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Harlem Building Collapses; Mystery of Flight 370

Aired March 12, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Obviously, no one is let -- really let within a block of the building.

JOSE PEREZ, RELATIVE OF VICTIM: Well, we're going to continue. We're going to go to the councilwoman's office. And they are doing the best that they can to reference hospital lists and to find out if she is at any of the hospitals.

And that's where we're going to head after here and just wait and stand until we get can any more information.

HARLOW: I know you are hopeful and you're keeping your spirits high. So, our best wishes to both of you, as you continue to search with her. We will be here throughout the day as well. So, keep us posted. Thank you guys very much.

Brooke, back to you, this is the real concern at this point. We don't know how many people are unaccounted for. The mayor's office not wanting to put a number out there, because it is still so early, so early, but as soon as we have more, we will update you.

BALDWIN: We will stay in close contact with you and our other crews there in Harlem.

Poppy Harlow, thank you so much.

And we continue on, hour two. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And we go to the mystery, this Malaysian airliner Flight 370. Still no sign of it or the 239 people who were on board. And with each new clue comes more confusion.

Here's what we have just learned at CNN, that the Malaysian police are questioning the friend of two Iranian nationals who boarded that flight with those stolen passports, although we're told the investigation into these two centered on human trafficking and not any suspected terrorism links. That questioning happening as I speak.

We are now entering the sixth day here and instead of the search area narrowing, it's only gotten bigger. As of now, it has doubled in size and covers about 27,000 square miles, roughly four times the size of the state of Massachusetts, just for perspective's sake, in part because the Malaysians can't even agree where the evidence shows the plane was last spotted. That's a problem. Malaysia's military now says it may have radically changed course, popping up as a blip on the radar more than an hour later and hundreds of miles away.

So, joining me now, Bill Palmer, commercial pilot and author of "Understanding Air France 447."

Bill, nice to see you. Welcome.

BILL PALMER, AUTHOR, "UNDERSTANDING AIR FRANCE 447": Thanks, Brooke. Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: We keep hearing -- we're hearing these experts, Bill, talk about the missing flight and the fact that the transponder went from on to off. First, just for all of us not in the aviation industry, what exactly does a transponder do?

PALMER: A transponder sends information down to the radar air traffic control.

It is what is referred to as secondary radar. In other words, the radar signal interrogates the aircraft and the aircraft sends back the information, its discrete code and it can carry other information as well, altitude, airspeed, heading and things like that, depending on which mode they are talking about.

BALDWIN: So, then try to explain why the transponder might have gone off.

PALMER: It could have been turned off or it could have failed, possibly from the same event that caused other communication items to fail. It's hard to say. It's an electronic component, so it's subject to electrical or other failures, just like any other electrical component.

BALDWIN: You are a pilot. You have been watching this. I talked to somebody who helped lead the investigation into Air France 447, and he is absolutely perplexed by this. What is your question number one, as we're all flummoxed by this?

PALMER: It seems we know less today than we did yesterday as far as the actual -- the radar trace, that we thought the airplane turned around and went back, and now it's not clear what the aircraft path was.

I think key part would be to see exactly how the airplane turned and what direction and did it stay on exactly the same heading? Those kind of clues could give us an idea of if it was a manually selected change in course or if it was just a degradation in the navigation mode from the managed path where the flight plan was typed in that degraded to a heading select mode due to failure of some other components. A lot of questions and not a lot of information right now to really build a good scenario with.

BALDWIN: Here's what else we don't have. We don't have debris and it's now day six. There's no piece of metal, there's no life vest, there's no seat cushion. What could that suggest to you?

PALMER: It's a huge area that the airplane could possibly be in. And it's hard to imagine how difficult it is to find something.

I know everyone thinks the 777 is really big, and it is if you stand in it or stand next to it, but it's kind of like, before, we were looking for something the size of a car or truck in Pennsylvania, and now it's more like we are looking for something that size somewhere in North America.

