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Updates In Search For Malaysian Airlines Flight 370; Multiple Earthquake Aftershocks Felt In Southern California; Washington State Landslide Kills 17, 90 Still Missing

Aired March 29, 2014 - 20:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Top of the hour. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining us.

Few planes and ships, a lot of open ocean. That's the challenge, again, facing search crews looking for that missing Boeing 777 airliner. In the overnight darkness, a Chinese navy ship scooped up some objects floating in the water. No word yet on what those things are or if they're part of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

In China, the passing time is just making the grief and anger deeper for relatives of the passengers. They're furious that the Malaysian government declared the airplane lost without physical evidence.

And in the country where the mystery flight originated, Malaysia's transportation minister met with some family members telling them his government will continue the search as long as there's even a remote chance of a survivor.

I want to talk about that more with CNN's Sara Sidner. She is in Kuala Lumpur. Also joining is Atika Shubert in Perth, Australia.

Sara, I'm going to start with you. Tell us about the families of those passengers, not only in Malaysia, but in China, too. Their frustration has not gone down. In fact, it's gone up as the weeks go by.

SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you can imagine. I mean, their stress levels are off the charts. They have been going through this emotional roller coaster now for 22 days. They still haven't seen any physical evidence. It is literally driving them crazy.

They're trying to figure out what is going on. They feel like some of the information that's being held back from them. But authorities have continued to say, we are telling you everything we know. And we know, ourselves, there are 26 countries that are helping in trying to find any kind of physical evidence of where this plane might be in the Southern Indian Ocean at the moment. There's a lot of frustration as you might imagine on the part of investigators looking into this trying to find out and finally solve this mystery.

But when it comes to the families who are from China, and that was the bulk of the passengers on the plane, their families feel even more left out. We were able to speak with them and see what happened. When they try to attend here in Kuala Lumpur, a briefing that was specifically for the Malaysian families who lost loved ones on that flight, and they were told they could not attend.

Now, obviously they speak mandarin and the briefing would have been in Malay. But they were very frustrated by that because they feel as though they want to have direct communication, and no matter what language it's in, no matter where this briefing is being held, they want to be able to attend.

So a lot of frustration there. They talked it through with the authorities telling them that they felt basically like they were captives and they couldn't attend this very important briefing and they just want the lines of communication open, Don.

What has happened over the past weeks is that there have just been fatigues. Their emotions are raw. They get rawer by the day. And they've been given hope, yet again, after hearing from the prime minister saying that all lives were lost, yesterday we heard from an acting transportation minister who said there may be some miracle, perhaps people are still alive and the search and rescue mission continues -- Don.

LEMON: All right. Breaking news. Thank you very much, Sara.

Breaking news into CNN. We're just getting this information and it is coming from Australia. Search planes are up in the air. We're hearing to search for flight 370. CNN has confirmed that an AMSA, that's a Chinese IL-76, Ilyushin, took off at 6:20, that's local time on Sunday, 6:20 p.m. Korean P-3 Orion and a U.S. P-8 Poseidon and certain aircrafts preparing to depart from Perth airport right now, about to take off within the next few minutes.

Let's get more details now from Atika Shubert who is in Perth, Australia, where the search is being conducted, where it is starting, originating. So the search planes in the air right now, Atika.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Search planes have just left. A C-130 actually also just departed from Pierce air base here. So they're on their way in about two hours or so, probably means that they'll be searching the area. And because it's a bit closer in, it now means they have more time to actually search that area. It's about 300,000 square kilometers. So it's quite a bit that they have to do.

Unfortunately, it's not the end of it, though. Even though planes may spot something from the sky, it means that ships then have to go in and verify that object. See what it is. There are currently four ships in the search area. Another six are expected by today. And they're calling in all commercial ships as well to help in. So it really is a tremendous effort out there for the search. We'll have to see what they can turn up.

LEMON: Yes. And you know, as every day when they go up, when they get to go up because sometime there are issues with the weather, Atika. And today, there's going to be issues a little bit later on. But again, breaking news on CNN, CNN has confirmed with AMSA that a Chinese IL-76 Ilyushin took off 6:20 local time on Sunday there in Perth, Australia. Korean P-3 Orion, U.S. P-8 Poseidon search aircraft preparing to depart from Perth airport right. About to take off within the next few minutes.

