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Search to Resume; Black Box Finder; Flight 370 Search; Catastrophic Mudslide

Aired March 25, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Mr. Blitzer, thank you, as always.

Great to be with you on this Tuesday. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Malaysia says all lives lost. The families of Flight 370 say that's a lie. Hundreds of family members and friends stormed the Malaysian embassy in Beijing today, some calling Malaysian officials murders.

Families clashing with police here. Banned from buses, they walked to the embassy, refusing to believe without proof that this plane ended up somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. Malaysia, though, is so confident in this new radar data that it's called off the search actually in the northern corridor. The Malaysians have all of their confidence pinned on this British company Inmarsat which says it tracked the plane into this southern corridor with six handshakes or pings. Adding to the credibility of this data, CNN has also learned it has been verified by space agency experts and by Boeing itself.

As for the hunt for this plane, it will start up again soon if weather permits. The search had to be suspended because the conditions in this part of the world have been pretty unforgiving or even more dangerous than usual.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID JOHNSTON, AUSTRALIAN DEFENSE MINISTER: This has been a tragedy. It has come from nowhere. Who would have anticipated anything like this? An aircraft just going off the radar. And now we believe it's about 3,500 kilometers away from where it's supposed to be at its last point of identification. Now, you know, ending (ph) Inmarsat (ph), in one of the most outrageously remote parts of the planet. I mean there is just nothing down there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN's Will Ripley is live for us in Perth, where it is 2:00 in the morning where you are, Will. Coming off of this discussion here about conditions, not so hot Tuesday, it's already Wednesday where you are, how is it looking for today?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, so far, so good. Planes are due to take off about four hours from now from Pierce Air Base. We have six countries, 12 aircraft involved in the search just from this air base. They have to fly 1,500 miles out over the southern Indian Ocean and the conditions are very treacherous. You're talking about waves that can get to be several stories high. You can have clear visibility one minute and almost zero visibility the next. So very, very complicated for those aircraft trying to get a visual look at possible debris spotted by three different satellites from three different countries. And also we're talking about a massive search area. The size of Mexico or two and a half times the size of Texas. Australian authorities are talking about trying to narrow that search area down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AIR MARSHAL MARK BINSKIN, VICE CHIEF, AUSTRALIAN DEFENSE FORCE: Put the analogy of what we've got out there at the moment. We're not searching for a needle in a haystack. We're still trying to find where the haystack is. So that's just putting it in context.

You're seeing a multi-national effort going on. It is difficult for (INAUDIBLE) to, in these weather conditions, to be able to find small bits of debris that is washing around in the southern Indian Ocean at the moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RIPLEY: Everybody here is really hoping, Brooke, that flights can go on as scheduled today. Losing an entire day of air support because of bad weather really dealt quite a blow and time is of the essence, as you know.

BALDWIN: Of course. And so as we - as we talk about, you know, finding just the haystack, let's talk about this Towed Pinger Locator, TPL. And we know that that's what they need to detect the pings from the boxes. That actually arrives where you are in Perth today. But from what I have gathered, from what I have read, Will, it won't actually get to the search area in the ocean until the fifth of April. Why so long?

RIPLEY: Absolutely right. Absolutely right. A week and a half from now. Here's the deal. It arrived overnight, as you mentioned. This is a great piece of technology provided by the U.S. Navy that can go down 20,000 feet and listen for the ping that's being sent out by the vice -- cockpit voice recorder and the inflight data recorder. They call this the black box locator.

But here's the problem. Those recorders have a battery life. And if you were talking about your cell phone, the battery's only about 30 percent right now, getting close to that red zone, you know, when your phone starts beeping, saying you don't have much time left. Well, these data recorders don't have much time left. They could run out as soon as April 8th, giving authorities just three days to use that technology, certainly not enough time considering the size of this area, perhaps the battery could go a little bit longer, maybe a week. But really, Brooke, that's a big issue that we're facing right now.

BALDWIN: OK, will Ripley, thank you so much.

Let's stay on this topic of the TPL because it's not necessary yet, but when it is called for, all eyes and ears will be focused on this, this dragon fly looking mechanism. We'll show it to you here now. As Will was talking about, this is the TPL 25. This is the piece of machinery that is absolutely crucial in finding the thing that could answer why Flight 370 went down. The flight data recorder, or the black box it's known more (INAUDIBLE). So TPL, as we mentioned, stands for Towed Pinger Locater. The ship does exactly that, too. It tows it along at really slow speeds as it's listening - listening for the clicks, those pings from the black box. And so if you're curious -- we talked so much about pings. This is actually what - this is the noise this TPL is listening for.

