Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Beirut Port Officials Warned of Volatile Chemicals Since 2014; Government Minister: Every Business in the City Impacted; 300,000 Residents Displaced From Their Homes; Blast Linked to Chemicals Stored in Port Warehouse; Fauci Expects Millions of Vaccine Doses by Early 2021; Students and Staff Test Positive as Schools Reopen; Florida Hospitals Struggle to Keep Up as COVID-19 Cases Rise. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired August 06, 2020 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the U.S. and around the world, I'm Becky Anderson live from CNN's Middle East broadcasting center here in Abu Dhabi.

Tuesday's catastrophic explosion in Beirut was a disaster that some Lebanese officials have been warning about for years. The country's information minister says documents as far back as 2014 had urged the disposal of thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a port warehouse. But those warnings went unheeded. That warehouse is the suspected force of Tuesday's blast that killed at least 135 people and injured 5,000 others. The city's governor says 300,000 people can no longer live in their homes.

Well, Lebanon's economy minister says every apartment and business in Beirut has been impacted by the blast. And state media reports 90 percent of the city's hotels are damaged. CNN's Ben Wedeman reports.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): George Faraoun comes with a friend to see what they can salvage from the remains of his parent's apartment which looked directly on to Beirut's port. Tuesday's blast turned it into a moon scape, a panorama of utter destruction. Dried blood marks the spot where his mother was resting in bed when the explosion sent a wall slamming on top of her. She's still in the hospital. This was his parents' retirement home.

GEORGE FARAOUN, BEIRUT RESIDENT: This was their life. Everything they did here. Look what happened.

WEDEMAN: Given the damage, they probably will never be able to move back. Many neighbors were badly injured, others killed.

(on camera): In addition to the dead and the wounded, many, many people have lost their homes. According to the governor of Beirut, more than 300,000 people in the city have been made homeless.

(voice-over): People are packing up and moving out. While others try to salvage what they can, the area near the port is now a hive of activity as an army of volunteers like Maggy Demerjian has launched in a massive cleanup effort. Perhaps to show themselves that despite this country's mountain of woes, good will prevail.

MAGGY DEMERJIAN, VOLUNTEER: Lebanese people doesn't deserve this. Yes, who are those people?

WEDEMAN: They've come from all over the city handing out food and water, pitching in wherever, however they can. Officials believe the blast emanated from a warehouse filled with 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate sitting there under lax security for six years. The government has promised a quick, transparent investigation yet going back decades Lebanon has witnessed a series of high-profile assassinations and rarely if ever has the truth emerged.

JAD ACHKAR, BEIRUT RESIDENT: This action here destroys us. For 20 years they're going to talk about the investigation. It's never going to end. No conclusion, no results.

WEDEMAN: And no confidence among many here that the truth will ever be known.

Ben Wedeman, CNN, Beirut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON: Well, Euan Ward is a reporter with "The Daily Star Lebanon". He joins me now from Beirut. And you were in the midst of this disaster you tweeted NEWSROOM is working as hard as we can to keep everyone in the loop following yesterday's explosion in Beirut despite the state of the office. Firstly, what was the impact on you and your colleagues personally?

EUAN WARD, REPORTER, THE DAILY STAR LEBANON: I mean, it was like nothing we've ever seen before. We originally thought it was an earthquake. I mean, the building was shaking for five seconds. Some of the buildings blew out. It was just chaos. We had an emergency alarm came on. We quickly rushed out the building. It was only when we actually got on the street that we realize the true scale of the devastation. It was harrowing. Absolutely shocking.

ANDERSON: There's been a decline in fundamental freedoms and a repression of free speech in Lebanon. That is well-documented.

[04:05:00]

And it's resulted in a significant decline in the number of independent media in Lebanon. Your own paper has faced financial difficulties. As we reflect on the past 36 hours, what needs to change?

WARD: In the country as a whole?

ANDERSON: Right.

WARD: I don't know where to start. I mean, look, people are angry because of this. People are really angry. But what's happened -- this only epitomizes, I mean, the sheer negligence and self-interest of this government. You know, Beirut was being destroyed physically, but for decades it's been destroyed, you know, by the soul of the heart economically. There's just so many developments which need to happen right now. And considering this has caused close to 3 to 5 billion U.S. dollars worth of damage in the midst of an already economic crisis. You know, I just don't see change on the horizon unless the international community can step in and help.

ANDERSON: How and why should they do that, is the big question. Is there an answer to that at this point?