We're talking to our Atika Shubert who stationed right there in Perth, Australia, where this search is originating. They said there are also another airplane, Atika, that's taking off and looking for objects. And Atika, we know they did find some objects yesterday during a search yesterday of the Indian Ocean. Those objects are aboard a Chinese Navy ship. We don't know if they're connected to flight 370, but they are looking them over now and probably bringing them back to land to be looked over further.

SHUBERT: What we know is that the Ilyushin, which is the Chinese ship that was out there, did pull some of these objects in. Unfortunately, at this point, it looks like there is simply, you know, things thrown off fishing vessels. One of the things they found earlier, for example, was a fishing buoy. So they're probably not going to h head into port just yet. They're going to continue searching until they find something that they think is from the plane. Once they have found that, then they're likely to bring it here to free mantle which is the port in Perth. And this will become the base of operations for the investigation.

I don't know if you've ever seen one of those giant aircraft investigations but they try and literally piece the plane back together. And so, that's what they're going to do once they find something. But they haven't found something yet, and so far, all of the sightings really have not turned out -- have not been confirmed parts of the plane at all. So even though there are lots of leads, lots of sightings, it doesn't mean we're getting any closer just yet, but you never know. We could find that one object today and if that happens, obviously the investigation gets well and truly under way.

LEMON: Atika Shubert standing by in Perth. Atika, thank you very much.

I want to bring in the experts. Conservation biologist and marine debris specialist Nick Mallos joins us. Aviation attorney, Mark Dombroff. Also CNN aviation analyst and pilot, Les Abend and CNN analyst and pilot Miles O'Brien.

Nick, I'm going to start with you. The objects retrieved. First of all, you know, breaking news, the planes are back in the sky. You know, another possibility that they could find something like what they retrieved from, you know, the ocean yesterday. The first possible physical evidence. Possible, I say. That does it look promising to you?

NICK MALLOS, CONSERVATION BIOLOGIST: Yes. I think at the moment it's hard to say promising. I think throughout this process, the best term to use is cautiously optimistic. And the reason being is there's a lot of debris in forms of plastic are at the sea surface throughout our ocean and it's incredibly difficult from both aircraft surveys and even from the photographs we've seen over the past few days to confirm with any certainty, you know, what it may be. And as we've seen from the physical retrieval of these items, it's only truly when you have these items in your hands that you can confirm their origins. And from personal experience, being out in the middle of the oceans, doing research surveys, it's not until you literally have that item out of the water on the deck of the boat where you can truly investigate it at a level specificity that will provide you the information to know whether or not it could, in fact, be a piece of that wreckage.

LEMON: Les Abend, you know, they're looking for anything and everything in this search. Are there parts, you think, that would stay intact in a water crash longer than other parts?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes. Absolutely. I mean, and this all is dependent upon what the impact of the airplane was like into the ocean. So, you know, we've discussed this before. You know, if it was a high-speed impact, there would be a lot more fragments. If it was low speed, we'd have a similar thing to air France where we get large pieces. The wings, we discussed, were probably able to float because the tanks would have been empty.

LEMON: You know, Mark, you know, we've been talking about a law firm, Chicago looking for discovery. What have you. Let's talk about compensation for the families. Do they have to wait until investigators can determine what happened and who's to blame here before they can move forward with that?

MARK DOMBROFF, AVIATION ATTORNEY: No, they don't, Don. The passengers entered into a contract with the airline which is true for anybody traveling. Your ticket is a contract. And in the case of international transportation, particularly here where Malaysia is a signatory to an international agreement, there's a contractual liability.

And under that contractual liability, there's something known, and it gets hyper technical, a special drawing rights and it's equivalent initially to about 140,000 U.S. dollars. And that's a contractual obligation.

There's liabilities beyond that in terms of provable compensatory damages, and it's all a contractual liability. And from that perspective, vis-a-vis Malaysia and the airline, it really in a sense doesn't matter. And whether or not the airplane is located in order for this liability under the contract to present itself. Obviously, that doesn't address the issue of the fact that we want to find this airplane. Everybody wants to know what happened.

And I would say that first and foremost, the families want to know what happened. My experience in representing airlines is that the thing that the families want more than anything else is information. The airline wants to find that airplane. They want to know what happened. They lost crew members. They lost both cabin crew members and cockpit crew members. But in terms of compensation, it need not wait.