We thought it was heading toward Canada, but now maybe it's heading towards Mexico. It's a very, very difficult situation to try to find anything. Finding -- looking for pieces on the shimmering water doesn't make it any easier for sure.

BALDWIN: And then you have -- let me ask you this, just as a pilot. We are learning from this newspaper in the area, "The Strait Times," that the last thing we heard from one of the members of the crew was, all right, good night.

Does that alarm you or is that something a pilot would say?

PALMER: No, that's normal. When we change from one control to the other, it's quite common to say good night, sometimes even in their local language, if you know it. It's quite common and doesn't alarm me at all.

BALDWIN: OK. OK.

Bill Palmer, thank you so much.

Let's bring in now CNN's Andrew Stevens. He is watching the story for us from Kuala Lumpur.

Andrew, we have word. Let's go back to the word about police interviewing this man in Malaysia who is this of those two men who used those stolen passports to board the plane. Tell me about that questioning.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We don't know what the line of questioning is at the moment, other the fact that they will be trying to find out as much as they can about these two people who used the stolen passports, Brooke.

As the police are going through and looking at the passengers, looking at the profiles of the passengers, as well as the crew, of course, what I can tell you is that we understand that he's actually still being interviewed at the moment. CNN spoke to him a couple of hours ago. One of our producers spoke to him. And he said, look, I'm well and I'm safe and I'm at the police station. I'm being interviewed and it will probably take two or three hours and I'm expecting them to go home.

It's important to remember the two men who did board that flight using the stolen passports, it's widely now believed both by Interpol and local authorities here that this was much more to do with people smuggling than any terrorist link, that they were going to Europe for either asylum or to start a new life in some shape or form.

BALDWIN: Yes. What about also police had searched the home of the pilot? What were they looking for?

PALMER: Yes, that's right.

Again, they say -- he's quite an interesting character. He's an absolute aviation buff. The captain, 53-year-old, had more than 18,000 flying hours under his belt. He's a very experienced pilot. When he was not flying, he was at home with his very own simulator. The police were interested in that simulator, for obvious reasons, to see what he had on that simulator. They have been looking at the data on that simulator.

We haven't gotten any information about what they took away or even if they did take anything away at all. But it's all part of the investigation, the broader investigation now just trying to establish some link, some clue to what may have happened.

BALDWIN: OK. Andrew Stevens in Kuala Lumpur, Andrew, thank you very much.

Coming up, much more coverage of course on the missing 777. We are getting some new information as far as what happened to the flight and what caused it to disappear without a trace and what military satellite imagery specifically here might show. That's ahead.

Up next, more on this building explosion and collapse in East Harlem, New York, this morning. Two people are dead and two dozen injured, rescuers frantically still searching the scene, because there still some unaccounted for, eyewitnesses next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Still a number of people unaccounted this afternoon after that massive explosion this morning Manhattan's East Harlem neighborhood.

The numbers still hold that we have here, so at least two people are dead, this is what we're hearing, and more than two dozen hurt. Two FBI agency are also injured. Those are among the numbers hurt from the blast, expected to be OK and that's the latest word we got.

This blast absolutely leveled two buildings, with stores and apartments. In fact, neighbors multiple blocks away felt the explosion and shattered windows and removed walls. One man says the force knocked his door off and sent his cat flying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of a sudden, this explosion goes off. Boom.

The kinetic energy had the door fly open. My cat flies out the room. And I'm like, yo, what's going on here? My son was sleeping. He pops up trying to figure out what's going on. The first thing I thought was one the pothole covers, remembering what happened last -- what was it, about two years ago on 42nd Street. That's what I thought it was. About 10 minutes later, there's a fire truck right there. I was able to get up there before all this had gotten blocked off. And what I saw there was a little -- a lot of chaos.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: My goodness.

Don Lemon is there for us in the midst of it. Don is on the phone.

Don, tell me what you are seeing right now.

DON LEMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm seeing a lot of firefighters here on the scene still, not as many as there were a little bit earlier, Brooke.

