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Rescue Efforts Still Ongoing After Earthquake in Japan; Death Toll Rises To 32 In Japan From Quake; 41 People Confirmed Dead from 7.8 Magnitude Quake In Ecuador; Brazil's Lower House Of Congress Sets Vote On Whether To Impeach President Dilma Rousseff; Pope Francis Brings Three Syrian Families Back To Rome From Greece On His Plane; Ted Cruz Celebrates Wyoming Win. Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired April 17, 2016 - 03:00   ET

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

[03:00:14] NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you for joining us. I'm Natalie Allen at CNN Center in Atlanta.

We are tracking two powerful earthquakes, thousands of kilometers apart. Rescue efforts continue in Japan. But we begin in Ecuador where magnitude 7.8 quakes struck the coast, the epicenter about 170 kilometers from the capital Quito. But much of the damage that we have seen so far has been in Guayaquil.

This is the video of a collapsed bridge there that killed at least one person. Seventy six more are confirmed dead throughout the country with nearly 600 injured.

Official say any risk of a tsunami has now passed. But there had been many aftershocks already with more potentially coming about 36 aftershocks.

Ecuador is still assessing the extent of the quick damage.

Our Meteorologist, Derek Van Dam has been studying quakes on both side of the Pacific, and so this one was a surprise. But certainly in area that sees a lot of them though but death toll has slowly creeping higher.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: In fact this is the area of the world that produces some of the largest and most powerful earthquakes, 7 magnitude, 7.0 or greater earthquakes have occurred since the 1900 just in this part of Ecuador, so that's just gives you indication of what we're dealing with here.

This is just one of the many images now filtering in to CNN. And then lot of social media, lighting up with very similar images to this lot of compromise building and structures with further aftershocks expected.

You can imagine that this situation will continue to remain dangerous and we will monitor so closely and filter the information as possible so we can get that out to you at home. We are thinking for everyone impacted by this particular tragedy not only in Ecuador but also Japan.

So let's go down to the details of what happened, how many people felt shaking and what cause this particular earthquake.

This is the northwestern coast of Ecuador. And we've broke down who felt the strongest shaking. The moderate shaking felt by just under 6 million people. Again just outside of Quito really very strong to severe narrow down to about 1.5 million people or so.

The epicenter of this quake was just along the coastline. It was a 7.8 and that depth 19.2 kilometers rather shallow but if in comparison to the Japan earthquake that took place on Saturday morning local time. That was a depth of 10 kilometers. Those can get extremely dangerous, the closer to surface they are because that just allows for that ripple effect to resonate across the earth.

Now, what cause this particular earthquake? Well, this is called a thrust, where the tectonic plates actually thrust underneath each other and cause the ground to move or slide in a particular direction.

With this particular type of earthquake a magnitude of 7.8, we would anticipate several strong but in comparison weaker aftershocks to continue for the next days to come, potentially 5 to 6.5 magnitude. So keep that in mind.

This is to look at the forecast radar across the area as a search and rescue operations commands and continue, we do have the potential of rain in and then around the -- as where all those region, we're getting a lot of pictures from this particular area with the search and rescue operations ongoing. You can see the chances of rain shower that's could potential impact that as well.

Now, when we look at the estimated fatalities, this is from the USGS with the similar earthquake of this magnitude within this particular population density or highest population or highest percentage here lies between 100 to 1000 fatalities. So that's what we would anticipate with this type of an earthquake. This is right on that volcanic rim, the ring of fire. And this is an area that gets a significant earthquakes. And this one is all the same.

You can see the frequency of earthquakes around the world. We see 7 to 7.9 magnitude, average about 15 per year. This is one of them.

ALLEN: About 15 million live in Ecuador, so not, and you know, that many people in the area so hopefully they'll keep the death toll down.

Thank you, Derek.

We will turn out to Japan where people are pouring into evacuation centers in fear of aftershocks there after a magnate 7.0 earthquake hit Kyushu Island early Saturday.

The death toll had risen to 32, that's according to official in the same region hit by a powerful tremor just two days earlier killing nine people.

[03:05:00] More than 1,000 were injured in both quakes. Emergency crews are searching for those still missing, possibly trapped.

Japan has now deployed 25,000 troops to join the search and rescue efforts.

Matt Rivers is with our team in Kumamoto. He joins us live from there. And Matt I know that you and the crew from CNN slept in a shelter last night. And you could very much commiserate probably and see what people were dealing with that where there with you.

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that was our intent but it was also because frankly there is nowhere else to stay in this area. This is an area that has been hit extremely hard.

And so as we were making our way in, you know, you look for hotel reservations, you look to pick some supplies. I stopped in grocery store, there was very little supply. There were no hotels open. And so we were put in the same exact situation as the people who live in this community.

