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Ecuador Earthquake Latest; Brazil Political and Economic Problems Examined; Russian Disputes Claims of Jet Aggressive Actions; Ted Cruz Wins Wyoming Delegates; Sanders and Supporters Slamming Big Money in Politics. Aired Midnight-1a ET

Aired April 18, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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

[00:00:10] ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: This is "CNN NEWSROOM" live from Los Angeles. Amid all of the death and destruction caused by a powerful earthquake in Ecuador, a story of survival, as rescuers pull a 7-year-old girl from the rubble; in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff's days of President may have been cut as the vote for her impeachment wasn't even close; and, in the United States, Donald Trump explains his recent delegate woes while Ted Cruz tells him to stop whining.

hello and welcome to our viewers all around the world. I'm Isha Sesay. "NEWSROOM L.A." starts right now.

We begin in Ecuador where the death toll has jumped to 272 now from Saturday's powerful earthquake. Rescue teams are scrambling to find survivors still trapped under collapsed buildings. National police shared this powerful image of a 7-year-old girl pulled from the rubble Sunday in Pedemales.

The initial quake hit Saturday night, local time, collapsing bridges, toppling homes and tearing roads wide open.

The coastal province of Manabi has seen the worst of the damage. This is the capital, Portoviejo, barely recognizable from a few days ago; and as you see these pictures, clearly now covered with debris.

For the thousands of response personnel deployed to help, the focus remains on reaching anyone still trapped.

Well, a state of emergency is in effect for several provinces along the coast. Ecuador's president cut short his trip to the Vatican to return home. Pope Francis sent his prayers, but the recovery is just beginning after the country's worst quake in decades. Rafael Romo reports.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A young girl pulled from the wreckage of a building, one of the first glimpses of rescue operations under way in Ecuador after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake tore through the coastal region Saturday night. The catastrophic quake left behind a trail of destruction.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, via translator: everything is completely destroyed. The majority of the buildings have fallen and there are a lot dead.

ROMO: Hundreds have been confirmed dead, making the quake is the deadliest to hit this small South American nation since 1987, and the most vulnerable are the hardest to reach.

THOMAS HOLLYWOOD, DIRECTOR, CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES SOUTH AMERICA: The roads are in really bad shape. Then, also the area is very vulnerable because of the intense rainfall that it has gotten because of El Nino. So those two factors have made it a challenging environment to work in.

ROMO: The quake's epicenter was off Ecuador's coast south of Muisne, in Esmeraldas province. A state of emergency is in effect for six provinces, spanning the majority of the country's coastline.

Hotels have been leveled, bridges collapsed, and families left destitute.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, via translator: I found my house like this. What am I going to do? Cry; that's all. Now we are on the street with nothing.

ROMO: Countries around the world are offering help.

JORGE GLAS, VICE PRESIDENT, ECUADOR, via translator: Our friend countries, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Spain and the EU have all offered to send rescue workers with specialized tools and food rations needed for this type of situation.

ROMO: So far, thousands of police and military personnel have been deployed to affected areas. Portable hospitals have been mobilized in the hard hit cities of Pedernales and Portoviejo; and rescue teams in helicopters continue to search for survivors. The extent of damage is only just being realized but one thing is clear, Ecuador faces a long, difficult road to recovery from this disaster.

Rafael Romo, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Well, CNN and Espanol's Gustavo Valdes is in Ecuador's capital Quito and he joins us now on the line. Gustavo, good to have you with us. I know it's late where you are but what are you hearing about the situation currently in the quake zone?

GUSTAVO VALDES, CNN CORRESPONDENT, via telephone: Well, good evening. It seems like everybody here knows somebody or knows of somebody that's been affected by this tragedy. The president, a few minutes ago, addressed the nation, calling this a great tragedy and that the country will pull together so they can come out of this in a better place. He says this is the country he loves and he's trying to do the best to make sure that they can not only help those who have survived but also recover the bodies of everybody whose lives have been lost.

She said over 1,000 people have been -- over 200 people are dead but he said that he believes that that number could increase as they go through the rubble in the affected area.

I can tell you that from the custom agent to the package people here in [00:05:03] Quito, the capital, which is the second largest city. Guayaquil is the largest city in Ecuador, and that's the city closest to the epicenter where we're seeing these horrible images. Everybody is thinking about this. They know that it's a great loss for the country. They are trying to pull together. They know that the international aid is coming. They are very thankful for that, but they can't stop thinking about the lives that have been lost.

SESAY: Our thoughts and prayers with everyone affected by this earthquake there in Ecuador. Gustavo Valdes joining us there, on the line from Quito. Appreciate the update; thank you.

Well, the death toll from two powerful earthquakes in Japan has risen to 42. Rescuers are now racing against the clock searching for people trapped under rubble.

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Kyushu island early Saturday. At least 33 people were killed. Another less powerful quake hit the same region just two days earlier, killing nine people. Disaster officials said about 180,000 people have been evacuated into more than 800 shelters. Widespread power outages and water outages have also been reported.

