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Amanpour

Tornado Devastate Moore, Oklahoma; Is Sectarian Violence Destroying Iraq?

Aired May 21, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour. And the world is sending condolences to the United States, everyone from Queen Elizabeth to the pope, after a massive funnel cloud descended from the sky and demolished an entire town in the American Midwest.

Something like this happens almost every spring, along a vast swath of the U.S. known as Tornado Alley. But the giant twister that touched down yesterday in Moore, Oklahoma, was one of the biggest and most destructive ever seen.

Why is this particular region subject to these terrible events? In a moment, we'll look at how these twisters form and where else in the world is vulnerable.

But right now, in Oklahoma, rescuers are still combing through wreckage that is two miles wide. Residents had about 16 minutes to seek shelter after the first warning went out. But at least 24 people were killed, nine of them are children, and some of them were killed in their elementary school.

The mayor tells CNN that schools there don't have underground shelters. Moore has been hit before. The tornado that devastated it in 1999 is considered the most powerful ever recorded yet.

Some of the most poignant scenes in Moore are of children, wandering around the rubble of what used to be their classrooms. The tornado slammed into them just before school was supposed to let out and parents came desperately searching for their sons and daughters. Some were lucky enough to be reunited.

Rescuers have pulled at least 100 people out of the rubble alive and they're still wading through blocks of flattened homes and businesses. In a moment, we'll go straight to the scene in Oklahoma, but first a look at the other stories we're covering tonight.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): From nature's fury to a manmade disaster, I'll ask Iraq's foreign minister whether an explosion of sectarian violence has sealed the country's fate.

And from out of the rubble, imagine a sign of life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A dog! Hi, puppy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's your dog.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, oh, puppy.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): And constant prayers.

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AMANPOUR: All that in a bit. But first, CNN's Brian Todd spent the day with the mayor of Moore, Oklahoma, walking around the devastation.

Brian, thanks for joining me. And it really looks so awful today. But I'm so struck by what the mayor told you that there weren't even shelters in many if not all of the schools there.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's what he said, Christiane, at least a few of the schools here did not have what they call safe rooms, shelters, for children to run in, including that school that got devastated, Plaza Towers Elementary School, where we're told probably about seven children died, a total of nine children, they say, at the moment, have perished from this tornado.

And they say seven of those nine died in that school. That school did not have a shelter for tornadoes. But school officials did say that they did have sheltering plans; they had drills that they went through, that they've done this all year long, that they had them in place, those procedures, and that they followed those procedures.

But they were seeming to indicate, Christiane, that this storm just came just too strongly and too quickly for them to get everybody out of that school in time. The reasons for the lack of sheltering in some of the schools around here is essentially money. The funding dried up. They -- we heard officials here say that the last couple of years have been light years for tornadoes here.

So the state and just various entities of the state adopted other priorities for funding. And not everybody applied for the funding needed for a safe room. We're trying to get to the bottom of some of this and exactly why some of these -- maybe at the more minute reasons why some of these schools didn't have shelters.

AMANPOUR: Well, it does honestly seem extraordinary because there was one, a bad one in 1999 in this very town. And you know the ways of Washington better than I do.

Clearly a lot of Oklahoma's legislators voted against disaster aid right after Hurricane Sandy or superstorm Sandy and that goes right to the heart of the money issue you talked about. They're going to have a lot of questions to ask -- answer, aren't they?

TODD: They have a lot of questions to answer, Christiane, especially today. When you look at the school in question, Plaza Towers Elementary School, there's virtually nothing left of it. And you've got some deceased children on your hands now as a result of this. And you know, there are a lot of questions being asked.

They were really hammered at this news conference that we just attended about why the money wasn't there for safe rooms, what they call them, safe rooms for these schools, for at least a couple of them here in Moore.

And they were explaining that the priorities had changed, that the disasters didn't come quite as heavily in the last couple of years. So the priorities changed; the applications for the money for those safe rooms weren't there for every school district. So they're kind of -- they're pointing fingers right now without pointing fingers. But there's going to be some recrimination over that in the days ahead.