WARD: I mean obviously, each state has their own interests. Macron, obviously, is visiting Lebanon today. We might expect some aid from that. I know the U.K. close to 5 million British pounds sterling yesterday. It's interesting the actors that have actually come out and support us. For months we've been campaigning to try to get support for the Lebanese economy and so far, have been extremely unlucky.

But in the wake of the disaster we've seen the Gulf states, Iran and we even have our neighbors to the south which of course, is tumultuous issue. Israel has also pledged funding. So we can see that there is a kind of international effort to help. Whether this stems from just rebuilding the country, rebuilding the buildings is another question but what we really need is to solve the root causes of the issues in Lebanon.

ANDERSON: It's infighting between the government and the central bank about the extent of these losses which are becoming clearer and clearer. That the international community says is at the heart of this issue. Until it is absolutely clear just how big a crisis Lebanon sits in, the international community has been loath to get involved. It needs transparency. Will it get it?

WARD: I mean, the issue is -- you know, Lebanon -- the political scene and the commercial scene, economic scene you can say is so interconnected. I mean, you mentioned these losses. There are politicians in Parliament who because they have shares in the banks are lobbying that they don't really want the full scale of the losses have been. So transparency is just a thing that's, you know, it's so tangible here.

You know, in the wake of this disaster there's immediate things that we need to address in this country and I don't think things like press freedom, and other things like things (INAUDIBLE) order are things that are now going to be at the forefront of what people are thinking about.

I mean, buildings are destroyed. Like we said earlier, 300,000 people are homeless. There are immediate things that we need to tend to. And maybe this may serve in a politician's interest because it allows them to push off these more long-standing problems which have been bubbling on the surface so long here.

ANDERSON: With that we leave it there for the time being. But we do thank you for your analysis. Well, satellite images show the sheer power and scale of that

explosion. This is what the Beirut port looked like about a week ago when it was still intact. Well here's that same view now. The damage spreading for 10 kilometers. It's even more striking when we zoom in on the epicenter of this blast. This warehouse, pictured here when we look at it now, a crater. Almost everything nearby is leveled.

The ammonium nitrate which apparently caused the explosion arrived in Beirut more than six years ago on a Russian owned cargo ship that was originally heading for Mozambique. But local officials say despite warnings it was stored at the port warehouse without safety precautions. CNN's Nic Robertson has been investigating that and he joins us from London -- Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Many warnings. The director of customers wrote six letters to the port authorities from 2014 to 2017. Telling the port authorities that the ammonium nitrate was extremely dangerous, that they should reexport it.

[04:10:00]

It had been called into Beirut port perhaps as a result of complaints by the crew as the ship made its way across the Mediterranean.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Too soon to know if this explosion was an accident or an attack. But what we do know about the devastating detonation that has killed more than 100 people and injured thousands of others is staggering.

At its core, ammonium nitrate shipped into Beirut aboard this relatively small Russian-owned cargo vessel late 2013. The 86-meter M/V Rhosus with Moldovan flag had arrived from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia via Istanbul loaded with fertilizer was on route to Mozambique but ordered into Beirut port for seafaring violations.

The cargo, ammonium nitrate fertilizer is so dangerous. U.S. forces and the Afghan government banned its use in 2010 because it was being used to kill U.S. troops. Once in Beirut port, M/V Rhosus' owner abandoned the ship and crew. According to the captain, he left us in a knowing dangerous situation, doomed to hunger.

The captain also telling Radio Free Europe, M/V Rhosus was impounded for failure to pay fees. The 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate then shifted to a warehouse. Why so much? And why such a dangerous bomb making precursor was still there six years later is central to the government's investigation.

HASSAN DIAB, LEBANESE PRIME MINISTER (through translator): Facts will be announced about the dangerous warehouse that has existed since 2014, meaning from six years ago. But I will not jump into any conclusions.

ROBERTSON: President Trump told reporters that his generals think it's an attack. DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They would know better

than I would but they seem to think it was a attack. It was a bomb of some kind.

ROBERTSON: Although hours later, the DOD dialed back the bomb theory. Three U.S. officials telling CNN, they didn't know what the President was talking about.

(on camera): However, Lebanese officials, are still investigating one intelligence officer said the theory they're working on is the explosions were triggered by a bomb and are scrolling through footage of the explosions, searching for clues.

