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Stabbing Rampage at Pennsylvania High School; More Pings Heard By Flight 370 Searchers; High-Tech Devices Used in Search

Aired April 09, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: I spoke with a trauma surgeon not too long ago, describing an incredibly gruesome abdominal wound. This 17-year- old student underwent surgery this morning, still in critical condition.

Can you just bring us up to speed as far as how many are still in the hospitals and what the conditions are?

BROWN: We know that at least 19 classmates ranging from ages 14 to 17 were wounded, and there was one adult, a school security guard, that was injured, as well.

And we've learned, Brooke, the numbers, of course, are sort of in flux right now, but several have been discharged from the hospital, we've learned. They had minor stab wounds.

But others had much more critical wounds. In fact, at least two students went into surgery, right after the stabbing spree, and they are said to still have critical injuries, including one 17-year-old male.

But doctors say, Brooke, that the students with the serious injuries are expected to survive, though they do have serious injuries. The doctors say the fact that they are young really works in their favor here and helps in their recovery.

But certainly a tough situation out here.

BALDWIN: Yeah, way too young to have to endure anything like this.

Pamela Brown for us in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, Pamela, thank you so much.

And as we get new information, we are getting more insight into how this horrendous event unfolded this morning through hallways and classrooms at Franklin Regional High School.

And, so, I want to just play this sound for you. You will hear the police radio transmission in the moment after the mass stabbing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): (Inaudible) I have my whole shift coming your way. UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): (Inaudible), the first hallway on the right, halfway down. We've got horrible victims here. We need ambulance here as soon as possible.

Be advised the suspect is in custody, only one suspect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: You heard it there, one suspect, but again, that suspect in custody.

Much more on that breaking story out of Pennsylvania in a moment, but first, the other major story we've been working for weeks here, and now another possible breakthrough in the search for Flight 370, crews hearing now not one, two new signals that could be the pings from the airplane's black boxes.

Could these final clues, could these leads really track down this missing plane finally? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Just when it seemed the trail was literally going cold, new sounds were heard in the ocean. Searchers are now optimistic. This is their word that these could be from the pingers.

See this graphic here. This brings the total to four possible black- box signals, all of them located within 17 miles of one another.

By the way, the two signals here are more faint than the previous ones, and the man in charge of the search believes that these black- box, ping batteries are dying.

So, joining me now, David Soucie, CNN safety analyst and author of "Why Planes Crash," David Soucie, welcome back to you.

First of all, let's begin with that. If Angus Houston, the guy in charge of this whole thing says that these batteries could be dying, is that why -- does that make sense why they were more faint?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: It could be two different things, although Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston stated in his address that his pinging was less in his opinion because of the fact that the batteries are getting low, but it also could just be because they are further from the center of where that pinging's located.

BALDWIN: So, how does this work? What are they doing right now?

Because we know through triangulation and all these different positionings, right, trying to hone in on the genesis of the pings and that would, thus, be the black box, but it seems like they're over here one day, they're here another day.

How do they find the center? SOUCIE: What they're trying to do, right now, they have a dome. If you visualize in the graphic there, the rings that are coming out from the pinger, they construct a dome which -- in which from within you can get up -- get the signals.

Now, if you go and drag that pinger locator through one of those areas of the dome, it'll be in there for a longer period of time or less period of time, depending on where it enters the dome.

So the idea is that you want to go all these different directions to try to narrow it down, try to figure it out.

Unfortunately, they're not getting a long time period of this signal, so what that means is they're skirting the edge of this dome.

So, what they need to do is get back into the center of it, or maybe go a little bit to the north, see if they get back to have that two- hour stretch and start to narrow it down a little bit better.

BALDWIN: So, let's say, David, that they are in the neighborhood of the wreckage or at least of the black boxes, and let's say they do not hear any more pings. Then what?

SOUCIE: That starts the next phase. As Air Chief Marshal Houston stated in his address, again, that he's not going to put them in there until they've got a good confidence of the fact that the batteries are dead and no longer giving a signal.

There is no sense in putting those in right now, and the reason is that, if you do, it's going to interfere with the ability to pick up those signals.

So, you want to make sure it's clean, that everything's clear, there's nothing in the debris area, if it is, indeed, the debris area. And then at that point, once the batteries are dead, that's when the Bluefin-21 gets to work.

