there was another magnitude 7.9, eight here, it would cause 35,000 deaths, compared to about 500 in 1906. It would bring down 10,000 buildings or make them unusable. It would cost $150 billion in damage. It would be a truly major catastrophe. Because the sad thing is San Francisco really still is not spiritually, mentally and physically prepared for what lies around the corner. The San Andreas Fault is like a coiled spring underneath the city, waiting to pop. There's 150 inches of accumulated movement in this last century. It needs to break, it needs to rupture. And when it does, there's going to a major, major disaster.

O'BRIEN: Why do you suppose people aren't ready there? Are they kind of seduced by the natural beauty of the place and just denial is a powerful thing?

WINCHESTER: I think that is a problem. When I was here actually on Market Street about six months ago, giving a speech, I found on the podium that I'm speaking from an envelope and I thought that's rather nice, the bookstore owner has given me a check. Fat chance. It wasn't at all.

It was someone had left an anonymous letter saying, Mr. Winchester, we don't need people like you coming here and telling us there's going to be a disaster. This is a wonderful place to live. I, the writer said, like to look at the sun setting over the Pacific every evening. Pour myself a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and think life is great in California. I don't want to think about earthquakes.

Well, sadly, earthquakes are always thinking about California. One day one of them's going to happen, and Sauvignon Blanc is not going to help.

O'BRIEN: Let's -- you know, what's interesting in the book -- and this is something that I think a lot of people may not know about, is the prelude to this earthquake. We have a map here. I just want to show people what happened in the run-up. In the 77 days prior to San Francisco, there was a tremendous earthquake also in the magnitude eight in Ecuador. Shortly thereafter, Saint Lucia with another significant earthquake. Then shortly after that, Mount Vesuvius, of all places, erupted. Then finally, of course, San Francisco on this day 100 years ago.

Now, let's fast forward to what's been happening recently. Bam, Iran was a recent event. And then, of course, Banda Aceh, which led -- when we talked recently about that, of course, the tsunami. And then this past summer of 2005, a series of earthquakes that have been along the so-called ring of fire. It amazes me that hundred years later, we can't sort of connect those dots and come up with some sort of prediction about when these events might happen.

WINCHESTER: Well, the seismologists are, in a way. There's this field of what's called trigger seismicity, where the world seems to endure particularly active periods of seismic activity. Oddly enough, there was a big volcano yesterday in Java, Mt. Merapi. It's erupting as we speak. So there's a pattern.

1906 a particularly bad time, 2005, 2006 is a bad time. And all the geologists can say is that during these seismically active times, anyone who lives on a plate boundary -- and this is a plate boundary; there's a boundary right under my feet where I'm standing at the moment -- anyone that lives on such a place, who's foolish or incautious enough to live on such a place, had better watch out, because an earthquake is around the corner.

O'BRIEN: Is it possible sometime in the future there won't be a San Francisco as a result of something like this?

WINCHESTER: Well, my view is that America, a young country, has put its cities where it jolly well wants to. It's put New Orleans in an unwise place. It put Phoenix and Tucson and Las Vegas -- there's no water there. Unwise places to build cities. San Francisco. If you knew in 1840 what we know now, would you have put San Francisco on top of this incredibly dangerous fault? No, you wouldn't. And I must say that in a couple of hundred years, after the city has been knocked down and rebuilt and knocked down and rebuilt time and time again, people are just going to get tired and may, indeed, move away.

O'BRIEN: Simon Winchester is author of the book called "A Crack in the Edge of the World." It's a great read and if you're interested in what happened a hundred years ago and what might happen in the future, I invite you pick it up. Thanks for being with us, as always.

WINCHESTER: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: The day's top stories, just ahead.

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