And what you saw on the shelter was really a place that has been sanctuary at sorts for people here because as you can see the devastation behind me has just been absolute amend given the level of strength that this earthquake we saw here Natalie.

ALLEN: Yes. And what about -- Matt what about as far as, you know, we can see the crumbled buildings behind you, what about as far as that island itself? We've seen, you know, aerial videos of complete road washed away, how much is travel impacted?

And, you know, its 25,000 people are helping out, the search and rescue, but can they move around the island?

RIVERS: You know, on our way, we saw, that was another thing we saw first hand for ourselves how difficult it is, you know, roadways like this just behind me. They have huge cracks in them in certain areas because you simple just cannot get through because of the level of damage that this earthquake caused.

And so we've seen convoy after convoy of military trucks. We've seen police vehicles but they are very, very slow going getting to where they are trying to go because frankly the infrastructure here has been damaged.

And speaking of infrastructure, it's also worth bringing up, the other difficulty -- the one of the other difficulties that people are facing here and that is that the power grade has been damage heavily by this. Electricity has been out in this area for sometime.

And so for people to really kind of return back to it a sense or normalcy if they were one of lucky ones that not have their home completely destroyed if they have the opportunity to come home.

It's going to be things like getting the water running again and getting the power back on that will allow these people to begin maybe to move forward.

ALENN: And we can see this home that collapsed behind you Matt. As you look around, how much of that do you see from your advantage point there? RIVERS: Well, we're in one of the neighborhood that was hit hard this year. And really you kind of get the feeling that it's on a block by block basis.

And frankly the other interesting point is that also really has to do a lot with how these homes were constructed. If you see some of the homes on the street behind me that were constructed in the last 10 to 15 years, they're built to a higher standard frankly and the homes were destroyed behind me generally speaking they were build mainly of wood and light metals and they simply weren't made to withstand the kind of force that we saw with this earthquake.

And so really on block by block basis things can be different but there's not doubt across this region of Kumamoto just a sheer of devastation in may parts.

ALLEN: Yes. As you talk there's house that collapse unto a street in the video that were shown on real and so real may even.

Thank you Matt Rivers to you and your team for that story, thank you.

We want to turn to other news that we're following. Brazil's lower house of Congress has set a vote in the coming day on whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff.

Defection in the president's coalition make it likely to vote to impeach will succeed. Ms. Rousseff and her party are mired in a corruption scandal and economic crisis. If she loses the vote, she'll face trial in the senate over whether she broke budget laws.

Here is CNN Shasta Darlington in Brazil.

SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A marathon session here in Brazil's lower house of Congress as lawmakers delivered their final remarks. Ahead of a closely we watch the vote on Sunday afternoon, when they'll decide whether to approve an impeach motion against the Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff.

Now, motions have been running high with some lawmakers shouting out impeachment.

Now, other is denouncing the whole procedure as a coup d'etat a lot of back and forth.

And outside of Congress, tensions are also running high, thousand of protesters are pouring into the capital of Brazilian police that had to erect a huge barricade on the front lawn of Congress hoping to separate pro-government supporters from the anti-government protester and really prevent clashes there.

[03:10:11] The problem is both side think they're right.

You have a huge percentage of the population that blames Dilma Rousseff for the economic crisis, for a corruption scandal that has engulfed many politicians in her party, although it has not implicated the presidents herself. But her supporters say, that that's exactly the problem that the opposition is trying to impeach her on a technicality for breaking budget laws when many of the lawmakers right here in the Congress really driving that impeachment motion have been accused of money laundering and of corruption.

At this point, it is looking increasingly likely that the opposition will master the two-thirds it need to approve the impeachment motion. Then, it would be sent to the senate which means that Dilma Rosseff could be stepping down to face impeachment trials as early as May.

Shasta Darlington, CNN, Brazilia.

ALLEN: We want to turn back to the Japan earthquake for a moment because we have on the line with us somebody's who's working in the relief effort.

The Red Cross has joined the relief efforts there.

And Rena Igarashi is the press officer for the organization in Japan. She joins us on the phone from Kumamoto. Rena, thank you so much for talking with us because we know you're so very busy in doing such important work.

First of all, I want to ask you with so many homes and apartment buildings and structures that had collapse or could be unsafe, what are you dealing with in terms of providing shelter to the people who need it?

RENA IGARASHI, PRESS OFFICER IN JAPAN: OK, the Japanese Red Cross society has provided 23 emergency medical clinic so far. And apparently, two r teams are -- after the evacuation center in Mashiki town which was one of the most affected area.

And also, the Kumamoto Red Cross Hospital is working around the clock. And after the second earthquake, they have received 707 patients so far.

