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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Relief Effort for Southeast Asia Gains Momentum

Aired December 28, 2004 - 22:00   ET

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

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


TUCKER CARLSON, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, I'm Tucker Carlson sitting in for Aaron Brown.
Here's the latest on the aftermath of Sunday's tsunamis in south Asia. More than 50,000 people are believed dead but that number could rise far higher once updated figures from Indonesia are added. UNICEF says as many as one-third of the dead may be children. In many areas, mass graves are being used to bury victims and one of the largest relief efforts in history is gaining momentum.

The U.S. alone has pledged $35 million in aid and is also considering sending in as many as 700 American troops. In Crawford, Texas tomorrow, President Bush is expected to make a statement about the relief efforts already underway.

There's a lot to get to tonight but, before we do, we'd like to go further and show you some brand new video just in to CNN. It was taken as the waves began rolling onto the beaches in Phuket, Thailand.

(VIDEO CLIP OF BEGINNING OF TSUNAMI)

CARLSON: The cameraman who took the stunning pictures you're looking at is called Frederick Bornesand. He's a policeman from Stockholm, Sweden. He happened to be swimming in the pool at a hotel with his girlfriend when disaster struck on Sunday morning.

We have Mr. Bornesand on the phone. Mr. Bornesand, can you hear me?

FREDERICK BORNESAND, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: Yes, I hear you.

CARLSON: That's remarkable pictures of a couple being swept away by the ocean coming in. Were you aware when you were taking them what was happening?

BORNESAND: No, I wasn't aware what was happening. We saw a lot of water coming in and (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I don't think anyone thought that it could come more water. So, after the first wave I went down to see if I could help someone and while trying to do that the second wave was coming.

CARLSON: Now, in your video it looks to be an older couple and it looks like they move out of the frame at high speed, pushed along by the water. Do you know who they were and do you know what happened to them? BORNESAND: Yes. After the second wave I was (UNINTELLIGIBLE) through the lobby and the waves by the hotel and luckily for me I managed to grab on a tree and climbed up there. When the water went away (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and I went back to the place where (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the couple and they found in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and some Thai people trying to get them up from the water. And, he's alive and well today, yes.

CARLSON: Where are you now Mr. Bornesand?

BORNESAND: Now I'm in Phuket town safe.

CARLSON: And how did you escape being swept away? How did you get up onto the second floor of the hotel from which you shot these pictures?

BORNESAND: When the first wave came I went up and after the first wave I got back down again and the second wave was much, much larger than the first one. So, when the second wave came I was forced towards the windows and through the lobby and when I came back again so much to do to help the old man and to clear the way to get him up one or two floors. It was hard work.

CARLSON: Frederick Bornesand in Phuket, Thailand, thank you Mr. Bornesand, horrifying video.

That's just one piece of a huge puzzle tonight and, as we go along, we'll try to take stock of the devastation as well as the efforts to help. We start on the ground halfway around the world where the scope of the medical emergency unleashed two days ago is still emerging.

Reporting live for us from Colombo, Sri Lanka, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Sanjay, where are you? My impression is you just got there.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Tucker, we just got here about a couple of hours ago. Now, we're in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka sort of trying to get a sense of what the public health relief system is like out here.

A couple of things, the biggest goal we're figuring out already is that those who survived the tsunami, the biggest goal to try and keep them alive. That may be easier -- that may be harder than it sounds, Tucker.

The public health system here in this part of the world really non-existent in so many ways, certainly not prepared for something like this. Getting the hospitals up and running to take care of all sorts of different things, everything from broken bones and trauma to all the epidemic type diseases that might result as a result of the standing water and gruesome decomposing bodies on the eastern part of this country, Tucker.

So, lots of concerns from the public health officials. That's what we're trying to get a sense of. Sort of interestingly, Tucker, we came into the airport, I expected to see a sort of sense of urgency as I've seen before in other public health sort of emergencies. We didn't see the tons of planes coming in with the relief. We've talked to several health organizations. They say they're not just sure yet where to put the personnel and where to put the supplies. It's a confusing situation, so many countries affected at the same time, so many people dead, unsure where the help is more dramatically needed right now, Tucker.

CARLSON: So, are you saying, Sanjay, that the government of Sri Lanka doesn't know what to do with the aid they're receiving or the aid hasn't been sent?

GUPTA: A lot of the aid hasn't been sent yet and we've talked to several organizations, including the U.N., the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders. They say that the aid is going to come. It's unclear exactly where and when it's going to go though.

Sri Lanka certainly is in desperate need of it. They do want the aid when it comes here but it's unclear exactly when it's going to get here. Again, as we arrived in Colombo, the capital, we're not seeing a lot of that as of yet -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Now, has it been cleaned up? We've been watching on CNN all day, terrifying, sad video from the areas affected of dead bodies out in the open. Have you seen anything like that where you are?

GUPTA: We're on the western part of the country. We haven't seen the dead bodies, the decomposing bodies. We've certainly heard about them as well. We are going to travel out there to see what exactly is going on.

The concern from a public health standpoint, obviously, is that these bodies, unless they're even cremated or given proper burials, will start to decompose and possibly spawn different epidemics, including dysentery, cholera, hepatitis A.

Tucker, these are some of the most gruesome things you have to think about from a public health standpoint but they can happen here in Sri Lanka, other countries as well around the world unless it's taken care of pretty quickly.

CARLSON: All right. Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Sri Lanka, awfully lucid for a man who just stepped off a 15-hour flight, thank you.

Well, as Sanjay pointed out, doctors cannot begin to cure the living until efforts are made to dispose of the dead. That's always the grim reality when so many people are killed in the same place at the same time. Reality, though, comes in all shades of grim and we want to warn you that what you're about to see is pretty tough to take.

Reporting from Banda Aceh, Indonesia, here is CNN's Mike Chinoy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We've heard the astronomical numbers but nothing can prepare you for a scene like this, the remains of men, women and children, about 1,000 the workers say, piled high for burial in a mass grave. The stench is overpowering contaminating the area killing bystanders. The grief is equally powerful.

"I lost everyone and everything" says 30-year-old Usniati (ph), "my four children and my husband are gone, gone. I was holding my 8- month-old in the waters but the waves pulled us apart." But Usniati knows where her 3-year-old is. She found his body in the street and brought him here.

"There are still a lot of bodies out there" says Alum Sol (ph) because so much of Banda Aceh was flooded by the waves."

There's no dignity in this kind of death. It feels more like a garbage dump than a grave but in their desperate struggle to bury decomposing bodies before the danger of epidemics grows even greater, the authorities have little choice.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHINOY: Indeed, as you drive around the streets here you still see bodies lying where they died. The task of cleaning them up is simply overwhelming and with thousands more feared dead in remote areas that no one has even reached yet, the concern is that things could get much worse -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Mike is that -- is it your sense that there are large parts of the country that haven't been reached yet where nobody knows what the devastation looks like?

CHINOY: Yes, absolutely. The western part of this northern tip of Indonesia, the coastal areas especially that were closest to the epicenter of the quake, have been completely cut off. The roads have all been damaged. Communications are down. Nobody has gotten there.

We simply don't know what has happened but there's a lot of concern that communities right along the seashore could have been completely devastated by the tsunamis and they've got no aid coming in at this point whatsoever. So, it could be an absolutely horrifying situation there -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Now, Mike, I wouldn't normally ask you a question like this but I've been watching you all day on CNN reporting one of the most depressing stories I've seen in a long time. How are you holding up? Has this been rattling to you personally watching this much death?

CHINOY: Well, my crew and I have covered a lot of bad news in the developing world over the years but we all feel the scenes that we've witnessed here rank among the most horrifying and upsetting that we've ever seen and it's not easy to operate because the electricity is off. There's no running water, sanitation, communications are a big problem.

But all that being said, we're managing and I think we're in a lot better shape than a lot of the people who lived through the disaster and that you see sitting in a daze on street -- by the side of the street having lost everything, not knowing what happened to their relatives. They're in a really, really desperate condition.

CARLSON: Thanks, Mike, CNN's Mike Chinoy in Indonesia.

Well, when all of this is over, this disaster may produce more orphans than any single event in recent memory. At the very least, the waters have torn loved ones from one another, perhaps for good, but hopefully only for now.

In Phuket, Thailand, Carl Nilson (ph) of Sweden is looking for his parents who were swept out to sea when the wave hit their hotel on Sunday morning. Sophia Mishel (ph) is ten years old. She's from Germany. She's being cared for at a local hospital while the search goes on for her parents.

Now, take just those two pictures you saw and multiply them by 10,000 or more. That's the situation right now on the coast of Thailand. With us from Phuket is CNN's Matthew Chance with the latest.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Tucker, we're having a few audio problems here but that's right. It is a scene of utter devastation across the region but particularly here in Thailand as well where so many tourists have come to spend their holiday vacations.

Thai authorities say at least 1,500 people were killed outright in the tsunami. Another 1,500 are said to be missing. There are scenes of absolute desperation near the town hall here on the holiday island of Phuket where people have gathered to try and give their loved ones, try and find information about their loved ones as much as possible, pin photographs on the notice board of their loved ones trying to get as much information as they can to try and find these people they haven't heard from essentially since after Christmas -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Matthew Chance, reporting live from Thailand, thank you.