BALDWIN: Right. That submersible with the pretty accurate sonar.

Angus Houston sounds pretty confident. Let's hope they could be right there.

David Soucie, thank you. Thank you as always.

And, you know, we've talked a lot about exactly how deep the Indian Ocean is, especially in this search location.

So, coming up, we will tell you about the one piece of technology that can go deeper than any other. Have you heard of this? It's called the Alvin. It can go nearly three miles underwater.

We'll see if this could help the search, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Right now in the deep, deep waters of the Indian Ocean, may disrupt any fading pings from the Flight 370's black boxes because the ocean is nearly three miles deep in these key search areas.

Officials are limiting sea traffic in these areas just to try to keep the waters calm and quiet. Plus, they are not deploying underwater search vehicles just yet. So, that could happen. That could, though, interfere with any signals they're really listening closely for.

The sheer depth of the ocean, though, is creating massive obstacles all to its own. So joining me to discuss, he is back, Georgia Aquarium research director, Al Dove, and meteorologist Chad Myers with just a great visual explanation here that is 3D, Chad.

So, I want you to just take it away and just show me the challenges of the depths we're talking about.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I truly don't think people get it, honesty. I've been a scuba diver all my life, about a hundred feet. A hundred-and-sixty-eight was my deepest dive ever. Your bottom time is literally nothing.

The Empire State Building, about 1,200 feet. The valley, all the way down at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, about 5,000 feet. Where we found the Titanic, about 12,000 feet.

And we're still lower than that. We're 13,000 feet and farther down than that. So what does that mean?

Let's say you have the vessel on top of the ocean there, and you're pulling this wire. It's almost 10,000 feet low, so that means you need 2.8 miles of cable to get it down to be that low. You just can't drop it down below the boat. It's got to kind of fly out behind the boat.

So, think about you have a giant fish on your line, Brooke, and you're trying to reel it in. You've got 2.8 miles of line out there. You don't know exactly where that fish is down there because there are a little bit of currents going back and forth.

Plus, it's 2.8 miles down that way somewhere, so we're talking about how sometimes it's been a 14-mile distance between where one ping was located, where the other ping was located.

Let's say the planes -- the boats were doing this, and that was 2.8- negative, because now the pinger's way back here, and 2.8-negative here. All the sudden, we're only about nine miles apart.

So the big depths down here are crushing, 7,000 psi. I have a great power washer. It's 1,500 psi. If I'm wearing flip-flops and I hit my toe, it will take the skin off my toe. It will take the wood off my deck if I'm there too long. And we're only talking 1,500 psi.

Down there, 7,000 psi, not squirting, I get that, but it's trying to crush this can, this pinger, as much as it can way down in the depths, and it's dark, not a bit of light gets down there at all.

BALDWIN: OK, Chad, actually, hang tight there, because I want to keep that 3D-graphic up, and let me bring in Al Dove, because we were talking yesterday, and I think the graphic really illustrates here, that the depth -- and we talked about the Titanic, right, that was found 72, 73 years later, using, you know, not as hip technology as we have today.

But that was just around 12,000-ish, right, feet? We're talking 15,000 now, and there's this -- it is an HOV, human operated vehicle, called the Alvin that maybe could go that deep.

ALISTAIR DOVE, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, GEORGIA AQUARIUM: This is really kind of pushing it for Alvin. Alvin's rated to about 14,500 feet.

Most likely, they would send down a ROV, a remotely operated vehicle, first, and there's several of those that could go to those depths. Actually, there are several of those that can go to the deepest parts of the ocean.

So, whether you pick the Jason or the Nereus, there's several other very capable remotely operated vehicles, that's probably where they would start, and something like Alvin might be the caboose that would come through and be the very last thing that you would send down to look at wreckage.

BALDWIN: Right now, though, they are trying to hone in, as Chad was explaining, you know, negative, positive, where, how exactly the ping would be coming from, the genesis of the ping.

And so these last two pings, faint maybe because the batteries are dying, maybe because they were farther away, maybe because, and we've talked about this before, the silt, the ooze. It could be buried.

How -- describe the silt and how deep could it be?

