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14 Dead, 176 Unaccounted for after Landslide; Search Area now the size of Alaska; Lithium Batteries on Flight 370; Obama, Dutch P.M. to Speak

Aired March 25, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Three days ago, first responders saved this 4-year-old boy taking this photo moments after pulling him from the mud.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So they brought him to us in the ambulance. I took all his clothes off, because he was freezing, wrapped him up and held him and told him I was a grandma and couldn't find the rest of his family.

CABRERA: Corey Kuntz lost his aunt and his home to the flurry, but his uncle survived.

COREY KUNTZ, LOST AUNT IN LANDSLIDE: They heard him pounding on that roof, he had a little air pocket. My neighbors and my friends came and started digging him out.

CABRERA: He and neighbors have formed their own search crew in the hopes that more will be found alive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: People here are praying for a miracle. We certainly hope to be able to bring some wonderful survival, rescue story, to all of you in the next 24 hours as another day gets underway of search and rescue. We know new crews are coming in from California to help in this effort. We have federal resources that will be moving in today as well.

And certainly, Carol, they can't come soon enough. There are dozens of people displaced and again, even more, awaiting answers on their loved ones.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Ana Cabrera reporting live for us this morning.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Teams searching for any sign of Flight 370 are now focused solely on the southern corridor in an area bigger than the state of Alaska. And the best information they have comes from a new way to interpret the satellite data.

CNN's Tom Foreman is here to explain. Good morning Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi Carol. You know this satellite data has really managed to narrow the field a great deal. Let me show you the latest search area that they are considering right now but point out just what you said a minute ago. It is still big. This is more than 621,000 square miles. And more than -- about five times big as the Air France search area which took a couple of years in which to find the plane.

How are they able to narrow it down this much but not any tighter? There are several factors to bear in mind. Let me bring in a model of the plane while we talk about some of this because this is really what it comes down to the performance of this plane.

For one thing, we don't really know the speed. They have a pretty good idea of the speed as it was going in here. But they don't have it specifically. And when you're talking about an aircraft that may be going 400 or 450 or 500 miles an hour that makes a big difference. If you are off by 10-12 minutes, huge difference.

And look at this one graphic that they brought in from the satellite analysis here. If you look at the yellow line, the yellow line is one possible speed they have anticipated for this craft. The red line is a different one. Look at how big that swing is in terms of where it could be. And that's not representing a gigantic difference in speed but a relatively small difference in speed.

Once you move past speed, we come to the issue of altitude. Again, they have a pretty good idea where it is but they don't know exactly where it is. That matters, because an aircraft like this, if it's flying very high, has very little resistance. It can fly very fast from a long way. If it is lower it gets to the troposphere where we live, with much more air resistance you burn a lot more everything changes the equation changes which brings up the subject of fuel.

Fuel depletion really matters here because we often think of fuel as we would in a car. You think, you have a tank of gas and you can drive this far on it. That's not really how a jetliner works. It is based upon how much energy they are putting into those engines at any given moment, how fast they burn that fuel.

So all of those turns that allegedly or possibly happened early in this flight, may have burned more or less fuel than they calculate on top of which, bear in mind, when you are talking about something this big with that much fuel, every minute that it burns fuel makes the plane lighter and changes the physics of where it will fly.

The last item to think about in all of this is glide. If you don't know exactly when the fuel ran out or if you don't know exactly where it was at the time, you also don't know if this plane kept gliding for a while or immediately nosed in. If it immediately nosed in that put it in on location. But this plane can glide for hundreds of miles.

So you have to extend out the possibility that even if you knew exactly where the fuel ran out, but it could still be hundreds of miles beyond it. That's why they've narrowed the space down a whole lot. But they can't get it tighter not yet -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So the family they are in agony Tom. They don't quite believe these satellite images that are being released that shows the plane crashed in this particular area. How can investigators be so sure?

FOREMAN: Well, you know the only way they can be sure, and in fairness, they are not saying they are sure. They are saying the mathematics at this point, the physics at this point suggests that is probably here. They will tell you it is an educated guessing game they are not sure. If they were sure, they would go get the plane. But they are sure if they can be under the circumstances. Certainly that is agony for the families because they want answers but all we're saying is that the math, the science of it says those answers are still going to have to wait because can only bring you so close and then you have to look.

COSTELLO: Tom Foreman thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, it could be a key part of unlocking the mystery of Flight 370. The in-home flight simulator that belonged to the plane's pilot, what if any clues, could it provide?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As investigators try to piece together what led to the disappearance of Flight 370, FBI agents continue to review the pilot's in-home flight simulator shown here in this YouTube video.

