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Malaysia Denies Report Flight 370 May Have Flown for Four More Hours; Search Under Way for Nine Missing in Blast

Aired March 13, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: An Islamic jihad leader says a cease-fire has been declared after two days of rocket fire from Gaza and airstrikes by Israeli forces. Four Palestinian residents were critically injured when the Israeli military launched air strikes on what it called terrorist sites in the Gaza strip. Israel says it was responding to rocket attacks on southern Israel.

Israeli Defense Forces say two rockets hit Israel today, and roughly 65 have struck since yesterday, including five in populated area.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the search area for Flight 370 expands greatly. Tom Foreman taking a virtual look for us.

Hi, Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol.

This is unbelievable how this thing is blossoming. It is going in all directions at the same time literally within hours when we thought it might get smaller. We'll be back with all the details on that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, Malaysia disputing the mystery plane was in the air four hours after its final communication.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me be clear, there's no real precedent for a situation like this. The plane vanished. We have extended the search area because it is our duty to follow every lead and we owe it to the families. And trust me when I say, we will not give up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: If Flight 370 did fly on for four more hours, that plane could be anywhere in a radius of 2,500 miles from its last known spot. That stretches from northwest India, all the way to mainland Australia.

NEWSROOM continues now.

Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. It is day six in the search for Flight 370 and still no sign of debris from the Malaysian airliner. But a new report from "The Wall Street Journal" suggests the plane could have flown for four hours after its last contact. If that's true, that could widen the search area by thousands of miles. We want to talk about that possibility with Mary Schiavo and Tom Foreman.

Tom, I want to start with you. Where are we talking about? Give us -- lay out the landscape for us, if you will.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'll tell you this about the landscape, Carol, you know this, it's changing every single day. Let's bring in the map and talk about what we know about this tragic story and the huge mystery that continues to swirl about it.

Here's what we know. We know the plane took off, right? We know that it flew for some 45 minutes to an hour roughly. And then we know it completely vanished somewhere around here.

Now we know from last night the Chinese took some pictures from somewhere over here, which they say they should have never released. Those were some 140 miles away. That automatically raised questions about, could it really be that far away at the time they took these pictures or said they took these pictures? Maybe ocean currents could affect where the wreckage would be and that would be true no matter where the wreckage might go down. In fact, if this plane crashed, you'd have to look at currents, especially after six days like this, things moving around, that sort of thing.

But the real question was, could that piece of debris that we saw, that tiny thing there, come from a plane this size? Well, that's not so tiny. Really, if you take all three pieces and average them out, they're about as big as half of a basketball court. So the question was, could you get something like that from something the size of a 777. Well, the 777's a very big aircraft. There's no question about it. About 200 feet wingtip to wingtip on this plane. But to get something that big or three pieces that big out of this, not really that easy. So you are correct.

We'll move the airplane now and just look at the space again. Once again we're back to all these competing questions about what happened. We have the image from the Chinese, which has now been discounted. We still have the mystery of where the plane went. We have the errant radar ping that we talked about so much, which drew the whole search over into the Strait of Malacca. It's all very confusing.

And I want to point out something, Carol. You talk about how far this area goes. When we talk about the big map here and the idea that perhaps this has expanded from India, I have to turn way over here, from India all the way down toward Australia, that sort of thing, a map like this - a (INAUDIBLE) map like this is not really accurate because the proportion of the places is off. To give you an idea, if in fact this were true, this thing that the Malaysians are saying is wrong in "The Wall Street Journal," if it were true, you would now be talking about a search area that would be -- I'm going to guess at least three times as big as the continental United States. So this is an absolutely unfathomable amount and an impossible amount to search.

I've been on a lot of airplane searches for a lot of missing planes that have been missing for a lot of days. Never, never, never have I been near a search area that even begins to border on something like this. And it truly cannot be searched at that range.

So, Carol, once again, another day, another layer to the mystery and still not the slightest clue as to what happened to these more than 200 souls who have simply vanished and these families want so badly to know where they could be.

COSTELLO: All right, Tom Foreman, thanks so much.

I want to bring in Mary Schiavo now, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, now an attorney for victims of transportation accidents.

Welcome.

MARY SCHIAVO, FMR. INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S. DOT: Thank you. Good to be with you.

COSTELLO: Oh, nice to have you here. So let's talk about this "Wall Street Journal" report. Here's the scenario. Supposedly a U.S. source told "The Wall Street Journal" that the maker of the plane's engine, Rolls Royce, received pulses of data from the plane's engines after it disappeared from the radar. Which means, I suppose, it could have been flying for up to four hours after it disappeared from the radar. I mean, what do you think about that? Is that a plausible scenario?