DOVE: This stuff is -- we call it marine snow. In the deep ocean, the bodies of old plankton just rain down all the time into the bottoms of the ocean, and over time it forms thick layers of what we call ooze. The ooze is the technical term. And this stuff can be up to a mile thick, so --

BALDWIN: A mile thick?

DOVE: It's not likely we're talking about a thin veneer of silt over the top of a hard substrate. This is thousands of feet of thick, sticky ooze. It's a mix of clay and old plankton.

MYERS: I had a Twitter question earlier, and I don't -- I couldn't answer it, but now I can because you can.

With the pressure, the depth we're talking about, does the ooze ever get compacted?

DOVE: Not in the same way because water supports the things that are at that depth and that's the same reason why it's unlikely that any wreckage would sink completely into the ooze, because it's being supported somewhat by the ooze, and by the water that surrounds it.

The pressure is still incredibly pervasive, but it's not like quicksand. It's not going to disappear down into the mud. MYERS: I think this two-hour ping and the 13-minute ping can best be described as cutting of pizza. If you cut it very slowly through the middle, it might take you two hours.

If you just nicked the crust on the very edge of that ping diameter, you would only take 13 minutes through that little part right, where it's a long drive through and a short drive through.

They need to go back to the long drive through was to get that ping and to get that triangulation going.

BALDWIN: Yeah, these last two pings, just a matter of minutes.

Al Dove, come back any time. We love tapping into your expertise.

Chad Myers, thank you very much.

MYERS: We love talking about ooze with you.

BALDWIN: Hey, it's a real thing. It could be a mile deep. I had no idea.

Gentlemen, thank you very much.

And, of course, we will continue our coverage of missing Flight 370 in just a minute, but first, more on our breaking story out of Pennsylvania.

Twenty people injured in a stabbing rampage this morning at a high school.

We will hear more about the young victims, their stories and the heroes who swooped in to help.

Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A 16-year-old teenager is in police custody after a stabbing spree at a high school in a Pittsburgh suburb.

Twenty people were hurt when police say this young man went from classroom to classroom down the hall, carrying two different knives, and stabbing anyone, seemingly, who got in his way.

Jean Casarez has been following this attack since it happened early this morning. Jean, what more are you learning about these young people, ages 14 to 17, who were hit? What do we know about them?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, right in the prime of high school.

We're learning that three of the students are going to be staying in intensive care tonight. They're going to be monitored all night and those are the three victims that actually went into surgery.

Now, 11 victims were taken, originally, to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hospitals, and that would be four hospitals.

We've heard some really particulars about one, a 17-year-old, that a doctor at Children's Hospital described as receiving a stab wound to the left part of his lower torso, which seemed to be a pattern here, and that stab wound perforated his liver, his diaphragm, major blood vessels.

The doctor said the only reason he lived is that the knife did not go through his heart or his aorta. He's currently on life support, but they do believe that he will survive.

BALDWIN: And as they are struggling to do so, there are some stories emerging, this school resources officer who -- did he slap handcuffs on the suspect?

CASAREZ: He is the one that apparently actually apprehended him, but the security guard was finishing his overnight duties, just about to go home, and that's when the school resources officer called on the intercom phone that they have, saying, We've good a problem.

So, the security guard came, school resources officer, a principal, and the security guard was stabbed in his torso, and he has been in the hospital.

But it was the principal, it appears as though, at least one of the principals, that subdued and then the -- then he was handcuffed, apprehended and taken to the police station.

BALDWIN: Jean Casarez, thank you so much for your reporting.

We've talked to a number of students. Jake Tapper, my colleague Jake Tapper, will speak to a student who saw everything. Of course, "THE LEAD" starts in just minutes from now, so stay tuned to that.

But switching gears back here to the plane, you have heard terms sonar and hydrophone devices when describing some of the strategies used in finding missing Flight 370.

So next, we'll take you on board this boat that actually has these devices. We will show you what they are, explain how they work and how searchers are using them in the Indian Ocean.

Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We've been talking about the possible major leads here, these two new sets of pings from somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and now the search for Flight 370 has shrunk to a patch of water roughly the size of South Carolina.

So, that is four sets of pings here, you'll see them all in yellow, since Saturday, all within the 17-mile stretch of one another. And the head of the search effort is predicting they will find the plane or its wreckage very soon.