Well, because some of the hardest hit areas were also vacation spots, people caught the unfolding disaster on home videotape, a lot of them did. We saw a little bit of that a moment ago. The pictures have been coming in to us all day long here at CNN.

This was shot from a hotel balcony in southern Sri Lanka. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another one. There's an even bigger one out there. Oh, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). They're terrified (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Oh, my it's going right in the hotel. (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

CARLSON: In a moment, a progress report on the massive relief effort now in motion, a break first.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The catastrophe in south Asia has set in motion one of the largest relief efforts in history. Dozens of organizations worldwide are working to collect and distribute aid, a discussion in a moment, first a report from the front lines.

Here's CNN's Ted Rowlands.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Employees here have cut vacations short and are working around the clock preparing medical relief supplies for victims of the tsunamis.

Direct Relief International is a private non-profit near Santa Barbara, California, one of the dozens of agencies around the world working overtime to try to get help to Southeast Asia.

THOMAS TIGHE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, DIRECT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL: We're more than happy to kind of pair up with anybody and let them take advantage of the aircraft.

ROWLANDS: President and CEO Thomas Tighe says the outpouring of support for relief has been phenomenal. Companies have pledged to donate medical supplies, medication. FedEx has even donated the use of a 747. Getting these supplies off the ground is urgent, says Tighe, but there's also a danger of delivering them too soon.

TIGHE: Just in the affected regions are already tough, so we want to make sure that what we send is not clogging up the arteries any further.

ROWLANDS: Another complicating factor is getting through government regulations in not one but several countries. An example is India's new regulation prohibiting pharmaceutical deliveries without a special, difficult to obtain, certificate. An e-mail received here from India this morning confirmed that despite the situation there, the restriction has not been lifted.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have to provide the certificate in order for the goods to come in, so that's definitely a delay in India for pharmaceuticals.

ROWLANDS: Phones here have been ringing steadily with donations. Direct Relief already has one of the largest standing inventories of medical relief supplies in the United States.

BETH PITTON-AUGUST, SR. MANAGER, PHILANTHROPIC INVESTMENT: But we also know that the need is really beyond what we're able to handle and we know that our partners, our corporate donors, really want to be proactive in situations like this. ROWLANDS (on camera): One of the things that they do have ready to go, cases of antibiotics. The belief is that in the days and weeks to come several countries will have a need for this medicine.

(voice-over): One of the major concerns is children.

DR. BILL WORTON-SMITH, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, DIRECT RELIEF INTL.: The lives of children are very fragile and certain solutions, such as oral rehydration solutions for diarrheal illnesses will become very important.

ROWLANDS: The first palates of medical supplies are expected to leave here sometime tomorrow. It is expected that the shipments will continue for months.

Ted Rowlands CNN, Goleta, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: Well, one of the many things that sets this disaster apart from others is its enormous scope. Casualties were reported thousands of miles apart from the earthquake's epicenter all the way to the coast of Africa, to Somalia. In Sri Lanka alone, by some estimates, as many as one million people are now homeless.

Joining us from Atlanta is Gail Neudorf. She's the Deputy Director of Emergency Relief for CARE. And, here in New York with me is Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of UNICEF.

Carol Bellamy, give us a sense how big is this relief effort?

CAROL BELLAMY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNICEF: It will probably be one of the biggest relief efforts we've ever seen, in part because you're talking about so many countries affected and so you've got to reach so many places that are so difficult to reach in such a broad geographic area.

CARLSON: Now, Gail Neudorf, it has been said, there was a complaint voiced the other day from a United Nations official that the United States was being and other western nations were being "stingy" in the money they were donating to this effort. Do you think that's true?

GAIL NEUDORF, DEPUTY DIR., EMERGENCY RELIEF, CARE, USA: Well, there's always a need for extensive response in this kind of situation. We're still finding out a lot about the needs and I think all the various governments have been very generous and very speedy in at least responding with what we need in the immediate.

My hope is that as things progress and as we start to look at the rehabilitation that's required that these doors will open even wider and there will be more generosity.

CARLSON: Now, Carol Bellamy, you work obviously in the U.S. government running the Peace Corps. What do you think? Do you think the U.S. government is being stingy? Is this a fair criticism?

BELLAMY: No, I don't and I spoke to my colleague in the U.N. about it and, in fact, he's rather retracted it. I agree with Gail. I think we're certainly going to need much more than has been forthcoming so far from the U.S., from Japan, from Australia, from Europe but the first response has been a good one and it allows everybody to get started.

CARLSON: Well, Gail, what can people do if you're watching CNN and you're moved to donate, who do you donate to? Who do you call? What do you do?

NEUDORF: There are so many organizations out there and there's many different ways of assisting. In the case of CARE, we're asking people to support us in terms of cash because this is the most flexible way that we can help.

We can purchase what's needed right there on the ground in many, many cases. We can be more flexible. We find the gaps that are not being filled by other donations and can immediately respond with that. So, this is the best in our sense anyway the best way for people to help at this point in time.

CARLSON: Carol, Sanjay Gupta was saying earlier in the program that there were logistical problems in distributing aid where he was. Will there be logistical hurdles? There's a low level civil war going on in Sumatra, for example. Will things like that hinder relief?

BELLAMY: It will. I mean, first of all, you have enormous destruction to the infrastructure, which wasn't very good in the first place. It differs from country to country. But your roads are down. Your bridges are down, your ability to reach people in the farthest places.

Then in places like, as you mentioned, in northern Indonesia or even in Sri Lanka you have wars going on. In Sri Lanka, one of the things that the floods have done is they've sent the landmines that we knew at least where they were planted and where we could protect ourselves against they're floating off in other areas. So, you have bad infrastructure, very bad communications and now you have the landmines in some of the war areas.

CARLSON: Gail, quickly, how many people are -- just give us some sense of what CARE specifically is doing. How many people are you sending to south Asia and how much money do you think you'll raise?

NEUDORF: Well, for the first part of your question, we're really focusing on the four countries that have the most impact at this point. That is India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia.

And we do have an extensive presence there. We have been in most of those countries from between 25 and 50 years, a lot of projects, a lot of networks, very good community relationships.

And so, what we are trying to do is work through those projects and networks already. Our staffing components are very large, 300, 400, even into 1,000 in the case of India. These are experienced people.

They've done this before, not in this circumstance but definitely they've responded to emergencies and we're supporting them with some of the technical expertise from outside but we're very reliant on our national staff.

CARLSON: All right. In Atlanta, Gail Neudorf, thank you very much. Here, Ms. Bellamy, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

BELLAMY: My pleasure.

CARLSON: Coming up in a moment, more stories of loss and survival.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Sunday was yet another reminder of the random cruelty and the luck that determines who lives and who dies when a natural disaster strikes. The walls of water unleashed by the enormous earthquake off the coast of Indonesia claimed tens of thousands of lives.

But, as large as the death toll may turn out to be, it is dwarfed by the number of people now homeless, many of them injured, all of them facing serious health risks.

Here's CNN's Hugh Riminton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HUGH RIMINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Amid survival stories, a tale of no survivors. On Sri Lanka's west coast, south of the capital Colombo, all 1,000 people on this eight-carriage train are now recorded as dead or missing. It was the same series of waves that hit English tourist Peter Etheridge (ph) on a nearby beach.

PETER ETHERIDGE, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: I couldn't believe the power. It was just unbelievable.

RIMINTON: Taken to Colombo's main hospital, he cuts a lonely figure. The wave swept away Pat, his wife of 32 years.

ETHERIDGE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I knew where she was and I was hiding behind a (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I went around to get her and then just all hell broke loose and that was the last time I saw her.

RIMINTON (on camera): Despite the stories in these wards, doctors are being stripped out of the capital Colombo to fill the overwhelming needs out in the district hospitals that are bearing the brunt of this medical emergency.

(voice-over): One hundred and twenty-five doctors, many of them volunteers, have already been airlifted to front line clinics, the burnout rate just 48 hours before most need to be relieved. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The conditions you don't have electricity. You don't have water service and the buildings are shattered. Hospitals are shattered.

RIMINTON: The immediate needs antibiotics and painkillers. The medical challenges wound infection, respiratory problems among those who inhaled water and bodies, so many they threaten to contaminate everything.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RIMINTON: And, even as the world hurries to help Sri Lanka and the other countries that have been affected by this tsunami, in this country at least it has to be said that the emergency disaster response is overwhelmingly local and it is woefully inadequate -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Thank you, Hugh, reporting live from Sri Lanka.

Now the larger picture, as reported by John Irvine of Britain's ITV Network.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN IRVINE, ITV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The children were playing on the beach when I came running down to find them and my wife, Libby. The sea off (UNINTELLIGIBLE) was a flat cam but with one big exception. A 20-foot wave was coming in shore very quickly indeed. Five-year-old Peter was staring at the wave mesmerized. I lurched forward and grabbed him.