ALLEN: Are you getting the supplies that you need? And we're looking at people walking down the streets as you talked carrying food and water, is enough of that coming in the country. And I talked with someone earlier with Save the Children saying, there still needs to be more coordination at this point?

IGARASHI: Yeah, for the moment, our priority is medical relief. So we prioritizing the emergency medical team to dispatch and also that our activities in the Kumamoto Red Cross Hospital, but also, we are deploying -- we are providing 4,000 set of the blankets and the emergency kit extra dry and extra draft (ph).

ALLEN: That is good news. But I want to talk with you about the trouble with moving around the island. We've seen so many rows that have been impacted, a landslide, covering a highway, how much is that adding to your challenges?

IGARASHI: Currently on in the center of the Kumamoto City, everything is going OK. But one of our medical team is now peeping to the Minamiaso town. It's a kind of a remote and mountainous area and that has exactly the road is cut down, and the landslide. But we are expecting that our medical team will reach up to the area in a two hours or so, hopefully before the sunset today.

ALLEN: And what about communications issues? How is that?

IGARASHI: Communication in the Kumamoto City, it's OK. It's working. But in the remote area again in the Minamiaso, I had in my colleague there but I couldn't reach -- I can't reach him for the moment. Maybe, the network is very bad or fluctuating.

ALLEN: Well, we thank you very much. We know you're quite busy with a important tasks ahead of you Rena Igarashi with the Red Cross. Thank you.

Well, three refugee families have a new home after the pope visit to Greece.

We'll tell you -- well, where he took them after he landed in Greece. Stay with that for the uplift.

U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has another win from the state in the U.S.

[03:14:50] Coming while -- why front-runner Donald Trump says, he's not too worried about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALLEN: Welcome back. Pope Francis has given some refugees more than a message of hope. He gave 12 of them a new home. The Pope brought three Syrian families back to Rome from Greece. They get to ride on his airplane. They've been living at a migrant camp in Lesbos which Pope Francis visited on Saturday. He spoke with hundreds of migrant. They're telling them they're not alone.

And later he told journalist that all nations shared the responsibility to welcome refugees.

Migrants at a small village at the Macedonian border want a visit from the pope. Thousands are living there in a makeshift camp. They were stranded after a number of country seal their borders closing off the migrants Balkan route into northern Europe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I hope it is good for us. I wish he could come visit us, and for each to go to the country they want to. This situation like this is very difficult, it is the same as being in our country at war, it is the same situation in Syria and here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: During his visit to Lesbos, the pope met with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Hala Gorani spoke with Mr. Tsipras about the migrant crisis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEXIS TSIPRAS, PRIME MINISTER OF GREECE: I think that was a significant chance to give the correct messages to the global community in order to recognize the efforts of the Greek people and of Greece, in order to face this humanitarian crisis, this refugee crisis.

You know, I think that it was very -- it was too important for us because we tried from the very beginning to face this crisis in high difficulties. But I think that at the end of the day, we managed to keep our values and our principles when at the same time, in Europe, there were some of our partners that they didn't do the same.

HALA GORANI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're talking about what country Hungary for instance, others?

TSIPRAS: It's no sense now to say specifically but I can say that it was not so easy for me in these difficult counsels' European counsels' when a lot of my colleagues asked me to protect the borders by push back to this vulnerable KIPO on the sea.

So it was not so easy for me to explain to them, that this is a -- first of all again, our principles. Secondly, out of the international legislation.

And it was difficult to convince my colleagues when their public opinion, where against the idea to give a help and edge and solidarity to these people.

[03:20:02] GORANI: So you're not naming country names. Let's talk about the Turkey/E.U. deal very quickly.

TSIPRAS: Yeah.

GORANI: There was a protest outside of the gate because ...

TSIPRAS: Everybody knows that, I'm sorry. Everybody knows in -- which were the congress that decided unilaterally to close the Balkan routes. Everybody knows about that.

GORANI: And we know that that ...

TSIPRAS: So at the same time that we would try to give solidarity to this vulnerable people, some decided to close the borders to build fences and walls.

GORANI: That -- there was a protest outside of where the pope was delivering his address and his blessing today saying, Moria the camp that he visited today is an E.U. prison stop the deportations. That is the tricky E.U. deal. Do you think it's a good deal?

TSIPRAS: The E.U./Turk is they'll -- it was very difficult deal. And of course there are a lot of conditions and -- that we'll have to implement with high difficulty because I believe and this is my best priority to deliver this deal on the framework of international legislation.

So that's why my obligation is to examine our talk all their asylum demands, all the asylum obligations ...

GORANI: But it's taking a very long time. And there's a lot of frustration in the camp.

TSIPRAS: But the fact is that after this deal, the flows have been reduced such vastly.