OK, so you get that. Those are the clicks it's listening for. We just talked to Will Ripley in Perth. He said that this TPL arrived overnight. And my next guest has used an earlier version of this TPL 25 for the TWA Flight 800 investigation back in 1996. She is Bobbie Scholley. She is a retired Navy captain and Navy diver.

So, Bobbie, thank you so much for joining me, because I need your expertise as we're all learning about these mechanisms sort of together here.

First, in order -- we keep hearing this analogy of the needle in a haystack. And in order to find the needle, you have to figure out where the haystack is. But they don't even definitively have plane debris. So can you even use the TPL without plane debris?

CAPT. BOBBIE SCHOLLEY (RET.), U.S. NAVY (RET.): No, you can't. We have to really pin down where we want to deploy the TPL before we even put it in the water. This system is designed to be flown to a location, like we have right now. We've flown it to Perth. It's waiting there with all the systems that it needs to be utilized, which would be the cable and the crane that would put on the ship and allow you to tow it behind any ship of opportunity. And I understand they already have a ship designated that they would place it on. And then that ship needs to go from Perth out to the search area, which will take a little bit of time to get out to where we want it to.

BALDWIN: Right.

SCHOLLEY: So we need to still find the debris and then back track that debris to where we think the aircraft has entered the water before we ever put this TPL in the water, because, as you said, you tow this device at very slow speeds, about one to five knots. And you also have to tow it in weather conditions much less than what we're seeing out there right now.

BALDWIN: There are so many ifs to this whole scenario. But for the families' sake, let's hope they find, you know, pieces of the plane debris so they can deploy this TPL. But here's my next question because we talk so much about this part of the world and the Indian Ocean several miles deep. I had an oceanographer talking about the highly technical term of the ooze, right, on the ocean floor. So I can only imagine, as this black box is made of, you know, aluminum, in crash scenarios, it could be under ooze, which would make the ping even fainter, correct?

SCHOLLEY: Yes. In most cases, the ping can still be heard. But in some cases, the pinger has been destroyed in the crash. I believe that happened in the Air France case, the pinger was destroyed and they did not pick up a ping. So they use this very technology, the Towed Pinger Locater, and did not hear a ping.

So then we go to plan b, which they have already done in this case. They sent along another censor, which in this case, the Blue Fin 21 (ph), which is an autonomous underwater vehicle. And this, then, is going to use sonar technology, not listening for a ping, in case either the battery has worn out or the ping is no longer able to transmit and we can't hear it. So then we use the sonar technology to try to find the aircraft debris on the bottom. So we have that capability.

BALDWIN: It is - it is incredible to me the technology, but they have to find the haystack first, and so hopefully conditions will be great for them to get out today, being Wednesday in Australia, and find this debris and link it to the plane and then deploy what they need to.

Bobbie Scholley, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on.

Let me take you now to some pictures, because this is what we're watching here. Live pictures from our Houston affiliate KPRC. What you're looking at -- not exactly right now, because the -- there we go. This is a massive fire. This is burning at a residential building. It's under construction. Again, this is Houston. Massive flames here. Clearly out of control. We're told you can see smoke from miles and miles away. We're making phone calls as of this moment here as we're watching this very closely.

No reports yet of injuries. The building was vacant. But that intersection, as you can imagine here in this part of Houston, absolutely shut down. No one's getting anywhere near. I mean look at this as the camera from this helicopter zooms out, you can really see how massive this fire is. Three alarm fire is what we're learning. An empty condo building under construction, part of this whole thing. So as soon as we get more information for you in Houston on this massive fire, of course we'll bring it to you live here on CNN.

Coming up here, you know this, time is running out for crews to hear the pings we keep talking about from these signals under water. We'll talk about the limitations of the black box.

Also ahead, it is now revealed exactly how much money these families are getting from the airline. And as they wait, they are angry, they're desperate for answers.

And back here at home, one geologist says it is the worst landslide he has ever seen. More than 170 people still unaccounted for as rescuers are clinging to hope that they could find another survivor. We will take you there live. This is CNN's special coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Malaysia is now saying that Flight 370 sent its final satellite signal as - it's partial signal at 8:19 on the morning of March 8th. So, the signal that was sent some eight minutes earlier, 8:11, was not the last signal after all.

You're asking, well, what is a partial signal? Answer, they're not saying. But, Malaysia's defense minister suggested today at this news conference that the plane ran out of fuel sometime after 8:20 and before 9:15 that morning when the next schedule -- signal was scheduled.

So let's bring in David Soucie, CNN's safety analyst, and also Phaedra Hise, author of the book "Pilot Error: The Anatomy of a Plane Crash."

So, welcome to both of you.