He says additional data from the pings heard over the weekend strongly suggests they were not random ocean noise but electronic signals.

And you see that red spot at the tiptop of the screen here? That's where they're searching now. That's the evolution of the search since early March.

But let's go live to a boat off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. There she is, Stephanie Elam back on a boat for us today to do a little demonstration, show us -- give us a better idea of what it is they're doing to find the plane.

Stephanie?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. Right, Brooke, because we keep hearing this talk about pingers, right, and what they do? And I want to show you what a pinger looks like.

But first, let me introduce you to James Coleman. He is the senior hydrographer with Teledyne Rason.

And let's take a look at pinger, because it's way smaller than I thought it was.

JAMES COLEMAN, SENIOR HYDROGRAPHER, TELEDYNE RASON: Yeah, exactly.

So this is an emergency locator beacon that's used in black boxes. This is the pinger that's sending out that 37.5 kilohertz sound or a similar pinger to what's sending out that 37.5 kilohertz sound.

ELAM: And then this is what's picking it up right here, right? These are hydrophones that we're looking at here?

COLEMAN: Right. These are different examples of hydrophones. Hydrophones come in all shapes and sizes. They're basically underwater microphones. That's the component that's used in a pinger locator to be able to pick up that pinging sound.

ELAM: And when it picks it up, though, it doesn't know were the ping is coming from?

COLEMAN: No, it's just detecting the sound. It doesn't know that it came from here or over there. It just detects the sound.

And they use the fact that the sound gets louder as you go this and softer as you go that way to try to localize where the sound is coming from.

ELAM: All right, so let's go inside and take a look at what the sound can look like, and then how we would map it on top of it, as well.

COLEMAN: I have a hydrophone in water now, and so, you can hear the once-per-second click coming in. That's the sound of the pinger.

But you can have a visual representation of it, and so what we see here is the frequency that the sonar's picking up or the hydrophone is picking up in the water and there's energy in a particular band.

If you were looking for that underwater locator beacon, you would want to make sure that that was in that 37 kilohertz band. So that's what they're using to know that they're looking at the right sound.

ELAM: And then the other thing that they're doing is the side-scan sonar, because that can see more what's underneath the boat, right?

COLEMAN: Right. And, so, it's important to recognize this is done in stages.

We've done the stage of isolating the rough area where this is located. We want to get an image of what happens down there. They're going to use side-scan sonar for that.

So this is detecting. It's just sending out pings to either side of the boat and looking for images of objects on the sea floor.

ELAM: And so is this something here that we're looking at?

COLEMAN: Right, so there's a couple of objects that are beginning to show up as we go over this debris field. And that's what we're detecting with the side-scan.

ELAM: And so then, after you do that, you take this data, and you're able to map it. So what would that look like?

COLEMAN: Right, right. And, as I said, we're doing this in stages.

ELAM: Right.

COLEMAN: And, so, we're progressively getting more and more detail. They're going to mow the grass, as you say, as we call the (inaudible).

You're going to just keep going backwards and forth, and building up a map. And, so, here's some data that we already collected earlier today. And as we're going along, we're recording more data.

This is multi-beam (inaudible) data. It's a higher level of detail than what we were looking at, but they have a myriad of tools as they get more and more detail on the what the wreck site looks like.

ELAM: So this is what you would do if you figured out where that debris field was?

COLEMAN: Right.

ELAM: If you were looking for that and you found that, then you would do this to map out where the bigger pieces are and how you could pull those up?

COLEMAN: Right, and you're progressively working more detail until eventually you're able to get camera on all of the different pieces that are down on the sea floor. So we're detected it with the pinger locator. We've mapped out the general area with the side-scan. We're doing more detail here and then eventually we're going to do optics.

ELAM: It's amazing technology, Brooke, and it's very detailed, but, obviously, as you can see, it takes a long time to do it, as well.

BALDWIN: I see that.

Stephanie Elam and James Coleman, thank you so much.

Just each sort of level of searching and then, of course, the different pieces, the different, you know, ROVs, HOVs, AUVs they're using, deployed in this search that's now shrunk right now based upon these possible pings just 17 miles.

Let's hope for the sake of the families they find it.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me. I'll see you back here tomorrow. "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.