I would further point out that, indeed, I've read reports and there have been announcements made that, indeed, compensation, initial stages of compensation are already being paid. Not by way of a final resolution of anybody's claim that they may have, but rather to help families get through this period of time where they may have incidental expenses that are necessary to be paid.

LEMON: Miles O'Brien, investigators absolutely 100 percent sure they can figure out if the objects are, in fact, from flight 370. But the sooner they find them, the better their chances are of determining that.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Absolutely. I mean, you know, one thing to consider here is if it's anything to do with an aircraft in that region, it's not like there's another crash that might confuse things. It will be obvious if it's an airplane part. And then, of course, airplane parts are -- there's a lot of paper and documentation and serial numbers which are associated with all of them. So --

LEMON: Miles --

O'BRIEN: Trace it.

LEMON: Forgive me for jumping in here, but you brought up the tsunami which I thought was a very good point when you're looking at these things. You know, one never knows.

O'BRIEN: Well, yes, I can't think there was an aircraft washed away in the tsunami.

LEMON: No, no, but I mean, just objects. I mean just objects.

O'BRIEN: Yes. I think that's what we were seeing, particularly those objects in the more southern search area where we saw, you know, a couple of hundred objects. Might very well be linked back to that tsunami. I'm not an oceanographer. I wish to ask them. I'm pretty sure the currents would support that.

LEMON: OK. Thank you, Miles. Thanks, everyone. Miles, Nick, Les. And everybody stick around, though. We're going to be talking to you a little bit later on this hour.

But first, a developing story I want to get to. A series of earthquakes in California. We're going to go there live, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: The hunt for Malaysian airlines flight 370 verging on a new chapter right now. Ten search planes are set to take off soon in Perth, Australia. Some have taken off now. We will have more on that in just a bit.

But first, let's update you on a couple major stories right here in the United States.

First there's a lot of shaking going on in southern California right now. Multiple earthquakes, all within a 24-hour period. The latest happened just a few hours ago. In L.A. county, that's near Rowland heights. It was one of several aftershocks to the big one last night which is at 5.1 magnitude. It was near Orange county, city of El Habra.

Stephanie Elam joins us live now.

Now Stephanie, the first aftershock this morning?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, actually, there were a bunch last night. In fact, I followed this one little twitter handle that tells you all the earthquakes that are happening. It was going crazy last night after the 5.1 earthquake rolled through.

And it really did roll. It was kind of a rolling earthquake as opposed to the one on St. Patrick's day in the morning which was more of a jolt. It is a little bit harder. Not to say that there wasn't damage because as you can see, there was some damage. But overall, it wasn't a very large earthquake.

We saw some maybe vases being broken, plates broken, some rocks coming down, one section on a street there. But overall, it wasn't so bad. People who were evacuated last night, I saw they closed down that shelter and everyone went home. But since then, we have had about 100 or so, maybe even hundreds, of little earthquakes since then. A lot of little shaking here.

And I'm from California. As you know, Don. And so, I know what an earthquake feels like and how people respond to them. It's just that when they all come together like this, this is when people get nervous.

But just to put this into perspective, southern California hasn't had a real big earthquake since the Northridge earthquake which was in 1994. That one coming on Martin Luther King weekend. It was around 4:30 in the morning and scared a lot of people and did a whole lot of damage.

And so, when you take a look at that perspective, there are actually true southern Californians who have grown up here who are adults who have not felt a strong earthquake. And so, because of that, there's complacency here when some of the experts saying, all of this earthquake action that we've seen over the last couple of weeks could be a precursor to something bigger. But obviously we don't know, but they always say it's not a question of if, it's a matter of when -- Don.

LEMON: Yes. Never experienced it. So they don't know. Thank you.

Stephanie Elam, we appreciate you updating us on that story.

You know, a week ago today a massive landslide virtually wiped out one rural Washington state town and severely damaged another one. Cascades of mud overpowered the Snohomish county town of Oso and nearby town of Darington. Seventeen people are confirmed dead. But officials say number will climb. Ninety people still unaccounted for.

Dan Simon is live for us in Arlington. Dan, we're anticipating a news conference in the next hour, we hear.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. At the top of the hour, there's going to be a news conference. And hopefully we'll get some greater clarity, Don, on where things stand. Here we are a week after the tragedy and I don't think any of us really have a full appreciation, you know, in terms of the magnitude of what happened.

