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American Morning
Customer Disservice; Slow Response Leads to Tragedy; Outraged at the Airports; Muddy Waters, More Rain; Billion Dollar Blizzard; Preventing Burnout; 2010: There And Back Again
Aired December 30, 2010 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOE JOHNS, CNN ANCHOR: I wake up. I drink coffee. I go to the gym. It doesn't help.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, we have an author to talk about the three top ways to know you're burned out, and how you can actually change that in the New Year.
JOHNS: Besides just going to the beach and sitting there.
CHETRY: Or kissing in Times Square.
We're going to talk about all of that. First, we'll get to you the top stories this morning. Customer disservice. Airline passengers simply outraged, stranded now for days so practically trying to find their home after the blizzard that hit Sunday. They might not get there now officials are saying until 2011.
JOHNS: That's great. Christine O'Donnell on the hot seat. The feds opening a criminal investigation, trying to determine whether the Delaware Republican Senate candidate used campaign money for her personal expenses. She denies it, of course, pointing a finger instead at Vice President Biden. She'll explain herself when she joins us live right here on AMERICAN MORNING at 7:30 Eastern.
CHETRY: And he would not talk to NFL investigators. Now he's stone walling the quarterback Brett Favre 50 grand. Meanwhile, the league says it can't prove future hall of famer sent inappropriate texts to a female New York Jets employee. The details on the NFL findings were lack thereof and the backlash about what some are saying is a small, small fine.
JOHNS: So they didn't find anything, but he's still getting a $50,000 slap on the wrist, which doesn't mean anything because he makes millions of dollars every year. That's justice.
CHETRY: We begin the hour with a mea culpa from the mayor of New York City as the city - its airports and its people are struggling to dig out from one of the worst blizzards in history.
One of biggest fears that emergency crews and ambulances would not be able to get to the city's nearly 8.5 million people if there was an emergency is unfortunately coming true this morning.
JOHNS: There has been a lot of gridlock in the outer boroughs of the city paralyzing what little traffic is out there and isolating rescue vehicles. Mayor Michael Bloomberg who earlier this week told New Yorkers to quit complaining is toning down his comments now saying the city didn't do its job. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (I) NEW YORK: You know, you can grade us any way you want. Our focus, we did not do as good a job as we wanted to do or that the city has a right to expect. And there's no question, we're an administration that has been built on accountability.
When it works, it works, we take credit and when it doesn't work, we stand up there and say, okay, we did it and we'll try to find out what went wrong, and then make that information public.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Well, one hour and counting, New York's sanitation commissioner yesterday said that every street in the entire city, including the outer boroughs would be plowed by 7:00 a.m. this morning. We're going to keep an eye out to see if they can deliver on that promise.
Also this morning, we're learning about the death of a newborn earlier this week after his mother waited hours for the emergency personnel to arrive. Some are blaming that death on the blizzard. Susan Candiotti joins us with that part of the story. This is horrible. What are they saying about what happened here?
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Terrible tragedy, this happened Monday morning as the blizzard was winding down. What happened was this about 8:30 in the morning, a woman calls 911 and she says, I'm giving birth, I'm in labor.
But they asked her question, they didn't give the call high priority because of what she was telling them. They kept calling back over the course of four hours but they couldn't reach her. Meantime, the city's getting swamped by 49,000 calls to 911 during that time.
They couldn't reach her, finally at 4:30 in the afternoon, she calls back and she says at that baby is crowning. It takes them another hour to get to her, by then, they discover that the baby was unconscious. The baby was rushed to the hospital, pronounced dead around 6:00 in the evening or so.
JOHNS: And the thing that a lot of people don't realize, because New York is such a large, vibrant city, because New York has done stuff like this so well, the rest of the country really looks to New York to set the standard for municipal services.
And this was a city that just didn't have it all together. We have the sound bite, don't we from Michael Bloomberg talking about the things that they're trying to --
CHETRY: Trying to defend their actions, exactly. The Sanitation Department is saying it's been slow because of budget cuts and they've lost 400 positions, but Mayor Bloomberg says it just didn't happen that way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, NEW YORK CITY: We take our emergency saving responsibilities very seriously and I'm extremely dissatisfied with way our emergency response systems performed and as I announced yesterday. We're going to take a look at everything we did to see if it could be done better starting with the communications and dispatching system. Could we do a better job. We're going to try to facilities seriously. And I'm extremely dissatisfied with the way the emergency response systems performed.
We're going to be looking at everything to see if it can be done better, starting with the dispatching system. Could we do a better job? We're going to take a look at that. Could our ambulances have taken different routes? We'll take a look. Perhaps they could have stayed in a place and walked.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: New Yorkers are not happy about how everything went down.
CANDIOTTI: Yes, one of the big criticisms is why wasn't there a snow emergency declared early on in the game, which would have forced cars to find another place to go, if not, they could be towed.
CHETRY: It's hard to understand based on past experiences in years, there hasn't been an issue like this and talking to people during previous administrations. A lot of people hot under the collar on this. As we said repeatedly, it's only the second week of winter, folks.
