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Biden Hosts NATO Secretary General At White House For Bilateral Meeting; Houston Students Risk Lives To Dodge, Crawl Under Train To Reach School; Pacific Northwest At Risk For A Devastating Earthquake, Tsunami. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired June 17, 2024 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: He travels personally to each country to meet face-to-face with the head of state that will be representing that country at the summit. So certainly meeting with President Biden is a critical ally to reach consensus, but Stoltenberg still has more work to do before mid-July -- Guys.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, Kayla Tausche, thank you for the report from the White House -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Let's discuss this important meeting. Joining us now is CNN National Security Analyst Beth Sanner. She's a former Deputy Director of National Intelligence. Beth, thanks so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

This new NATO agreement meant to increase coordination and oversight of aid to Ukraine. What's different now compared to what NATO was doing before?

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, you know, before the United States led the entire effort. Now, 50 countries, so that's the 32 NATO countries, plus a lot of other countries like Japan and South Korea and Argentina now just joined part of this kind of contact group called the Ramstein Group, and that was led by Secretary of Defense Austin. And, you know, and I actually think that this is a really good move, regardless of politics.

It is about NATO, and it means that the Europeans also are saying, you know, we have skin in this game, and we're going to work better than the United States. But the United States was absolutely key in the beginning in setting this all up. It was really that led the way.

SANCHEZ: Beth, how much of this sort of new deal has to do with the potential for Donald Trump to win the election? Because he's given clear signals that he's not exactly enthusiastic about NATO.

SANNER: To say the least, he said this Saturday at a rally that he was going to solve the Ukraine situation, the war with Russia. And including, he implied that he was going to cut off assistance to Ukraine as president-elect, even before he was inaugurated. So definitely there is an issue there. But I think absolutely, the brainstorming for this idea was a Trump- driven idea. And I think it's important for all of us to recognize that, you know, there are positives and negatives about that. You know, I think that it's very interesting how many countries are ramping up in addition to the countries who have already met that 2 percent.

We're seeing a lot more of the other countries make concrete plans. So yes, it's about Trump-proofing, but it's now about a lot more.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Beth, what about China? I found that comment from Stoltenberg interesting that Beijing can't have it both ways. At some point, unless China changes course, he says, allies need to impose a cost. What do you think that cost looks like?

SANNER: Well, it looks very much like what the United States just put in place last week, which is pretty amazing. I mean, it's another huge step up in the penalties that we are putting on anybody doing business with Russia. And this includes Chinese semiconductor companies who are exporting to Russia and includes any company with Russian banks. And that's aimed squarely at China.

So we will see how that will be imposed and whether the other allies will pick up on these sanctions. Over time, they tend to double down on what the United States is doing. But we control the financial system in the world. So what we do matters a lot more.

SANCHEZ: Beth Sanner, I appreciate the insight. Thanks for joining us.

SANNER: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course. When we come back, a school commute you have to see. It is more treacherous than what any kid should face. How getting to campus involves crawling under freight trains for some students in Houston. Stay with us.

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[15:38:56]

KEILAR: Middle school can be tough enough without having to dodge moving trains on your way to class. But that is just what students at McReynolds Middle School in Houston deal with all the time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, the trains are unforgiving, man. They're not forgiving nothing. They're going to hurt you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: School officials there say one third of the students who walk to school have to cross this an incredibly busy Union Pacific Rail yard to get there. And after several close calls, students and administrators are asking the rail company to build a footbridge over the tracks. So far, no dice. Let's talk about this now with Lisa Falkenberg, who is the opinion editor at the Houston Chronicle. Elisa, thanks for being with us. Your newspaper actually shot that video we just saw, which is pretty frightening and shows what is clearly these middle schoolers in a way too dangerous situation trying to get to class.

[15:40:03]

Can you tell us about the kinds of close calls that you've heard about?

LISA FALKENBERG, EDITOR OF OPINION, HOUSTON CHRONICLE: Yes, well, one of the middle schoolers we interviewed actually was starting to go under the train at a certain point, because she thought it was stopped. And then it started moving. Another child that we had filmed, who's actually went to another school, was also we actually caught him in the moment where he's about to climb up on the train to get over. And the train started moving.

