Return to Transcripts main page

Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Search Teams In Indonesia Brave Inclement Weather; The Search For AirAsia Flight 8501's Data And Cockpit Voice Recorders Is On; Families Of AirAsia 8501 Passengers Wait For Confirmation; Getting Closer To Predicting The Flu; 2014 A Banner Year For Scandal And Controversy

Aired December 31, 2014 - 12:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back, I'm Jake Tapper. Where I am in Washington, D.C. it is still 2014, but in Indonesia, it has been 2015 for half an hour where search teams in Indonesia are braving terrible weather. They've now brought four bodies from AirAsia Flight 8501 to shore. Two arrived in the daylights hours, two more just a few minutes ago. So far, at least seven bodies had been retrieved from the Java Sea where the Airbus A321 down on Sunday with 162 passengers and crew on board, 18 of them children. The plane itself for sizable parts of it at any rate may have now been spotted by sonar on the ocean floor. Their search officials have yet to confirm that.

We do know that the bodies that have been retrieved are being flown to Surabaya, Indonesia where Flight 8501 originated. They're being brought there in numbered caskets. There, they will be examined and with help from families already devastated by this strategy, they will hopefully be identified.

Let's go now to CNN's Paula Hancocks. She's at the Indonesia hospital that's serving as a sort of way station for the remains of victims, Paula, what's the latest there?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, this is really the first stop hospital for those victims on the west coast of Borneo here and just as you say in the last hour, two more bodies were brought in to the hospital here. Sirens announced their arrival. There were Red Cross workers, hospital workers awaiting the two ambulances. Their body bags were then rushed in on gurneys into a special wing of the hospital where they'll be treated and identified.

Now this is really the preliminary identification. They'll ascertain the gender, the height, looking at facial recognition, looking at any identifying marks. Now remember, just recently, the families were asked to give all that information. They were asked to give recent photos of their loved ones exactly for this purpose.

Now we're being told by the hospital director also what they're doing is they have representatives of five different religions saying a prayer over the body because they don't know what religion that victim is following. At that point, the body is put in the casket, and as you say, it's flown to Surabaya for the formal identification with the family.

Now, it is a slow process at this point. Obviously, the weather is making things very difficult. We understand there is a fairly stop- start search today from different reports. There has been heavy rain in the area where this plane went down. There's been high winds, high waves and of course that's making it very difficult for divers to have the kind of visibility they need to see underwater, and of course those ships and the aerial support on site as well are finding it very difficult.

The fear at this point is that that bad weather could last another couple of days which is obviously going to make an agonizing wait for those families even worst. Jake?

TAPPER: All right, Paula Hancocks, thank you so much.

For accident investigators, pieces of the aircraft are indispensible clues as to what may have happened. None are more critical than the flight data and cockpit voice recorders. Neither of which has yet been detected. More on the search now from CNN's Stephanie Elam.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As the first pieces from AirAsia Flight 8501 are recovered, the intense hunt for the rest of the plane continues. For investigators, the plane's flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, otherwise known as the black boxes, may explain what led to this disaster. But how will searchers look for the plane underwater?

First, they will likely listen for it.

JAMES COLEMAN, TELEDYNE RECON SENIOR HYDROGRAPHER: This is a hydrophone.

ELAM: All commercials airplanes are required to carry pingers, underwater locator beacons that are attached to the black boxes. They emit a ping once a second. James Coleman is a senior hydrographer with Teledyne Recon, a company that makes technology use for just this purpose.

COLEMAN: A hydrophone is really simplified an underwater microphone. This is the type of device, you're going to put it together in tails and they tow behind the vessel, we'll dip it over the side. They're going to use to listen for that pinger locator.

ELAM: How far can it hear?

COLEMAN: About five miles.

ELAM: But unlike the extreme depths of nearly three miles in the Indian Ocean where Malaysia Air Flight 370 disappeared, the Java Sea is shallow, running only about 80-100 feet deep. While it is easier to operate hydrophones at this depth, Coleman says there's more interference closer to the surface from waves, passing ships, and inclement weather that make isolating the pings harder.

COLEMAN: This is a spectrum view. This shows the frequencies in the ocean. If that pinger were nearby we see a sharp spike right at that pinger frequency around 30-40 kilohertz.