JOHNS: Right, it goes all the way back to Mayor Lindsey before they'll have really big problem with the snow response.
CHETRY: There you go.
JOHNS: Thanks so much. Susan Candiotti and we will be checking back in you.
CHETRY: See you later.
JOHNS: Now, to the region's airports where relief is slow and very hard to come by. Four days after the big storm, thousands are still stranded this morning. There are still long lines inside packed terminals. The airports and airlines trying to play catch-up.
Travelers are now lashing out at the airlines for poor customer service, some of them saying the airlines are blaming everything on the weather to take themselves off the hook. So we called continental customer service line. Here's what we got.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks for calling continental airlines. Due to the weather in the northeast, we're experiencing unusually high call volume and are unable to take your call. You can check the status of a flight or check in for a flight from your handheld device go to pdacontinental.com and enter your flight information.
JOHNS: So there you. There's a reason we got to record - Continental cut 600 call center jobs in February. That's nearly a quarter of its reservationist. United slashed 30 percent of its staff in the customer service department over the past decade and American Airlines eliminated 500 positions when it closed a call center in Connecticut.
CHETRY: Even if you could actually get to someone at the call center, would that have made a difference, though?
JOHNS: No, not really.
CHETRY: To get to gates and these flights.
JOHNS: Exactly.
CHETRY: Every single one of them is booked as people try to get, what did we say, 10,000 flights canceled? So all of those people had to somehow find a way on another flight.
Now to the weather out west, which could spell big trouble in the east with another blizzard, but the west coast, they're dealing with some terrible weather right now. High winds literally ripped a tree with a six-foot wide trunk out of the ground. There you see it.
It crushed part of a big rig as a truck driver was trying to load cattle on it. That's unbelievable that shot right there. These are scenes playing out over California. Another tree that fell killed a woman in Santa Rosa.
JOHNS: Higher up, anywhere from 1 to 3 feet of snow in the Rockies and parts of the southwest. Now, let's take a look at the radar right now, the messy storm on the move to the Midwest, maybe the snow covered east coast in time for New Years. We begin our team coverage this morning with Casey Wian reporting from California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mud and water everywhere up to 5 feet thick in Leslie Best's Highland California backyard and inside her house. She was starting the cleanup when more rain hit Wednesday. Do you think the house is salvageable?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have no idea, I'm not an expert in this. I know that I need to do as much as I can when I can, that's why we're here today. ` WIAN: Along with her 74-year-old father and a cleanup crew consisting largely of state prison inmate volunteers. They've helped lay 150,000 sandbags in highland the past week and claimed out choked storm drains to try to contain the damage. The rain may be tapering off, but the danger remains.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've lived in California all my life for 57 years and the one thing I've learned once you start moving earth like this, any little bit of rain over the next few weeks can trigger it all again.
WIAN: Farther north in stormy Santa Rosa, a woman camping was killed by a falling tree. Rain, ice and several feet of snow covered much of the west and heavy winds post an additional danger. Heavy snow fell in Washington State. A state trooper says many residents were not prepared.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to have a full tank of gas. We need to have proper traction tires or at least make sure you've got tread on your tires enough that if you're on a snow situation to carry chains.
WIAN: In Arizona, the main artery between Phoenix and Flagstaff was closed because so many big rigs slid off the road. The Department of Public Safety recommended no travel to northern Arizona.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIAN: Back here in Highland, officials say it's a miracle they've had no fatalities and no serious injuries during these series of storms. Rescuers have had to pull more than two dozen people out of the raging floodwaters. Joe, Kiran?
CHETRY: What a mess they're dealing with as well. Reynolds Wolf is in the extreme weather center this morning. How long are they going to get hit with this system?
REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It's look like parts of California is actually going to get a break starting today and that's going to last I would say into the beginning of the weekend, more rain is comes back through.
The idea they're getting rain in this part of the year is not unusual. This is when they usually do receive most of their precipitation. The problem is, getting this amount. It's just incredible and mind boggling.
And it's just California, we've also been telling you all week long about the issues we've had in parts of New York and New England, but now take a look at parts the four corners. We head down to Arizona even into New Mexico where at this time you see the rain and also some heavy snowfall.
In fact, we've got blizzard warnings that are in effect for parts of regions, could see anywhere from 6 to 12 inches of snowfall in the Santa Greta Mountains up near Dragon Pass. If you make your way along parts of I-10, be careful there, you've got the strong wind gusts, too, topping 60 miles per hour and that is going to be relentless.
The question is, where is it all this headed? Well, it's all driving to the east. As it does so, it's going to be bringing some very heavy winter-like conditions to parts of the Midwest. But today, closer to the east coast, we're seeing an entirely different storm system.
What we're seeing here from the Great Lakes southward into parts of the Tennessee Valley scattered showers, but ahead of it, into high elevations of the Appalachians, you've got a little ice, a little bit of snow, especially on parts of 64. Please be careful if you're driving in the high mountain passes.
As it stands, we're seeing the possibility of snow from the upper Midwest, clear down to the four corners, anyone making travel plans to Denver, perhaps Salt Lake City, maybe the twin cities. Even your regional airports, Lincoln, Nebraska and into parts of say, Montana, you are going to have some delays.