There have been cases in the past years ago where children actually had amputations. They were riding the trains, which is something kids do because they're kids, but also because it's really frustrating when the train is stopped in your path. And you're just a little tempted if it's going really slow to jump on. And we haven't had, thank God, any of those situations in the past several years.

KEILAR: Yes, but they're trying to prevent it because it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Right. I know dispatchers have been trying to stop the train traffic during critical times like the beginning of school and the end of school. But it's certainly not perfect.

And you've seen trains that are stopped on the tracks as kids need to get to or from school. I wonder, though, as these children themselves are asking this rail company to build a footbridge over the tracks, why there hasn't been progress on that?

FALKENBERG: Well, as they will say, it's complicated. And this is a problem that's existed for generations. And the Houston Chronicle editorial board, our videographer, Sharon Steinman, and she was the first person to really capture on video the extent of this problem.

So now there's there are images. We've got hundreds of thousands of people online looking at this and demanding change. But the problem is the jurisdictions.

Federal government tends to oversee trains. Mayors in the past have tried to deal with it. They even ticketed some of the conductors. But they feel those efforts have been stymied by jurisdiction issues.

Houston -- Houstonians daily lives are impacted by these trains, but none as much as the people who live and work near the trains. And it is a problem that Union Pacific says it's very difficult to address for them because they have a major rail yard, one of the biggest in the country near McReynolds.

And they have no interest, as far as we can tell, in building a bridge that those are complex projects. Houston floods. You can't do an underpass in some areas. The bridge has to be in the right location. It's a long process. You have to get the grant to help fund it.

We wish Union Pacific would step up once and for all and work with whoever they have to work with locally. Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, whoever it is, and find a solution.

KEILAR: Look I mean, the problem, it predominantly affects kids who live in this Fifth Ward area. I heard one student say that they weren't hopeful because they are coming from, quote, a lower class neighborhood. That is what this girl said.

How much is socioeconomic status? The fact that this is almost entirely black and Hispanic kids. How much is that playing into what really seems to be a failure to address this problem?

FALKENBERG: Right. Those are heartbreaking words from Ruby, the young woman who, I mean, she was so brave. She and her classmates called Union Pacific officials to their school, gave them a tour, gave them a presentation and said, we want help.

But in the end, this is an area with lower socioeconomic, lower opportunities. It is in the East End. The city did grow up around these tracks. So people who live in this area, that's what they can afford. And I think historically, the idea was, well, you live over there, you knew what you were getting into. You know, it's just it's just something you have to deal with.

But that's an antiquated mentality. And these children need help. And it's not like they're in cities, Los Angeles, Chicago, that have found a way to deal with some of these issues. And they built the bridges. They got it done.

And that's what these kids need. They need that kind of respect and attention. They need to be able to get to school and back home without risking their lives.

KEILAR: Yes, it's pretty glaringly obvious that that is the case. Lisa Falkenberg, thank you so much for talking to us about this. We appreciate it.

FALKENBERG: Thank you for your attention on it.

KEILAR: Ahead, scientists released new data that shows a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami are inevitable in the Pacific Northwest, and they warn no one is ready for it. We'll have more on that when we come back.

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[15:49:25]

SANCHEZ: Right now, scientists are sharing new data about a natural event so powerful it'll remake the Pacific Northwest coastline and make it unrecognizable. Researchers have new imagery of what's known as the Cascadia subduction zone. This is a 700 mile fault running along the coast of northern California to Washington state.

And this new data suggests that if not if, but when this fault ruptures, it could trigger a 9.0 magnitude earthquake followed by a massive tsunami. For contest -- context, this is precisely what happened off the coast of Japan in 2011.

[15:50:02]

That earthquake was a magnitude 9.1, causing significant damage, including a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. So what could all of this mean for the Pacific Northwest? Let's discuss with seismologist Jeffrey Park.

So, Jeffrey, walk us through this new research and what it means.

JEFFREY PARK, SEISMOLOGIST: Well, this research is a culmination of a long study of the geology of the north -- the northwest Pacific area. There have always been Indian legends of big earthquakes occurred before the Europeans arrived in the area. And what had happened like in the late 20th century, a Japanese seismologist noticed that there had been measurements of a two meter tsunami in Japan in the year 1700 without any earthquake associated with it.