AMANPOUR: Yes, indeed, Brian, thanks for joining me. And, of course, let's not forget to emphasize that this area is particularly vulnerable to these tornadoes. And it is not just America's Tornado Alley that sees this weather phenomenon. Many other parts of the world are also susceptible.

And some of those places may come as a surprise to you. CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller joins me now, and he used to live in the heart of Oklahoma's Tornado Alley. He's studied and chased these tornadoes at home and around the world.

So, first of all, Brandon, thanks. What is it? You've lived and studied and chased these tornadoes -- about that particular area that makes it so susceptible?

BRANDON MILLER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, Christiane, tornadoes really require specific ingredients. It's almost like making a cake, in a way. And these ingredients only come together in certain places of the world. This portion of the U.S., the Central and the Southern Plains of the U.S., is really the best place where these come together.

Some of these ingredients include warm, moist air; that's comes from the Gulf of Mexico here in the U.S. Cold, polar, arctic air that streams down from Canada. And you get these dips in the jet stream; that provides the wind energy that these supercells, which are the most powerful thunderstorms and the ones that produce a majority of the tornadoes, will occur.

You also get warm, dry air that comes in from Mexico and the Desert Southwest of the U.S. And that really is those perfect ingredients to make supercells and, therefore, tornadoes.

AMANPOUR: So talking about the other places that are surprising around the world, I mean, I was really surprised when I heard the place which has the most frequent ones. Explain where it is and why that is the case.

MILLER: Certainly. So tornadoes can occur anywhere in the world, basically. They occur on all continents, really, except for Antarctica. Here in Tornado Alley, in the U.S., is definitely where the largest of violent, strong tornadoes, certainly what we saw and more yesterday as an example of this. And that's really unique.

The only place where those massive tornadoes really occur with any regularity, but other parts of the world do see tornadoes. Canada, actually, sees the second most number as far as countries. And that's really an extension of the U.S. Tornado Alley, extending up into Southern Canada, but also parts of Europe, really all of mainland Europe is susceptible to tornadoes from time to time.

That includes even Great Britain, parts of Africa. You get into East Asia. One of the other highest concentrated areas occurs in East India, in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has seen a number of very devastating tornadoes.

When they occur in these locations, they really occur without much warning; there's not a good warning system in place like there is here in the U.S. And there's also very vulnerable housing there. So we see tremendous death tolls.

In 1989, for instance, we had over 1,000 people killed in Bangladesh from a particularly strong tornado. And, again, moving into East Asia, we'll see them in parts of Eastern China, all the way down into Australia, New Zealand. They see them as well.

The main thing you'll notice is they're close to a body of water, close to that warm, moist, buoyant air that can cause tornadoes and supercells to form.

AMANPOUR: So go back to England, because who would imagine that. And I read that it has the highest concentration of tornadoes per square kilometer. Why, though, are they not as devastating? What is it about the weather?

MILLER: Right. Well, they certainly don't see as many as the U.S. They only see around -- most estimates are around 30 a year. But when you average that out over how small the U.K. is, it comes out to a higher concentration of tornadoes, more tornadoes per square kilometer than even the U.S. But most of these tornadoes tend to be very short-lived and very weak.

They don't have that warm, moist air that they have in the southern U.S. It's just not as hot. So therefore these tornadoes are driven really by wind shear. That's a change of winds in direction. So if you are in the U.K., you obviously know, it's very windy frequently.

Those winds will spin up real quick and normally very weak tornadoes, not the big, devastating, violent tornadoes like we saw in Oklahoma yesterday.

AMANPOUR: And finally and very briefly, of course everybody's going to be saying, well, how does climate change play a role in what we've just seen? And this comes up every time there is tornado season in the United States.

Is there a clear link or not?

MILLER: Well, no is the answer. There's not a clear link. Go back to what I said at the beginning, of making a tornado is like making a cake. If you add more warm air from global warming, that would be like adding more sugar to your cake. It's not going to necessarily give you more cake. It's just going to give you a sugary mess after a while.

It's really how all those ingredients come together that's going to determine tornado frequency and intensity. What we probably see and what most research up to this point has said is you may see a shift from that Tornado Alley to -- maybe to the east; maybe a little farther north. As you get a little bit more warm air from climate change.