You might see spillover delays also in Milwaukee maybe even O'Hare, perhaps into Atlanta before the day is out. Guys, it's another big weather weekend that happens to coincide with the big holiday. We'll talk more about it coming up in just a few moments. I just recommend patience is going to be the key.
CHETRY: It will be pretty thin at the airports. People still can't get out after all these days. All right, Reynolds.
JOHNS: Thanks, Reynolds.
One cabbie literally went the distance to help a family get home in the blizzard. He drove a mother and her five children, get this, 393 miles from Buffalo to New York City on Sunday. Can you imagine that cab ride?
CHETRY: I don't really want to. Are you supposed to pack five children and an adult in a cab?
JOHNS: Unthinkable. They just wrapped up a five-day vacation at Disney World when they learned their flight to JFK was canceled for at least three days. I mean, so what you're going to do. She decided to fly her family to Buffalo and then bus it back home.
Only problem, Grayhound hold her no buses are running. She's desperate for the ride because she said she couldn't afford to keep the family in Florida for extra days. I can't imagine how much that would have cost. That's when the cabbie Eddy Emran saw the family in need and decided to pay it forward.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EDDY EMRAN, AIRPORT TAXI DRIVER: She started crying. I say, why are you crying? She say how much to New York City?
I say flat rate for the airport taxi is $1,100. She said, I don't have that money with me. I say, I'll give you a break.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: All right, well, there you go. So this is a Buffalo cab driver.
JOHNS: Forget about it.
CHETRY: Well, he ended up knocking a couple hundred bucks of the top.
JOHNS: That's great.
CHETRY: Normally, it was a seven-hour ride. It took 14 in the horrible conditions.
JOHNS: Nothing like having to sit in a car when it's storming like that.
CHETRY: Yes, but I guess it's probably better than being stuck at the airport.
JOHNS: Absolutely.
CHETRY: With kids.
JOHNS: And all that money.
CHETRY: Still to come, they call it the billion dollar blizzard at this point. The snow began to fall last weekend, so did revenue for retailers who took a ten-figure hit. What's their deal now? We're "Minding Your Business."
JOHNS: For every parent out there with teenagers who drive too fast. Ford may have a way for you to control your kids' car speed from home. Doesn't that sound great?
CHETRY: And now they can't speed either.
JOHNS: That's fantastic. We love that. It's 13 minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JOHNS: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING.
New this morning, Vikings' quarterback Brett Favre has been fined $50,000 by the NFL for failing to cooperate with the league's investigation into allegations he sent sexually explicit texts with - what makes that each year about, what, three minutes' worth of work? I don't know?
CHETRY: Yes, he makes $16 million, so -
JOHNS: Yes. So -
CHETRY: -- about a million a game. So -
JOHNS: So that's like a traffic ticket.
CHETRY: Yes, three minutes.
JOHNS: What the NFL says, it was unable to prove that future hall of famer, as we all know, sent former New York Jets hostess Jenn Sterger - I always have a problem with her name - in 2008, when Favre was a quarterback for the Jets.
Sterger's attorney, Joseph Conway, had this to say. "It clearly shows that an NFL star player was given preferential treatment, and tells all other players that failure to cooperate may cost you some money but will not result in other punishment." You know, but the - the thing is, if the guy didn't cooperate, they didn't get any -
CHETRY: I mean, provoke they do (ph).
JOHNS: Yes. It's catch-22 there, I guess.
CHETRY: Yes.
JOHNS: All right.
Well, meanwhile, Favre's Vikings are officially homeless. All the events at the Hubert Humphrey MetroDome in Minneapolis have been canceled. Do you remember this? They -
JOHNS: Yes.
CHETRY: They got - because of (ph) the snow -
JOHNS: I was here when that happened last time.
CHETRY: And - and wasn't it funny at the time, they said, well, you know, the roof is inflatable and we'll be able to get this repaired. Well, now, it's going to take till March. Several panels of that roof collapsed during a blizzard last month. It dropped 20 inches of snow. So it's going to take longer than they thought to get it up and running again.
Luckily, though, for the Vikings, Sunday's game, it's the last of the season is an away (ph) game -
JOHNS: Right.
CHETRY: -- against the Detroit Lions.
JOHNS: It's (INAUDIBLE) on all your houses.
CHETRY: Yes.
JOHNS: Last year, they had such a great season and it seems like this year just everything has gone wrong.
CHETRY: Yes.
JOHNS: And the blizzard that belts the northeast could cost retailers $1 billion. The worry this morning, will businesses be able to make it up? Christine Romans is here with the story. So -
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: A billion?
CHETRY: And we're (INAUDIBLE) out. We weren't shopping.
ROMANS: That's right. And it was the day after Christmas is this day of just epic sales. I mean, this is a whole consumer -
JOHNS: Right. ROMANS: -- culture here. America is driven by these sales and people were actually already putting ice on their - on their driveways instead of going out to the malls. And you can see that shopper track number show $1 billion in lost sales on the two days, the day after Christmas and the day after that. $1 billion overall. In the northeast, it's a crucial time, traffic to the mall down 43 percent compared with a year ago.