And they are still putting water on the scene, trying to douse those hot spots. And I would imagine now that they have gotten this gas main shut off, that they feel that they are out of danger at least of another explosion. But I'm seeing firefighters. Firefighters are walking away. Some people are -- there is a shift change right now.

And I just spoke to one of the firefighters and I said -- this is just before you were coming to me -- and I said, do you think there is anyone under there? And he goes, all I can tell you, sir, is that there is definite possibility and that's why we are still searching.

What happened, Brooke, is when they had the bulk of the firefighters out on the scene earlier when this thing -- when the blast happened earlier, it blew the bricks off of the building. And there was rubble on the sidewalk. What the firefighters did, they brought a big group out of them with buckets, using their hands to go through the debris and the rubble and to remove it.

They have now put a big pile of debris in the middle of Park Avenue, between 116th and 117th Street. And so now what they are using, bigger equipment since they have gotten a lot of this rubble out of the way to go further into the building and remove some of that rubble. And then there other firefighters that are now inside of this place where they can get where there are not any hot spots. There are other firefighters in there with their hands now looking.

We also saw dogs a little bit earlier on the scene. I guess they were trying to sniff to see if they could -- if there was any bodies or anything like that. The electricity in that block is shut off. It's not shut off in the block that I'm in. I'm just one block over, standing next to the police officers here and I'm at the community board.

And they're allowing me inside of the police lines. But we're essentially the only crew that is allowed inside of the police lines here. But, again, it's just unbelievable. A firefighter who walked by just moments ago said -- I haven't seen firefighters with looks on their faces like this in quite some time. They are saying it's just horrible. And they still don't know if there still people underneath this debris -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Yes, the smoke and the rubble and those pictures initially coming out, everyone here, I'm sitting here in New York City as well and it's like everyone just hearkened back to those few moments after 9/11.

Don Lemon for us in East Harlem, Don, thank you.

Coming up, it's an international mystery that has investigators around the globe asking the question, how can a passenger airplane just, poof, disappear? We will tell you where authorities are honing in on their search coming up next.

Also ahead, how you can help the search for the plane from your own computer at home. I will talk to the creator of this crowd-sourcing app that allows you to help with the search. Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: To the mystery of Flight 370, still capturing the world's attention.

What happened on board this flight? Investigators across several countries now scratching their heads, trying to answer that very question. So, this plane, just think of the timeline here. It vanished early Saturday night, 239 people on board.

Malaysian officials not only don't know what happened to the plane. They also don't know where to look, apparently.

So, let's bring in our chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto for in Washington with more on this, because, Jim, you have got a lot of sources. What are they telling you about the investigation here?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, I'll tell you, confusing, frustrating for all involved, as you say, scratch-your-head moment, because it's days after this plane disappeared and Malaysian authorities, investigators are still looking at a whole range of possible explanations, but no closer to picking one of them as the leading theory here. Right?

They are exploring the possibility of a hijack or taking over the cockpit, of mechanical failure, terror event or even a pilot suicide. They are looking into all of those things. And you saw some steps today in each direction. You saw, for instance, a friend of those two Iranian men who boarded the plane with stolen passports. He was questioned by police today.

There were also reports today that they searched the apartments of the pilots for clues, perhaps pointing in the direction of the pilots having done this intentionally. I can tell you this. And every day, I speak to intelligence officials who look at this kind of thing very closely, and they say that still again today with all this information we have seen, they have nothing to indicate a connection to terrorism.

It doesn't mean that they have ruled that out. And we heard that from the CIA director, John Brennan, yesterday, that they haven't ruled terrorism out, but they have nothing to indicate to rule that in. Right? You have all these potential explanations and they're looking at all of them, kind of like they are looking all over the ocean there for the plane in a half-a-dozen different places, but are no closer to saying that one is a likely explanation or in fact one of those search areas is a likely location of where this plane went down or disappeared.

BALDWIN: Right.