What he did is he figured out, well, if this had occurred at the same time as those Indian legends, that we would have had a magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of Washington and Oregon. And so this is the this is the basis for what we think is happening. All the study we've had since has kind of confirmed this picture that this extremely large earthquake is characteristic of this portion of the United States and that it will probably happen again.

SANCHEZ: So the last one happened roughly 325 years ago. Does the science point to when we might see this happen again?

PARK: Well, of course, short term prediction of earthquake activity is not possible now, but we do know that the fault is active. There are moderate earthquakes. There's also a number of types of tremors that occur that tell us that the fault zone underneath coastal Oregon and coastal Washington is indeed moving. So there's stuff going on. We've been measuring sort of geodetically with GP -- a long term GPS measurements, these type of movements for a couple of decades now.

SANCHEZ: So what does this mean for people living in the Pacific Northwest?

PARK: Well, if you're in one of the major cities, it means that at the time this happens, and it could occur any time in the next century or even two centuries, that there'll be a quite a bit of shaking going on. But specifically along the coastline, you can expect a massive tsunami many meters high that would come crashing in from offshore. Most of the motion that occurs in this type of earthquake actually occurs offshore.

And so what will occur physically is that during the earthquake, the seafloor will drop by maybe a meter or so. And when it does, the water falls in after it and then sets up a wave that heads towards the shore. You can set -- you can have a wave that's well, well offshore in a kilometer of water that might be only a meter high.

But when all that energy gets concentrated into the surf zone, maybe 10 meters or 100 meters depth water, then it becomes a much larger wave.

SANCHEZ: So, Jeffrey, you mentioned the science around predicting earthquakes being difficult in the short term. Is there anything that might change that? A new technological advancement moving into the future?

PARK: Well, for some cases, we are monitoring fault zones around the world to try to detect subtle changes that may occur in areas where earthquakes might occur and become quite large. In the case of an earthquake system that's quite as large as this, that encompasses like 700 kilometers of length along the coastline, we don't have quite enough of these to do to understand what the predictions might be like. Many of them, when we look back at previous earthquakes before magnitude nine earthquakes, is not a lot that tells us that a magnitude nine was coming.

SANCHEZ: Jeffrey Park, thanks so much for the analysis. We hope that the big one is still a long way off.

PARK: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Thanks.

You've got to wear a helmet. That's the message from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay after suffering what he calls a really bad bicycle accident. The details on that in just a few minutes.

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[15:59:02]

KEILAR: Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has a new message on bike safety that may just stop you in your tracks. Maybe it could save you. Ramsay sent out a heartfelt Father's Day message on Instagram, saying he is, quote, lucky to be alive after a really bad accident that shook him.

SANCHEZ: We should warn you, you might wince when you see what he has to say. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON RAMSAY, CELEBRITY CHEF: Honestly, you've got to wear a helmet. I don't care how short the journey is. I don't care how long the journey is. I don't care, you know, the fact that these helmets cost money. But they're crucial. Even with the kids, a short journey, they've got to wear a helmet.

Now, I'm lucky to be standing here. I'm in pain. It's been a brutal week. And I'm sort of getting through it. But I cannot tell you the importance of wearing a helmet.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KEILAR: Oh, wow.

SANCHEZ: Ouch, that was kind of gross. He showed post-accident pictures of his beat up bike helmet, his shirt with a huge rip in it.

[16:00:00]

He says the accident happened while riding his bike in Connecticut. And he thanked medical staff for helping treat his injuries.

We were just sharing notes on bike accidents. I had a couple ugly spills when I was a kid not wearing a helmet. Probably should have been.

KEILAR: I had a concussion from a bike accident. not wearing a helmet definitely should have been. Might have saved my head a little more.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: My face took the brunt of it though.

SANCHEZ: You did fine you're pretty good shape. I still have some scars on my knees

KEILAR: I know, one on my hands.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: It's rough.

SANCHEZ: Wear a helmet.

KEILAR: Wear a helmet. Jake wears a helmet, and "THE LEAD" starts right now.