Lost forever those sales or just postponed? That's the big question. Some retail analysts are saying they think that the retailers will be able to make up those sales over the next days and weeks. What does that mean for you? It means likely sales. They're going to try to do new things to get you into the store so that you can spend your gift cards and spend your money when you would have spent it on those two days in the storm.
So look for sales specifically on apparel and other kind of consumer goods that - that they're trying to move out of the way -
CHETRY: Yes.
ROMANS: -- because spring merchandise is coming in. And as I told you last week, spring merchandise is what they sell for full cost, you know? So they really want to get -
CHETRY: Right.
ROMANS: -- stuff out of the way so that they can get the spring merchandise out there.
CHETRY: Also, I mean, when you think about the 10,000-plus canceled flights, the airline cannot be liking the situation, not to mention the angry passengers, the crowded airports, et cetera.
ROMANS: And it's costing them - when we told you, we reported to you that this is going to be the first sort of year in the black in a long time for the airlines. $150 million is the tally there. Analysts are saying $150 million because they're paying for more fuel to sit on the runway. They're paying for overtime for their crews. They're paying for overnight accommodations for all of the people who work for the airlines and the airport - not necessarily the passengers, of course.
And they're paying for -
CHETRY: Refunding.
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: Refunding, 150 there. Another sort of financial impact to look at is the states.
JOHNS: Right.
ROMANS: I'm telling you right now, city managers across the country are - have their fingers crossed and/or are praying that we do not have a very wintery winter with lots of storms this year. Because they've already spent in some cases half of their snow removal budgets on already very strapped city and state budgets.
JOHNS: Unbelievable.
ROMANS: So that's something to watch as the winter progresses.
JOHNS: And last year was a really lousy year, too.
ROMANS: It was. It was.
CHETRY: And they - what do they say in New York City, $1 million an inch? In terms of -
ROMANS: Wow. That's unbelievable.
CHETRY: -- of how much it cost for removal -
ROMANS: But if you think in what seems such a huge budget -
CHETRY: Only in the second week into winter (ph).
ROMANS: -- some of these smaller towns, the city managers are very, very concerned because it's - you know, what are they going to do, are they going to open up the pools this summer or they're going to remove the snow this winter. I mean, that's some of the choices that they're - they're making.
JOHNS: Bad choices.
ROMANS: Sure.
JOHNS: Great. Christine Romans, thanks.
ROMANS: You're welcome.
CHETRY: Well, the Feds are investigating Christine O'Donnell. It is a criminal probe. The FBI and the Justice Department want to know if the Delaware Republican Senate candidate used campaign money for personal expenses when she ran this fall.
O'Donnell vehemently denies it, calling the investigation, quote, "thug tactics". She has strong words for Vice President Biden as well. You can hear Christine O'Donnell's side of the story. She's going to join us at 7:30 Eastern live here on AMERICAN MORNING.
JOHNS: Well, Snooki's New Year plans fell through. New today, why she wouldn't be high above Times Square on New Year's Eve?
CHETRY: Yes. They were going to put her in a ball, right, and drop it down. What happened? What could have - could have possibly gone wrong?
JOHNS: I just can't imagine, but I think it has MTV on that, I swear.
CHETRY: We'll see.
Also, the top three signs that you're burning out and what you can do to revive yourself and thrive in the coming year. We have some good advice for you.
Twenty-two minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Just past the hour now. Time for our "Morning Talkers", stories that got us talking in the newsroom this morning.
We're all looking ahead to tomorrow, New Year's Eve.
JOHNS: Very excited about it.
CHETRY: Are you one of those crazy, crazy, fun-loving people that will stand for hours freezing to be in Times Square?
JOHNS: I have done this before, but only once or twice.
CHETRY: Not for work?
JOHNS: Not for work, actually. One time I actually did stand out there, and you're right, I was very cold.
CHETRY: It's fun, you know, when you're young, do it one time.
JOHNS: Yes, yes.
CHETRY: But man it's pretty crazy.
Well, now, you know, they're getting all ready for it. They've been doing this for months. Yesterday, what they did was test out the confetti at the Crossroads of the World.
JOHNS: And what do you need to know about confetti?
CHETRY: You need to know if it's going to be (INAUDIBLE) and air worthy as they call it, will it fly through the air and look beautiful.
JOHNS: Yes.
CHETRY: Two thousand pounds of it will be released as the clock hits midnight on New Year's Day.
You know what I always find amazing? I - for years, I'm always coming to work -
JOHNS: Right.
CHETRY: -- you know, the day after.
JOHNS: Absolutely.
CHETRY: It's 3:00 in the morning and sanitation, for all the hits they've been taking about the storm -
JOHNS: Yes. CHETRY: -- they have that cleaned up.
JOHNS: Yes. It's so fast -
CHETRY: You can't even tell there were millions of people in Times Square.
JOHNS: -- it's incredible. I know. Yes.
The thing that gets me is the noise at midnight if you're trying to sleep -
CHETRY: Oh, forget it.
JOHNS: -- because you got to get up and be here at 3:00, yes, it's grueling (ph).