(voice-over): One reliable regional intelligence source told CNN the ammonium nitrate storage was well known to Lebanon's international partners who pressured the government to get rid of it.

Already, in tatters economically, politically, and medically, Lebanon long a cordon of vexed competing interest has much at stake in figuring out who is to blame. If the investigation finds it was an attack, not an accident, the government may have a sliver of hope navigating the immense anger of people who have suffered so much, only to be thrown into such a hell again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: But what everyone is going to want to know is precisely why that ammonium nitrate was there. And if the customs authority was asking for it to be removed, and the port authority wasn't responding, what influences were operating over the port authority to continue to maintain such a dangerous, dangerous warehouse so close to hundreds of thousands of people -- Becky.

ANDERSON: Nic's on the story for you and we will have a lot more on what is the utter tragedy in Beirut later in the show. Including the economic impact the explosion has caused. Before we do that let's get you back to CNN Center there in Atlanta. Rosemary Church is there for us.

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Becky. We'll be back with you in just a moment.

Well, as COVID-19 cases rise across the U.S., many are asking will it ever really go away? The answer may depend on who you ask. Back in a moment.

[04:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: There is growing hope that a coronavirus vaccine can soon be on the horizon. The top U.S. infectious diseases expert says tens of millions of vaccine doses will likely be available by early next year. And Dr. Anthony Fauci says, if we do have a vaccine the virus it will no longer be a pandemic capable of immobilizing the world and destroying economies. But says, he doesn't think COVID-19 will ever truly be eradicated because it's so highly transmissible. The U.S. President doesn't seem to agree.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's going away now. It'll go away. Things go away. Absolutely. It's no doubt in my mind it will go away. Please, go ahead. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: Well, Mr. Trump's claim came on the same day the U.S. recorded more than 33,000 new cases. And with states battling to slow the spread of COVID-19, schools are debating whether to reopen. Sara Sidner has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, FORMER DIRECTOR, U.S. CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: The virus is winning and the American people are losing.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The coronavirus teaching us a terrible lesson as some schools begin filling with students. In- person learning already disrupted in Cherokee County, Georgia after a second-grade student tested positive within the first couple of days. Students and a teacher in that class now home for a 14-day quarantine. In Georgia's largest school system, 260 school employees staying home due to positive tests for exposure to the virus.

ASHLEY NEWMAN, FORMER TEACHER: This is a community issue and we need to find a way to be able to get through to the higher ups and help them see that if the teachers aren't safe, then the students aren't safe and then the community is not safe.

[04:20:00]

SIDNER: Dr. Anthony Fauci says if in-person learning happens, one way to mitigate the danger --

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Keep the windows open. That to me when you're dealing with a respiratory virus, its simplicity is so, so obvious.

SIDNER: But in the third largest school district in the country, Chicago public school officials announcing the danger is too high to reopen.

LORI LIGHTFOOT, CHICAGO MAYOR: The fact of the matter is we are seeing an increase in cases. Combined with the trends that we are seeing, the decision to start remotely makes sense for a district of CPS's size and diversity.

SIDNER: An American academy of pediatrics study revealing, minority children had much greater rates of infections than their white counterparts. In a study of 1,000 students, 30 percent of black children and 46.4 percent of Hispanic children tested positive for the virus, compared to 7.3 percent of white children. Across the country, a small hope. 45 of 50 states are seeing new case

rates steadying or declining. But the death toll is still rising. Nearly 1,400 people reported dead in one day.

FRIEDEN: We need to focus on what's happening. 1,400 dead in one day is just a toll that is unacceptable and we need to up our game.

SIDNER: New York City's mayor announcing vehicle quarantine checkpoints after numbers show 20 percent of all new COVID-19 cases in the city are coming from out of state travelers.

BILL DE BLASIO, NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: The checkpoints I think are going to send a very powerful message that this quarantine law is serious.

SIDNER: In Jackson, Mississippi, a different move to try to slow the spread, a nightly curfew for 5-day period announced by its mayor.

(on camera): And we're seeing in the first week of school just how disruptive coronavirus can be. Now we've learned that three more schools in that same Georgia district have had one student who tested positive now have other people testing positive. Meaning that more than 60 students have to be guaranteed in that district. And we've also learned that in Mississippi, they have seen several people test positive in one of their school districts, meaning more than 100 people have to be quarantined there.

Sara Sidner, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: So let's talk more now with Dr. Robin Moore, an emergency physician in Miami. Thank you for talking with us.