The death toll currently stands at 17 officially, but you have 90 people missing. The 17 number has remained steady over the past couple days because the way they're doing it here in Snohomish county is the medical examiner officially needs to clear the bodies, identify the bodies before they update the death toll. So it's been a little bit confusing.

We know that there are still many bodies in the debris. At this point, 90 people still missing. There was a moment of silence, Don, at 10:37 a.m. local time today. Rescuers who were in the debris field stopped and paused and paid respect to the victims. This was the precise time last week when all of this occurred and one fire commander explained the way things look today. Take a look.

LEMON: All right. We're waiting on that, Dan. Let's see if they can get it together there. But again, 90 people still unaccounted for. That's a heck of a lot of people. And obviously they think the death toll is going to go up. Still at this point, though, it is -- they're still holding out hope against hope that this is a rescue operation rather than a recovery operation.

SIMON: That's true. Officially it's still called a search and rescue, but I think, you know, when you look at it realistically, the fact that it happened a week ago, they haven't heard any sounds over the past couple of days. I don't think many people still think that there's anybody alive. But nonetheless, that's what they're calling it.

I should tell you, don, for the first time, they actually September out cadaver dogs today to look for bodies and apparently they're going to be -- that's going to be a crucial component as they try to recover more of these victims, don.

LEMON: Dan, what you were referring to earlier, let's listen in. You and I can chat about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE MASON, SNOHOMISH COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT: What you have out here is houses that have been picked up, run through a blender, and dropped on the ground. Then you have another house that the cars are still parked in the garage. The house has been pushed all the way across. It's not livable but it is still somewhat intact. So you have everything out here. So we've had to go piece by piece through the debris piles and also piece by piece through each house to make sure we look for everything that we can find.

(END VIDEO CLIP) LEMON: It's not easy, Dan.

SIMON: You know, it's not. And the reason why, you're talking about mud that some places is 30 to 40 feet deep, just think about that. I mean, to go through there and literally dig through all that mud to try to find victims is a very difficult task. And then you add the rain on top of it. It's basically been raining over the past 24 hours. It's partly cloudy, little bit of sun at the moment, but it's supposed to keep on raining throughout the weekend. That's only adding to the misery for the entire town and in particular the search and rescue crews -- Don.

LEMON: Appreciate it. Dan Simon.

Crews have shifted the search area for flight 370, again. We're going to show you what they're up against now as they look for any evidence of the missing plane.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: First things search for the airborne search crews, find something on the surface. But we're talking an enormous expanse of open ocean and that's just the first challenge if some airplane wreckage is found.

Chad Myers has a good way for us to visualize it.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: What we do know, obviously, the search mile hundreds and hundreds of miles away from the old search area. But what does that really, really mean?

We see that the topography of the ocean floor changed significantly. From where we were which was pretty flat, an ocean floor that's stretching apart to now an area that has significant ridging and troughing (ph) here, too.

Some big ridges here. Higher elevations here. Only about 6,000 feet deep here where we're 12,000 feet deep in the darker blue. But also, this very big trench right through the middle, right through this fracture in the ocean floor. And if something would fall down into one of these crevasses, you may never find it. This is what it looks like for miles and miles all the way into Australia, itself. That's the bad news.

There's some good news here, though. From what we know about where this thing went down, at least we think. This is the search area. There's not much of a current here. Currents to the south, currents to the north, but this is almost one big hole in the middle where currents go around. And so I can get you a lot closer here where you see little eddies going around, but only about a half a mile per hour.

So we're not going to lose debris or lose things in the ocean because this water is moving at three or four miles per hour. It simply isn't doing that and it won't do that in this entire area here.

What we have is the south gyre. The Indian gyre right through here, Indian Ocean, around and around and around. This is something else that I'm a little bit concerned about, too, because if something falls into this gyre, it stays in the gyre for a long time until it sinks or gets onshore somewhere. Around and around and around, all that debris goes. And some of the debris that we're seeing especially by the satellites may have been in the ocean a really long time.

LEMON: Thank you very much, Chad Myers. Good information. OK.

These search teams of course have their work cut out for them, as you can see, from what Chad said there.

Let's bring in marine debris specialist Nick Mallos.