CHETRY: Just bring your ear plugs. You'll need them.
JOHNS: Exactly.
It could really be a Happy New Year for someone. The next shot at mega millions jackpot will be on Friday night, New Year's Eve. And there hasn't been a winner for a while. The jackpot right now stands at $237 million. So if you win that there wouldn't be any need to be in here.
CHETRY: Oh, yes. No, there would be a Happy New Year.
Snooki has been banned from the ball on New Year's Eve. And she was, as part of the stunt, she was supposed to drop down inside of the glass ball. She's short, you know?
JOHNS: Right.
CHETRY: She loves - you know, she plays (INAUDIBLE) but she's short. I think she's 4 foot 9 or 4 foot 11.
Anyway, it was a stunt for MTV, but when officials who planned the real ball drop found out about it, they reportedly said, no way.
JOHNS: We're not having it.
CHETRY: So an insider telling you or say you either play by the rules or you get kicked out. And so -
JOHNS: Why spoil the fun? Yes. All right.
We, of course, follow the rules here at CNN for the most part. And we will be out there on New Year's Eve, Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper live at 11:00 P.M. Eastern. Don't even think about missing it.
CHETRY: All right. Well, still ahead, there's snow, there's rain, there's mud and there is misery. Another storm slamming the west. California hit very hard right now, as well as Washington State, threatening the rest of the country this morning and into New Year's weekend. So we're going to get the extreme weather update for us ahead.
JOHNS: Now, just sit at home and watch it on TV, you might have to. And we've already got "Sunday Night Football," "Monday Night Football," "Thursday Night Football." Is "Tuesday Night Football" next?
All right, guys, looking forward to that, when AMERICAN MORNING continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Oh, that's a pretty shot this morning.
JOHNS: That's beautiful.
CHETRY: New York City on this Thursday, December 30th. It's 6:30 Eastern.
We have a live look at the sun rising over New York; 28 degrees right now, going up to a high of 39 later today. Reynolds says we're looking for a warm up. And hopefully, all that snow will melt.
JOHNS: Oh, yes.
CHETRY: We need it. Good morning.
JOHNS: They say they're getting it off the streets, right?
CHETRY: Yes. Well -- yes, we have 30 more minutes according to the sanitation commissioner to have every street in New York City plowed.
JOHNS: First rule of politics: never give yourself a self-imposed deadline.
CHETRY: Well, good morning, everyone. I'm Kiran Chetry.
JOHNS: And I'm Joe Johns.
And here are this morning's top stories. Mayor Bloomberg taking the blame for what many are calling a snow debacle in New York City, saying the response has not been enough (ph). Many people outside of Manhattan are fed up. A top city council official is promising an investigation. An army of trucks were out in New York City last night, with the city saying all roads will cleared by 7:00 this morning, from a storm that started on Sunday.
CHETRY: Floodwaters, five stories high. They're dealing with historic flooding in Australia right now where officials say the city is completely isolated. The only way to get there is by helicopter. Choppers are also helping to evacuate an entire town of 300 people.
JOHNS: Updating a story CNN was following all day yesterday, a second body has been found in the rubble of a furniture store that blew up in Michigan. The gas explosion could be heard miles away. Three hundred people were evacuated after the blast.
As of last night, residents of all but nine homes were able to return. The utility company is investigating what went wrong.
CHETRY: And more extreme weather now. Another storm is dumping rain on an already waterlogged west, threatening areas where some homes are already filled with mud. If you look at these pictures, you can just see how devastating it's been. This is in Knightsen, California. Some giant trees have been ripped out from the roots, one fell right on to a semi-truck. There you see it. It's about six-foot-diameter trunk just fell like that.
Our Reynolds Wolf is in the extreme weather center.
What a mess out there and they're dealing with snow and blizzard-like conditions in some of the other higher elevations of California.
REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely. What a shot with that truck, too. If that trunk just landed a little bit to the right or to left, it might be a story, but now, boom, it's a problem for the truck owner and the insurance agents. But, hey, what you can do.
Weather is going to do what weather is going to do, and right, we're following parts of the West Coast, let's go right to it. California is actually catching a break for the time being. A little bit of a sigh of relief before the weather starts ramping up again towards the weekend. But as you can see, West Coast looks good, all things considered. Compared to yesterday, it looks just fine.
However, we're seeing the bulk of that rough weather now moving into the four corners, including parts of Arizona, back into New Mexico. We're in the high mountain passes, the extreme southern end, the very southern spine, if you will, of the Rocky Mountains, in the same way to Crystal Mountains, they're going to be dealing with some snow and at the same time, possibly strong gusts approaching 60 miles per hour. So, anyone driving on parts of I-10 in a high-profile vehicle, say a semi-truck or maybe a Winnebago, it's going to be some rough driving to say the least.
Also, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, it will be tough for you, but for skiers up in talus (ph), you'll certainly be smiling.
But not a lot of us are skiing today. A lot of people are traveling out and about, and you're going to seeing some trouble not only out west, but also out towards the east, up and down the Appalachians, the highest elevations. It's going to be a combination of rain and ice. However when you get into parts of the Ohio Valley, and the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, it's all rain right now. Lexington, scattered showers, a few thunderstorms can be expected for the morning hours.
