Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

Search for AirAsia Jet Continues; Families Asked for Medical Records; CDC: Flu Outbreak Hits Epidemic Level

Aired December 31, 2014 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Happy new year to everyone making vodka toasts in Moscow, for the clock just struck 12:00 a.m.

Here's mud in your eye, Vladimir.

I'm Jake Tapper. This is THE LEAD.

The world lead: The hunt continues. In an odd way, the only thing worse than not finding anything is finding something, seven bodies, for instance, passengers from AirAsia Flight 8501 reclaimed from the Java Sea so far, as families on the shore wait for authorities to help figure out who these particular victims are.

Plus, sonar sweeps pick up something that may be, just may be the jet's main cabin, but with powerful storms and waves descending upon rescue workers, will search teams even be able to get to the wreckage any time soon?

And our national lead, most Americans think it will give their kids a cough and keep them in bed for a few days, but this flu has killed 15 children already this season. The CDC says this outbreak is now an epidemic and flu shots are not always enough.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to THE LEAD.

I'm Jake Tapper.

And we begin today with a sonar echo from the ocean floor, something search teams hope is AirAsia Flight 8501, and a sad homecoming, of course, for some of the passengers on the doomed jet. Roughly 100 military personnel stood by earlier today as two bodies, victims recovered from the Java Sea arrived in Surabaya, the city their fated plane left from early Sunday morning.

The number of caskets escorted by rescue workers and soldiers hammered home the devastating reality that the 162 souls who boarded 8501, including 18 children, are almost certainly all gone. So far, Indonesian officials say rescue teams have recovered a total of seven bodies, including a woman wearing a flight attendant's uniform.

All of them will ultimately wind up at hospitals or morgues for the grim, but necessary process of examining and identifying the bodies to give families closure, of course, but also to look for any evidence that might peel away the layers of mystery about how this jet went down, clues that might give the families and friends of the passengers and the world some answers, as the search for more victims and wreckage is prevented by more awful weather.

The array of ships, planes, helicopters and divers looking for Flight 8501 had to abort yesterday's search two hours early, as heavy rain, wind and towering waves shrouded the scene in a misty, dark fog. Efforts remained focused on the Karimata Strait. That's where crews first spotted the debris.

Now Indonesian officials say they think that the plane's main fuselage may be there as well.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux has the latest on the hunt for this wreckage.

Suzanne, these teams, even though they have some good clues now, they still have a ton of work ahead of them.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They really do. It's a sad story when you think about all of those children on that flight.

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes being very careful today to tell us what they know and what they don't know. He has said they do have a visual of what could be the wreckage of the aircraft, the main part of the fuselage in the Java Sea, but he cannot confirm that radar has picked this up, which would be significant.

So it leaves many of these families of those aboard Flight 8501 in agonizing limbo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): The bodies of two more passengers from AirAsia 8501 arrived by ambulance, rushed to a local Indonesian hospital to be identified by grief-stricken loved ones.

It's the first stop before being brought to the city of Surabaya, where the flight originated and where the caskets of other recovered passengers are received by the Indonesian military. So far, very few of the 162 people on board have been found. Searchers discovered an emergency door and a blue suitcase.

TONY FERNANDES, CEO, AIRASIA GROUP: The weather unfortunately is not looking good for the next two or three days. And that is slowing us down, but they did inform me that the ships are looking to operate 24 hours.

MALVEAUX: Now there are conflicting reports from Indonesian officials about whether a sonar image has located wreckage believed to be from the ill-fated flight submerged at the bottom of the Java Sea.

One theory developing:

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: The pilots had made an attempt to land on the water, similar to the aircraft that was landed on the Hudson successfully. From the last time the radar picked up the aircraft until the time that they found -- or the location where they found the debris is over 100 miles. And that would be consistent with a slow descent down into that region.

MALVEAUX: The specter of the miracle of the Hudson, where the plane glided on water and passengers walked away from the crash, had given hope to some families perhaps another miracle would be revealed here.

But at the crisis center, as time passes, praying has given way to despair. This family told CNN's Gary Tuchman they lost seven loved ones on the doomed flight.

SUYONO THAJAKUSUMA, FAMILY MEMBER (through translator): When we heard the information, firstly, of course, we hoped our family members were safe and thought of nothing. Until yesterday morning and afternoon, we still hoped we would get a miracle, that our families are still alive, because my mother, my sister, we were very close.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: It is just heartbreaking for those families.