Nick, how do you search terrain like this ? It is seems virtually impossible.

MALLOS: It is incredibly difficult. When you're out there doing research cruises for the sole intent or the sole purpose, I should say, of trying to find debris, there's very standardized protocols. How that relates to search and rescue operations may very well vary.

But what we can say is, you know, these waters where this search area has expanded to, it's worth noting that the waters between south of Indonesia and north of Australia are highly productive waters. You know, significant amount of fishing activity takes place in those waters.

So in addition to the other forms of debris that may be adrift in the ocean coming out of these gyres, there's also the likelihood of fishing gear and fishing-related debris that could, in fact, be complicating search process.

LEMON: Yes, and you know, it's interesting as we were watching Chad Myers do his thing there, Les Abend brought up a good point. He said, what happened to the big pieces a of debris that we saw, you know, the one that looked like a refrigerator door and all the big pieces? We don't know because they have not found it. They saw it by air, right? But they have not retrieved it, correct?

MALLOS: Correct. The ocean is a highly dynamic place and, unfortunately, especially when you're relying on aircraft and visual surveys to locate these objects, once you identify the location of the objects, that's the first part. Then it's hoping that the ocean and the wind, and all of the environmental conditions that can significantly affect the transport of these drifting items. You hope they cooperate so if you have the opportunity to employ the search and rescue crew that those items are in that same vicinity.

And it's not only a surface drift you have to worry about, but if the properties of some of these items can take in water and become denser than seawater, you have to worry about the likelihood these items could sink below the surface and out of the view of the search and rescue operation.

LEMON: Les, question or a statement? ABEND: Yes, my concern now is that if we have so many assets deployed out there with a lot of eyes, my concern is that the airplane impacted harder than we might have thought and fractured into a lot more pieces and maybe nothing is floating, adding to what was just said.

LEMON: Respond to that for me, if you will, Nick, quickly.

MALLOS: Yes. I mean, I think certainly if we are talking about an area where a plane may have entered the water and certainly I can't speak to the dynamics of the entry and what impact that may have had on how the plane comes apart, but certainly there's a lot of composite materials, a lot of lightweight materials that are in the external cavity of the plane, so you would expect to see a significant number of those items floating on the surface and what I would expect in a relatively dense area.

LEMON: All right. Thank you very much. Stick around. We have lots to talk about. I just need to get to a break. That's why I asked you to go quickly for me.

We're going to get back to the search of flight 370. It's Sunday morning in Perth, Australia.

Up next, an update on what's happening right now to try to find this missing plane. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Right now, Sunday morning in Australia and search planes are in the air hunting for any physical evidence from the missing Malaysian airlines flight. Ten planes are scheduled to take part in the search over the Indian Ocean. The effort may be hampered by weather, though, with light showers and low clouds expected. Ships finally retrieved objects from the search area today after three weeks of looking for possible objects that never materializes.

And as we look at this, I wanted to be clear that no link exists so far between these objects and the missing Malaysian airliner. The objects could be sea trash. They're hoping to find something. But again, they could just be sea trash.

So let's bring in our panel of experts. Nick Mallos is here, Mark Dombroff is here, Les Abend, Miles O'Brien, all of you, Thank you very much.

Miles, you know, we were talking about these objects, but also you are making a point earlier, I'm not sure if you finished your point. I didn't mean to cut you off. But you brought up a very good point about the tsunami and about debris, you know, being in part of the ocean. Did you get to finish your point?

O'BRIEN: Well, you know, I was looking at Chad's explanation of the ocean currents and kind of supported what I was saying. You know, there's kind of a swirl in the Indian Ocean, the gyre. And all that stuff that would have come into the sea during that tsunami would be swirling around in the gyre. And that is a big part, I suspect, of what provides all these false positives as it were, as they say in the trade.

So, there's a lot of stuff. You know, the oceans are filled with a lot of junk. That's well-documented. But this place in particular, given the 2004 tsunami has even more than would be normal, I think.

LEMON: But you know what, Miles, none of the -- I don't think, at least, you know, we saw several big pieces we thought from satellites even early on in the first week of the investigation here. We saw the one just a couple of days ago. But none of that has been retrieved yet.

And you know, Les Abend during our last segment brought up a good point. What happened to those big objects? Well, it's not that easy to find them even if you spot them in the air.