But into the afternoon, what we're going to see is a band of snowfall that will be stretching from the Midwest back to the Four Corners, and with it, some delays. Cleveland, rain, it could give you a 30-minute to a full-hour delay. Minneapolis, the rain, low visibility -- the key thing about Minneapolis, as we wrap things up, Minneapolis, a lot of that rain is switching other to some snow, possibly some ice as we get into the weekend.
Chicago, we could see some delays due to low visibility. And as mentioned, Phoenix, even Las Vegas, we got to throw that in there, some strong wind gusts over an hour-delay at Sky Harbor Airport. Certainly some frustrating time to travelers, as if they're not frustrated enough in parts of the Northeast.
Back to you, guys.
JOHNS: Pretty frustrated.
CHETRY: Yes, the mess continues.
JOHNS: Yes. All right. Thanks so much, Reynolds.
New this morning: relief in sight for millions of stressed out moms and dads with teenagers who drive. How would you like to make your car stern-proof and speeding proof?
Ford announcing an upgrade to its MyKey technology that will allow parents to control speed settings and we told you yesterday how the feature will also block satellite radio shows that parents don't want their kids listening to. If you want to see how the MyKey technology works, head to CNNMoney.com.
CHETRY: Wow.
All right. A memo from the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas -- a thief who stole a stack of chips worth $1.5 million better cash in quickly. Dozens of those chips were worth 25 grand each. And now, the casino plans to stop making them. Anybody who has one has an April 22nd to redeem it. So far, cops say there's no sign of a helmet-wearing bandit, though, who pulled off that robbery at gunpoint earlier this month.
JOHNS: You think they'd be able to track those chips.
CHETRY: I thought they had some sort of technology especially those big chips.
JOHNS: Well -- and have we witnessed the birth of "Tuesday Night Football." NBC wants the NFL to consider it after Tuesday night's Vikings-Eagles matchup delivered nearly 24 million viewers. That is huge, the single largest Tuesday night audience for any network this year. The NFL already has "Sunday Night Football," "Monday Night Football," "Thursday Night Football." You name it.
So, even more. I can't say I'm going to complain too much, though.
CHETRY: No. I mean, I never understood, they have all the games on at once on a Sunday.
JOHNS: Right. You can't watch them all.
CHETRY: You can't watch them all. And I wonder if people would watch them all.
JOHNS: Yes. Well, I would -- unless, I was working which does tend to happen. That's the burnout story, that's coming up. CHETRY: Oh, yes. We're going to talk about why so many of us are burned out yet don't realize it, don't really understand what we can do to sort of recharge and revive in the New Year. Well, there's someone who wrote a book about it and she has good advice for us.
She's going to be joining us coming up.
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CHETRY: Thirty-nine minutes past the hour.
Boy, we were talking about this one off camera. What do you -- what happens when you know you're burned out, you feel you need to recharge and refocus, and maybe even change paths to sort of drop out of our tech-obsessed world for a while.
JOHNS: Yes, burnout, it's a lot more common than a lot of people really think. And it can also mimic signs of depression.
So, how do you know if you have it and what can you do to prevent it?
Joining us from Denver right now, Joan Borysenko, author of "Fried," why do you burn out, how do you revive, which comes out New Year's Day.
CHETRY: And Joe is going to be taking notes, Joan. So thanks for joining us.
(LAUGHTER)
JOAN BORYSENKO, AUTHOR, "FRIED: WHY YOU BURN OUT AND HOW TO REVIVE": You're welcome, you two.
CHETRY: Oh, good to see you this morning, by the way. So, when you talk about burnout, you talk the top three signs -- exhaustion, compassion fatigue and the loss of confidence and competence. Let's go through a couple of those -- emotional exhaustion. Explain it in a nutshell.
BORYSENKO: OK. First of all, I want to say that two researchers, Maslach and Jackson have looked at these three components.
Emotional exhaustion -- gosh, you know, Kiran, I think of it as that feeling that somebody just pulled my plug out of the socket. I just can't go on anymore. I feel overwhelmed. I feel done and I feel depleted emotionally and physically.
CHETRY: Well, the compassion fatigue. That's the thing. And I think I know what it is. But I don't fully understand it.
BORYSENKO: Well, you know, Maslach and Jackson called it depersonalization. It's kind of a funny name, but it really means dehumanization -- feeling like you've lost your humanity, your ability to empathize. People to you suddenly become more like objects.
And that sense of compassion that makes us fully human just drops away -- so that it means well, you get snarky, maybe, with a spouse. You get short with your colleagues. You find yourself feeling kind of cynical.
For health care workers, what compassion fatigue means is they don't have any compassion for the people that they're actually working with. And that, by the way, is one of the biggest problems in the health care system that hasn't been addressed.
CHETRY: Wow. That is certainly. You also talk about this loss of confidence.
BORYSENKO: Yes, the burnout rate is high.
CHETRY: Yes, it is. You talk about this loss of confidence in yourself that then leads to a loss of competence. So, maybe what you used to do well, you don't do well anymore?
