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Earthquake in California; Flying Under Radar; Mystery of Flight 370

Aired March 17, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we do have a bit of breaking news out of California. Apparently a large earthquake was felt there. Paul Vercammen is on the phone.

Paul, what happened?

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, we (INAUDIBLE) whether or not it was large. It was definitely significant enough just to rattle my house and a couple of (INAUDIBLE) I know we've been hit by an earthquake. One is I have lights that hang from a chain and those started swinging. And the other indicator is the backyard pool just started sloshing with water. It lasted about (INAUDIBLE) minutes. It was a pretty - it was kind of solid, jerking motion from side to side. I live in the east San Fernando Valley. So whenever you're on the inside looking out, you have no idea just how widespread it was. But it was definitely (ph) a really, really strong jolt.

COSTELLO: And as you look out your window, can you see any damage?

VERCAMMEN: No. We don't have any damage. And there were not a bunch of items that came flying off the shelf. I mean that would contrasted with other earthquakes that we've had here, you know, particularly, back in 1994, when it was clearly a very severe earthquake and not only the small items come flying off the shelves, but so did big things, such as TVs and it was obvious that there was (INAUDIBLE) and cracks in walls and that sort of thing. This was not that severe of an earthquake, at least where I'm standing right now, which is (INAUDIBLE) in east San Fernando Valley.

COSTELLO: Yes, we're getting -- we're getting a bit of information, just for clarification. We understand from the USGS the center of the quake was in Westwood, California, 4.7 on the Reciter Scale. So not so big, but big enough to like, you know, cause you to take notice if you live in California.

VERCAMMEN: Well, good to hear that it wasn't huge.

COSTELLO: That's true. Paul Vercammen, we'll let you get back to it. Thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a new report that says that missing Malaysia jetliner may have flown down to 5,000 feet in order to avoid radar detection. But is that really possible? We'll talk about that with CNN's Martin Savidge.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Carol, we wondered the same exact thing, what is it like to fly 5,000 feet in mountainous terrain, but we'll show you when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks for joining me.

That breaking news coming out of California. Westwood, California, to be exact. A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck there. Westwood is northwest of downtown Los Angeles. We just spoke to our reporter in the area, Paul Vercammen. He said water sloshed out of his swimming pool outside, knocked some books from book shelves. A 4.7 magnitude isn't huge, but it's enough to rattle nerves and also rattle things around the house. So far we have no reports of any major damage. Of course, we're keeping an eye on the situation out of Westwood, California, this morning.

Also, a stunning report on that missing jetliner. A Malaysian newspaper citing unnamed sources reports investigators believe the plane could have flown down to 5,000 feet to avoid radar. Seems important, right? CNN's Kate Bolduan joins us now from Kuala Lumpur, where she talked to the editor of the newspaper.

Kate, tell us more.

KATE BOLDUAN, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": Yes, Carol, this is one of many theories that are out there. And why are there many theories? It's because right now there is no hard evidence that has been revealed to honestly prove or disprove anything that's out there. We spoke with the editor of this Malaysian newspaper where they have their unnamed source they say are close to the investigation and why they think this is a significant, new theory being put out there.

As I say, it can answer the question, one of the many questions that's out there, which is, how could this plane fly for so long possibly over three countries without being detected by radar. And that's what they're looking into. Here's a little bit of our interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Sum it up for me what you have heard from your sources about your report, that they dipped below to -- an area of some 5,000 feet and talk to me about what is terrain masking, why would they do it?

FARRAH NAZ KARIM, EDITOR, "NEW STRAITS TIMES": OK. This would be the closest way to answer this question that everybody is asking, how -- where is it? And how did it -- if it did pass the last point of detection, how did it pass through this airspace, all the countries, without being detected. So we spoke to those close to investigations and they explained how it could be done. And investigators are as they look into all possibility. This is one aspect that they could be looking into. Terrain masking in -- obviously has to be up north in their search and when you go that low, you would have to have the kind of avionics knowledge to fly to your intended destination. But this is all speculation at this point. And until --

BOLDUAN: And one of many theories that you guys are also chasing down as well as the government has not confirmed one way or the other, right?

KARIM: Yes. Yes. At best we can do is make sure that this information is coming in in bits and pieces are -- make sense. Because everybody is trying to make sense of what's happening, what has happened between (INAUDIBLE) just by losing (ph).