O'BRIEN: It's like we're shadow boxing or chasing ghosts. You know, it's extremely frustrating to those of us on the outside. You can imagine what it's like really, you know, literally risking your life in these search operations to not be able to get anything on the deck of the ship at the very least just to see what it is. But, you know, the things do not stand still in the ocean, unfortunately and that's what we're finding out.

LEMON: You know, Nick, I want to get to you just real quick. Now that we have pulled some of these objects from the sea, does that give an overall jolt of optimism? Because as we're saying, and we can see, we've been talking about the ocean full of all kinds of debris that is mostly trash.

MALLOS: Yes. I think, you know, certainly the search and rescue operation has been taking place for a while now. It's been hard to identify debris. The fact they are seeing, or able to retrieve some floating items of debris is certainly, you know, positive from a search and rescue operation.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of the items they've retrieved or just from the, you know, high-level imageries that I have seen to date of the other items, none of those items to me, you know, a lot of those look like traditional floating drift nets. Other items of debris that we see out there on a normal basis. So at the moment, working with the information that I have seen, you know, again, cautiously optimistic that the plane is, in fact, in that area.

LEMON: Mark, you know, I don't remember a story like this where victims' families are so involved and in many cases so angry with the way the investigation has progressed. Is that going to influence how, you know, the post-crash investigation is handled?

DOMBROFF: Well, one would hope that it doesn't, Don. The crash investigators customarily are very professional so long as they're able to run the investigation. I think part of the problem we have here is the manner in which information has been presented by the Malaysian government. They are running the investigation under the international agreements, and obviously a large amount of distrust has built up. There's a tremendous credibility gap. And I do think that the anger is going to continue and I think that's a real problem that should be addressed sooner rather than later. Otherwise I think we're at the beginning of a long and difficult road, whether they find the aircraft or not.

LEMON: Yes. You know, Les, you have flown 777s. You still fly them. Has anything been talked about, discussed, anything that you have learned over the past three weeks that can improve somehow the aircraft, the performance and its tracking system?

ABEND: Well, this is a great airplane. You know, Boeing just makes a nice product. But we've discussed before, the system is already in place. And it's just a matter of what airline subscribes to the advanced system. It's always available to track this system. And you know, my understanding is Malaysia may not have had that subscription.

LEMON: We're going to continue to discuss this. So everyone, stick around, please.

Coming up, a flight attendant on the missing plane. She is a mom and wife. Now her husband opens up about his struggles as their kids ask, where's mom?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. For three weeks now, the families of these passengers and crew members have not held, kissed or spoken to their loved ones. And that includes a husband of one of the flight attendants.

He tells our Paula Hancocks how he's simply at a loss as to what to tell their children.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Foong Wei Yueng's 10-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son keep asking where she is.

Eighteen years as a Malaysia airlines flight attendant, she was working aboard MH 370.

LEE KHIM FATT, HUSBAND OF MH370 FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Mommy is going to take a bit longer to come home this time. And I even promised them I'm going to bring her home. But I really don't know either way is she alive? And now, I'm not sure whether I can bring her home.

HANCOCKS: Lee Khim Fatt asks me what he should tell his daughter. She says Foong is caring, loving. He speaks in the present tense.

FATT: Of course, I'm still hoping there have been lots of miracles. But just, like, what we want is the reality, the true story.

HANCOCKS: Showing me mobile photos of his wife, he tells me he's angry at the way he's being treated. His wife was part of the cabin crew, but Lee feels the airline tells the media more than it tells him. He says he gets most of his information from televised press conferences, part of the reason he's hired a lawyer.

MANUEL VON RIBBECK, RIBBECK LAW: It is not their fault that this happened to the plane, so, therefore, they have to be compensated for their damages.

HANCOCKS: Lee and Foong were together for 20 years. He says they were happy. Now she is lost. Lee says he has lost all direction.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Painful to watch.

Families of those onboard flight 370, you can see they have had it. They're emotionally, physically exhausted. They say they're tired of the mixed messages. Some even walked out of a briefing by Malaysian officials in protest.

I want to talk to aviation attorney now Mark Dombroff. He joins me. What's next for these families? Listen, no amount of money is really, especially at this point, it's not going to heal a broken heart. You knows down the line, they will have some recourse. But right now, how are they going to get the answers that they want?