BORYSENKO: Exactly right. You find out, hey, you know, I used to do this much better.
I went once to a burned out physician. I couldn't believe it. She missed all of the major symptoms. She was completely off-track and completely mean.
And if I had been a medical scientist myself, I think I would have left her thinking I was about to die. So, that's a very really problem. Her confidence has really diminished.
JOHNS: So, how do you tell when you're depressed or when you're burned out? I mean, what's the difference? Is there just like a dividing line? Or are they two completely different things?
BORYSENKO: You know, they're so similar that researchers have asked what's the difference?
And here's the thing, let's say you're burned out, you're exhausted, you're emotionally overwhelmed -- you go on vacation for a week. And as soon as you get away, you come back to life again, that life that's been lost, the sense of self-that's gone. That kind of separation from enjoyment of life just comes roaring right back.
For a depressed person, it doesn't. It's a much more permanent kind of --
CHETRY: Right.
BORYSENKO: -- fixture until they begin to recover.
CHETRY: All right. So, tell us what --
BORYSENKO: People with burnout --
CHETRY: Sorry for the delay, I know we're on a little bit of a delay.
BORYSENKO: Well, what can you do?
CHETRY: Right.
BORYSENKO: That's all right.
What I've done in my book "Fried" is to go through about a dozen stages of burnout that have been described in the literature before. But I've tried to bring them together in a way that people can really recognize themselves because burnout's a slippery slope.
It starts by working too much, working too hard. Then you forget what's important. Thanksgiving comes and you don't even want to be with the family. You just want to work, work, work.
And so, if you begin to recognize these early stages, you don't go into the latter stages where you become so miserable, so empty and separated from yourself, that you don't know what to do. So, awareness is the first thing.
JOHNS: One of the things you talk about that I find really interesting that I do a lot of is taking things personally when I shouldn't be. And that's a sign of burnout, of course.
BORYSENKO: Absolutely.
JOHNS: How do you stop taking things personally when you shouldn't?
BORYSENKO: First of all, you have to notice that you're doing it. And once you notice it and you say, it's a habit pattern to take things personally, is that really true. You can dispute your own pessimistic thinking style. And in disputing it, you can step back, and then you don't start the whole mental kind of landslide of thoughts that leads to burnout. So that's really important.
But the burned out person mostly has to bring themselves back to life. When you're burned out, as I started by saying, it just feels like someone's pulled out the plug. So, you have to say, what is it that gives me life? What is it that gives me joy? And do that.
Certainly, a lot of us have forgotten how to have fun. I was just at the birthday of my older brother and I gave out yo-yos to pretty much everybody there. And it was amazing. People just came to life. And you have to say, what's important to me, what are my priorities, how can I say no to the things that use my life up, so that I can say yes to the things that I deeply value.
CHETRY: Good point.
BORYSENKO: Have some fun, and particularly, exercise and get outside. That makes a huge difference.
CHETRY: People can check out more in your book "Fried: Why You Burn Out and How You Revive." Joan Borysenko, thanks so much for getting up with us this morning. Appreciate it.
JOHNS: Great advise.
BORYSENKO: Thank you. All right. Joe, Kiran, Happy New Year. CHETRY: You too.
JOHNS: Same to you.
JOHNS: New York Sanitation Commissioner promising to clear every city street of snow by 7:00 this morning.
CHETRY: Fifteen more minutes. Fourteen more minutes now.
JOHNS: And counting. Can he possibly deliver on this? A lot of streets out there.
CHETRY: Absolutely. All right. We're going to check in with him. He's actually going to be joining us live coming up in the next hour. And we're going to be checking on the streets with our live tower cameras as well.
Also, Christine O'Donnell, you remember her, Senate candidate out of Delaware. She is firing back after the feds launch a criminal investigation into her campaign spending and want to know if she misused campaign funds during her Senate run. She's joining us live as well in the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING.
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CHETRY: You saw (ph) control room this morning.
JOHNS: Oh, yes, raise your glass, Pink. I'm ready. One more day.
CHETRY: One more day. You got to be in bright and early Saturday.
JOHNS: On Saturday, I've got to work, too. So, I'm not going to be raising too many glasses.
CHETRY: Just one.
JOHNS: Yes.
CHETRY: It's 49 minutes past the hour right now. That means, it's about, let's see, 9 1/2 minutes until the sanitation commissioner's self-imposed deadline about having every street plowed comes to fruition here. We're going to see how it's going. This is a look at some of the streets yesterday in Brooklyn. Streets that have not seen a plow, even though, the snow stopped some 50 hours before.
JOHNS: And I don't want to be pessimistic here, I've got to tell you, there's awful lot of streets out there, and there were big problems. Although, on the other side of it, on the way in here, Seventh Avenue, unbelievable how much work was getting done out there. Just incredible.
CHETRY: Oh, here's a live picture right now. This is one of the areas in the outer boroughs of Manhattan, and you see a plow going down that road. You can see at the top of the picture that has not been plowed. But the other problem is you see cars parked on both sides of the street as well. JOHNS: Yes. Right.