SCHIAVO: Well, it's factually possible. Look, the plane, the 777 is very much like the 340. The Airbus 340 was the plane on Air France 447. That plane did the same thing and in the aftermath of that we had a printout. It's actually a data printout that shows these systems status reports is what they are. They're supposed to go back to the airline. They go back to the engine manufacturers. 777's the same way. So it is factually possible.

But it is not factually possible if what happened when the transponder stopped is there was a catastrophic loss of the aircraft. There would be no further data. So what has to happen now is what happens - this is the second thing that happens in U.S. crash investigations. The first thing is to send the go team. The second thing is to gather every piece of data, every maintenance report, every engine speck, every engine log, every plane log, every piece of data about the maintenance operation performance of that plane and study it. That needs to be done next. And if this data exists and it hasn't been provided to the investigators, frankly I think that's almost criminal.

COSTELLO: You're echoing what Bob Francis (ph) told us earlier this morning. He's a former NTSB investigator. Now, U.S. investigators are on the scene in Malaysia and I've been asking everybody, how much input do you think they really have?

SCHIAVO: Well, they're not in charge. You know, there's a - there's a treaty, international civil aviation - IKO (ph) organization, sets forth how this should be done. And, you know, the U.S. follows them. Most nations follow it. But it's supposed to be the civil investigative body that's supposed to lead it. But here we have so many cooks in the stew that perhaps they're not speaking with one voice of authority. And they may not have the domestic rules in place. For example, in the United States, if you tamper with an accident scene, if you withhold information, anything like that, not only can you have a civil penalty, it can be criminal. We take it very, very seriously.

We need one voice and we've got to get this data. These wild leads are plausible because we don't have the data. If they would have gathered the data, then we would know, no that's a wild hare. This isn't possible. This is possible. Follow the hard lead. And I think they need to go right back to where they think that the catastrophic event happened.

COSTELLO: OK. So I'm just thinking about all of the different pieces of information that have come out, right?

SCHIAVO: Correct.

COSTELLO: And then Malaysia shoots them down. For example, yesterday we were told that authorities searched one of the pilot's homes for anything that might lead them to maybe a psychological problem he had or whatever. Today, during the press conference, the Malaysians said, no, we didn't do that. It's just confusing.

SCHIAVO: But they should have. What's amazing is they seem to be embarrassed about investigating a horrific accident. Of course you should search the pilots' home. You should look for data.

When the NTSB and when we do an investigation in the United States -- by the way, when the NTSB is done, people like me pick up. We depose everyone. We go back over - we re-create the accident. You should have the -- the log books, you know, searches, whereabouts, what did he do in the previous week. I mean there's no -- there's nothing to be saying they didn't do it about. They should have done it. And if they haven't, I want to know why.

COSTELLO: Mary Schiavo, thanks, as always.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Malaysian officials respond to the latest report that Flight 370 flew on for hours and hours after it disappeared from the radar. We'll talk more about that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Malaysian officials are knocking on "The Wall Street Journal" report that Flight 370 may have flown for four hours after its last radar contact.

Jim Clancy has more from day six of the search.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Malaysian officials say they found nothing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me be clear. There is no real precedent for a situation like this. The plane vanished. We have extended the search area because it is our duty to follow every lead. And we owe it to the families. And trust me when I say, we will not give up.

CLANCY: And the hopes that these clues would lead to answers now, not as promising. Vietnamese searchers came up empty after scouring coordinates where Chinese satellites spotted three floating objects. It was near 370's flight path in waters between Malaysia and Vietnam, approximately 140 miles from where the plane's transponder went silent. The images were from March 9th, one day after the aircraft went missing.

Adding to the mystery of the missing airliner --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The Wall Street Journal" reporting that U.S. investigators suspect the flight remained in the air an additional four hours beyond its last confirmed location. Malaysian Airlines' CEO denies those reports.

In Beijing, China's premier said his country would not give up on the pursuit of any clues. Earlier this week, Malaysia's defense minister admitted it could be some time before they are able to answer all the questions. Another clue being pursued, the possibility the plane veered way off course. Officials here hope the U.S. can help sort out Malaysia's military radar records to prove or disprove that theory.