Let's go to our Matt Rivers who has been following the deadly earthquakes from Japan, and he joins us now from is live in Japan. I understand that you're at Minamiaso Village. Matt, I understand you're at a rescue site. Set the scene for us; what is happening?

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's absolutely right. We are in a village that is typically a tourist town. It's up in the mountains, outside of where we were yesterday. What ends up happening here, during those two earthquakes that you mentioned, is this is one of the harder hit areas.

Let me show you what we're in front of right now. This is an ongoing rescue operation. You can see there's roughly, probably four to five dozen soldiers up there with the Japanese Defense Force, the self- defense force here. They are going through the rubble there, the very heavy mud that was a landslide triggered by this earthquake. The officials that we've spoken to say there are two people that are trapped inside of a building that was in the way of that landslide when it came down. This was a spa. these two people were apparently staying here as guests and so these guys behind me have been here for almost over a day now trying their best to get those two people freed. Isha?

SESAY: Matt, let me ask you this, what are emergency responders saying about how long anyone trapped in those kind of conditions would be able to survive under that kind of debris?

RIVERS: Well, typically, in this kind of a situation, -- we just spoke to a commander here with the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. They are putting the timeline as no more than 72 hours. So right now, this particular landslide was triggered by the Saturday morning earthquake. That was around 1:30 local time. So we are now more -- well over two days, really 2.5 days since this happened and so this window, unfortunately, for the two people that are inside this landslide, is getting a little bit narrower, and every hour that goes by, the chances of finding them possibly alive gets that much slimmer.

SESAY: Yes, it certainly does. A terrible time for family and friends who know that their loved ones are trapped.

Matt, beyond that rescue site where you are right now, are operations under way in other parts of the village? What can you tell us about what else is happening beyond where you stand right now?

RIVERS: That's right. There are other operations going on. 11 people in total, including the two people that are trapped here behind me, are still missing at this point, according to authorities. So there is this site and we saw two or three other sites on our way up here. Each one of them posing its own challenges, but almost all of it caused by landslides that were triggered.

This is very wet, muddy ground. We're on the side of a very steep mountain and so each separate scene here likely caused by a landslide. That makes the rescue efforts for these first responders here very, very difficult; very slow going. They are going tree by tree, shovelful by shovelful by dirt. It's a very slow process here but hopefully ones that end with some good news.

SESAY: That is our hope. Matt Rivers there joining us there from Minamiaso Village, and there at the scene of an ongoing rescue operation, a landslide triggered by one of those quakes that struck Japan on Saturday.

Matt, appreciate the on-the-spot reporting. We will continue to check in with you. Thank you.

And there have been hundreds of aftershocks in Japan and Ecuador since the big ones hit. Let's go to our Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri. He joins us now with more on that from the International Weather Center. Pedram, what are you seeing? Break it down for us.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Isha. You know how this works, right? We get these major quakes, of course, sometimes months; in some cases, [00:10:02] years, like the 9.0 in Japan, you have aftershocks that continue.

Show you what's happened so far, of course, with the 7.8, a depth that came in just shy of 20 kilometers, and a very shallow quake that occurred across Ecuador there on the 16th of April. But when you take a look at this particular quake, a thrust fault, and essentially what the U.S.G.S. scientists call a "slipover fault."

When you have this sort of a fault, you're actually disturbing the area of shaking in a far greater region, about 11,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of the country of Qatar, is the amount of land that has this major shaking. So you have a dot typically on the map that represents the shaking intensity. In this case, it actually expanded over 10,000 square kilometers for that 7.0 intensity shaking; hence, why we have large-scale fatality and, of course, it also doesn't help when your infrastructure doesn't support significant shaking like we see here, with an oceanic plate that wants to dive underneath the continental plate.

You've got to keep in mind, these plates are moving the same rate that your fingernail grows every single year. So they are constantly in motion. Once they come into a point where they stop, they rebound. The rebound that takes place is the shaking that you feel. And with a quake of this magnitude, Isha, we typically expect one aftershock, one order magnitude less. That would be the 6.8. We have not had a 6.8 thus far from the 7.8 quake.

Fortunately, that's the good news. Of course we know, statistically speaking, that is due to happen. You typically see ten aftershocks, Isha, that are 5.8 magnitude or greater. The largest we've had is a 5.4. So it's still plenty of aftershocks that could be considered quite large possible in the next coming couple of days over this region that we'll watch. Isha?

SESAY: Yes, a terrifying situation for many in the area. Pedram, we appreciate it. Thank you so much.

JAVAHERI: Thank you.

SESAY: Well let's get a closer look at the quakes in Ecuador and Japan. I'm joined by seismologist and geophysicist Mark Simons. He joins us here in the studio in L.A. Thank you so much for joining us.

