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At This Hour

Family Talks of Death in GM Car; MH370 Search Zone Moved Again; Answers Viewers Questions on MH370; No Tiger Woods at Masters Tournament?

Aired April 02, 2014 - 11:30   ET

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

PHIL TRAUTWEIN, SISTER DIED IN GM CAR CRASH: Now, there is a lot more we will never know. That's something GM took from us.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: When I use the word cover-up, can you tell me why you believe that?

RENEE TRAUTWEIN, DAUGHTER DIED IN GM CAR CRASH: How does a company that has known about this for so long still pretend not to? Why are we having an investigation? I'm just amazed at this. A new GM. Everybody is still there. Are you kidding me? No one has been held accountable. I would like to see that. I would like to see criminal charges to be honest. I really would.

BERMAN: These investigations going on in Congress and one in Washington. They are asking maybe the same questions you are. I don't think they are coming from the same place you are.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Definitely not. We hope that maybe you can find a little bit more comfort and provide comfort to some of the other 13 victims.

RENEE TRAUTWEIN: Yeah. Wonderful people.

PEREIRA: Renee, Phil, thanks so much for being here. Our condolences. We know this is going to take some time to heal.

RENEE TRAUTWEIN: Thanks for having us.

PEREIRA: Ahead AT THIS HOUR, a new section of the Indian Ocean is being searched in the search for flight 370. Question is, are authorities grasping at straws? 26 days after that jetliner disappear. We'll talk to a pair have ocean search experts and get their take.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: 26 days into the investigation of what happened to flight 370. Authorities say they may never know how that flight disappeared. Today, they move the search zone again.

PEREIRA: Let's focus on the search zone.

Former Navy operations research analyst, Colleen Keller, joining us here in New York. Her team helped find the wreckage of the Air France jetliner in 2009. Also, joined by ocean search specialist, Rob McCallum. He is a 30-year veteran and also helped with the search of the wreckage of Air France flight 37.

Colleen, they moved the search zone yet again. Given your expertise, your team helped map the area where it went down. Are you confident in what's going on here?

COLLEEN KELLER, OCEAN RESEARCH EXPERT & SENIOR ANALYST, METRON, INC.: I am hopeful that they have some information we don't know that's guiding the movements of the search areas. It could be possible they have some other detection of the aircraft that it was a hint they should be looking elsewhere. It also is possible that they just haven't found anything in the existing search area and they are kind of moving around to maybe get lucky at this point. I hate to use those words.

PEREIRA: 26 days in, you are hoping not for luck.

BERMAN: I think it is fascinating. In the absence of what we don't know, it seems like they are hoping for luck. That's a very precarious place to be this far.

KELLER: They seem to think they are in the right area but they are moving it around. It is kind of like they are reaching out and grabbing for stuff. If they would find one piece, we would be on op top of it.

BERMAN: Rob, the tower pinger locater, the towed pinger locator will be on site this weekend. Time is running out for the pings from the black boxes. There is also a British sub that will be reaching out. What can they do without debris on the surface?

ROB MCCALLUM, OCEAN SEARCH SPECIALIST: Very, very little. Even if we had debris on the surface, it would be some hundreds of miles from potential impact site. So they need to be practically on top of any wreckage on the sea floor, which is not going to be related to wreckage on the sea surface in order to get ahead. You would have to be a desperate optimist to claim this is going to be any good. The chances of having it out there are a lot better than having it tied up on a wharf in Perth.

PEREIRA: so many comparisons being made to Air France. We know these situations are very different. Colleen, to that end, we know in that situation, the pinger ran out of batteries as well. What if we get past that point? We are now getting really close to the life of the batteries expiring. What do we do then? Where do we go? That makes the search that much harder.

KELLER: The pingers in the Air France search never operated. Both were damaged. We only recovered one and determined it watts damaged prior to the aircraft crashing. The other one we never found. We know we can find an aircraft without pingers.

(CROSSTALK)

KELLER: Without a tight area and no pingers and no debris, we are really up the creek here. What I think they intend to do is undertake an underwater search even then. So it is going to be a very long protracted search. I liken it to trying to cut the grass in a football field the size of the state of Utah with a push mower. They are going to have to take the underwater vehicles with side scan SONARs and sweep the lawn. We did a rough calculations of five years of continuing searching.

PEREIRA: Without breaks for winter and weather.

BERMAN: Let me get your take on this quickly. What would you be doing? You have a vast amount of searching under the sea. What would you do at this point?