DR. ROBIN MOORE, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: Thank you for having me.

CHURCH: So Florida has become the second state to top 500,000 cases after California and it's recording more than 200 deaths a day. Those are frightening numbers. What's been your experience at the hospital?

MOORE: We're definitely overwhelmed at the hospital. I actually work at two hospitals here in South Florida, one in Miami, one just north of Miami. And both hospitals are pretty near full capacity. It becomes dangerous because our ICUs are full. Many of our ventilators are already being used. And it becomes difficult for us in the emergency department because new patients are coming in and we don't have any place to put them. We are being completely overcrowded and there's no way to treat our new patients.

CHURCH: How are your nurses and the other doctors coping with all of this?

MOORE: The nurses I feel are the most overworked and we're trying to keep morale up but they're definitely working super hard. Also, a lot of our staff have actually fallen ill due to COVID. So that's become an extremely difficult challenge for us trying to cover the shifts, as many of our colleagues around us have fallen ill as well. So they're working long hours. We're actually bringing in help from other states. We've got a lot of traveling nurses that have come in to help out because we're so overwhelmed that we're becoming unable to treat new patients as they come in.

CHURCH: You know, that is certainly terrifying. And what about your PPE levels?

MOORE: So we simply don't have enough N-95 masks to get a new one every day. So we either where the same mask for a few days or most of us as doctors have actually purchased our own respirator masks to wear every day that are more protective even than the N-95 masks. We try to gown up on a patient that's higher risk or where we have to do procedures. And of course, we wash our hands constantly, using gloves constantly. And we're trying to keep ourselves safe and our patients safe.

CHURCH: And what are you finding -- with the patients coming in, what is the main story here? Are you looking at older people, younger people? What's the demographic?

MOORE: I'm seeing all ages. But of course the sicker patients tend to be the ones that have a lot of co-morbidities, heart disease, diabetes, overweight and those that are older. So we're seeing a lot of our nursing home patients come in. They are very ill from this. They seem to be the ones that are most devastatingly impacted from COVID. But we are seeing an entire range of ages. But fortunately the younger, healthier people don't seem to be as severely impacted.

CHURCH: Right, and the U.S. just saw its highest one-day death toll in two months. And yet President Trump said at his briefing Wednesday, that the pandemic will just go away. But he still didn't offer any national plan for testing or masks.

[04:25:00]

How will it just go away without a national plan?

MOORE: I don't see that it's going away right now. We're still seeing cases day by day by day. We're still completely overwhelmed. If we were a little bit more overwhelmed than we are right now, I think we'd be in complete chaos. I actually went to New York and helped them in April and in May as a doctor there. We aren't as bad as they were in the hospitals there, but we're still seeing a huge number of new patients coming in every day. So this isn't going away. Right now we're still in the crisis. We're right in the middle of the crisis.

CHURCH: Right, and the President also defended his statement that children are virtually immune to the virus and said that's why all schools need to be open for in-person learning. Using science as our guide there, should schools open when cases are surging? And are kids virtually immune as Mr. Trump keeps insisting?

MOORE: Well, it's not my place to choose those schools open or close. But I can at least say as a doctor I have seen COVID in children. Fortunately, I've not seen any severe cases in any of the children. It's just been a handful of cases that I have seen. But obviously, they're not completely immune. They can fall ill to COVID as well. And the other thing is that they can still spread the infection to their mother at home, their grandmother at home, for our patients that are, you know, that are sick that have comorbidities. So it's who they're going to bring it home to is the other concern.

CHURCH: Right, and we've seen some states banding together in an effort to establish a plan to increase rapid testing. And we know now that Florida has opened up two new rapid testing sites in Miami-Dade with results back in 15 minutes. That is great progress. How big a difference do you think that might make to your area?

MOORE: Oh, I think it's going to be a great change because a lot of people just need to know whether they are or aren't infected so they can help guarantee themselves to prevent the spread, further the spread. We aren't able to offer the out-patient testing in our hospitals so when young people come, we advise them to go to the outreach testing centers. And luckily there are more ones that are opening now so we that we can find out who is infected and those people can stay quarantine truly at home and help to lessen the spread.

CHURCH: Dr. Robin Moore, thank you so much for talking with us and for everything you do there at the hospital. We appreciate it.

MOORE: Thank you.

CHURCH: And still to come, we will have more on our top story out of Beirut and how the tragic blast is expected to have a devastating impact on Lebanon's already shaky economy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END