BOLDUAN: I think a lot of people - I mean you've heard -- we talked about this earlier, there has been a lot of criticism on Malaysian -- the Malaysian government, on Malaysian officials, on their coordination and their communication with other countries and with, you know, publicly with the media. Talk to me from the Malaysian perspective, do you think that's fair criticism?

KARIM: As a journalist, I understand that first of all new information, but I think as we enter into this tenth day of the search, the criticism against the Malaysian government has somehow kick (ph) back and I think people are beginning to appreciate that information that's coming from the Malaysian government are verified and tell it (ph). And if you would have noticed the first few days, it was the harshest because that's when all of this unverified reports were coming in from Vietnamese side and from China, but Malaysia not once confirmed this. And when they - when they did, it was not verified - I mean it was not true. The reports were false.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: And so with all of this, I mean the focus has to be, where do things go from here? That still remains a huge question mark, Carol. As the days progress, the search area, rather than narrowing, seems to now, of course, be expanding, as you've been pointing out. And the questions just continue to be even more. So that is one theory that's out there.

And then the latest theory, one of the -- another big thing that is now in dispute is the timeline of where the communication systems shut off and when we heard that last voice communication from that cockpit. That, "all right, good night." The Malaysian officials had given what they thought was a confirmed and corroborated timeline, which seemed to suggest whatever was going on was already underway when they gave that "all right, good night." And now even today, at the press conference, the big headline was, they're not entirely sure that's exactly the way it played out. So, little solace, little comfort to the families who have still no detail, no better information to find out what happened to their loved ones.

COSTELLO: All right, Kate Bolduan, many thanks to you.

All right, back to our breaking news out of Westwood, California. A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck there. It's a very densely populated area. So although the magnitude isn't all that great, it could have caused damage. With me now on the phone is a geophysicist, Paul Caruso.

Good morning, sir.

PAUL CARUSO, GEOPHYSICIST (via telephone): Good morning.

COSTELLO: So tell us about that area and how it might affect - how a 4.7 magnitude earthquake could affect it.

CARUSO: Well, we have reports that it's been felt pretty strongly in the Los Angeles area. It's a magnitude 4.7. I would expect that people felt significant shaking, probably things falling off shelves, chandeliers swinging back and forth, that sort of thing.

COSTELLO: The way the buildings are constructed, though, is it likely any buildings were structurally damaged?

CARUSO: I'd just be speculating. I can't say that for sure.

COSTELLO: Well, tell me about a magnitude 4.7. Is it serious -- I know what you said, that it would, you know, knock book shelves and things like that. But on a scale of one to 10, how serious is it?

CARUSO: Well, just to give you an idea, we don't generally see significant damage or casualties until earthquakes get up to about magnitude 5.5. But it varies from region to region depending on the construction codes and also the soils and rocks underground.

COSTELLO: Gotcha. Paul Caruso, a geophysicist, joining us to talk about this 4.7 magnitude earthquake that struck Westwood, California, which is northwest of Los Angeles. I'm going to take a break. We'll be back with much more in the NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Twenty-six nations are now hunting for Flight 370 along the search curve that extends as far north as central Asia and as far south as the deepest part of the Indian Ocean where the sea floor -- where the sea floor drops more than two miles below the surface. Key to the sprawling hunt could be detecting pings from the flight's data recorders.

To talk about this, I'm joined by Chuck Schofield he's the vice president of Business Development in Duquesne which makes one of the components that emits signals from those flight data recorders. Welcome, sir.

CHUCK SCHOFIELD, VP OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, DUQUESNE: Good morning.

COSTELLO: You know, you make equipment to make sure scenarios like this don't happen. As you sit back and watch this what goes through your mind?

SCHOFIELD: Well, you have to think that maybe they are just not close enough maybe they are not in the right area because the range of the equipment that we make is approximately two nautical miles. So you just have to hope at some point they get close enough to where the arrays that they tow (ph) to pick up the signal can find it.

COSTELLO: Is there any way to manually turn off the signal that's being emitted from those flight recorders.

SCHOFIELD: Well this thing is not necessarily transmitting a signal. It's an audible signal that's heard by a listening equipment. Other than disassembling the part, be very difficult to manually disable this product.

COSTELLO: So there's a lot of ships -- there are lot of ships out on the ocean searching for this, helicopters in the sky, planes looking for this thing. And you have to get fairly close to those black boxes to catch the ping, right? So what sort of equipment do those ships, planes, helicopters, need to detect the signal?