(on camera): Obviously with the wave pursuing us pretty rapidly, Peter and I were moving rather more quickly than we are this morning. My wife, Libby, and my daughter Elizabeth headed for our bungalow over there but I knew that myself and the little fellow here simply wouldn't make it.

We listened to the wave breaking on the beach. There was a big bang as it came through those trees. I suppose we'd reached about here before we were washed away. We were then carried about 40 yards.

The wave carried us both through this little gap between these two bungalows. All the time I was acutely aware of all the debris that the wave had picked up on its journey.

Peter and I ended up actually down there in this field. Here are some of the tree trunks and other bits of debris that the wave carried with us. Fortunately they missed us.

(voice-over): Afterwards, we find that my wife had gone through a similar experience. Only our daughter had made it to the bungalow, which was itself swamped. Nine-year-old Elizabeth was tumbled around. The furniture and fittings were destroyed but miraculously she suffered only cuts and bruises.

Some of the buildings here were damaged structurally, so powerful was the tsunami. We lost pretty much all of our belongings, but we consider ourselves incredibly fortunate.

As for this resort itself, the general manager is promising he'll be back in business within a fortnight.

John Irvine, ITV News, Ko Yao, Thailand.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: Incredibly fortunate is right.

Straight ahead tonight, what happens if this is not a once-in-a- lifetime story? And it probably won't be. How prepared are we?

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: As first-person accounts of what happened on Sunday emerged, the full story is now coming to life. One eyewitness was American Bill Smith, who moved to Phuket, Thailand, when he retired a number of years ago. This Sunday, he was riding his bike by the beach when he saw a wall of water coming at him. He survived the tsunami. He also took photographs of the aftermath.

He joins us now on the phone from Phuket, Thailand.

Mr. Smith, are you there?

WILLIAM SMITH, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: Yes, I am.

CARLSON: So, you were riding your bike on the beach. Tell me what you saw and what happened next.

SMITH: Well, I saw this huge expanse of sand. And all of the boats that were normally floating were on the bottom on the sand.

And then, as I was marveling at that sight, I saw this wall of water coming into the bay. And I didn't really think too much about it until it started to crash on the seawall. And then I started to run for the bridge nearby and ran up the bridge. And the water crashed over the seawall and across the road and into the hotels and businesses on the other side, wiping out entire bottom floors of all the businesses.

CARLSON: And where were you at this point? How did you get away from the water?

SMITH: Pardon me?

CARLSON: How did you escape getting sucked out to sea?

SMITH: I was about 50 meters from a bridge that leads to high ground and goes over a small river that comes into the bay here. And, as the water started to slop over the wall, I ran up to the bridge and ran up the bridge, about maybe 20 meters or so, and was above the waves. (CROSSTALK)

SMITH: I didn't even get my feet wet.

CARLSON: That's remarkable.

Now, you live there. Are you staying? Do you plan to stay in Phuket after this?

SMITH: Oh, yes, I'm staying here. The reconstruction efforts are starting now. They're starting to clean up. There's one place, Ocean Plaza, where people were in the basement supermarket. I think maybe 20 people were killed. And they're still pumping it out and looking for bodies there. But other people are digging out and starting to recover a bit here.

CARLSON: Well, since you've got perspective on what the place was like before and after, give us a sense. How bad is it? How bad is the physical destruction?

SMITH: The entire beach road, three kilometers long on the beach, is pretty much totally destroyed.

And then back in from there, the streets running to the beach road are destroyed, of course, by the beach, and then as you go further back in, 100, 200 meters, the damage is less. But...

CARLSON: I think we've lost Mr. Smith.

If you can hear me, congratulations on making it.

Well, early this morning, waves from the South Asian tsunami -- that's right, this morning -- began hitting the West Coast of our country, the U.S. The ocean rose about four inches off Alaska, about eight inches off San Diego. And in Manzanilla, Mexico, the shape of the ocean floor made things worse, producing an 8.5-foot wave. A local official there called it the biggest thing to hit that area in 40 years.

So, what happens when something even bigger comes along? And it will.

With that, here's CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The devastation in Southern Asia came without warning, as it did in 1946 in Hawaii, when more than 150 people died from a tsunami, as it did in 1964, after an earthquake in Alaska created tsunamis, killing at least 130 people.

Both events prompted the creation of tsunami warning centers, this one in Hawaii and another in Alaska. Scientists at the center say a tsunami will again someday hit the Western U.S. CHARLES MCCREERY, DIRECTOR, PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER: We don't know whether it's going to come tomorrow or whether it could be another 10 or 20 years before the next one. But it will come.

BUCKLEY: Experts say coastal residents in the Western U.S. are at risk, a million in California alone. But in the hours it would take a large tsunami to cross the Pacific Ocean, deep ocean sensors and other instruments would provide enough information to the warning centers to allow scientists to predict where and when water would come ashore, so that emergency management officials could warn local residents of impending danger.

JEFF LADOUCE, CHAIRMAN, INTERNATIONAL TSUNAMI INFORMATION CENTER: Although there will be casualties, I don't believe the casualties will be anywhere near as extensive as what they are. Obviously, the goal is no casualties.

BUCKLEY: Jeff LaDouce of the National Weather Service heads an effort to reduce the potentially devastating effects of tsunamis. He works with state emergency management officials, like George Crawford of Washington state, who has developed evacuation routes and other plans based on projections like this one illustrating a potential event in Seattle, Washington, of where a tsunami would go.

GEORGE CRAWFORD, MANAGER, WASHINGTON EARTHQUAKE PROGRAM: Where do I see potential traffic problems? Where's the best place to do mass care?

BUCKLEY (on camera): But emergency management officials say coastal residents should also listen to the warnings from the earth itself. They say people along a coastline who experience an earthquake strong enough that it makes it difficult to stand should immediately move to higher ground.

(voice-over): Quakes like those might generate local tsunamis that could come ashore within minutes of a temblor, which is why LaDouce and others say coastal residents should always be prepared to evacuate immediately after a quake.

LADOUCE: We probably will not be able to save everyone, but we will save people's lives based on the work that we've done.

BUCKLEY: Because a tsunami could happen here and will happen again.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: Well, at the top of the program, we showed you a pair of heartbreaking photos, two young children separated from their parents in the tsunami. They weren't the only ones, though. Far from it.

Ben Abels of Evanston, Illinois, was vacationing in Thailand. He was traveling with Libby North, who is now reported to be in a Bangkok hospital in critical condition. Tomorrow, Ben's brother David travels to Thailand in hopes of finding him.

David Abels joins us now by phone.

Mr. Abels, thanks for joining us. We're going to put on the screen a picture of your brother Ben. Have you heard anything about his whereabouts?

DAVID ABELS, BROTHER OF TSUNAMI VICTIM: No. We have heard nothing. And we're very desperate here.

We want people here to call friends and relatives in Thailand to go look for him, in Krabi, Penang, Phuket, and Phi Phi. We want to recover my brother Ben before the Thai authorities cremate him. We don't want a photo of my brother in an urn. We want his body. We want people to go look for him.

He has a tattoo on his left ankle on the inside. It might be on his right, but we think it's on his left, in the shape of a triangle. It's a small tattoo about an inch on each side. He has a birthmark, a distinct birthmark on the left cheek of his face. And we want as many people in the United States to start calling people in Phuket, you know, in Krabi, in Penang, everywhere there, anywhere in Thailand, just to go and just start looking for him.

And, you know, if he's alive, that's fantastic, but we want -- if he's not alive, we want to be able to bury him here in the United States.

CARLSON: What kind of contact have you had, Mr. Abels, with the Thai government? What have they said?

ABELS: We've had help here not with the Thai government, but we've been dealing with Representative Jan Schakowsky, our congresswoman from Illinois, who's been fantastic. And we've -- I'm going to forget. We've had so many people helping us, and we appreciate all the help.

But, at this time, we need to make a plea for global help. Just, we need to get the word out as much as possible, whatever anyone can do. We're hoping CNN will post his picture on your Web site and people can download it and e-mail it to relatives in Thailand, so they can start looking. And, again, he has this tattoo on his ankle that is distinctive. And he also has this mole on his cheek. So he will be able to be identified, we hope.

CARLSON: Now, what are you doing? You're leaving tomorrow for Thailand. What are you doing when you get there?

ABELS: We are going to do the best we can, whatever I can do on the ground that can't be done here. It's just -- it's so hard to get things done over there, and the communication is so tough.

And we thought we'd get more done from here, but it doesn't -- we don't know what's happening. We know so little. We don't know what the U.S. government has in place in this area. It's just very difficult. CARLSON: David Abels, good luck. I hope you find him.

ABELS: Thank you.

CARLSON: Ahead on the program, the other news of the day. Imagine dozens of cops dying every day on the streets of this country. That's the violent reality every day in Iraq.

The latest on that and more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, here's a sobering figure. In the last few months, for every American soldier killed in Iraq, a dozen Iraqi policemen or National Guardsmen have also been killed. Lately, the ratio is even higher.