And, David Soucie, if I can, I'd like to begin with you because I have been doing a lot of reading both about these two boxes, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. And something that I hadn't realized is that specifically with the cockpit voice recorder, it continually records over itself. So if and when rescuers finally find this thing to hear about the traffic between pilots, it will only be the last two hours.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, that's true of the flight - of the cockpit voice recorder, but not of the flight data recorder. The flight data recorder would have at least 27 to 30 hours of data, including 17,000 separate bits of information about what the aircraft is doing. But remember that even if we don't get the cockpit voice recorder, even if it's only that two hours, it would give us a lot of clues, it would yield a lot of information about what was going on in that cockpit. Was there no one there? Were they there? You could hear talking if there was still talking right up to the last minute versus an empty cockpit with no voices at all.

BALDWIN: And then we keep talking about listening for the pings. And, Phaedra, I'm coming to you in a second. But, David, we keep talking about the pings. Does each - would the black box or the flight data recorder that really holds the key to the answers as far as what happened on the plane, and the cockpit voice recorder, are those separate pings? So they're listening for two sets of pings?

SOUCIE: That's correct. There's two different boxes entirely. One keeps track of just the voices and the other keeps track of the data. But - and, yes, there are two of them, but either of the pingers are 30-day pingers. They have 30-day batteries on them.

BALDWIN: OK. OK.

And, Phaedra, something else. We know that the pilot and the co-pilot, the pilot had logged some 18,000, you know, flying miles. So he was very, very experienced. This co-pilot, 27 years of age, pretty fresh out of flight school. And I'm just curious, as a pilot asking you, in an emergency situation, if we don't know what kind of emergency happened onboard this particular plane, would you rather have someone who was a little more veteran, a little more experienced or younger and fresh out of school and fresh with procedure?

PHAEDRA HISE, PILOT: This sounds like a trick question. I think everybody would go with the more experienced pilot. BALDWIN: Not a trick question. Not a trick question.

HISE: I think everybody would vote for the more experienced pilot. But, actually, all airlines have safety procedure training. Each aircraft has its own procedure for a crew, so this procedure isn't built for one pilot. The crew has a hand in it. And each emergency activity has its own procedure list.

And so pilots and co-pilots, no matter what they're training, they have trained extensively for this. There are checklists that need to be run through and these simulations are practiced in a flight simulators. So just because a co-pilot doesn't have a lot of experience, maybe not a lot of hours, that co-pilot is definitely confident enough and competent to handle an emergency procedure because of that extensive training.

BALDWIN: OK. David, do you agree?

SOUCIE: Oh, yes, absolutely. There's -- in fact, there's been some studies about the combined cockpit where we talk a lot about crew resource management. And, you know, is it better to have two experienced pilots that rely on their institutionalized thinking or someone new. And it really comes down to the red box checklists, the things that are committed to memory, and those that are just out of training would be more recent, better recall of those red box lists than would a senior captain. So I think it was a good combination of skills and experience in that cockpit.

BALDWIN: OK. Phaedra Hise and David Soucie, thank you both very, very much.

Coming up, back to the families, because as the families' anger boils over, we are now learning exactly how much money the airline is giving them during this waiting period. So I'll ask an aviation attorney whether this dollar figure is actually enough.

Plus, here at home, dramatic new pictures. Look at this four-year-old little boy being rescued from that deadly landslide in Washington state. This as crews hunt for survivors with more than 170 people still unaccounted for. Bill Weir is standing by live. He's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: It is now day four of a grueling search for victims of last Saturday's massive mudslide in Washington state. This rural hillside, just north of Seattle, gave way and crashed through the tightknit community of Oso. Fourteen are confirmed dead. More than 170 people are still unaccounted for. And there have been some pretty amazing stories of rescues, like this one. This little four-year-old boy found trapped beneath the muddy rubble.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBIN YOUNGBLOOD, HELPED YOUNG BOY IN AMBULANCE: So they brought him to us in the ambulance. And I took all his clothes off, because he was freezing, and wrapped him up and held him and told him I was a grandma and couldn't find the rest of his family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Just to give you a better sense of how devastating this is, you see on your screen, this is what it looked like before, on the left-hand side, and that is what has happened after. CNN's Bill Weir is live for us in Darrington, Washington, with - oh, how is that search going here? Just awful hearing these stories.

BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's really disheartening. I can't even tell you. It's being described -- they're finding some of the victims of this. One description is, it's like they've been in a rock tumbler, or it's a war zone.

BALDWIN: Oh.

WEIR: The sheer force of that mountain falling, pushing across a town, across a river, across a highway, it's incredible.

But let me take you here. This is the IGA grocery store here. Sort of the information board is where people are trying to get information. This is where we met Aaron Briet.