DOMBROFF: I think that's the problem, Don. And, you know, in all my years representing airlines in these sorts of situations, it's absolutely clear that the thing the families want, and it's not just the families of the passengers, it's the families of the cabin crew, the flight attendants that we just saw and the families of the cockpit, the pilot and the co-pilot, they want information. They want answers. And we're in this extraordinary situation, and I just can't remember in my 44 years of doing this, I can't remember of a situation quite like this.

There have been situations where aircraft have disappeared. We've heard about those. But certainly not in our information age where an airliner goes missing. And then the flow of information by the Malaysian government who have the lead on the investigation is, I'll call it flawed as it is in this situation.

So the answers hopefully are out there and they're going to come sooner rather than later. And I don't know what you say to the families. I don't think there's anything acceptable to say to them.

LEMON: You know, you've been part of several U.S. -- United States airline crash investigations. How would you compare them to flight 370? I know you said you've never seen quite anything like this, but just to the investigation. I'm sorry, it's just, you know, let's be honest here, Mark. I can't -- watching that guy breaks my heart. I just can't even imagine how they are standing at this point after, you know, if you have something and its final, you know, my loved one was in a car crash, my loved one was killed some kind of way, my loved one was in a plane crash and you know. But when there's no finality, you don't know what to do with your feelings and your emotions. You don't know where to turn to. I just had to say that. How would you compare this, your investigations, to this investigation?

DOMBROFF: Well, I think what you just said is, in fact, a sentiment shared by everybody. Closure is not going to come to these families just by determining that a piece of the debris is from the aircraft or even locating the aircraft. Closure is going to take a very, very long time if it's ever reached.

In terms of comparison to other accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board which is the lead investigative agency for accidents in this country, I would say is the platinum standard as it relates to worldwide accident investigation agencies. There are other very good ones. The air accident board in Great Britain. The transportation safety board in Canada. And I've been involved with an awful lot of government investigative agencies all over the world.

The problem in this one is, one, we don't have an aircraft, and that presents a problem to any agency, but the one aspect of this investigation to date, I'll suggest to you, the investigation really hasn't even started. We're still looking for the airplane.

LEMON: Right.

DOMBROFF: The problem we have right now is that the information that's being presented is contradictory. It's being reversed. It's being changed. The families are being whipsawed back and forth. Speculation has gone rampant. The media, obviously, is following it all. And it's become an absolute worldwide fascination.

I'm hesitant to say it, but it's probably the biggest mess in the context of an airline accident investigation I have ever seen.

LEMON: Thank you, sir. Appreciate your perspective.

And before we go to break here, I just want to say that we are, you know, we are answering your questions about this, about flight 370. You can use #370qs.

I want to read this one, though. This one is from Tracy sounds off. Tracy says "Don Lemon, story of husband whose wife is a flight attendant is so sad with their two kids. Wow. The flight crew hasn't gotten enough attention." I concur.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So you have got questions about Malaysia airlines flight 370. And we have got experts to give you answers.

Now, Miles, I want you to take the first question and this one is from (INAUDIBLE). Why not build a black box that begins pinging only when it receives a signal that a receiver is near? Save battery life. By the way, there's a flight recorder that we have here on the anchor desk.

O'BRIEN: Well, there's a couple things to think about here. That's a good idea. Another good idea, you know, they broadcast at I think it's 37 1/2 kilohertz. It's low frequency. The lower the frequency, if you take it down to about 10 kilohertz, it has much more range. But to do that, you need a bigger black box and airlines don't like anything that's bigger or heavier because that means it's going to cost you over the long run. So it's actually not the ideal frequency for under water.

But here's a little piece of irony. The P-3s and P-8s that are searching for this particular aircraft are outfitted with black boxes that float.

Why not? Why not have a -- you can have a redundant set of devices that stay on the surface and then you can broadcast on an emergency frequency and you could find a site much easier than trying to, you know, get sonar equipment underwater and hydrophones to listen for a ping.

LEMON: Yes. If we can, too, guys, take a two shot. How heavy is that, Les?

ABEND: It's a fairly heavy unit.

LEMON: It's a fairly big device.

And you said, Miles, what were you saying about in one incident that the pingers were not --

O'BRIEN: You know, we certainly -- at this point we don't have any reason to believe the pingers have ever worked in air France 447. But they actually did take that device over the area where they found them later a couple of years later and they didn't hear it.