Today, in Baquba, a suicide bomber killed five Guardsmen. In Tikrit, gunmen killed 12 officers at a local police station. And, in Baghdad, a top Iraqi general survived a car bombing. The blast happened shortly after he pulled out of his driveway at home, all of this a reminder of the dangers for everyone in Iraq. Bombs, of course, don't distinguish between uniforms, which is why efforts to protect American troops are now in overdrive.

Here's CNN's Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the race to get armored vehicles into Iraq, this is the starting line. At this remote Army camp in Kuwait, soldiers cut and weld simple steel plates into doors for soft-sided vehicles that are headed into Iraq over the coming days.

For Corporal Jonathan Crockett (ph), the big-picture debate in Washington is light-years away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whatever we can do to help our other fellow soldiers. And working 20 hours or what we have to do to help them out is what we have to do. Simple as that.

STARR: These plates will protect against insurgent small-arms, but not much more. Still, the need is so great, even at Christmas, the work goes on 24/7.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just work until we're finished. And now we've expanded the operations to six times what we had.

STARR: The soldiers working the armor line in Kuwait say they were busy long before one soldier ignited the recent controversy by asking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of armor.

SPC. THOMAS WILSON, U.S. ARMY: Now, why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles? STARR: CNN got an exclusive look at the place where soldiers are authorized to poke around for extra protection.

(on camera): It's been called the junkyard, a scrap pile, and a landfill. But here in Kuwait, this is a vital part of the military's effort to strip vehicles damaged in Iraq of their usable armor and other parts and put it all back on the next round of vehicles going into Iraq.

(voice-over): At another facility, heavier armor packages are installed on Humvees to offer side-blast protection from roadside bombs. Lieutenant General Steve Whitcomb is the senior Army commander. His operation ramped up months ago.

LT. GEN. STEVE WHITCOMB, SR. ARMY COMMANDER: I've got right now the equipment. I've got the personnel. And we've got no shortage of materials to be able to do this. It is just a huge job.

STARR: Installation is doubling to 150 vehicles a week. These doors and armored windows can add more than 1,000 pounds to the weight of a Humvee. The general, like the soldiers here, says the debate over whether there is a shortage of armored vehicles for Iraq gets personal.

WHITCOMB: Would I want my daughter, who is an Army captain, riding in one of the vehicles that we're preparing? And, as a father and as a soldier, you know, we've all got concerns. And I would put her in one of these vehicles.

STARR: Barbara Starr, CNN, Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: And now, for a change of pace, Fannie Mae, not the chocolates, not your maiden aunt, but the federal national mortgage association, Fannie Mae actually and Franklin Raines, more on him in a moment.

First, Fannie Mae itself. The company buys, consolidates, and guarantees home mortgages. It also sells stock to investors. The name makes it sound like a government agency. And, in fact, it was, established in 1938 by the government. It went private about 30 years later, but it is still something of a hybrid. Fannie Mae pays no state or local taxes, and it's not required to file with the FEC. More on that in a moment, too. And it's big, the second largest company in the nation in terms of assets.

Fannie Mae is also the single largest source of home financing in America. That's Fannie. Now Franklin Raines. He's the departing CEO. He was forced to step down after five years on the job amid questions about accounting practices involving about $9 billion. And for that, he may be getting a golden parachute of $114,000 a month for life, or not.

A scandal? Some are saying it is.

We're joined now by one of the reporters covering that story, Charlie Gasparino of "Newsweek" magazine. He's also the author of the upcoming book "Blood on the Street."

So, is it a scandal?

CHARLES GASPARINO, "NEWSWEEK": It's a huge story, and it probably is a scandal. I mean, when $9 billion goes missing in a company like this -- it's a government company, essentially -- then it's a big story.

I mean, right now, there's multiple government investigations. Could be criminal fraud involved here. We just have to wait and see exactly how big it is.

CARLSON: So, if it's big, if it's like Enron...

GASPARINO: Sure.

CARLSON: Why is it -- and I think you're implying that it is.

GASPARINO: Right.

CARLSON: Why has it not been reported like Enron?

GASPARINO: Well, Fannie Mae is a very politically corrupt -- it may be politically corrupt, but it's a politically correct company.

I mean, they do all the things that, let's face it, liberal journalists like, like put home mortgages out there for poor people. And so right now, beating up on Fannie Mae is kind of politically incorrect.

CARLSON: So, because it's not part of the tobacco industry or an energy company, it gets a pass from the press?

GASPARINO: Right. It's not related to George Bush. Franklin Raines, I believe, is a Democrat. So there is a degree here -- because I've heard journalists talk about this -- that hey, this is -- there's politics on the part of the Republicans. That's why they're beating up on Fannie Mae, which may be true.

But, at the same time, this is a huge story, and it's going overlooked.

CARLSON: And Franklin Raines has a lot of friends in Washington, where I live. He's a very charming guy and I'm sure a very capable guy. A very well-paid guy, though, we learned. How much did he make while running Fannie Mae?

GASPARINO: Well, he was making millions of dollars a year. He's got a golden parachute some estimate at $30 million, which is huge, because let's face it. Fannie Mae may be a public company, but it's supported by the federal government, which makes it different than Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns' CEO, James Cayne, I think, walked away with a year-end bonus of $20 million.

But hey, you know, he takes risk. His stock can go up and down. So that's what's difference between...

CARLSON: So, let's say Franklin Raines is making, I've read anywhere from $20 million a year, all considered, altogether.

GASPARINO: Right.

(CROSSTALK)

GASPARINO: Right.

CARLSON: Couldn't they find somebody, since it is, as you said, partly a public-supported company, couldn't they find someone to do it, say, for $10 million, $5 million? I'd do it for $2 million, actually, personally.

GASPARINO: Three million.

Yes. Yes, listen, this guy is overpaid by anybody's sort of estimates of what people should be paid in this role. The question is, why is he overpaid? We still have to get to that. And there's all these sort of accounting irregularities at this company. And did that lead to him being overpaid? You have to realize that lots of the payment is sort of calibrated to the performance of the stock.

And, you know, let's face it. The stock performed because Fannie Mae was saying that their earnings were a certain level. And now we're hearing that their earnings weren't at a certain level. So this is obviously a story that's going to unfold in the next couple weeks.

CARLSON: So, $9 billion goes missing, as you said.

GASPARINO: Right.

CARLSON: And it looks like he could get over 100 grand a month for life with life insurance and full medical, again, for life.

(CROSSTALK)

GASPARINO: Great deal.

CARLSON: Is that going to happen, A? And, B, how did that happen? And why didn't someone call foul when the contract was signed?

GASPARINO: Well, that's a great point.

Listen, there's a board of director of Fannie Mae, which has to be held accountable. Now, as you know, all these board of directors are always sort of -- they have sweetheart deals with the guys that are running the show. And people have to ask, what are the connections between Franklin Raines and the board of director of Fannie Mae?

CARLSON: All right. That is an interesting story, some of which may be in your book.

GASPARINO: Some of it.

CARLSON: Charlie Gasparino, thanks.

GASPARINO: Thank you.

CARLSON: When we return, the story of two American friends caught in the tsunami disaster. They could have died, but they didn't. They survived.

How they beat the odds after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Everyone who survived Sunday's catastrophe in South Asia has a story, and this is one. Justin Barth and Jake King left Los Angeles last Thursday on what was meant to be a vacation at a resort in Phuket, Thailand. Mr. Barth was eating breakfast when the tsunami struck. His friend was still asleep. They managed to avoid being swept away, but were separated in the chaos at one point.

They arrived back home in Los Angeles this morning, and they told us their story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTIN BARTH, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: I was having breakfast, and the wave just came in and took everybody on the beach with it. Life kind of slows down in a split-second. Can't really think during those circumstances. You just have to kind of react and go.

It kind of just looked like a regular high-tide wave, and then it just got more intense and more intense. And then everybody started running off of the beach. And it was chaos. There was cars floating down the street.

JAKE KING, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: The water got so high that we -- the door would only open outward. We were unable to push the door outward. So, in order to get out, he had to grab just bottles and chairs and shattered the window. And that's when the water basically pushed me all the way back. He floated his way out.

The TVs and mattresses inside the rooms were floating, you know, at shoulder high, and the water was coming so quick that I couldn't get out. So I basically just held on to a bathroom door, you know, until that broke off. And then I was able to just kind of get my way right out of the water.

I just climbed up to a roof of the hotel and then the roof was getting high enough to where I just had to jump on a tree. I just pretty much jumped up on top and stayed on top of the tree until the tsunamis died down. We were grabbing people's arms from the top of the roof, so that people were not drowning. There was a lot of very old people, a lot of people that were unable to swim in these conditions. And it was just tough seeing people who weren't strong enough to get on a tree. And we did everything we could to grab people, but the water was just so powerful that you can only hold onto people for so long before they either slipped out of their hands or some were strong enough to hold.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming again!

KING: Probably three, four hours after the third tsunami, I heard him yelling my name. And I was yelling his name for hours, too. And we just bumped into each other and gave each other a big hug and said, let's get the hell out of here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: And that's it, the end of the program, not a particularly upbeat hour, but we hope you enjoyed it.