Tom Fuentes is a CNN law enforcement analyst and he's a former FBI assistant director. Welcome, Tom.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Hi, Carol.

COSTELLO: So -- so they are still searching this flight simulator. I guess it has been a week now, right, since they first started. Are you surprised they are still searching?

FUENTES: No. I'm not surprised but I would like to add, they are not searching it on our behalf. They are searching it on the behalf of the Malaysians. And when they get the results, that's going to be directly conveyed back to the Malaysians. You know later, that will get leaked out when other officials in our government know about it and typically leaks come out pretty quickly after that as to what -- what was found or what was relayed back.

But as of now, everything that they find will go back to the Malaysian government. As we've seen, they don't feel the need to tell everybody as much as we would normally say in this country during a crisis like this. They may hold it close to the vest. And we may not know for a long time exactly what the findings were.

COSTELLO: Well, considering that the families are demanding answers and putting pressure on the Malaysian government, might they be more forthcoming in the future?

FUENTES: Well, that's a good question. But that's a political question for Malaysia. It's not something we're going to have control over here. It's not something we're going to have control over here. You know, we could recommend what they should or shouldn't do. But it's up to them. And you know the Prime Minister and the other ministers that are especially running this on the aviation side.

I think another fear would be that no matter what they find on the simulator, as far as earlier flights practiced by the captain, it may be irrelevant. They may look suspicious and really not be. The guy not only used it for work purposes but he used it for recreation.

So he could have logged in, what would it be like to fly to the North Pole or what would it be like to fly to the middle of Africa or anywhere in the world. With now you know never having an intent to actually do it but doing it as a game, as a computer game.

The other issue with the computer that I think is more important and always have is what Web sites did the two pilots visits regularly. What were their personal interests? You know and that can be anywhere from legal and illegal. To that can raise all kinds of other issues and what were their personal interests on the Internet when they thought they were having private time on the computer.

COSTELLO: Because of the way this investigation was handled initially, do you think we'll ever really know what happened?

FUENTES: Well I think that you know we may never really know what happened and I wouldn't blame it necessarily on the investigation. You do have two investigations. You have the aviation side, where is that airplane? How did it get there? Who made it get there?

And then, you have what has been from day one, the criminal side runs in parallel kind of as "just in case". Did a pilot, did a member of the crew, did a passenger, did somebody on the ground that services the aircraft, have something to do with this disappearance?

And really, you know not having the flight recorders, I don't know if we will ever know without those flight recorders. And even if we get the flight recorders, the voice recorder, the cockpit voice recorder may have written over the recordings that occurred at the time that plane changed direction when the transponder was shut off, when the ACARS stopped working. When different communications mode stop working with the ground that's what we may never know.

COSTELLO: Tom Fuentes, many thanks.

FUENTES: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: We'll continue to explore this mystery. We'll take a look at the cargo. There were 400 pounds of lithium -- lithium ion batteries in the cargo hull. They are known to overheat and spontaneously explode.

Could they have played a role? More after this. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As we've told you, the cargo manifest for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 included more than 400 pounds of lithium batteries. Despite the fact that they are in use in your phone and they're in use in your computer, your laptop, they are known to overheat and spontaneously explode. Could these batteries have anything to do with the crash of flight 370?

CNN's Randi Kaye has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: At 30,000 feet, this laptop may be enough to bring down a jumbo jet. Watch closely. It is about to catch fire. Inside is a lithium battery. When it gets too hot, it ignites just like this FAA training video demonstrates.

In the last two decades or so, the FAA reports more than 140 incidents involving batteries in cargo or baggage. In most cases the batteries were undeclared. Baggage handlers notice luggage on fire or hot to the touch. On board, laptops, even flashlights, started to smoke. Even though lithium batteries can cause this, they are still allowed in the passenger cabin.

But in 2008, the FAA banned loose batteries in checked luggage. A limited amount of batteries are still allowed to be checked if packaged properly. The concern is they could short circuit.

A short circuit can happen by chance. Say a loose battery in a person's checked college. Comes into contact with keys or coins or even jewelry -- that can create a circuit or a path for electricity; the current flowing through that short circuit creates extreme heat, leading to sparks and fire.

Lithium batteries burn so hot, they can melt the body of a plane.

KIT DARBY, RETIRED COMMANDER: Nothing brings the fear of god to a pilot like having a fire or smoke in the airplane. You just can't pull off to the side of the road and hop out like you can in a car.

