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Living in Limbo; Fort Hood Shooting; Tornadoes, Hail Hit the Nation's Heartland; Jet's Pings Could Start to Fade Saturday; NCAA Final Four Frenzy

Aired April 04, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Kyra Phillips, in for Carol Costello today.

Opening bell on Wall Street just ringing there moments ago. Early trading expected to head higher today as investors react to the news that 192,000 jobs were added to payrolls in March. Good news.

Online food ordering service Grubhub making its public debut today, trading on the New York Stock Exchange for the very first time. CEO Matthew Maloney ringing the opening bell there.

All right, we begin this hour, however, in the southern Indian Ocean where the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has now moved under water. It's a critical piece of equipment that has finally joined the hunt this morning. The Australian ship known as the Ocean Shield. On board, a U.S. Navy pinger locator, which is battling the clock in a bid to find that plane's black boxes. The batteries for those pingers are expected to fade starting tomorrow. And a total of 14 planes, nine ships are now scouring the search area today. That totals some 84,000 square miles, by the way. Roughly the size of Idaho. The specific region, about 1,000 miles off the western Australian coast.

And for four weeks, the families of the missing passengers have held vigils and they've also held on to hope, desperate for any signs that their loved ones are still alive. CNNs Pauline Chiou sat down with some of those relatives in Beijing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULINE CHIOU, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mao Tugui (ph) is a well-known Chinese water color artist. In early March, he had gone to Malaysia to exhibit his landscape paintings. His daughter and wife never spoke to him during that week-long trip because the international calls were too expensive. They rushed to Beijing nearly a month ago as soon as they learned he was on board the missing Malaysia Airlines flight.

His daughter says, "I'm really afraid my mother cannot bear this any longer. What if my dad's gone and my mother follows him? What would I do?"

Under the weight of so much anguish, her mother does hang on to moments of hope. "There's an old Chinese saying," she says. "If a person is alive, we need to see him as proof. If a person is dead, we need to see the body. We relatives haven't seen anything yet. so how can we give up hope?"

While hundreds of relatives wait for more definitive information, they shuffle in and out of regular meetings in Beijing with Malaysian officials. Briefing after briefing after briefing. Most begin with a slide presentation. One skeptical relative has asked, "how can you draw conclusion from a PowerPoint presentation?"

As relatives continue the wait, they pray, they reflect, they hope, drawing strength from being with each other.

"The most painful thing in life is to lose your loved ones," this man says, "but we believe we haven't lost them. They must be alive. All we have now is a lie saying that the plane crashed."

CHIOU (on camera): Privately, many relatives are saying they are realistic and trying to prepare for the worst news. But one family member explains the nuances going on. He says, there's a difference between hope and belief. Hope for the best possible outcome and belief that outcome may not actually materialize.

Pauline Chiou, CNN, Beijing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: I want to bring in now Pauline Boss. She's a psychotherapist and she's an expert in the field of ambiguous loss and unresolved relief.

Pauline, good morning. Good to see you.

PAULINE BOSS, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: Good morning.

PHILLIPS: You know, we're dealing with a lot of cultures here. For instance, the majority of the passengers on this plane are Chinese. And the wife of one of them actually spoke to CNN about how the culture is impacting the grieving process. I want you to take a listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HU XIANOUN, WIFE OF FLIGHT 370 PASSENGER (through translator): There's an old Chinese saying. If a person is alive, we need to see him as proof. If a person is dead, we need to see the body. We relatives haven't seen anything yet so how can we give up hope?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: What are your thoughts, Pauline?

BOSS: That is so normal what she is saying. People need to see the transformation of their loved one from being alive to being dead. They need a body to bury. They need remains to honor and to dispose of as they want. And when human beings don't have that, from antiquity, people have been troubled by that. And what she is saying is very wise and very true and it cuts across cultures, by the way.

PHILLIPS: Well, you know, the other thing that we've been talking about this morning are these cockpit recordings. You know, officials have now denied the family request to release the audio. You know, there's been a transcript released, but not the audio. They said it's part of an ongoing investigation. So if families were able to hear those moments, do you think that would help in any way, hurt?