We'll be back tomorrow at the same time. See you then.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired December 28, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
TUCKER CARLSON, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, I'm Tucker Carlson sitting in for Aaron Brown.
Here's the latest on the aftermath of Sunday's tsunamis in south Asia. More than 50,000 people are believed dead but that number could rise far higher once updated figures from Indonesia are added. UNICEF says as many as one-third of the dead may be children. In many areas, mass graves are being used to bury victims and one of the largest relief efforts in history is gaining momentum.

The U.S. alone has pledged $35 million in aid and is also considering sending in as many as 700 American troops. In Crawford, Texas tomorrow, President Bush is expected to make a statement about the relief efforts already underway.

There's a lot to get to tonight but, before we do, we'd like to go further and show you some brand new video just in to CNN. It was taken as the waves began rolling onto the beaches in Phuket, Thailand.

(VIDEO CLIP OF BEGINNING OF TSUNAMI)

CARLSON: The cameraman who took the stunning pictures you're looking at is called Frederick Bornesand. He's a policeman from Stockholm, Sweden. He happened to be swimming in the pool at a hotel with his girlfriend when disaster struck on Sunday morning.

We have Mr. Bornesand on the phone. Mr. Bornesand, can you hear me?

FREDERICK BORNESAND, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: Yes, I hear you.

CARLSON: That's remarkable pictures of a couple being swept away by the ocean coming in. Were you aware when you were taking them what was happening?

BORNESAND: No, I wasn't aware what was happening. We saw a lot of water coming in and (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I don't think anyone thought that it could come more water. So, after the first wave I went down to see if I could help someone and while trying to do that the second wave was coming.

CARLSON: Now, in your video it looks to be an older couple and it looks like they move out of the frame at high speed, pushed along by the water. Do you know who they were and do you know what happened to them? BORNESAND: Yes. After the second wave I was (UNINTELLIGIBLE) through the lobby and the waves by the hotel and luckily for me I managed to grab on a tree and climbed up there. When the water went away (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and I went back to the place where (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the couple and they found in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and some Thai people trying to get them up from the water. And, he's alive and well today, yes.

CARLSON: Where are you now Mr. Bornesand?

BORNESAND: Now I'm in Phuket town safe.

CARLSON: And how did you escape being swept away? How did you get up onto the second floor of the hotel from which you shot these pictures?

BORNESAND: When the first wave came I went up and after the first wave I got back down again and the second wave was much, much larger than the first one. So, when the second wave came I was forced towards the windows and through the lobby and when I came back again so much to do to help the old man and to clear the way to get him up one or two floors. It was hard work.

CARLSON: Frederick Bornesand in Phuket, Thailand, thank you Mr. Bornesand, horrifying video.

That's just one piece of a huge puzzle tonight and, as we go along, we'll try to take stock of the devastation as well as the efforts to help. We start on the ground halfway around the world where the scope of the medical emergency unleashed two days ago is still emerging.

Reporting live for us from Colombo, Sri Lanka, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Sanjay, where are you? My impression is you just got there.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Tucker, we just got here about a couple of hours ago. Now, we're in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka sort of trying to get a sense of what the public health relief system is like out here.

A couple of things, the biggest goal we're figuring out already is that those who survived the tsunami, the biggest goal to try and keep them alive. That may be easier -- that may be harder than it sounds, Tucker.

The public health system here in this part of the world really non-existent in so many ways, certainly not prepared for something like this. Getting the hospitals up and running to take care of all sorts of different things, everything from broken bones and trauma to all the epidemic type diseases that might result as a result of the standing water and gruesome decomposing bodies on the eastern part of this country, Tucker.

So, lots of concerns from the public health officials. That's what we're trying to get a sense of. Sort of interestingly, Tucker, we came into the airport, I expected to see a sort of sense of urgency as I've seen before in other public health sort of emergencies. We didn't see the tons of planes coming in with the relief. We've talked to several health organizations. They say they're not just sure yet where to put the personnel and where to put the supplies. It's a confusing situation, so many countries affected at the same time, so many people dead, unsure where the help is more dramatically needed right now, Tucker.

CARLSON: So, are you saying, Sanjay, that the government of Sri Lanka doesn't know what to do with the aid they're receiving or the aid hasn't been sent?

GUPTA: A lot of the aid hasn't been sent yet and we've talked to several organizations, including the U.N., the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders. They say that the aid is going to come. It's unclear exactly where and when it's going to go though.

Sri Lanka certainly is in desperate need of it. They do want the aid when it comes here but it's unclear exactly when it's going to get here. Again, as we arrived in Colombo, the capital, we're not seeing a lot of that as of yet -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Now, has it been cleaned up? We've been watching on CNN all day, terrifying, sad video from the areas affected of dead bodies out in the open. Have you seen anything like that where you are?

GUPTA: We're on the western part of the country. We haven't seen the dead bodies, the decomposing bodies. We've certainly heard about them as well. We are going to travel out there to see what exactly is going on.

The concern from a public health standpoint, obviously, is that these bodies, unless they're even cremated or given proper burials, will start to decompose and possibly spawn different epidemics, including dysentery, cholera, hepatitis A.

Tucker, these are some of the most gruesome things you have to think about from a public health standpoint but they can happen here in Sri Lanka, other countries as well around the world unless it's taken care of pretty quickly.

CARLSON: All right. Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Sri Lanka, awfully lucid for a man who just stepped off a 15-hour flight, thank you.

Well, as Sanjay pointed out, doctors cannot begin to cure the living until efforts are made to dispose of the dead. That's always the grim reality when so many people are killed in the same place at the same time. Reality, though, comes in all shades of grim and we want to warn you that what you're about to see is pretty tough to take.

Reporting from Banda Aceh, Indonesia, here is CNN's Mike Chinoy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We've heard the astronomical numbers but nothing can prepare you for a scene like this, the remains of men, women and children, about 1,000 the workers say, piled high for burial in a mass grave. The stench is overpowering contaminating the area killing bystanders. The grief is equally powerful.

"I lost everyone and everything" says 30-year-old Usniati (ph), "my four children and my husband are gone, gone. I was holding my 8- month-old in the waters but the waves pulled us apart." But Usniati knows where her 3-year-old is. She found his body in the street and brought him here.

"There are still a lot of bodies out there" says Alum Sol (ph) because so much of Banda Aceh was flooded by the waves."

There's no dignity in this kind of death. It feels more like a garbage dump than a grave but in their desperate struggle to bury decomposing bodies before the danger of epidemics grows even greater, the authorities have little choice.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHINOY: Indeed, as you drive around the streets here you still see bodies lying where they died. The task of cleaning them up is simply overwhelming and with thousands more feared dead in remote areas that no one has even reached yet, the concern is that things could get much worse -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Mike is that -- is it your sense that there are large parts of the country that haven't been reached yet where nobody knows what the devastation looks like?

CHINOY: Yes, absolutely. The western part of this northern tip of Indonesia, the coastal areas especially that were closest to the epicenter of the quake, have been completely cut off. The roads have all been damaged. Communications are down. Nobody has gotten there.

We simply don't know what has happened but there's a lot of concern that communities right along the seashore could have been completely devastated by the tsunamis and they've got no aid coming in at this point whatsoever. So, it could be an absolutely horrifying situation there -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Now, Mike, I wouldn't normally ask you a question like this but I've been watching you all day on CNN reporting one of the most depressing stories I've seen in a long time. How are you holding up? Has this been rattling to you personally watching this much death?

CHINOY: Well, my crew and I have covered a lot of bad news in the developing world over the years but we all feel the scenes that we've witnessed here rank among the most horrifying and upsetting that we've ever seen and it's not easy to operate because the electricity is off. There's no running water, sanitation, communications are a big problem.

But all that being said, we're managing and I think we're in a lot better shape than a lot of the people who lived through the disaster and that you see sitting in a daze on street -- by the side of the street having lost everything, not knowing what happened to their relatives. They're in a really, really desperate condition.

CARLSON: Thanks, Mike, CNN's Mike Chinoy in Indonesia.

Well, when all of this is over, this disaster may produce more orphans than any single event in recent memory. At the very least, the waters have torn loved ones from one another, perhaps for good, but hopefully only for now.

In Phuket, Thailand, Carl Nilson (ph) of Sweden is looking for his parents who were swept out to sea when the wave hit their hotel on Sunday morning. Sophia Mishel (ph) is ten years old. She's from Germany. She's being cared for at a local hospital while the search goes on for her parents.

Now, take just those two pictures you saw and multiply them by 10,000 or more. That's the situation right now on the coast of Thailand. With us from Phuket is CNN's Matthew Chance with the latest.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Tucker, we're having a few audio problems here but that's right. It is a scene of utter devastation across the region but particularly here in Thailand as well where so many tourists have come to spend their holiday vacations.

Thai authorities say at least 1,500 people were killed outright in the tsunami. Another 1,500 are said to be missing. There are scenes of absolute desperation near the town hall here on the holiday island of Phuket where people have gathered to try and give their loved ones, try and find information about their loved ones as much as possible, pin photographs on the notice board of their loved ones trying to get as much information as they can to try and find these people they haven't heard from essentially since after Christmas -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Matthew Chance, reporting live from Thailand, thank you.