MCCALLUM: Two things. The first is exactly what they are doing at the moment which is retro navigating back on the data they got from the hand shakes. The shift in the search area, I don't know why it is moved. I presume it is because they have reanalyzed some of the data they had earlier. That's been done as a constant process. They are allowing for the movement of ocean current and wind, which is pushing them down wind, which is a good thing to do. The second thing I would be doing is accepting that this is going to be a long search. It is going to be a vast area. I would probably move away now from AUVs, unmanned vehicles and go with towed array SONAR. They have far better range.

PEREIRA: Rob McCallum and Colleen Keller, we appreciate both of you, above the water, below the water, the search continues. Thank you so much.

Don't forget, you can tweet us our questions. We are going to bring back Jeff Wise and Mary Schiavo. Tweet or post on Facebook your questions, #370qs. BERMAN: Coming up next, Malaysian police say all the passengers have been ruled out. How can they reach that conclusion? We will ask the expert for answers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Back to the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370. We want to go back to your questions.

PEREIRA: With us, Mary Schiavo and Jeff Wise.

Jeff, why cannot an aircraft carrier stay in search zone with helicopters on deck instead of jets?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: That's a good question. You would be able to move out all your assets and be there on location. It is a matter of cost. You are not just moving a ship but a whole fleet of support vessels as well, submarines and destroyers. It is not op optimized for search. There are tense things going on elsewhere in the world.

BERMAN: I am surprised there haven't been helicopters out there.

WISE: Some of the destroyers, you can put a helicopter on just about any ship. Helicopters have a shorter range than fixed aircraft. They are taking part.

BERMAN: Mary, some people are wondering about the pilots and the crews. What can their families expect to receive as compensation? You work as a lawyer for victims' families here. What about that?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST; Well, depends on what ultimately is determined to be the cause. If there is no cause ever found, then they will receive the compensation from the airlines, such as workers' comp or whatever the airline compensation is. If the cause were to be determined to be something other than the carrier, such as a mechanical or some outside force or, don't forget, the shipper and the batteries. If the shipper would be liable, that would be like value jet. The pilots and flight attendants, the crew can recover just like anyone else against those entities.

PEREIRA: All right. Mary Schiavo, Jeff Wise, thanks.

Thanks to all of our viewer. It went really well with the questions on Twitter and Facebook.

BERMAN: Ahead for us AT THIS HOUR, that big earthquake rattling Chile overnight. There were smaller ones in California last month. Some of them not so small, in fact. What's going on here? Is there a connection? Can we expect more earth quakes to come?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: To Chile now, where people were sitting eating dinner, maybe watching TV, relaxing at home last night, when a massive earthquake rattled the coastal area of that nation.

BERMAN: Yeah, triggered landslides, fires, power outages. At least six people now dead. That number could rise as they search some of the more remote areas.

U.S. Geological Survey research seismologist, Gavin Hayes on the phone from Colorado.

We were talking about earthquakes a few days ago, because some have started to hit California again, magnitude 5-plus. People see the earthquakes in California, they see the earthquakes in Chile. I know these are on different fault lines, but is there any connection here?

GAVIN HAYES, RESEARCH SEISMOLOGIST, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY (voice- over): We don't think so. The two faults in question are really too far apart for there to be any connection between the two. Actually, the earthquake in Chile comes at a time of relative seismic quakes globally for large quakes. There hasn't been one for three or four months.

PEREIRA: We heard from one of the seismologists on CNN talk about the fact that this area has seismic activity, but that they were expecting a much bigger one. I think that's shocking to people, when they hear the number 8.2. How much bigger can you get? And is that something that is anticipated in the near future for Chile? GAVIN: Chile has a history of very large earthquakes along its coastline. They have had earthquakes as large as 9.5, which is the largest we have on historical record in southern Chile. This part of northern Chile has experienced earthquakes of about 8 in history, which I think is about eight times larger than this 8.2. So there is a possibility -- a larger could occur. It's difficult to tell at this stage what we might expect, based on what has happened last night.

BERMAN: So 8.2. That is a big quake. And when it first struck overnight, there were fears of a tsunami that could hit. There were places where waves as big as seven feet did strike. What determines if it's worse than that? What makes it a bigger tsunami versus a smaller one, and how far away are you at risk? Could the United States be at risk for what happens off the coast of Chile?

GAVIN: Really, what we need for a big tsunami would be a lot of slip very shallow in this zone. And I think what we're seeing in our analysis of this event, it seems that most of the large slip in this magnitude 8.2 was deeper on that subduction zone. Perhaps 30 to 40 kilometers deep, rather than, you know, 10 to 20 kilometers, like we saw very large slip in Japan. And so when you get that very shallow, large slip, you get a big tsunami. In terms of the hazard for -- the coast around the Pacific, yes, there would be one from a large earthquake in Chile, as we saw in 1960 and again in 2010.