You would think that, after so many days, they would be narrowing the search. You look at the map and all the big circles, it has now doubled in size. We know 12 countries or so helping in the search effort. Do you know the U.S. will up the ante and at least help provide any more help in finding this plane?

SCIUTTO: They are. Here's the key change now, because the Malaysian authorities have clearly had for a number of days this radar data that shows this plane turning around and heading south and out to the other side of the Malay Peninsula. They didn't share it for a few days and now they have asked for help.

We know that the NTSB from the U.S. and other authorities have been asked to look at it to figure out if it's this plane, because in fact Malaysian authorities are not certain that that extra radar data that shows that alternate flight path is in fact this plane.

And as a measure of their lack of confidence in that radar data, that is why they are still looking on two sides of the ocean there, right? If they were sure that this was the plane, then they would clearly be focusing their efforts solely to the west of Malay Peninsula, as we look on the map, but they are still looking to the east because they are not sure. It's a sign of a lack of confidence.

Another -- everybody -- you can see why the family members are throwing bottles at Malaysia Airline representatives. Just the information coming out has not been consistent and sometimes been contradictory and it's definitely been slow.

BALDWIN: I would be throwing bottles after day one. This is day six, Jim Sciutto.

Jim, thank you so much in Washington for us.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up, I know a lot of you are watching this story very closely. Do you want to help find this plane? You can if you have a computer. We will talk to a creator of a crowd-funding Web site. It puts the search in your hands next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: It's tough to find this 777 jet when you don't know where to work.

The search area for this missing Malaysia Airlines plane has now doubled to 27,000 square miles, about four times the state of Massachusetts, according to my friend Richard Quest, who you are about to hear from in a minute. There are very few leads also to help shrink the search area. In fact, the more we learn, the more puzzling this disappearance becomes.

A couple new nuggets this afternoon. One, we have learned that Malaysia police are questioning the friend of these two Iranian nationals who boarded that plane with those stolen passports, though key to mention here, we have been told that the investigation into these two men, as we have been reporting, really now focuses more on human trafficking, not any links to terrorism.

Also, this -- after spending five days, now going into the sixth day, searching for this area beneath underneath the intended path of this Beijing-bound flight, Malaysia's military now says it may have radically changed course, popping up as a blip on the radar more than an hour later, hundreds of miles away.

Malaysian authorities seemingly overwhelmed by this new piece of information, they are asking U.S. experts to help analyze their radar data, all the while families, families of those on board the flight, they are still clinging to hope.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Our hope is that they will be found soon, as soon as possible, that the plane and the people on board will be found. And we are hoping for a miracle that they are all still safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Richard Quest, let me bring you in. And I know you have talked about this for days and days and days.

Question number one on the point about the Malaysian government now reaching out to the U.S. and saying, hey, NTSB, we need your help to try to analyze some of this information. You say?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's entirely reasonable.

And there many countries in the world that would not have the capability. Under the international treaties, it is the state of occurrence -- in this case, it could be Malaysia, it could be Vietnam -- or it's the state of origin or the state of manufacture that has the primary responsibility here. It's where the accident took place.

Now, we're assuming, since we don't know, if the state of occurrence, that is Malaysia. Malaysia thought they were dealing with the information. They're clearly, clearly doing a very good job of actually searching, but a less good job of knowing where to search. BALDWIN: That's the thing, because the whole -- the search area doubled in size. Shouldn't it be -- shouldn't by be honing in on the area?

QUEST: Well, it should be refining, but it shouldn't be -- we shouldn't be -- let's say we have a look at this.

What we shouldn't really be having is such vast discrepancies from the South China Sea all the way to the Andaman Sea, with the Straits of Malacca and the Gulf of Thailand in the middle.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: It's massive

QUEST: Now, so, they are bringing in the NTSB and the FAA. And I'm imagining there will be -- the Australians might be as well, and maybe the U.K. as well.

BALDWIN: OK.

QUEST: They will be bringing them in to look at the data, to look -- get people in who are well-used to looking at radar, raw radar information.