And what is complicating this, it's monsoon season. The weather is treacherous and it is slowing down the search for the passengers and the debris as well. They have to be cautious about search planes flying in high winds, the divers swimming in those strong currents and pieces of the plane lurching through the sea.

And, thankfully, there is still time to get those flight data recorders, the so-called black boxes, which could provide that critical information as to why this plane went down, Jake.

TAPPER: Of course the weather being a possibility, at least a contributing factor. Suzanne Malveaux, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Let's go right now live to Surabaya, Indonesia, where CNN's Andrew Stevens is standing by.

Andrew, obviously another very sad day for these families. The search is set to resume just under two hours from now. How is the weather? Will they be able to start searching again today? As we mentioned earlier, the search yesterday was aborted two hours prematurely.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The conditions, we are being told, Jake, is those conditions at first light are going to be very similar to the conditions that led to the aborting of the search today.

So, it gives you an idea of just the sort of obstacles they're facing here, winds up to 50 miles an hour, 20-foot high seas, we're being told here. They're big swells. Obviously, that's going to -- the wind speeds are going to restrict flights, as well as driving rain, a lot of heavy rain bands going through that area.

And it's expected to go through for the next few days, which is going to be the problem. We are being told divers haven't actually gone into the sea yet because it is just too dangerous. So, you tie all those together, it is going to be very, very difficult to have effective searching going on at least for the next 24 hours, if not longer.

And there were suggestions, Jake, that they have identified the fuselage, the main cabin of 8501, but we have been speaking to the heads, the local head here of Indonesia's search-and-rescue. And he can only say that it may be that we found it. We don't know. We can't confirm it at the moment.

And given the fact that the weather is going to be as it is, and also, remember, this is the monsoon -- the seas, which are shallow there, they do get whipped up generally. So, you get a lot of sediment and a lot of mud and murk in the water, so, actually, visibility underwater is going to be pretty difficult as well.

TAPPER: Andrew, the new year came to Indonesia when we spoke four hours ago. It's obviously supposed to be a happy occasion. Many of these passengers were flying to Singapore, one presumes to celebrate the new year.

But I would assume that things are pretty somber in Surabaya right now.

STEVENS: Well, absolutely, Jake.

There is a strong connection with Singapore here. There is a strong Chinese fraternity here in Surabaya. There were -- having said that, there were plenty of fireworks going off, but the authorities here have -- they canceled all public celebrations of New Year's right across the eastern Java province, of which Surabaya is the capital.

And there has also been a vigil, a candlelight vigil in the park here in Surabaya which attracted hundreds and hundreds of people. This is a city in mourning, hundreds turning out, children, also families of the relatives turning out. So, it was led by the mayor, who prayed for strength in these very, very difficult times for so many people.

And the really sad thing here is, Jake, is that because of the weather conditions, this grieving, this despair continues because the likelihood of bodies, more bodies being retrieved obviously gets pushed back because of the weather conditions.

So this could be days before these relatives who have been through so much already, hope and despair, now they have got this agonizing weight for the bodies to be returned. They then have to be identified. That is quite a long process, too, because they're being so cautious about getting the right identification.

They have been asking relatives for photos or for distinguishing marks, for anything that is going to help them in that search, also for the samples which could help them in DNA matches. So it is going to be quite a long process to actually identify all of those victims.

And then, of course, there is the burials to go through as well, so absolutely harrowing days ahead for so many families in this grieving city.

TAPPER: Just awful. Andrew Stevens live in Surabaya, Indonesia, thank you so much.

The debris uncovered so far has been found floating on the waves, but what investigators have recovered may only really be setting the table for the critical discoveries that officials need next.

Our Tom Foreman explains -- Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are really three layers to the physical search right now.

The one we have been talking about the most right now is on the surface of the water. We know where the plane took off and we know where it disappeared. We know where they have found debris in the search area and we know the water here is very rough at times.

The surface matters because the surface is where you get your first clues most often. Things floating on top of the water may or may not tell you a lot about the cause of the accident, but they are indicators, because when you move to the second layer, which is the water column beneath them, and you start reverse-engineering their position against the competing currents below, you can get an estimate on where they came from. And that can lead you to the third layer down here, which is the heavy bits on the bottom, because those are the ones you really have to get.