This YouTube video shows how quickly lithium batteries can fuel a chain reaction. In 2006, fire forced a UPS plane to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia. Investigators found, electronics containing Lithium batteries in the cargo. The pilot survived

RANDI: And this is what was left of a UPS plane after it crashed in Dubai in 2010. The Boeing 747 was carrying 80,000 to 90,000 lithium batteries. A chain reaction fire filled the cockpit with smoke. Both pilots died.

Following the UPS crash, in 2010, the FAA wanted to tighten the rules on battery shipments in cargo planes too even classified them as dangerous goods.

Industry groups and lobbyist fought back hard the final compromised approved by Congress in 2012 blocked proposed tougher federal rules on transporting Lithium batteries on plane instead relying on international standards that buy the U.N.

Randi Kaye, CNN New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Rough waves, high winds and bad visibility. Some of the fierce conditions search teams are up against in the hunt for that missing flight. Combine that with the fact that the ocean is like one big trash can and the task of recovering wreckage becomes even more difficult.

Let's bring in lead scientist for the Nature Conservancy, Dr. M. Sanjayan. Welcome, Doctor Sanjayan.

DR. M. SANJAYAN, CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL: Hi, Carol. And by the way, I'm with Conservation International. I used to be with the Nature Conservancy but another organization.

COSTELLO: Thank you for the correction. I appreciate that. And I apologize.

Safe to say the ocean is a dirty place. How dirty?

SANJAYAN: Well, most people think that, you know, once you get offshore, it is pretty pristine. But when you do these studies and there have only been few of them, you find a lot of trash in the ocean. So, for example, in the North Pacific, we know that there is probably three million tons of plastic debris alone. That's just plastic which is the only thing people are going to encounter. And in the last 40 years the amount off trash that go in the ocean has gone up by about 100-fold, 100 times.

COSTELLO: That is really sad actually. It's incredible, too. In the South Indian Ocean where they are searching for any bit of debris from this plane that they can find, what sorts of garbage are they dealing with?

SANJAYAN: Well, you know, you would think when you get far, far away from land you are not going to find human garbage out there. You do. I have been on some of the most remote atolls out there in the ocean and found things all the time. They are going to run into things that come off ships, often. And they are going to get things that come off coastlines.

The majority of people today live near the ocean. And ultimately, most of our refuse ends up some way or another in the ocean. There are about 10,000 containers that fall off ships every year. 10,000 That's quite a lot. So finding something and then identifying it as something that's coming from this Malaysian Airline is going to be very, very difficult. Not just finding it but then identifying it as different from the soup of materials that you are in is like finding a needle in a needle factory.

COSTELLO: It's like, you know, they say they want to find these wooden pallets. Ships often carry wooden pallets, because they transport goods, right. It is not like if it falls off a ship, they go out and retrieve it.

SANJAYAN: Absolutely. I do think if they find an object, forensic science is good enough that they will be able to trace it with some certainty that it is coming from this aircraft. I think the hard part is detecting anything from the aircraft.

In all the other things, all the false leads, if you will, that they have to then track down. Yes, this is a pretty remote part of the world. But it's still surprising how much you are going to find.

COSTELLO: Dr. Sanjayan, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it.

SANJAYAN: Absolutely. Thank you.

COSTELLO: Thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. "AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Michaela starts now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. I'm John Berman.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST: And I'm Michaela Pereira. It is 11:00 a.m. in the East, 8:00 a.m. out west. President Obama is set to speak at a news conference.

Any minute now in the Netherlands, he and other world leaders are at The Hague for nuclear system summit. But to be honest -- they just (inaudible). In fact one would argue a whole lot of their time talking about Russia, Ukraine and Crimea.

BERMAN: Yes, huge news coming from this summit already. We're talking about the decision to suspended from the group of industrialized nations -- the so called 5-8. President Obama along with the Dutch Prime Minister, they're expected to make some comments and taking questions. You're looking at a live picture of that room where they'll hold that news conference in just a few minutes.

Now, we could expect also to address some of the issues a rather big news conference. The White House plans to end the part of the NSA's bulk collection of telephone data.

PEREIRA: Let's talk about this with our Michelle Kosinski, she's is traveling with the President as he's there joining in The Hague. I think Michelle safe to say that we should also expect the President to address Russia's annexation of Crimea.

KOSINSKI: Probably so. Just because this dominated the discussion so much, I mean the G-7 minutes which was held as a part of the Nuclear Security Summit. It wasn't really an original part of the plan. It was only because of the event in Ukraine any that this happened. And it was a big deal.