BOSS: Well, right now the families are just trying to survive after a disaster. And may I talk more generally about the other disasters I've worked with. Families are just trying to survive it first. And perhaps hearing the cockpit -- cockpit recordings would be more trauma right now. And what they need right now is each other. They need to have some peace, some sequestering and coming slowly to the idea where they can hold two ideas in their head at a same time, as one of the people did on the recording. They're probably dead and maybe not. They may be coming back and maybe not. And that is where you hope people will get to so that they can go on to live good lives despite this agony where it no longer predominates but they will always have in their mind the missing person. He's probably dead and maybe not.

PHILLIPS: Pauline, also, you know, the search has gone underwater now. And in the next 24 hours the main concern here is going to be finding those black boxes before the pingers go silent. If we don't find anything, how do families process that?

BOSS: Well, that's very hard for them. Obviously with ambiguous loss there is no closure and so the rest of us need to stop using that word because it pressures them and it misleads them terribly. This is a loss without any finality. And may I say that even if they found debris, they might not find the bodies. So that still would leave them with the ambiguity of not knowing if their loved ones were on that plane or not.

My realization has come to be this, that unless families have a body to bury, unless they see the person in front of them, they still have a sliver of hope, perhaps for a lifetime, that that person may have floated to an island somewhere, that that person may be alive on the streets somewhere and that this is natural. The brain does not like ambiguity. And when we use the word closure, we are harming these people.

PHILLIPS: Yes. It's learning how to deal with it. It definitely never goes away. It never, never closes emotionally. Psychotherapist Pauline --

BOSS: No, we need to hold it.

PHILLIPS: Yes. Amen. Pauline Boss, thank you so much.

We're going to get back to our Flight 370 coverage shortly. But first, a family struggling with the death of a loved one in the Fort Hood rampage. Sergeant Timothy Owens was one of four killed in Wednesday's soldier-on-soldier attack. The 37-year-old from Illinois worked as a counselor at the post. He had served in Iraq and Kuwait. Owens had just gotten married last year and his family is devastated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY MUNTEAN, MOTHER OF SGT. TIMOTHY OWENS: He didn't answer the phone, so I left a message on his phone, "son, call me so I know if you're OK or not." Well, never got no call from him. I thought, oh, God, please don't let it be.

WALLACE GERHARDT, UNCLE OF SGT. TIMOTHY OWENS: He was just a very honorable, you know, individual. And like I say, I don't think he knew any strangers. Everybody that he met, I believe, that Tim got along with them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: CNN's George Howell outside Fort Hood following the investigation of the man who killed his brothers in arms before turning that gun on himself.

What's the latest, George?

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the more we're learning, Kyra, about Ivan Lopez, you start to juxtapose two very different personas. Soldiers who knew him, knew him as a good soldier, a person who had integrity. But investigators are piecing together the puzzle of a mentally unstable man who went on a shooting spree.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL (voice-over): Now looking into the moments before Ivan Lopez set off on a shooting rampage on Fort Hood, saying it could shed light on the Iraq veteran's motive.

LT. GEN. MARK MILLEY, COMMANDER, FORT HOOD: Well, there may have been a verbal altercation with another soldier or soldiers. And there's a strong possibility that that, in fact, immediately preceded the shooting.

HOWELL: But officials say there is no indication he targeted anyone specifically. We also know Lopez was undergoing a variety of treatments for depression and anxiety and PTSD. Doctors prescribing the 34-year-old medication, including the drug Ambien and anti- depressants. Those who knew him say Lopez was an extraordinary human being with lots of values. Co-workers are in disbelief.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To us, one of my best soldiers in the mobilization (ph).

HOWELL: Lopez, his wife and their two-year-old daughter lived in this apartment. One neighbor says she spoke to him just hours before the shooting.

IESHA BRADLEY, NEIGHBOR OF SPC. IVAN LOPEZ: He didn't seem like, you know, the type that would do what he did.

HOWELL: Another neighbor was with Lopez's wife the moment she found out the shooter was her husband.

XANDERIA MORRIS, NEIGHBOR OF SPC. IVAN LOPEZ: She just broke down. And I did as anybody else would do, I ran and I comforted her.