What are we talking about? We're talking about big parts of the plane, parts of the wings and parts of the tail and parts of the landing gear and the electronics, the flight data recorder, the voice recorder, the engines, which are each about 9,000 pounds.

All of these are critical because if you collect enough of them, as they did with TWA 800, which was also in about a hundred feet of water off the coast of Long Island, you can reassemble the plane, in effect, and when you do that, you can look at all these pieces and figure out what went wrong. Was there a fire? Was there an explosion? Did it simply tear apart? Did it hit the water intact and then sink?

All of those can be critical clues to understanding what happened.

TAPPER: All right, Tom Foreman, thank you so much.

Finding the main cabin could answer so many of the questions about what went wrong, which needs to be known so as to prevent future disasters like this. Weather has hampered crews trying to find the plane. Divers dread what they will find inside when they finally get there.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We are going to continue with our coverage of the world lead. Families of the AirAsia flight victims are struggling, of course, to come to grips with their loved ones being gone, but as Indonesian authorities search the sea for more wreckage and more victims and more clues, officials are now bringing bodies to a midway point. There, they can start the grim process of trying to identify them.

Let's go to CNN's Paula Hancocks who is in Borneo -- Paula.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, this is the first-stop hospitals for the victims of the AirAsia crash on the west coast of Borneo. We have just received two more bodies here. Sirens signaling the two ambulances arriving that were Red Cross and hospital workers waiting with gurneys. The two body bags were then rushed into a special wing of this hospital to be treated and also identified.

Now, the hospital director tells us that what they're doing is trying to give the initial identification to figure out the gender, the height and any identifying marks, any facial recognition that can tell them who the passengers and crew are.

Now, we know the families have already been up for this information. They've already given up-to-date photos of their loved ones exactly for this purpose. Now, the retrievable of bodies appear to be fairly slow at this point. The weather is in part of that. We've had heavy rain at the sights of the crash.

We've had high waves and also high winds which obviously makes things very difficult for the divers and little visibility and also for the ships and the aerial support in the area. The concern, of course, is the next couple of days could be just as bad -- Jake.

TAPPER: Paula Hancocks in Borneo, thank you so much.

Let's bring in Captain Tim Taylor. He's a sea operations and submersible specialist, and the president of Tiburon Subsea Services.

Also here to give their insights, CNN safety analyst, David Soucie, and CNN aviation analyst Jeff Wise.

Tim, let me start with you.

Do you think it's likely that this object that has been picked up by the sonar, even though the airline won't yet confirm it, do you think it's likely the main cabin of the jet?

CAPT. TIM TAYLOR, TIBURON SUBSEA SERVICES: I don't have the knowledge to say it's likely, but if it is, you know, it -- it's -- it's amazing, I mean, to find the whole cabin intact after what it had to go through.

TAPPER: David, you told me earlier that you think we actually know less today than we did yesterday. Explain what you mean.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, yesterday if you recall, they said the aircraft had gone into the water that the debris was located six miles from where they last had a radar fix on the aircraft, which would indicate it was a steeper deep stall. Today, that's a 120 miles. It went from six miles to 120 miles that was a mistake. They also told us other information that we knew this, we knew that. We knew that the aircraft -- that the sonar had found this aircraft. Now we don't know if it found it or not. It's backed off on it.

So, in their attempts, yesterday, I was talking about how they did such a great job of managing the misinformation and now I'm going to have to back off on that because it appears that there's information getting out, some back-and-forth just like what we saw with MH370 which is torturous to the families.

TAPPER: Jeff, based on the clues that we know so far, based on the bodies and the debris that we've seen, based on the information we have, what are investigators thinking right now in terms of what may have caused this crash or is it still too early to even speculate?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It's really too early to speculate. I mean, it's not very fruitful to speculate. Really what they're doing as you reported earlier, they're really bent on getting these black boxes out of the water. The destruction seen of the fuselage itself will be helpful, but really the key will unlock the secrets pretty quickly. I suspect this case will not take too long to resolve, certainly nothing like Air France 447, and absolutely not like MH370.

So, then the answers will emerge pretty quickly. So, we could, as sort of a mental exercise talk about the possibilities related to weather and perhaps some pilot errors, et cetera, but it's not going to really be useful because we'll have the true answer soon enough, I hope.

TAPPER: David, weather has obviously slowed the search. What can these teams do, if anything, to mitigate the risk of this evidence, the chunks of the plane, the debris, et cetera, drifting away from where they have found pieces of wreckage or is that just impossible?