But basically the short answer is no, we don't know. The climate models we use to forecast into the future for climate change, they're not fine enough to see tornadoes and individual supercells. So we struggle to model that going into that future.

So things like heat waves and cold snaps that last a number of weeks, we can point to those with pretty good certainty and say that they are driven by climate change. But something on a time scale and a spatial scale as small as tornadoes we just can't say that with any type of certainty.

AMANPOUR: Brandon Miller, thank you very much.

And among the scenes of incredible destruction in Oklahoma, there is also this one, what used to be a bowling alley beneath the fallen beams that once held up the roof are the empty bowling lanes. And the ghosts of games gone by. After a break, we'll turn to a different kind of disaster, the onslaught of sectarian violence in Iraq. I'll ask that country's foreign minister, will democracy be the final casualty?

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. And what is happening to Iraq? It's now seeing some of the worst violence since the civil war of 2006. Dozens of people are being killed every day in these past weeks. Almost 100 were killed on Monday alone.

Tit-for-tat bombings are targeting Sunni and Shiite communities in an explosion of sectarian violence. Is this the inevitable aftermath of the sudden exit of American troops in 2011? Is sectarian violence spilling over from Syria next door? Is Iraq unraveling?

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari insists that it is not. But in an unusually frank conversation, he acknowledged to me the many failures of his government, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and its inability to rise above sectarian differences. I spoke to him from Baghdad a short time ago.

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AMANPOUR: Foreign Minister, welcome. Thank you for joining me. And let me get right to the point: there have been so many killings over the last couple of weeks that everyone on the outside believes that we're going to see another civil war in Iraq.

How worried are you about that happening?

HOSHYAR ZEBARI, FOREIGN MINISTER, IRAQ: We are worried indeed because of this increase in the number of terrorist attacks and also the rise of sectarian tension.

But really the country is not sliding into civil war or sectarian war. We have seen worse times than these times. This violence is a direct result of the lack of political progress among the politicians and the key parliamentary blocs in the country and the deterioration in the security is the result of that lack of progress and coexistence and consensus that has marked the new Iraq from 2003 onward.

AMANPOUR: I know you say we've been through worse before, but this is as bad as it's gotten since the civil war of 2006-2007. So to that end, you are part of a government which is accused of centralizing too much power, of being almost as autocratic in its own way as the Sunni Saddam Hussein regime that was overthrown. What is going to break this impasse?

ZEBARI: Yes, I think the reference point for all the parties, all the conflicting parties and interests is the Iraqi constitution that was approved by the majority of the Iraqi people, the majority of the people of Iraq that raised the new system, the new democratic system. And I think differences could be settled there.

The government has its own failing. I'm not here to give you a rosy picture or to portray unrealistic picture. But the country is not crashing. Contrary to what you see from a broad release (ph).

AMANPOUR: Well, again, let me question you on that and push you on that. A lot of the things that are required, as you're talking, requires approval by parliament and things are really stuck there because of the divided parliament. So that's a real problem. Don't you agree?

ZEBARI: Well, I agree actually there is a lack of cooperation between the executive branch and the legislative branch and both sides are taking position, are banking in their position. But really there would be ways to resolve, to settle these differences.

The parliament is the representative of the people and the government is eligible to be changed and next elections might be -- there would be a new government. But what is lacking is the lack of confidence of trust among the politicians.

And we have lost the service of an honest broker before it used to be the United States or the -- it used to be the religious majority (ph). It used to be the Kurdish leaders who tried to mediate. Now our president is sick in Germany. So there has been a lack of political dialogue among the Iraqi leaders and politicians. Otherwise, these issues are -- can't be settled, let's say, through peaceful means.

AMANPOUR: You mentioned the lack of the United States, which often helped reconcile and mediate between the parties, but also obviously helped with the security situation.

Describe what kind of a vacuum has been left by the U.S. not performing these functions anymore, because they're not there.

ZEBARI: They have been helpful, actually. I'm not trying to underestimate the U.S. role at all. It's always welcome. But really that role has changed. I mean, with the military presence, with the forceful political engagement and engagement, that has changed because of the change of the policy.