It all adds up to agony for the families of those missing. Paul Weeks was on flight 370 heading to a job in Mongolia. Before boarding, he handed his wife his wedding ring and watch to give to their sons if anything should happen to him. His wife spoke to Piers Morgan live last night.

DANICA WEEKS, PAUL WEEKS'S WIFE: I'm praying that, you know, I can -- I can give that back to him. So I can hold on to it because I -- there's no finality to it. We're not getting any information.

CLANCY: The hunt for the plane and the answers continues.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Yes. Jim Clancy joins us now from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. A question for you about who is in charge of this investigation. It seems like the military is taking the lead. Oh my goodness. Jim Clancy is frozen. His shot is frozen. We're having technical difficulties, obviously.

We'll get back to him as soon as we can. But of course it appears now the Malaysian military does appear to be in charge of the investigation along with civilian -- civilian authorities. We're going to sort that out a little later in the NEWSROOM. Still to come, rescue crews search for survivors as the death toll rises after that blast in Harlem. We'll talk to a former New York City Fire Commissioner about the search and whether other older buildings could be at risk.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: We'll get back to our coverage of the missing Malaysian Airliner in just a minute.

But first let's go to east Harlem where the community has been absolutely devastated. These are pictures taken a little bit earlier. Actually these are people on the scene with masks covering their faces.

But a little earlier, Mayor Bill De Blasio went down to east Harlem to kind of connect with the first responders to congratulate them on a job well done. Because man they dealt with an earth shattering blast, it flattened two apartment buildings killed at least seven people and sent dozens more to area hospitals. The families of those killed -- well they're only beginning to grieve.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGEL VARGAS, COUSIN OF BLAST VICTIM: Carmen was the icon of the family. She always kept this family up. She was really one person to look up to. And we miss her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Some families mourn others well -- all of the families are desperate for answers. Nine people still reported missing and they're probably trapped in the rubble.

Joining me now to discuss this, former New York City Fire Commissioner Tom Von Essen, welcome sir.

TOM VON ESSEN, FORMER NEW YORK CITY FIRE COMMISSIONER: Thank you.

COSTELLO: So those nine people still missing, could they still be alive?

VON ESSEN: Probably not. If they're in that rubble, it would be very difficult for them to survive. It could possibly be that someone is under a cantilever, a piece of heavy steel or something and some air underneath and haven't been affected by the toxic fumes, by all the water, by the heat. There is a remote possibility. And that's why the firefighters will continue to search until they get all that rubble cleared and make sure no one else is in there.

COSTELLO: And while they're doing that, the investigation continues. Can you -- can you kind of take us through where that investigation goes?

VON ESSEN: Well we all start off assuming it's a gas leak and we assume that it's an old gas pipe. It could possibly have been a water main that broke and broke the gas pipe. It could be a new gas pipe that was installed recently in the building up to five floors. So there's all kinds of possibilities. People -- there are reports of people smelling gas for a considerable amount of time before yesterday. And then Con Ed said that that's not the case. Con Ed has had a pretty good record I think the last 10 to 15 years of being honest with these things. There are lots of pipes underneath the ground they are very old and need to be replaced all throughout New York City probably throughout many of the older cities in the country.

But they've never had the money or the will to just go around. It would be billions of dollars probably to start a plan that would rip up the streets and start to replace many of these pipes that are 100 years old.

COSTELLO: Right.

VON ESSEN: They say their average age is 60-70 years old.

COSTELLO: Yes a lot of cities are dealing with that very same problem. Going back to the residents smelling gas in the area and reporting it to Con Ed, this building also had a number of violations. Doesn't that change the picture some what?

VON ESSEN: Well it does depending on what kind of violations they were, depending on if they were minor. They may not have been with the gas. They could have been in recent renovations or minor construction issues. There could have been new people moving into an apartment, a new tenant with a permit they should have gotten. So you really -- the investigation has to go forward to try to find out who is at fault, if anyone and try to you know certainly to prevent it from happening in other buildings.

COSTELLO: Former New York City fire commissioner Tom Von Essen, thanks so much for joining me this morning.

VON ESSEN: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Ahead in the next hour of NEWSROOM, new questions and new doubts in the mystery of that missing Malaysia Airlines flight. Families of those on board growing ever more frustrated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am upset. Very, very upset. I am really hoping they will find this plane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, we explore whether this desperate search could turn into a criminal investigation. The second hour of NEWSROOM starts after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, the mystery of Flight 370 deepens. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trust me when I say we will not give up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Overnight search crews come up empty. This turned out to be nothing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was near 70s flight path in waters between --