And then in the case of the famous Sully landing in the Hudson River, the cockpit voice recorder which was still intact, even though it was in contact with water, the pinger did not work. So these things are, you know, it is not that reliable.

LEMON: So Mark, this is for you. It says -- Katie asks, why can an aircraft search stay in the search zone with helicopters on deck instead of jets?

DOMBROFF: I suppose there's no reason why they couldn't. I think it's a question of whether or not a particular nation is prepared to commit those assets. And those are decisions that would be made clearly at the policy or defense level for the particular nation involved.

But I think I did hear one story where whether it was the Chinese or whomever did have a ship out there that had helicopters on the deck and, were in fact, being used as part of the search effort.

LEMON: OK. Les, this is for you. Unless you want to weigh in. but let me ask you. This is from M.J. M.J. asks, the angle of the plane when it turned looks like it should have went west or should have gone west. How did it start flying south? ABEND: That's a great question. It's something that I think is confusing a lot of people. To me, I think what may have happened is if, indeed, there was a mechanical issue, it may have done something to begin the airplane's turn and may affect the flight controls. It's hard to see. That's part of the speculation.

LEMON: OK. Nick, this question is from Catherine. She asks, would a plane crash in ocean cause a mini tsunami or wave form that would register and you can track back local? I imagine it would cause some waves but not anything -- would it cause anything to be picked up on any type of device?

MALLOS: No. You know, any form of wave like that which we saw in the great east Japan tsunami several years ago, these are phenomenon that are caused by, you know, shifting of plating underneath in the earth's crust that create these massive waves. So nothing like that would emerge from a plane potentially entering the water.

LEMON: Yes. But when you think about how volatile that water is, 30, 40, some instances it depends on what's going on if there's a storm, 50-foot waves. You know, a plane crashing into the ocean would not even make as much noise, right --

MALLOS: Yes, and many -- yes. In many ways the surface of the ocean almost acts like, you know, a solid ground or concrete when something is hitting it with that type of force.

LEMON: Right. As you said, a small pebble in a big pond, a way of putting it.

Thank you, Les. Thanks, everyone. Stand by.

You know, it's morning in Australia which means a new day of searching for Malaysian airline flight 370. A live report from Australia at the top of the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: You know, predicting earthquakes is really impossible, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. Our Nick Valencia has more on why the push is on to know when the big one is coming.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Major earthquake. At 8:00 we have one that was about only a 3.6. This one felt like it was about a 10.0.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It may have felt like a 10.0 to this CNN ireporter, but Friday night's the earthquake in Los Angeles was nowhere near the big one. People are wondering.

Is there a chance tonight's earthquake could be a pre-shock for a larger earthquake?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There always is. LUCY JONES, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY SEISMOLOGIST: Five percent of California earthquakes are followed by something larger within three days.

VALENCIA: The trembler, centered along the Puente hills fault. It is one of the strongest in California since the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake 20 years ago. That quake registered 6.7 on the Richter scale killing more than 50 people and causing an estimated there are 42 billion in damage.

CNN meteorologist Alexander Steele says the chance for a catastrophe like Northridge exists anywhere a fault line is present.

ALEXANDRA STEELE, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Our planet's seemingly stable surface is actually constantly moving and it is composed of enormous rock that's slowly moving underneath our feet. And when they rub and touch and crash against each other or crack, then there's this massive release of energy and that's an earthquake.

VALENCIA: But we still can't predict a big one, right? The big one is unpredictable.

STEELE: Unpredictable. You know, in the last 100 years, we can detect them, know their origin, their magnitude. But one thing yet we don't know is when they will happen.

VALENCIA: And scientists still can't predict the big one, that hasn't stopped some from imaging the doomsday scenario. USGS said recently California has a 46 percent chance of a magnitude 7.5 or larger in the next 30 years and that it would likely hit southern California.

A recent virtual earthquake study by Stanford University tried to envision what would happen if the big one did hit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The waves travel through that corridor toward Los Angeles and are essentially guided into the sedimentary base that underlies Los Angeles. Once they're in that basin, they reverberate, they get amplified and cause stronger shaking than would otherwise occur.

VALENCIA: The scale of disaster that hopefully won't become a reality any time soon.

Nick Valencia, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)