Well, because some of the hardest hit areas were also vacation spots, people caught the unfolding disaster on home videotape, a lot of them did. We saw a little bit of that a moment ago. The pictures have been coming in to us all day long here at CNN.

This was shot from a hotel balcony in southern Sri Lanka. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another one. There's an even bigger one out there. Oh, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). They're terrified (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Oh, my it's going right in the hotel. (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

CARLSON: In a moment, a progress report on the massive relief effort now in motion, a break first.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The catastrophe in south Asia has set in motion one of the largest relief efforts in history. Dozens of organizations worldwide are working to collect and distribute aid, a discussion in a moment, first a report from the front lines.

Here's CNN's Ted Rowlands.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Employees here have cut vacations short and are working around the clock preparing medical relief supplies for victims of the tsunamis.

Direct Relief International is a private non-profit near Santa Barbara, California, one of the dozens of agencies around the world working overtime to try to get help to Southeast Asia.

THOMAS TIGHE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, DIRECT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL: We're more than happy to kind of pair up with anybody and let them take advantage of the aircraft.

ROWLANDS: President and CEO Thomas Tighe says the outpouring of support for relief has been phenomenal. Companies have pledged to donate medical supplies, medication. FedEx has even donated the use of a 747. Getting these supplies off the ground is urgent, says Tighe, but there's also a danger of delivering them too soon.

TIGHE: Just in the affected regions are already tough, so we want to make sure that what we send is not clogging up the arteries any further.

ROWLANDS: Another complicating factor is getting through government regulations in not one but several countries. An example is India's new regulation prohibiting pharmaceutical deliveries without a special, difficult to obtain, certificate. An e-mail received here from India this morning confirmed that despite the situation there, the restriction has not been lifted.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have to provide the certificate in order for the goods to come in, so that's definitely a delay in India for pharmaceuticals.

ROWLANDS: Phones here have been ringing steadily with donations. Direct Relief already has one of the largest standing inventories of medical relief supplies in the United States.

BETH PITTON-AUGUST, SR. MANAGER, PHILANTHROPIC INVESTMENT: But we also know that the need is really beyond what we're able to handle and we know that our partners, our corporate donors, really want to be proactive in situations like this. ROWLANDS (on camera): One of the things that they do have ready to go, cases of antibiotics. The belief is that in the days and weeks to come several countries will have a need for this medicine.

(voice-over): One of the major concerns is children.

DR. BILL WORTON-SMITH, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, DIRECT RELIEF INTL.: The lives of children are very fragile and certain solutions, such as oral rehydration solutions for diarrheal illnesses will become very important.

ROWLANDS: The first palates of medical supplies are expected to leave here sometime tomorrow. It is expected that the shipments will continue for months.

Ted Rowlands CNN, Goleta, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: Well, one of the many things that sets this disaster apart from others is its enormous scope. Casualties were reported thousands of miles apart from the earthquake's epicenter all the way to the coast of Africa, to Somalia. In Sri Lanka alone, by some estimates, as many as one million people are now homeless.

Joining us from Atlanta is Gail Neudorf. She's the Deputy Director of Emergency Relief for CARE. And, here in New York with me is Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of UNICEF.

Carol Bellamy, give us a sense how big is this relief effort?

CAROL BELLAMY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNICEF: It will probably be one of the biggest relief efforts we've ever seen, in part because you're talking about so many countries affected and so you've got to reach so many places that are so difficult to reach in such a broad geographic area.

CARLSON: Now, Gail Neudorf, it has been said, there was a complaint voiced the other day from a United Nations official that the United States was being and other western nations were being "stingy" in the money they were donating to this effort. Do you think that's true?

GAIL NEUDORF, DEPUTY DIR., EMERGENCY RELIEF, CARE, USA: Well, there's always a need for extensive response in this kind of situation. We're still finding out a lot about the needs and I think all the various governments have been very generous and very speedy in at least responding with what we need in the immediate.

My hope is that as things progress and as we start to look at the rehabilitation that's required that these doors will open even wider and there will be more generosity.

CARLSON: Now, Carol Bellamy, you work obviously in the U.S. government running the Peace Corps. What do you think? Do you think the U.S. government is being stingy? Is this a fair criticism?

BELLAMY: No, I don't and I spoke to my colleague in the U.N. about it and, in fact, he's rather retracted it. I agree with Gail. I think we're certainly going to need much more than has been forthcoming so far from the U.S., from Japan, from Australia, from Europe but the first response has been a good one and it allows everybody to get started.

CARLSON: Well, Gail, what can people do if you're watching CNN and you're moved to donate, who do you donate to? Who do you call? What do you do?

NEUDORF: There are so many organizations out there and there's many different ways of assisting. In the case of CARE, we're asking people to support us in terms of cash because this is the most flexible way that we can help.

We can purchase what's needed right there on the ground in many, many cases. We can be more flexible. We find the gaps that are not being filled by other donations and can immediately respond with that. So, this is the best in our sense anyway the best way for people to help at this point in time.

CARLSON: Carol, Sanjay Gupta was saying earlier in the program that there were logistical problems in distributing aid where he was. Will there be logistical hurdles? There's a low level civil war going on in Sumatra, for example. Will things like that hinder relief?

BELLAMY: It will. I mean, first of all, you have enormous destruction to the infrastructure, which wasn't very good in the first place. It differs from country to country. But your roads are down. Your bridges are down, your ability to reach people in the farthest places.

Then in places like, as you mentioned, in northern Indonesia or even in Sri Lanka you have wars going on. In Sri Lanka, one of the things that the floods have done is they've sent the landmines that we knew at least where they were planted and where we could protect ourselves against they're floating off in other areas. So, you have bad infrastructure, very bad communications and now you have the landmines in some of the war areas.

CARLSON: Gail, quickly, how many people are -- just give us some sense of what CARE specifically is doing. How many people are you sending to south Asia and how much money do you think you'll raise?

NEUDORF: Well, for the first part of your question, we're really focusing on the four countries that have the most impact at this point. That is India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia.

And we do have an extensive presence there. We have been in most of those countries from between 25 and 50 years, a lot of projects, a lot of networks, very good community relationships.

And so, what we are trying to do is work through those projects and networks already. Our staffing components are very large, 300, 400, even into 1,000 in the case of India. These are experienced people.

They've done this before, not in this circumstance but definitely they've responded to emergencies and we're supporting them with some of the technical expertise from outside but we're very reliant on our national staff.

CARLSON: All right. In Atlanta, Gail Neudorf, thank you very much. Here, Ms. Bellamy, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

BELLAMY: My pleasure.

CARLSON: Coming up in a moment, more stories of loss and survival.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Sunday was yet another reminder of the random cruelty and the luck that determines who lives and who dies when a natural disaster strikes. The walls of water unleashed by the enormous earthquake off the coast of Indonesia claimed tens of thousands of lives.

But, as large as the death toll may turn out to be, it is dwarfed by the number of people now homeless, many of them injured, all of them facing serious health risks.

Here's CNN's Hugh Riminton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HUGH RIMINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Amid survival stories, a tale of no survivors. On Sri Lanka's west coast, south of the capital Colombo, all 1,000 people on this eight-carriage train are now recorded as dead or missing. It was the same series of waves that hit English tourist Peter Etheridge (ph) on a nearby beach.

PETER ETHERIDGE, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: I couldn't believe the power. It was just unbelievable.

RIMINTON: Taken to Colombo's main hospital, he cuts a lonely figure. The wave swept away Pat, his wife of 32 years.

ETHERIDGE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I knew where she was and I was hiding behind a (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I went around to get her and then just all hell broke loose and that was the last time I saw her.

RIMINTON (on camera): Despite the stories in these wards, doctors are being stripped out of the capital Colombo to fill the overwhelming needs out in the district hospitals that are bearing the brunt of this medical emergency.

(voice-over): One hundred and twenty-five doctors, many of them volunteers, have already been airlifted to front line clinics, the burnout rate just 48 hours before most need to be relieved. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The conditions you don't have electricity. You don't have water service and the buildings are shattered. Hospitals are shattered.

RIMINTON: The immediate needs antibiotics and painkillers. The medical challenges wound infection, respiratory problems among those who inhaled water and bodies, so many they threaten to contaminate everything.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RIMINTON: And, even as the world hurries to help Sri Lanka and the other countries that have been affected by this tsunami, in this country at least it has to be said that the emergency disaster response is overwhelmingly local and it is woefully inadequate -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Thank you, Hugh, reporting live from Sri Lanka.

Now the larger picture, as reported by John Irvine of Britain's ITV Network.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN IRVINE, ITV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The children were playing on the beach when I came running down to find them and my wife, Libby. The sea off (UNINTELLIGIBLE) was a flat cam but with one big exception. A 20-foot wave was coming in shore very quickly indeed. Five-year-old Peter was staring at the wave mesmerized. I lurched forward and grabbed him.