Good to see you.

He was searching the pile. You were looking for your cousin.

AARON BRIET, EYEWITNESS: Yes. I'm looking for Summer Brennan (ph).

WEIR: And she -- she was in a car on the phone with her mother -

BRIET: Yes.

WEIR: When the slide happened Saturday morning.

BRIET: Yes, sir. She was in a blue -- like a teal blue Subaru WRS.

WEIR: And you and your cousins went up there on Sunday, against the wishes of the authorities here, to try to do some digging of your own.

BRIET: (INAUDIBLE). The authorities weren't out there. Nobody was out there that was with us, state or government agencies. We just had to rally as many people as we could, civilians, and get us out there to try to search for our loved ones.

WEIR: Show me on this map right here exactly what we're talking about. I mean this is the part of the mountain -

BRIET: Yes.

WEIR: That is now a cliff, essentially.

BRIET: Yes, this is the part of the mountain that's gone. All of this, it came down the valley, redirected itself and came down right here. All of this is all under water. We have - we have two hovercrafts that are working that. But our team right here, this is where we started finding all the bodies. This is right here.

WEIR: And you were - you were trying to describe to me just the sheer physical force. So it was as if this entire neighborhood was shoved into a corner. So the tension on those trees is there.

BRIET: It's crazy. It's insane. When we were chopping some of the trees, I tried to help one guy with a chainsaw because when he started chopping, it started to build pressure. I didn't even realize the pressure that was built until he hit the other side and the big part snapped over and almost hit my cousin Tammy (ph). It's - it's like a war zone out there. You see hands - the way I found Mrs. Studderly (ph), her hand was sticking up out of the ground.

WEIR: I can't imagine the emotional toll this is going to take on you going forward, but do you -- are you hopeful that your cousin somehow is in that car, somehow has enough air? What - how are you --

BRIET: I pray to God that she has the air to survive. But I don't think any vehicle holds enough air to survive for four or five days. And that's how long it's going to take before they can even get to some of the cars. There's a Jeep Liberty upside down up there, right about here. And then there's a motorhome, a 34-foot motorhome that was 34 feet and now I can touch the wheelbase. It's crumpled like somebody crumpled a ball of paper.

WEIR: I'm so sorry for your pain. I hope you can find some peace in all of this at some point.

BRIET: I'm more worried about my Aunt Lydia (ph) and my cousins over here that are out there. My aunt -- you don't ever want to see what happens to a mother in a catastrophe like this. Her emotional pain is so great that she just can't - she can't see really right now because she doesn't know.

WEIR: That's the hardest part, not knowing, right?

BRIET: That's the hardest part is not knowing. I wasn't able to give closure yesterday when I went out searching for Summer. The GPS - the GPS shut off when she was coming through and she was on this side and it went out she was somewhere right in this area. So I don't understand how we didn't find her. We dug every bit of the perimeter. We searched the full perimeter. With the limited amount of bodies that we had out there to do searching, we only had -- we had enough to cover one square mile in limited form.

WEIR: You think the authorities are now doing everything they can? Are you satisfied with the effort now?

BRIET: No, because the effort -- if we had a better first response for -- for natural disasters like this, especially in the state of Washington, but --

WEIR: But this is unlike anything anybody's ever seen.

BRIET: Well, yes. Eight or nine years ago when that mountain gave way, it was just a small slide and it was on a much smaller scale and nobody died. That's why it wasn't anything serious.

WEIR: People rebuilt. Thought this is a beautiful spot, why leave.

BRIET: Yes, they rebuilt. Everything. And I don't know if you have the record on it, but they said that there was a 1.1 or 1.2 right up here earthquake up here before this dropped.

WEIR: Well, they know it did read on seismographs like seven miles away. They say it wasn't seismic activity. But regardless, it's such a tragedy. I'm so sorry for what you've been through.

BRIET: Yes. I just - I just want to help all of the families that are involved and the Studderly (ph) kids that were out there digging up their parents yesterday. That was - that was the most hardest thing that I've ever seen is having to watch kids dig up their parents.

WEIR: That's unbelievable. Our hearts are with you. Thank you very much, brother (ph).

BRIET: Thank you.

WEIR: Appreciate that.

BRIET: I really appreciate it.

WEIR: So, Brooke, this is what you're dealing with. I mean this is -- this is the reality of a guy who was on that pile for the last couple of days, and things he can never unsee. And the thing he wanted to see the most, his cousin, she's still up there somewhere.

BALDWIN: There is nothing more I can say after hearing him talking about kids digging up their parents. Bill Weir, thank you so much.

Let's just take a quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)