AMANPOUR: Let's also be frank on what's required politically. You say and you refer to the government going through elections next year. And certain many people are being very vocal about saying that Mr. Maliki, the prime minister, bears a huge share of responsibility and some are even saying it's time for Maliki to go because of the overreliance on Shiite cronies and political brokers.

Let me describe to you how his situation is being written about over here.

One article says, "Maliki's inner circle dominates the selection of military commanders, right down to the brigade level, controls the federal courts, sees control of the central bank. The executive branch is rapidly eclipsing all checks and balances that were put into place to ensure that the kind of autocracy that we're seeing doesn't happen.

How big a problem is that?

ZEBARI: The new Iraq cannot be ruled by one set of or one nationality or one man or one party. Those days are gone. And it would be up to the Iraqi electorate in the future to change its government through the ballot boxes.

AMANPOUR: I know that you're part of this government and I hear you saying things and not going as far as perhaps I would like. So let me ask you again.

You say that there cannot be sectarian policies and politics in Iraq. But in fact, the prime minister is accused of playing very hard line sectarian politics with security, with the political process itself, resisting integrating the military and all the security forces fully with Sunni participants.

Calling Sunni politicians terrorists and hounding them out, you know, how big a challenge is that? The Sunni population seems to have lost confidence in the ability to be part of the new Iraq.

ZEBARI: There is a problem, definitely. I agree with you, there is a lack of trust, of confidence. But the Sunnis who have been rising against the government and peaceful demonstration or protests or sit-ins, I mean, it has been 4-5 months, Christiane. It hasn't turn into an open war or warfare between the Shia or the Sunni.

The differences between the Kurds and the government, despite the rhetoric and so on, really it has not turned into a confrontation. And that are some of the good signs about Iraq that the majority of the people want to live together and the new democratic federal system of governance.

And with the respect for human rights, I underline respect for human rights because we are mindful of our duties, our responsibility as a government that there has to be more improvement on that, too.

AMANPOUR: I'm sure you're absolutely right, that the majority of the Iraqi people after all they've gone through really don't want to get caught up in another savage round of bloodletting. But more than 200 dead over the last several days is shocking.

And I guess I want to know how you think, as a nation, you're going to get over this now, in the short term, the medium term and for the long term?

ZEBARI: Well, we discussed this as early as yesterday, Christiane. You have been a close follower of the region and of Iraq. In fact, this existential question was discussed at a cabinet meeting with a very open, frank discussion, that there is a need to lower the rhetoric; there is a need for the government to rise above any sectarian leaning.

The prime minister act as the prime minister of all the communities, not of one community against the other. And there has to be measures of accountability for all these breaches of security and this killing of innocent people.

We know the terrorists; we know Al Qaeda. We know the Islamic state of Iraq is trying desperately to ignite the sectarian war here in Iraq or the conflict by targeting Shia mosques or communities or people or innocent bystanders. But so far there has been restrained by the political religious leadership, not to be dragged into what the others are trying to do or to achieve.

AMANPOUR: Mr. Foreign Minister, thank you very much for joining us.

ZEBARI: Thank you.

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AMANPOUR: I also asked the foreign minister how he would grade his government from A to F. For his answer, go to our website at amanpour.com. And after a break, from out of the wreckage of Oklahoma, a story of survival and a heartwarming reunion when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, earlier we showed you the devastation and heartbreaking loss in Oklahoma. But imagine a world where one survivor's prayer was answered on camera.

Barbara Garcia lived through the tornado, but she went back to what used to be her house to look for a missing family member -- her little dog. She had all but given up hope when suddenly a tiny miracle occurred. Take a look.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The dog! The dog!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The dog!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, puppy.

GARCIA: Oh, oh, Babsy (ph). Oh, Babsy (ph), bless your little bitty heart. Help me.

Oh, Babsy (ph), oh. Oh, oh. Come on.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get him?

GARCIA: Well, I thought, God just answered one prayer to let me be OK. He answered both of them, because this.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): And as you can see, Barbara's little dog lives to walk and bark another day. Answered prayers indeed.

And that is it for tonight's program. Meantime, you can always contact us at our website, amanpour.com and also on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.

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