PEREIRA: The thing that certainly saved lives here, we know there are six people that have been reported dead. There is a concern there will be more. But one of the reasons that it wasn't more catastrophic is the fact it was off coast and didn't hit a populated zone.

We want to say thank you to Gavin Hayes, who joined us on the phone from Golden, Colorado. Thank you for that.

Ahead AT THIS HOUR, for the first time in 20 years, no Tiger at Augusta? Could a bad back deny Tiger Woods the dream he has been chasing for so long?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Apparently, no green blazer for Tiger Woods this morning. More likely to be sporting a back brace. Woods forced to miss the masters because of back surgery.

BERMAN: This is the latest obstacle coming between him and really was at one point a very attainable dream. That is to break the record held by Jack Nicklaus of 18 majors.

We bring in Laura Baldesarra, from CNN International World Sports.

Tiger is really at this point in my mind playing for one thing and that is the Jack Nicklaus record of 18 majors. But he has been stuck at 14 since 2008. So to me, it feels like this dream, Laura, is slipping away.

LAURA BALDESARRA, CNN INTERNATIONAL WORLD SPORTS: Yeah. No, John, I wouldn't necessarily say it is slipping away. However, I would say right now there is a bit of a minor setback for Tiger Woods. But Tiger Woods undergoing the type of he has, this is a surgery that's going to protect the longevity of his career. This is something that's going to allow him to play for many, many more years in the future. It's not a quick fix solution. It's something that allows him to keep going and keep reaching the biggest number in golf, possibly in sports, which is that major record that's held by Jack Nicklaus. 18 is that major number.

However, I want to do a bit of a comparative analysis here. Both at the age that Tiger Woods is now and the same age that Jack Nicklaus was, 38 years old, when they had both won 14 majors, they had both played 64 major championships. So we are level. We are level right now. Tiger Woods is on par.

Now, of course, when I speak about a bit of a setback, he won't be playing at the masters. So that won't be his 65th. Jack Nicklaus won his 15th major in his 67th major championship that he played in. So now we're going to see as Tiger Woods is fighting back from this surgery, which could be about three months to get him fully back out there, will he be able to perform later on in the summer, possibly the open championship, possibly the PGA championship. But I think that it's still a very, very attainable goal for Tiger Woods.

PEREIRA: You know, I was thinking about this when we were talking in the office about Tiger. You know, a lot has been made about the comeback and the image rehabilitation he underwent. How do you think the history books, when they're written, will look back at Tiger Woods' career and talk about the moment that cost him his dream?

BALDESARRA: I think that when we look back at Tiger Woods, all those books will say that he was the greatest player that's ever played the game. He is someone that had a big hiccup, let's say, in his personal life. But was able to fight through it. And was able to hit a record, not just conquer Sam Snead's record of PGA tour victories, but beat Jack's record. I would say that Tiger Woods possibly has 40 more majors left in him, about 10 years, let's say. And that would take him until he's 48 years old. And I think if Tiger Woods can stay healthy, he will be able to hit that goal. We have to think about Tiger Woods at Augusta, and can play very, very well at. A player like Fred Couples, he's in his early 50s, and he has been in contention for the past three or four years at Augusta. So there is a lot of time left for Tiger.

BERMAN: There is time. Everyone who covers golf agrees with you, that Tiger still has a chance. I'm not so sure. I just don't see it. I see too many other good young golfers out there.

But Laura Baldesarra, come back on our show. We like to have you.

BALDESARRA: Thank you very much. I will.

PEREIRA: All right.

Really quick before we walk out the door, the winner of one of the largest Powerball Jackpots in history, finally coming forward six weeks after the drawing. How he did it is most noteworthy. He checks his number repeatedly. We consulted with a legal and financial team and put his plan in motion. But he waited until April 1st. Yes, April Fool's Day to come forward to collect his winnings. And there he is. Look at that. But what's on his shirt?

BERMAN: Well, the coolest thing here is what is on his shirt. It was this. Take a good look. I can't see it from here, but hopefully you can. It says, "Luck of the Jedi, I Have." Wearing a Yoda shirt. Yes, the force is strong with then.

(LAUGHTER)

Good man.

That's all for us today. Thanks for joining us AT THIS HOUR. I'm John Berman.

PEREIRA: And I'm Michaela Pereira. See you again.

"LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts right now.