HOWELL: Around 4:00 p.m., Lopez, armed with a .45 caliber handgun like this one, opened fire killing three and injuring 16. The gun purchased at the same gun shop where nearly five years ago Major Nadal Hasan bought the gun he used to shoot and kill 13 people at the same place.

FORMER SGT. ALONZO LUNSFORD, 2009 FORT HOOD SHOOTING SURVIVOR: You have to wonder, five years later, have we learned anything from the shootings incident that happened with us. What progress has been made?

HOWELL: Sergeant Timothy Owens, one of Wednesday's victims, was working as a counselor when he was shot and killed. His mother says the death of her 37-year-old son still hasn't sunk in.

MARY MUNTEAN, MOTHER OF SGT. TIMOTHY OWENS: He was a good person. Why would they shoot a good person that was helping them?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: Now, of the three people who were killed, 16 injured, we know that the injured, there were there who were in critical condition the other day but now we know that they've been upgraded to serious condition. So some hopeful news, it looks like of the 16 injured, all will survive.

Kyra.

PHILLIPS: George Howell, thanks so much.

And here's what's ahead in the next hour of NEWSROOM.

Grieving families wait for any news of Flight 370. So, does a growing group of U.S. lawyers who want to jump into the long and constantly battle (INAUDIBLE) compensation?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These lawyers launched within days, maybe even hours, of the crash. Ambulance chasers, in essence. But they're ambulance chasers on a global scale.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: The stakes are high. We're talking billions of dollars. And that's all next in the hour of CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, communities in the nation's midsection are getting slammed by tornadoes and a lot of other strong storms.

Residents in Denton County, Texas actually ran for cover as those sirens blasted out a warning. Officials reported damage but no injuries after a tornado touched down last night. Severe weather also shut down this baseball game you're about to see as storms rolled through just north of Dallas. And in Kansas, heavy rain and golf ball size hail pummeled part of that state. Torrential downpours also caused significant flooding along the Missouri/Kansas border.

CNN's Indra Petersons joins me now with more. Hey Indra.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes good morning it definitely look like we have shifted these seasons. We went from what was a very long winter down too quickly to the severe weather season.

What are we looking at? Well yesterday, well eight tornadoes, eight reports of tornadoes were out there. But that wasn't the only thing a lot of times you get some very strong, straight line wind reports. And notice we did see a lot of those -- about 133 of those. Also very large especially hail back through Texas yesterday.

A lot of people think this is a yesterday incident. That is not the case. In fact, we are still looking at the squall line with severe weather making its way across the country. You can actually some severe thunderstorm watches currently out there. The threat is still there for isolated tornadoes but less than yesterday.

Nonetheless, if you're near from Charleston, maybe to Roanoke, also even Asheville, and then farther again the tail section is down to the south, Mobile back to about New Orleans, you still have that threat for severe thunderstorms and even a threat for an isolated tornado.

So that's the concern today. The back side of this has been some heavy rain. And heavy rain in short periods of time really producing some heavy flooding around St. Louis, even out for (inaudible) Missouri, even outward Indianapolis two inches remember in a short period of time. That can be devastating.

But we're also going to be looking at that system making its way into the northeast today kind of backing up exiting off shore by this evening. That's the good news. Just keep in mind by the end of the weekend another system is going to be pushing in from the south. So with that we're going to be talking about the threat potentially for even more severe weather by next week.

And that we want to be hearing. But of course maybe it's just that time of the year -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: OK Indra Petersons thanks so much.

Well, still to come the batteries on the plane's black boxes -- the pingers, they're about to run out. It's why finding that flight data recorder is key now to solving that mystery of Flight 370.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well tomorrow, Flight 370's black box pinger is expected to start fading. And once that sound is gone, it will be even more difficult to try and find the flight data and cockpit voice recorders. Those devices likely contain critical information as well all know about what happened to that aircraft. CNN's Zain Asher is joining me now with more. I'll tell you families are on edge too. Everybody is watching and waiting to see what happens here.