(on camera): Obviously with the wave pursuing us pretty rapidly, Peter and I were moving rather more quickly than we are this morning. My wife, Libby, and my daughter Elizabeth headed for our bungalow over there but I knew that myself and the little fellow here simply wouldn't make it.

We listened to the wave breaking on the beach. There was a big bang as it came through those trees. I suppose we'd reached about here before we were washed away. We were then carried about 40 yards.

The wave carried us both through this little gap between these two bungalows. All the time I was acutely aware of all the debris that the wave had picked up on its journey.

Peter and I ended up actually down there in this field. Here are some of the tree trunks and other bits of debris that the wave carried with us. Fortunately they missed us.

(voice-over): Afterwards, we find that my wife had gone through a similar experience. Only our daughter had made it to the bungalow, which was itself swamped. Nine-year-old Elizabeth was tumbled around. The furniture and fittings were destroyed but miraculously she suffered only cuts and bruises.

Some of the buildings here were damaged structurally, so powerful was the tsunami. We lost pretty much all of our belongings, but we consider ourselves incredibly fortunate.

As for this resort itself, the general manager is promising he'll be back in business within a fortnight.

John Irvine, ITV News, Ko Yao, Thailand.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: Incredibly fortunate is right.

Straight ahead tonight, what happens if this is not a once-in-a- lifetime story? And it probably won't be. How prepared are we?

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: As first-person accounts of what happened on Sunday emerged, the full story is now coming to life. One eyewitness was American Bill Smith, who moved to Phuket, Thailand, when he retired a number of years ago. This Sunday, he was riding his bike by the beach when he saw a wall of water coming at him. He survived the tsunami. He also took photographs of the aftermath.

He joins us now on the phone from Phuket, Thailand.

Mr. Smith, are you there?

WILLIAM SMITH, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: Yes, I am.

CARLSON: So, you were riding your bike on the beach. Tell me what you saw and what happened next.

SMITH: Well, I saw this huge expanse of sand. And all of the boats that were normally floating were on the bottom on the sand.

And then, as I was marveling at that sight, I saw this wall of water coming into the bay. And I didn't really think too much about it until it started to crash on the seawall. And then I started to run for the bridge nearby and ran up the bridge. And the water crashed over the seawall and across the road and into the hotels and businesses on the other side, wiping out entire bottom floors of all the businesses.

CARLSON: And where were you at this point? How did you get away from the water?

SMITH: Pardon me?

CARLSON: How did you escape getting sucked out to sea?

SMITH: I was about 50 meters from a bridge that leads to high ground and goes over a small river that comes into the bay here. And, as the water started to slop over the wall, I ran up to the bridge and ran up the bridge, about maybe 20 meters or so, and was above the waves. (CROSSTALK)

SMITH: I didn't even get my feet wet.

CARLSON: That's remarkable.

Now, you live there. Are you staying? Do you plan to stay in Phuket after this?

SMITH: Oh, yes, I'm staying here. The reconstruction efforts are starting now. They're starting to clean up. There's one place, Ocean Plaza, where people were in the basement supermarket. I think maybe 20 people were killed. And they're still pumping it out and looking for bodies there. But other people are digging out and starting to recover a bit here.

CARLSON: Well, since you've got perspective on what the place was like before and after, give us a sense. How bad is it? How bad is the physical destruction?

SMITH: The entire beach road, three kilometers long on the beach, is pretty much totally destroyed.

And then back in from there, the streets running to the beach road are destroyed, of course, by the beach, and then as you go further back in, 100, 200 meters, the damage is less. But...

CARLSON: I think we've lost Mr. Smith.

If you can hear me, congratulations on making it.

Well, early this morning, waves from the South Asian tsunami -- that's right, this morning -- began hitting the West Coast of our country, the U.S. The ocean rose about four inches off Alaska, about eight inches off San Diego. And in Manzanilla, Mexico, the shape of the ocean floor made things worse, producing an 8.5-foot wave. A local official there called it the biggest thing to hit that area in 40 years.

So, what happens when something even bigger comes along? And it will.

With that, here's CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The devastation in Southern Asia came without warning, as it did in 1946 in Hawaii, when more than 150 people died from a tsunami, as it did in 1964, after an earthquake in Alaska created tsunamis, killing at least 130 people.

Both events prompted the creation of tsunami warning centers, this one in Hawaii and another in Alaska. Scientists at the center say a tsunami will again someday hit the Western U.S. CHARLES MCCREERY, DIRECTOR, PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER: We don't know whether it's going to come tomorrow or whether it could be another 10 or 20 years before the next one. But it will come.

BUCKLEY: Experts say coastal residents in the Western U.S. are at risk, a million in California alone. But in the hours it would take a large tsunami to cross the Pacific Ocean, deep ocean sensors and other instruments would provide enough information to the warning centers to allow scientists to predict where and when water would come ashore, so that emergency management officials could warn local residents of impending danger.

JEFF LADOUCE, CHAIRMAN, INTERNATIONAL TSUNAMI INFORMATION CENTER: Although there will be casualties, I don't believe the casualties will be anywhere near as extensive as what they are. Obviously, the goal is no casualties.

BUCKLEY: Jeff LaDouce of the National Weather Service heads an effort to reduce the potentially devastating effects of tsunamis. He works with state emergency management officials, like George Crawford of Washington state, who has developed evacuation routes and other plans based on projections like this one illustrating a potential event in Seattle, Washington, of where a tsunami would go.

GEORGE CRAWFORD, MANAGER, WASHINGTON EARTHQUAKE PROGRAM: Where do I see potential traffic problems? Where's the best place to do mass care?

BUCKLEY (on camera): But emergency management officials say coastal residents should also listen to the warnings from the earth itself. They say people along a coastline who experience an earthquake strong enough that it makes it difficult to stand should immediately move to higher ground.

(voice-over): Quakes like those might generate local tsunamis that could come ashore within minutes of a temblor, which is why LaDouce and others say coastal residents should always be prepared to evacuate immediately after a quake.

LADOUCE: We probably will not be able to save everyone, but we will save people's lives based on the work that we've done.

BUCKLEY: Because a tsunami could happen here and will happen again.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: Well, at the top of the program, we showed you a pair of heartbreaking photos, two young children separated from their parents in the tsunami. They weren't the only ones, though. Far from it.

Ben Abels of Evanston, Illinois, was vacationing in Thailand. He was traveling with Libby North, who is now reported to be in a Bangkok hospital in critical condition. Tomorrow, Ben's brother David travels to Thailand in hopes of finding him.

David Abels joins us now by phone.

Mr. Abels, thanks for joining us. We're going to put on the screen a picture of your brother Ben. Have you heard anything about his whereabouts?

DAVID ABELS, BROTHER OF TSUNAMI VICTIM: No. We have heard nothing. And we're very desperate here.

We want people here to call friends and relatives in Thailand to go look for him, in Krabi, Penang, Phuket, and Phi Phi. We want to recover my brother Ben before the Thai authorities cremate him. We don't want a photo of my brother in an urn. We want his body. We want people to go look for him.

He has a tattoo on his left ankle on the inside. It might be on his right, but we think it's on his left, in the shape of a triangle. It's a small tattoo about an inch on each side. He has a birthmark, a distinct birthmark on the left cheek of his face. And we want as many people in the United States to start calling people in Phuket, you know, in Krabi, in Penang, everywhere there, anywhere in Thailand, just to go and just start looking for him.

And, you know, if he's alive, that's fantastic, but we want -- if he's not alive, we want to be able to bury him here in the United States.

CARLSON: What kind of contact have you had, Mr. Abels, with the Thai government? What have they said?

ABELS: We've had help here not with the Thai government, but we've been dealing with Representative Jan Schakowsky, our congresswoman from Illinois, who's been fantastic. And we've -- I'm going to forget. We've had so many people helping us, and we appreciate all the help.

But, at this time, we need to make a plea for global help. Just, we need to get the word out as much as possible, whatever anyone can do. We're hoping CNN will post his picture on your Web site and people can download it and e-mail it to relatives in Thailand, so they can start looking. And, again, he has this tattoo on his ankle that is distinctive. And he also has this mole on his cheek. So he will be able to be identified, we hope.

CARLSON: Now, what are you doing? You're leaving tomorrow for Thailand. What are you doing when you get there?

ABELS: We are going to do the best we can, whatever I can do on the ground that can't be done here. It's just -- it's so hard to get things done over there, and the communication is so tough.

And we thought we'd get more done from here, but it doesn't -- we don't know what's happening. We know so little. We don't know what the U.S. government has in place in this area. It's just very difficult. CARLSON: David Abels, good luck. I hope you find him.

ABELS: Thank you.

CARLSON: Ahead on the program, the other news of the day. Imagine dozens of cops dying every day on the streets of this country. That's the violent reality every day in Iraq.

The latest on that and more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, here's a sobering figure. In the last few months, for every American soldier killed in Iraq, a dozen Iraqi policemen or National Guardsmen have also been killed. Lately, the ratio is even higher.