SCHOFIELD: Well, the equipment produces a specific frequency. And organizations such as the Navy, Coast Guard, et cetera, they have the equipment either on a surface listening device or a towed array on the ship itself which goes to a depth and listen for the equipment. So it's important that they have the equipment that will listen for the specific frequency.

COSTELLO: Literally an army of people are looking for any sign, any ping emitted from these flight data recorders and I know it's a very large area but are you surprised nothing has been heard as of yet?

SCHOFIELD: It is surprising. With as many people are out looking for this signal it is extremely surprising they haven't heard anything yet.

COSTELLO: What does that tell you?

SCHOFIELD: The only thing I can assume is that they are not looking in the right area. Of course our equipment doesn't work if the -- if the aircraft is on land, it only operates if it's in the water. So right now it's just fairly speculation that, you know, our -- our equipment will work as-needed.

COSTELLO: If the wreckage is in the water, if it's on land not so much.

SCHOFIELD: Correct.

COSTELLO: Chuck Schofield, many thanks to you. We really appreciate it.

Still ahead in the NEWSROOM we're going to check back in with Martin Savidge who's showing us what it's like to fly a plane at 5,000 feet and if it's even possible over three countries.

We're back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: The mystery continues. The latest theory is that this plane, this Malaysian jet liner, this huge Boeing 777 could have flown at 5,000 feet over three countries to outsmart radar operations on the ground. Is that even possible?

We want to bring in CNN's Martin Savidge who's in Ontario, Canada. He's at the controls of a Boeing 777 with pilot Mitchell Casado.

So gentlemen it just defies belief that a plane could fly at 5,000 feet over three countries and nobody notices.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right exactly. And you know every time you get one of these theories Carol the great thing about having a simulator is the fact that we can try it. All right if somebody says this might have been, could it really have been done? Well this is the best way to test it out because nobody gets hurt if it goes wrong.

We are actually at about 6,600 feet or 6,000 feet. But the terrain here, and this is northern Pakistan, one of the routes they may have taken, the terrain is so mountainous, that we're actually only about 1,000 feet above the ground.

So you can see that 5,000 feet doesn't necessarily mean you are that high off the ground. 1,000 feet in this terrain, well it means you have to fly -- you're going to fly it manually does it?

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRANER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: Very difficult, very high speed unforgiving a lot of mountains. To do this at night, multiply it by a hundreds. It's very difficult.

SAVIDGE: Yes and we should point out if they did make that trek, it would have been at nighttime. And the mountains here all around you, trying to literally thread a commercial airline through mountain passes, not to mention the taxing wear and tear on the pilot itself an extremely loud, alarms going off all the time, constantly having to be alert. I can't imagine how anybody would have been able to do this -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right we're going to let to -- we're going to step away for a minute because we're going to rejoin you at 10:00 Eastern Time. So thanks to you Mitchell and Martin.

Anger, frustration and grief, the families of the passengers and crew aboard Flight 370 are in agony as they wait for tangible proof of that missing jet. And there is still no end in sight. Atika Shubert met one father in Malaysia who is refusing to give up hope.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORESSPONDENT (voice over): For families of the passengers on Flight 370, the wait is excruciating.

"If I had two or three," this father tells us, "I might be able to accept it but this is my only son." SHUBERT: Gurusamy Subramaniam is waiting for his son, 34-year-old son, Puspanathan an I.T. specialist who is headed to Beijing for a new job.

"Surely, they must find the plane" he says. "That's all I hope for." The whole world is out looking for it.

But I ask him, what if they don't? He answers, "If not, only God knows. It is in God's hand. It is fate." He tells me he worked 20 years as a security guard to put his son through college. And at home, a wife and two young children also wait for him.

"He was responsible for everything" his father says, "even these clothes I'm wearing. Whatever country he was in, he would call and once a week he would come see us with the whole family. He really took care of us.

(on camera): He was telling me that the two younger children didn't want to see their father go to Beijing. So they clung to his legs and refused to let him go out of the door until he promised to bring them chocolate and presents when he got home. It has to be very sad.

(voice over): Before we leave, he tells us to call any time with any news we have. He hardly sleeps, he says. And now, he never turns his phone off, not even for a moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Atika Shubert reporting.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)