CHETRY: So, it's --
JOHNS: That's what makes it so hard to plow, you know?
CHETRY: Yes, it's a difficult situation, and also some of the plow equipment getting stuck as well because, you know, some three days, four days after the storm, that is nice and hardened now. It's not the soft powder that first fell.
JOHNS: And then the plows also will hit the cars or whatever and mess them up. We saw some video of that yesterday, too, though.
CHETRY: Yes.
JOHNS: You know, there's just no good solution.
CHETRY: All right. That was another Brooklyn Street and you saw had not seen a plow yet. So, we're going to keep you posted on how this is going.
JOHNS: Our Christine Romans is here. We'll talk a little bit of business for the entire 2010.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Did it feel to you like you were living through history last year?
JOHNS: Sure did.
ROMANS: I mean, think of it. The 2010, you saw so many things happening, monumental things happening with your money. Every single big headline in the end came down to what you and your family were feeling and what your own standard of living was going to be. It was a year in which every headline meant something to you. And guess what, if you felt like you were living through history, I'm here to tell you, you were.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS (voice-over): Stimulus, jobs, health care reform and soul searching. The year started trying to find the root of the economic crisis and assess some real blame when no one, apparently, wants to take any. Even the maestro, only under pressure looking back.
ALAN GREENSPAN, FMR. CHAIRMAN OF FEDERAL RESERVE: I was wrong 30 percent of the time. And there an awful lot of mistakes in 21 years.
ROMANS: The golden boys at Goldman Sachs defending their role in the crisis even as the government was suing them.
LLOYD BLANKFEIN, GOLDMAN SACHS, CEO: I think we, in our behavior, got caught up in and participated, and therefore, contributed to elements of froth in the market. ROMANS: In an epic effort to stimulate an ailing economy never had more money been spent in so little time. And don't forget BP and environmental and public relations disaster.
TONY HAYWARD, FMR. CEO, BP: The massive disruption it's caused their lives. And, you know, there's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I want my life back.
ROMANS: He wanted it to be over. She wanted the change she was promised.
VELMA HART, CONCERNED CITIZEN: I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantel of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now.
ROMANS: Change did come for her and many others in the form of unemployment. An emergency condition that turned chronic in 2010. So far, 19 months, that's how long unemployment has been above 9 percent. All of this against a backdrop of monumental reform, credit card reform, banking reform, student loan reform and health care and epic legislation that fueled a new political force.
In a year in which everything seemed to change, one thing didn't. Your income taxes. Bush era tax cuts extended for all.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010.
ROMANS: More than a million jobs were created this year, but ask anyone, even the president, and it wasn't enough.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS (on-camera): And I've said nothing about deficits as far as the eye can see. I've said nothing about the Toyota recall. I've said nothing about a lot of these things that we're going to be doing heading into next year. I mean, the story isn't over. But, bottom line, covering all of these stories all year, I felt as though we're going to look back. Our kids will look back. There's going to be a chapter in the history books about what we're living through right now.
CHETRY: We read about the great depression.
ROMANS: That's right, we're living through it right now, and it's not over. What we're going through is not over several lot of things will be happening. So, I promise (ph) to be a very exciting 2011 with a lot of headlines that will matter directly to how you live your life and how you pay to live your life.
CHETRY: Oh, I can, you know, keep my fingers crossed for is there are some lessons learned in all of this in the debt crisis and everything that we're going through.
ROMANS: And then the key, you can only rely on yourself. We have no control over what's going to happen over the next few years. We don't know if there's going to be inflation or deflation. We don't know if house price is going to go up and down. You can only take care of yourself. Savings is the most important thing in very near term for everyone, I think.
JOHNS: Just get in the black and gets more jobs out there.
ROMANS: That's right. That's right. And maybe 2011 will be that year. Maybe 2011, the jobs will start to come back.
CHETRY: Hope so. Christine, thank you.
ROMANS: Sure.
CHETRY: Call it a customer disservice, but thousands of stranded fliers struggling to get home after the blizzard of 2010, trying desperately to reach someone in customer service at the airlines. We're going to tell you what happened when we called.
JOHNS: Also, how to sell your house when home prices keep backing up. We're "Minding Your Business" in the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOM JOYNER, RADIO PERSONALITY: This is the hardest working man in radio. I'm the fly jock, Tom Joyner.
Good morning from the TJ --
The caller wins a $1,000.
You're the fourth caller.
Fifteen before the hour.
You're the tenth caller.
Play, play, play all.
I've syndicated more than 115 markets around the country, and I travel to two or three markets every week. So, I travel a lot. The secret of keeping a schedule and flying all the time is drink a lot of water. I take food with me. I have a chef and -- who makes dinners. I eat right, exercise and I'm married to a fitness guru, Donna Richardson- Joyner. And she's the food police.
I have mastered the power nap and been sound asleep in those 30 minutes. In fact, I'm sleeping right now as I talk to you. I have all my clothes in the closet just laid out, and all I have to do is grab them and put them in the bag. I have this one and this one. A nice suit.
Donna, I'm going to leave you, this time, I mean it.
(END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