ELAM: Time is not on the investigator's side. The batteries on the pingers only last about 30 days. But if the pingers fail, searchers will likely turn to sonar.

COLEMAN: So this is the sonar, this is what they're going to use to map the sea floor once they have an idea where the debris site is or to search for the debris site if the pinger can't find it. This is going to emit sound.

ELAM: Yet like hydrophones, sonars work better in very deep water where the search area can be far more broad. But Coleman says in shallow water, the search can move along more quickly.

And sonar is just showing us what's at the bottom, right?

COLEMAN: Exactly, and so it's emitting that sound as the sound comes back up the bottom, it's interpreting in order to draw a 3D image of what's on the sea floor and it also generates an image of top-down image of what's on the sea floor.

ELAM: That image will help investigators mark the debris field, so the process of salvaging as much of the plane can begin. Stephanie Elam, CNN.

TAPPER: There were 162 souls on board AirAsia Flight 8501. Right now, their families and loved ones are coping with horrific loss. One family lost seven members on that light, their story coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back. There is still some back and forth about whether the wreckage of the AirAsia flight has actually been found. Despite the debris, sonar images and even bodies taken from the water know official agency in Indonesia has gone on the record to say with certainty that they had found the airplane. Many people with loved ones on that flight. Well, they're or not waiting for that confirmation, they're already of course shattered with grief and CNN's Gary Tuchman met a family dealing with that shock, seven times over.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: An Indonesian family going through an unfathomable experience. They lost many people they loved on AirAsia Flight 8501.

SUYONO THEJAKUSUMA, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIMS: My mother and then my sister and my brother-in-law and his whole family and my in-law to be, so in total, seven people.

TUCHMAN: And now, Suyono Thejakusuma and other family members get ready to drive to where the AirAsia flight started, the Surabaya airport to join other families waiting to hear about the status of their loved one bodies. Suyono's mother, an 81-year-old (inaudible), the matriarch of the family.

How does a man cope in this situation?

THEJAKUSUMA: I am very sad. Of course I am devastated.

TUCHMAN: And (inaudible) is this young man's grandmother.

As Eric drove to the airport, he thought about opportunities he missed out on with his grandma.

ERIC, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIMS: I basically regret all the time that I was supposed to spend time with her. Now, I can't do it anymore.

THEJAKUSUMA: When we heard the information, firstly, of course, we hoped our family members were safe and thought of nothing. Until yesterday morning and afternoon, we still hoped we would get a miracle that our families are still alive, because my mother, my sister, we were very close.

TUCHMAN: And this Suyono's other sister The Le Hoa.

THE LE HOA, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIMS: I asked God why he is testing us this way by taking them away without giving us the chance to say goodbye.

TUCHMAN: But this family knows a miracle is most unlikely.

THEJAKUSUMA: My wife said, "Why is it always the best that leave first?"

TUCHMAN: Gary Tuchman, CNN, Surabaya, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: And for more on how families of those on the plane are coping and how you can help, go to cnn.com/impact.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back. I'm Jake Tapper. Here are the hour's top stories on CNN. More bodies have been brought ashore in Indonesia by search crews looking for airplane wreckage, at least seven bodies have been recovered from the sea. Debris from the aircraft was also spotted. And the general area where a commercial flight with 162 people on board disappeared on Sunday. Rainstorms and heavy seas are making the search very difficult.

More lousy weather, this in Southern California, 139 people all got stuck in the mountains when a sudden snowstorm buried their cars. Fire department rescuers with heavy machinery worked through the night to get everyone to shelters. Today, they will try to get their cars unstuck. Good luck with that.

One of the big box office winners (inaudible) this week was of course the war drama, Unbroken, but not everywhere. There is a growing movement in Japan to boycott the movie and to even ban director Angelina Jolie from ever coming in to Japan again. The film is inspired from a book that suggested Japanese troops resorted to cannibalism while in prison camps. Protesters say that never happened and they are furious they want the movie never shown in Japan.

It's official now. The strain of flu that is going around the country is as the epidemic threshold. That's not from us, it's from the Centers for Disease Control, which has identified 36 states where the flu is now considered widespread. Those most in danger are those people who are age 65 and older. But this particular flu virus has already caused the deaths of 15 children. Scientists are working on the best way to map and forecast the flu's movement, much like predicting the weather, watch this from CNN's doctor, Sanjay Gupta.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's amazing how much more we know about how to predict flu.