GORANI: Is that because Turkey, you believe all along could have secured inside of the border better?

TSIPRAS: I think that this is true. I think that is a combination. A combination of the willing of the Turks side to implement agreements and, but at the same time of the message that it was very clear that the illegal routes has stopped.

GORANI: Yeah.

TSIPRAS: At the same time illegal routes start to begin. And this is the substance. So the substance is to say to this people, these vulnerable people don't trust the smugglers, don't take the risk to trust the smugglers in order to go Europe. Let's go with the resettlement scheme from Turkish coast and also for the relocation scheme from Greece.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Hala Gorani with the prime minister of Greece there.

Well, a group of former Guantanamo Bay detainee has arrived in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. said Saturday nine people from Yemen would be transferred to Saudi Arabia ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit there next week.

This is the video. The man as they were welcomed by officials and family members of Saudi Arabia. Eighty detainees remained at Guantanamo after this latest transfer.

We turned to the U.S. presidential race now. Republican candidate Ted Cruz celebrating a big win in the state of Wyoming but front-runner Donald Trump is focused instead on Tuesday's crucial New York primary.

Our Ana Cabrera reports from Wyoming.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Cruz camp celebrating a big win here in Wyoming. They walked away with all the 14 delegates who were elected here at the state convention. That essentially met their expectations. Cruz was the only candidate who had an organized campaign presence in this state. They began recruiting grassroots volunteers and supporters as early as last fall. Trump saying he didn't want to waste resources in this state, in fact, saying that this weekend.

And again, criticizing the delegate election process here. This is a state that elects its delegates to the national convention through state conventions and county conventions instead of an open primary.

And I talked to one Trump supporter here who said had it been the other way around and there had been a primary here, well, the results may have told a much different story.

JUDY JONES, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Because people could go to the polls and actually vote for their man. I never liked the idea of one person deciding, you know, 1500 people's vote. I just -- it just never rubs me right, it just always bothered me, one man, one vote.

CABRERA: Ted Cruz picking up more momentum after this weekend coming out of Wyoming, although Trump and Kasich, who were in New York campaigning this weekend, expect to turn the tide come Tuesday.

Ana Cabrera, CNN, Casper, Wyoming.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Well, despite his lost in Wyoming Donald Trump is still in the lead to secure 1,237 delegates. That's how many are needed to clinch to the Republican Party's nomination.

Trump is ahead with 758, followed by Cruz with 553, John Kasich 145.

No candidate with his threshold. Delegates will vote for their party's nominee in a contested convention in July.

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says, he had an extraordinary meeting with Pope Francis. But he is not sharing what the pope told him.

On Saturday Sanders arrived back in New York from a quick trip to Rome.

[03:25:02] The senator tells CNN he think the pope for raising awareness about economic inequality. Sanders was at the Vatican for a conference and briefly met with Francis before the (inaudible) flew to the migrate camp. We just told you about in Greece.

The pope has this to say about the meeting with Sanders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE FRANCIS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): It was manners. It's called manners and not getting involved in politics. If anyone thinks that a greeting is getting involved in politics, then I recommend they look for a psychiatrist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: And the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has repeatedly attacked Sanders on gun control. Twenty years ago the Vermont senator voted against a key law mandating federal background checks on gun sales.

But now, Sanders says, he supports gun control reform. Still on Saturday Clinton slammed him again campaigning in California.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will continue to take on the gun law before common sense, gun safety measures.

This is one of biggest difference between Senator Sanders and myself. And no matter how often he's asked by family members of those who have been murdered, he sticks to his talking points.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Well, the American historical shows Saturday Night Live took inspiration from the CNN Democratic debate on Thursday, after Larry David again performed his spot on impression of candidate Bernie Sanders.

And Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus played her character Elaine from the show Seinfeld.

Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS, ACTRESS: So listen, you've been pretty vague in the past, but how exactly are you gonna break up the big banks?

DAVID SANDERS: You mean a big bank break up?

LOUIS-DREYFUS: Yeah, a big bank break up.

SANDERS: Yeah, bring it on.

LOUIS-DREYFUS: How? How?

SANDERS: Once I'm elected president, I'll have a nice schvitz in the White House gym. Then I'll go to the big banks, I'll sit them down, and yada, yada, yada, they'll be broken up.

LOUIS-DREYFUS: What? No. No. You can yada, yada at a debate, also, you yada yada-ed over the best part.

SANDERS: No, I mentioned the shvitz.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Pretty good stuff from SNL as always.

Thanks for watching. I'm Natalie Allen. Erin Burnett, Out Front is up next here. And I'll be right back with our top stories.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[03:30:05] ALLEN: I'm Natalie Allen. Back with our top stories here.