ZAIN ASHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What happens, of course the black boxes let me tell you Kyra they are crucial in terms of figuring out the flight's maneuvers. So it's looking at things like speed, altitude, which pilot controlled what during that flight. I actually spent the day in Buffalo with an engineer who walked me through the process of how you go about downloading information on a flight data recorder and reading it on a computer to figure out what may have happened to a flight like MH-370. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN BALYS, OWNER, KGB AVIATION SOLUTIONS: Crash protected and shock mounted.

ASHER (voice over): This is what investigators will see once the black boxes of Flight MH370 are found and data from the memory downloaded for analysis.

BALYS: We will pull the data up in the screen we'll see the data in a tabular format and graphical format.

ASHER: Black boxes contain hundreds of data points or parameters about the flight's movement, pilot maneuvers, speed and altitude. All displayed with a series of graphs.

BALYS: Every flight data recorder records the data in binary values. It is a series of ones and zeros. In order for humans to understand that, we need to convert it into engineering units, and engineering units simply mean feet for altitude, ear speed is recorded at knots.

ASHER: It's through graphs like these that will learn if someone on board deliberately nose-dived the aircraft, if there was a pilot error or a mechanical problem.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: In an engine or mechanical failure there would be all kinds of indications. They would be able to determine which engine turned off first, if it was because of fuel starvation, they would know that versus if it would have been intentionally cut off.

ASHER: This line represents the plane's altitude. If flight MH-370 suddenly dropped to a lower altitude midflight, here is where we would see a change. And if someone on board deliberately altered the flight path, we'll see this line start to dip or rise depending on the direction.

BALYS: I think one of the important things that people will be looking at is who was in control of the aircraft. So when we look at the data from a flight data recorder, you can see if the inputs were coming from the autopilot or the left seat or the right seat -- in other words the pilot or the co-pilot.

ASHER: Technicians can also use latitude or longitude positions here to pinpoint where the plane was located at any point during flight and although the memory chips on flight data recorders are rarely ever damaged, airlines still need to perform regular flight data recorder maintenance and pre-flight testing to ensure the black boxes are up to par. The biggest challenge now is to locate them before the batteries die.

SOUCIE: Those pingers that are out there could be already dead. To find that pinger in those trenches or to find it after the pinger has stopped is going to be extremely difficult.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ASHER: And it's absolutely crucial that we find those black box before time runs out. But people are actually talking about using deployable black boxes, these are used by the military so that if a flight does crash, these are black boxes that would basically break away and float, obviously making it a lot easier to find especially in a situation like this.

PHILLIPS: Oh yes we've been talking about, you know, the efforts going on now under water to try to find those black boxes. And we hope we can do that before it's too late. Zain thanks so much.

Still to come, March Madness giving way to April's final four frenzy. Andy Scholes is in Texas for the big game -- Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, BLEACHER REPORT: Hi Kyra yes the big games are finally here. We've got two huge match ups tomorrow night. We'll break them all down after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Your brackets are in tatters, forget about it. Let's give it up for the teams that made it to the final four. They are playing tomorrow for the chance to move on at college basketball's championship game. Something Andy Scholes loves. He is at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, feeling the fire.

SCHOLES: Good morning -- Kyra. The anticipation is building. Tomorrow night, the final four teams left in the NCAA tournament are going to hit the floor here at AT&T Stadium to battle it out for a chance to play in Monday's championship game. Now today, the teams are going to come over here to the stadium to meet with the media and hold one final practice.

Now, this year's Final Four consists of Florida, UConn, Kentucky and Wisconsin. Now, the Gators -- they're the top overall team in the tournament. Most people expected them to get this far.

But the other three teams they're a bit surprising. And you know, it's kind of weird to say that Kentucky, is a surprising team to be in the Final Four considering this is their third appearance in the Final Four in the past four years. But this one by far the least expected after bringing in yet another stellar group of freshman players.

Kentucky, they're tabbed the pre-season number one team in the country. But the Wildcats did struggle through the season losing a number of games. However over the last two weeks, they have started to resemble the super team Kentucky fans were expecting at the start of the year. But still this team is one of the youngest to ever make it this far, the average age is just under 19 years old.