What they're trying to do now is predict the flu very much in the way that you predict the weather.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hurricane season.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Noah (ph) is predicting a below average season.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many parts of the state were under a hurricane warning early Thursday.

GUPTA: I know, all kidding aside, we don't always get the weather right, but this is pretty interesting. They use mathematical modeling to sort of predict where flu virus is going to be most dominant. But then they look at real time data and the real time data time is fascinating, people searching for flu on Google for example and they assimilate all that information to give you what are called hot spots, but they can go even deeper than that. This is a particular project that comes out of a Columbia school. You can actually figure out which week is going to be the worst in your particular city. New York City, January 10th. That's going to be your week.

Look, if you're a parent, it may be more likely to keep your kids home from school if they seem sick at all. I mean, you're more likely to cancel play dates, but also for hospitals. They could be anticipated more patients coming in, so leading more search capacity, more beds available, having more medications, flu vaccine, things like that on standby. But this is sort of where we're headed with regard to predicting when things are going to get really bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I want to get right to Dr. Kathryn Edwards. She runs the vaccine research program at Vanderbilt at Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Edwards, thanks for joining us. We just watched how scientists such as yourself will soon be able to predict and track the flu, much like the weather. How will that help you fight the virus and keep infections down?

KATHRYN EDWARDS, VACCINE TRIAL SPECIALIST: Well certainly, we've been trying to predict influenza for centuries and it's a very, very hearty and confusing virus at times, but we do -- certainly the CDC has a lot of ways that they track the virus, we find out first of all where it is but then we also find out what kind of virus it is. And the CDC told us last week that a particular strain that's circulating is called H3N2 which we know causes more severe disease than the other strains. We also know that about half or maybe slight more than half of the strains don't match the current vaccine. So we know that then that everybody should still get vaccinated because even if it's not a perfect match, it's very effective. But we also know that influenza always throws a few punches that we may not have anticipated. And so we need to watch very carefully and listen to the things that CDC is telling us about how to deal with the strains. And so we know a lot more than we used to but we don't know at all at this point.

TAPPER: You've been involved in clinical vaccine trials on many different flu strains for more than three decades, can all of the flu strains and this flu be compared. Do you approach them with the same strategy?

EDWARDS: I think that we approach them slightly differently. The usual strains when the virus changes a little bit causes new strains to be made and new vaccines to be made every year, and so those are generally kind of routine. We know how to change them, we don't have to do a lot of studies to make sure how they work. But when a flu strain changes dramatically like during the pandemic that we saw in 2009. Then we do need to look at those vaccines in a different way. We need to study them in a lot more people before we give them to people in the routine clinics.

So they are a bit different. We've also been studying bird flu strains and we've also studied the LAIV vaccine that's given in the nose as opposed to the flu shot that's given in the arm. We know at least in children for instance that this particular year, the CDC recommended that children, preferentially health children get the nose drop and we know that actually the nose drop vaccine often is a little better if the strain isn't perfectly matched. So this may be a really good time for the children to be protected with the nose drop vaccine because the strain isn't exactly what's in the vaccine.

We also know that we have some drugs, some antiviral medicines which can be helpful as well in taking care of the flu. Kind of like antibiotics, these are called antivirals. So early on in the illness, it's often very good to talk with the doctor, particularly for children, young children, certainly children at high risk with heart disease, that these antiviral agents may be just the ticket.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Kathryn Edwards, thank you so much. Wishing you a happy and healthy new year.

As the remaining hours of 2014 tick away, what were the year's biggest scandals and controversies. We will count down the top 10 coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOE JOHNS, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: 2014 was a banner year for the sort of scandals and controversies that shocked and appalled us. The stories we didn't always want to see or hear about, but many times were too disturbing to ignore.

Number 10, bridge gate, a new meaning for road rage. No city in New Jersey ranks in the top 10 cities for traffic gridlock. But tell that to the motorists stuck in the lane closure nightmare last September. In January, we learned the closures were part of a traffic study, which smelled like dirty politics aimed at Fort Lee's mayor who dissed Governor Chris Christie in the last election. No smoking guns suggested Christie knew what was going on.