MARK SIMONS, PROFESSOR, CALTECH SEISMOLOGICAL LABORATORY: You're very welcome.

SESAY: Let me ask you a question that's on the minds of many, two powerful earthquakes, one in Ecuador one in Japan, hours apart. Immediately people start to think are they linked in any way?

SIMONS: Well that's a natural thought but, of course, this is more like a tree falling in a forest in Canada and a cactus in Mexico. They are really not related by any way that we understand, at least at this point. In fact, these two earthquakes involve very different tectonic plates, and we just heard about how the plates come together or slide by each other.

These involve very different systems, one-third of the way around the planet. So we don't think they are connected.

SESAY: You don't think they are connected? So to bring home the point made by Pedram, what took place in Ecuador was a major thrust event, different from what took place in Japan. Just speak to that a little bit more, about the differences here at play.

SIMONS: Yes, that's correct. So in Ecuador, this event is much more like what we had in Japan actually in 2011, in the magnitude 9 earthquake or in Chile in 2010, where one plate does collide and even subduct underneath another one. Whereas the most recent event in Japan is much more like what we have in the San Andreas Fault here in California, where two plates slide by side. SESAY: So when you look at the occurrence of two powerful earthquakes happening the way they did, not connected, as you've made the point, but does it signal something? Does it signal a greater frequency of powerful earthquakes? I mean, when you look at the data, what does it say?

SIMONS: Really, there's no sense of it signaling or predicting a kind of period of an increased seismicity, other than locally where we get these aftershocks as described. But, no, there's no increased likelihood of large events. These large events and these plate boundary areas, where the plates meet, will occur and they're always a risk for large earthquakes. Whether there's one tomorrow or a hundred years, it's very hard to predict.

SESAY: Do the quakes point you in the direction of any new area of study as a seismologist?

SIMONS: Absolutely; so, for instance, the earthquakes in Japan are very interesting because there were two foreshocks, magnitude 6 and 6.2, followed a day later by the magnitude 7. What we'd like to understand is they are so close to each other there clearly is a relationship but we'd like to understand is that relationship due to the passing waves from one earthquake increasing the stress on another fault or is the fault creeping and actually these earthquakes are just the noise associated with a fault creeping in the background? That's something that by looking at lots of observations from satellites and GPS and seismology we'll be able to piece together over the next year or two.

SESAY: I was going to ask you, how long will that take you?

SIMONS: Maybe less than a year; we'll see. We'll see what the data shows us.

SESAY: And one last thing that I want to ask you about, which brings it home to folks here in the United States, some news released or statements made by government scientists in recent days saying that people in parts of Texas and Oklahoma now face the same earthquake risk of those living in California due to fracking. I ask this question, just in terms of you putting it in context, human activity and what that can mean for earthquakes.

[00:15:01] SIMONS: It's quite clear that when fluids are injected into the earth's crust you can trigger earthquakes; just like we've seen in Oklahoma. We have no real sense yet for the magnitude of the largest earthquakes that could be triggered in the future. So, yes, indeed, human activity can cause earthquakes but we have no evidence for human activity ever causing a very large earthquake, like the magnitude 8 earthquakes we've seen in

recent history.

SESAY: Mark it's great to have you with us to put it all in perspective for us, at a time when that is needed greatly. So appreciate the insight.

SIMONS: You're welcome. SESAY: Thanks so much. All right, well, if you'd like to help

victims of the earthquake, go to our special website at impact your world. You can find links to reputable organizations that are working to help the victims. Just go to cnn.com/impact.

Well lawmakers in Brazil's lower house have voted to impeach the President Dilma Rousseff. She's accused of manipulating government accounts to hide budget shortfalls. Celebration broke out on the streets as the tally was announced, as you see there. Brazil senators will vote on how to proceed. If they choose to go to trial, Ms. Rousseff she will be required to step down from office temporarily pending an outcome. She insists she's innocent and says impeachment is a conspiracy to push her out.

Our Shasta Darlington joins us now on the line with the very latest from Brazil. Shasta, I mean, looking at the way the votes fell, how much of a shock was this result in the lower house?

SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, via telephone: Isha, it really was a nail biter. It came down to just the last day with the government supporters saying they thought they were going to beat this and the opposition saying, no, they have the votes and they were going to vote her out, they were going to vote for the impeachment. So you really had both sides insisting that they were going to come out victorious.

You know, in the last week or two leading up to this, it became clear that President Rousseff was increasingly isolated. Members of the coalition dropped out. So in some ways it was factored in, although we expected the vote to be a little tighter. Tensions were running high inside the congress, you can see the shoving and pushing, lawmakers shouting at each other. Also, out on the lawn where we had pro-government and anti-government protesters separated by a huge barrier and lots of cheering on one side and some pretty unhappy presidential supporters on the other, Isha.

SESAY: Speaking of presidential supporters, let me ask about the woman herself, who is caught in the middle of this, Dilma Rousseff, have we heard from her? Has she reacted to this vote?