SOUCIE: Well, it's not impossible, Jake. What I'm hoping they're doing and they haven't been talking about this, but I suspect they are is dropping sonar buoys which will drift with the debris and they'll be easier to find because they actually emit a signal which can be narrowed in on later. So they can be do, but more importantly what they're doing right now is establishing and bringing in the subject matter experts and the stakeholders of the aircraft, the manufacturer, the airline itself and the countries that are involved, they all have to be part of this investigation and they may not be parties to it meaning they're not in the planning meetings, but they definitely have to be there.

I wouldn't dream of doing an investigation on the aircraft unless all major manufacturers including avionics were there to represent themselves and provide information.

TAPPER: Tim, it seems the only time the weather has been manageable is during the night. I've gone on night dives, they are challenging. You really only see what the late you're carrying picks up in front of you. But does it make these searches impossible? Obviously, they're continuing to do them at night. TAYLOR: Yes, I mean, if I was running this operation I would schedule

it for the times that are the best and that's the night right now. So, I would take advantage of that opportunity. And frankly, sonar and the sonar work you have to do, that can be done at any time.

Diving, a little bit of complication with lights and you can bring in AUVs -- excuse me, ROVs with massive lighting and divers together and solve a lot of that if they're going inside of a fuselage, it gets a little bit more dicey. But the divers are trained for that and recovering bodies is really the necessary thing. Recovering the wreck or salvaging the wreck can wait for months when the season gets better if it's deep enough, but bodies really have to be, you know, right now as soon as we can in recovery needs to be priority of that.

TAPPER: All right. Captain Tim Taylor, Jeff Wise, David Soucie, thank you all so much.

In our the national lead, the flu outbreak spreading so quickly this season experts say it's reached an epidemic level. Why your flu shot may not be enough to keep you from getting sick and why one particular flu strain has become so dangerous.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

The national lead now: a deadly outbreak spreading quickly across the U.S. has already been blamed for the deaths of 15 children. It's the flu. And the CDC announced it's officially an epidemic. And while you may not see patients quarantined or treated by doctors in hazmat suits, as we did when Ebola hit our shores, this flu strain is a serious concern for health professionals because it's not only dangerous, it's unpredictable. It's mutating.

The Centers for Disease Control reports widespread flu activity in 36 states and doctors say even if you got a flu shot, you could still get this virus.

I'm joined now by Dr. Jeffrey Kahn. He's the director of pediatric and infectious diseases at Children's Medical Center in Dallas.

Doctor, thanks for joining us. Why hasn't the flu shot been enough to stop people from getting the virus this season?

DR. JEFFREY KAHN, CHILDREN'S MEDICAL CENTER: Well, we know that flu can mutate and in fact, it mutates every year and that's why we have new vaccines that come out every year and we have to get re-vaccinated for influenza. This particular strain has mutated in a way that the vaccine no longer covers this particular strain. It's an H3N2 strain, which is one of the three strains that typically circulate, causes the most severe disease. And that's why it's drawing a lot of attention.

TAPPER: But just to be clear, doctors still recommend that people get the flu shot and it's not too late to do so because of the other two strains. People should still get their flu shots. KAHN: Absolutely. For the reasons that you mentioned and also, there

is some data that suggests that even if it's not a perfect match with the vaccine is not a perfect match with the vaccine, it's not a perfect match with the strains that are circulating nationwide, there is still maybe some protection afforded by the vaccine. By all means, if you haven't gotten a flu shot yet, you should get a flu shot.

TAPPER: So, this H3N2 strain is particularly virulent and particularly difficult. Is there a reason for that? Or it's just one that has mutated in a diabolical way.

KAHN: The mutation has to do with weather the vaccine will protect against the virus. The H3N2 is a common influenza strain that circulates through each of the epidemics. As I mentioned, it changes from year to year and it's known to cause bad disease and I think this year, it's no different from previous seasons.

TAPPER: There have been 15 reported deaths of children so far this year. Are children more susceptible to this particular strain?

KAHN: Certainly young children are much more susceptible. We see pediatric deaths during each influenza epidemic and typically at least over the last several years we've seen between 100 and 200 deaths in the pediatric population. But certainly, very young children are typically prone to influenza and there are reasons for that. First, children who are less than 6 months of age can't get vaccinated.