Today, in Baquba, a suicide bomber killed five Guardsmen. In Tikrit, gunmen killed 12 officers at a local police station. And, in Baghdad, a top Iraqi general survived a car bombing. The blast happened shortly after he pulled out of his driveway at home, all of this a reminder of the dangers for everyone in Iraq. Bombs, of course, don't distinguish between uniforms, which is why efforts to protect American troops are now in overdrive.

Here's CNN's Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the race to get armored vehicles into Iraq, this is the starting line. At this remote Army camp in Kuwait, soldiers cut and weld simple steel plates into doors for soft-sided vehicles that are headed into Iraq over the coming days.

For Corporal Jonathan Crockett (ph), the big-picture debate in Washington is light-years away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whatever we can do to help our other fellow soldiers. And working 20 hours or what we have to do to help them out is what we have to do. Simple as that.

STARR: These plates will protect against insurgent small-arms, but not much more. Still, the need is so great, even at Christmas, the work goes on 24/7.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just work until we're finished. And now we've expanded the operations to six times what we had.

STARR: The soldiers working the armor line in Kuwait say they were busy long before one soldier ignited the recent controversy by asking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of armor.

SPC. THOMAS WILSON, U.S. ARMY: Now, why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles? STARR: CNN got an exclusive look at the place where soldiers are authorized to poke around for extra protection.

(on camera): It's been called the junkyard, a scrap pile, and a landfill. But here in Kuwait, this is a vital part of the military's effort to strip vehicles damaged in Iraq of their usable armor and other parts and put it all back on the next round of vehicles going into Iraq.

(voice-over): At another facility, heavier armor packages are installed on Humvees to offer side-blast protection from roadside bombs. Lieutenant General Steve Whitcomb is the senior Army commander. His operation ramped up months ago.

LT. GEN. STEVE WHITCOMB, SR. ARMY COMMANDER: I've got right now the equipment. I've got the personnel. And we've got no shortage of materials to be able to do this. It is just a huge job.

STARR: Installation is doubling to 150 vehicles a week. These doors and armored windows can add more than 1,000 pounds to the weight of a Humvee. The general, like the soldiers here, says the debate over whether there is a shortage of armored vehicles for Iraq gets personal.

WHITCOMB: Would I want my daughter, who is an Army captain, riding in one of the vehicles that we're preparing? And, as a father and as a soldier, you know, we've all got concerns. And I would put her in one of these vehicles.

STARR: Barbara Starr, CNN, Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: And now, for a change of pace, Fannie Mae, not the chocolates, not your maiden aunt, but the federal national mortgage association, Fannie Mae actually and Franklin Raines, more on him in a moment.

First, Fannie Mae itself. The company buys, consolidates, and guarantees home mortgages. It also sells stock to investors. The name makes it sound like a government agency. And, in fact, it was, established in 1938 by the government. It went private about 30 years later, but it is still something of a hybrid. Fannie Mae pays no state or local taxes, and it's not required to file with the FEC. More on that in a moment, too. And it's big, the second largest company in the nation in terms of assets.

Fannie Mae is also the single largest source of home financing in America. That's Fannie. Now Franklin Raines. He's the departing CEO. He was forced to step down after five years on the job amid questions about accounting practices involving about $9 billion. And for that, he may be getting a golden parachute of $114,000 a month for life, or not.

A scandal? Some are saying it is.

We're joined now by one of the reporters covering that story, Charlie Gasparino of "Newsweek" magazine. He's also the author of the upcoming book "Blood on the Street."

So, is it a scandal?

CHARLES GASPARINO, "NEWSWEEK": It's a huge story, and it probably is a scandal. I mean, when $9 billion goes missing in a company like this -- it's a government company, essentially -- then it's a big story.

I mean, right now, there's multiple government investigations. Could be criminal fraud involved here. We just have to wait and see exactly how big it is.

CARLSON: So, if it's big, if it's like Enron...

GASPARINO: Sure.

CARLSON: Why is it -- and I think you're implying that it is.

GASPARINO: Right.

CARLSON: Why has it not been reported like Enron?

GASPARINO: Well, Fannie Mae is a very politically corrupt -- it may be politically corrupt, but it's a politically correct company.

I mean, they do all the things that, let's face it, liberal journalists like, like put home mortgages out there for poor people. And so right now, beating up on Fannie Mae is kind of politically incorrect.

CARLSON: So, because it's not part of the tobacco industry or an energy company, it gets a pass from the press?

GASPARINO: Right. It's not related to George Bush. Franklin Raines, I believe, is a Democrat. So there is a degree here -- because I've heard journalists talk about this -- that hey, this is -- there's politics on the part of the Republicans. That's why they're beating up on Fannie Mae, which may be true.

But, at the same time, this is a huge story, and it's going overlooked.

CARLSON: And Franklin Raines has a lot of friends in Washington, where I live. He's a very charming guy and I'm sure a very capable guy. A very well-paid guy, though, we learned. How much did he make while running Fannie Mae?

GASPARINO: Well, he was making millions of dollars a year. He's got a golden parachute some estimate at $30 million, which is huge, because let's face it. Fannie Mae may be a public company, but it's supported by the federal government, which makes it different than Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns' CEO, James Cayne, I think, walked away with a year-end bonus of $20 million.

But hey, you know, he takes risk. His stock can go up and down. So that's what's difference between...

CARLSON: So, let's say Franklin Raines is making, I've read anywhere from $20 million a year, all considered, altogether.

GASPARINO: Right.

(CROSSTALK)

GASPARINO: Right.

CARLSON: Couldn't they find somebody, since it is, as you said, partly a public-supported company, couldn't they find someone to do it, say, for $10 million, $5 million? I'd do it for $2 million, actually, personally.

GASPARINO: Three million.

Yes. Yes, listen, this guy is overpaid by anybody's sort of estimates of what people should be paid in this role. The question is, why is he overpaid? We still have to get to that. And there's all these sort of accounting irregularities at this company. And did that lead to him being overpaid? You have to realize that lots of the payment is sort of calibrated to the performance of the stock.

And, you know, let's face it. The stock performed because Fannie Mae was saying that their earnings were a certain level. And now we're hearing that their earnings weren't at a certain level. So this is obviously a story that's going to unfold in the next couple weeks.

CARLSON: So, $9 billion goes missing, as you said.

GASPARINO: Right.

CARLSON: And it looks like he could get over 100 grand a month for life with life insurance and full medical, again, for life.

(CROSSTALK)

GASPARINO: Great deal.

CARLSON: Is that going to happen, A? And, B, how did that happen? And why didn't someone call foul when the contract was signed?

GASPARINO: Well, that's a great point.

Listen, there's a board of director of Fannie Mae, which has to be held accountable. Now, as you know, all these board of directors are always sort of -- they have sweetheart deals with the guys that are running the show. And people have to ask, what are the connections between Franklin Raines and the board of director of Fannie Mae?

CARLSON: All right. That is an interesting story, some of which may be in your book.

GASPARINO: Some of it.

CARLSON: Charlie Gasparino, thanks.

GASPARINO: Thank you.

CARLSON: When we return, the story of two American friends caught in the tsunami disaster. They could have died, but they didn't. They survived.

How they beat the odds after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Everyone who survived Sunday's catastrophe in South Asia has a story, and this is one. Justin Barth and Jake King left Los Angeles last Thursday on what was meant to be a vacation at a resort in Phuket, Thailand. Mr. Barth was eating breakfast when the tsunami struck. His friend was still asleep. They managed to avoid being swept away, but were separated in the chaos at one point.

They arrived back home in Los Angeles this morning, and they told us their story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTIN BARTH, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: I was having breakfast, and the wave just came in and took everybody on the beach with it. Life kind of slows down in a split-second. Can't really think during those circumstances. You just have to kind of react and go.

It kind of just looked like a regular high-tide wave, and then it just got more intense and more intense. And then everybody started running off of the beach. And it was chaos. There was cars floating down the street.

JAKE KING, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: The water got so high that we -- the door would only open outward. We were unable to push the door outward. So, in order to get out, he had to grab just bottles and chairs and shattered the window. And that's when the water basically pushed me all the way back. He floated his way out.

The TVs and mattresses inside the rooms were floating, you know, at shoulder high, and the water was coming so quick that I couldn't get out. So I basically just held on to a bathroom door, you know, until that broke off. And then I was able to just kind of get my way right out of the water.

I just climbed up to a roof of the hotel and then the roof was getting high enough to where I just had to jump on a tree. I just pretty much jumped up on top and stayed on top of the tree until the tsunamis died down. We were grabbing people's arms from the top of the roof, so that people were not drowning. There was a lot of very old people, a lot of people that were unable to swim in these conditions. And it was just tough seeing people who weren't strong enough to get on a tree. And we did everything we could to grab people, but the water was just so powerful that you can only hold onto people for so long before they either slipped out of their hands or some were strong enough to hold.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming again!

KING: Probably three, four hours after the third tsunami, I heard him yelling my name. And I was yelling his name for hours, too. And we just bumped into each other and gave each other a big hug and said, let's get the hell out of here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: And that's it, the end of the program, not a particularly upbeat hour, but we hope you enjoyed it.

We'll be back tomorrow at the same time. See you then.

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