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U.S. Navy Arrives to Assist in Ferry Search; Mt. Everest's "Death Zone"

Aired April 18, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you so much.

Great to be with you on this Friday. We begin this hour with breaking news. We have just learned from the Defense Department they are expected to announce today they are sending a rescue and a salvage ship, the USNS Safeguard, to help in what is now an effort here to salvage the wreckage of the South Korean ferry and try to retrieve any bodies, should they be found here.

So the search for survivors on this capsized ferry really is turning increasingly grim at this hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN (voice-over): And now new pictures coming to us today inside the once-sinking ship. First of all, here we are beginning day 3. And you see by the looks of these pictures, that boat is now completely underwater and the death toll has risen to 29.

As for those missing, that number sits at 273. Scuba divers have made multiple attempts to get in there, find survivors. They did manage to get into the second and third floors of the ferry, but debris hampered search efforts to get up that fourth floor, where the passenger cabin rooms are located.

Meantime, as I mentioned, we are finally getting a clearer look inside the sinking ship. You can see here, as the water is rushing into this ferry, frightened passengers trying to escape. They were gripping the guardrails.

Some of those trapped grabbed their cell phones, hit record, taking these videos as they waited, hoped to be rescued.

And we are now hearing part of that conversation between the ferry's crew and ocean ministry officials. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (from captions): Please notify the coast guard. Our ship is in danger. The ship is rolling right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (from captions): Where is your ship?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (from captions): Please hurry. Absolutely hurry.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (from captions): Yes, OK, we will contact you. This is group 12.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (from captions): Ship rolled over a lot right now. Cannot move. Please come quickly.

We're next to Byeongpung Island, Byeongpung Island.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (from captions): Yes, understood.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So that was the back-and-forth between the ship and the dispatch. Let me show you this image now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN (voice-over): This is the captain of this ferry, Lee Joon Sook (ph), caught on camera, being rescued, leaving his ship and hundreds of his passengers behind. An arrest warrant has now been issued for him and two other crew members.

An assistant engineer on board describes what they were told to do.

PARK SEONG-YONG, ASSISTANT ENGINEER (through translator): The chief engineer phoned and told us to evacuate from the engine room. So three people left around 9 o'clock, I think.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And now this today, we are hearing that the high school vice principal, remember a lot of high school students on board this vessel, that individual here, investigators say he committed suicide. They found him hanging from a tree not far from where the families have been gathering, waiting for word on their children in Jindo (ph), South Korea.

Also under investigation, officials say a third mate, not the captain, was at the helm of the ferry when it capsized. So coming up next hour, we will dig a little deeper into this, including a stunning report from CNN's Randi Kaye. She will take us inside a ferry simulator to show us what it might have been like inside the ship when the water started rushing in.

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BALDWIN: But now we turn to the hunt to find missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. CNN has learned, a senior Malaysian aviation source telling us, Flight 370 had four emergency locator transmitters on the plane. And according to this source, it is odd that the transmitters did not activate or at the very least were not picked up by the emergency monitoring satellite.

This is new information that we're just turning around for you here. The 777 disappeared six weeks ago. Still no answers as to what happened to those 239 people on board.

Right now the Bluefin-21 underwater drone, it is on mission number five, a deepwater journey to scour miles of the ocean floor, just trying to find any traces, proof, evidence, debris, something from this plane.

Crews spent hours analyzing data from Bluefin's fourth mission, came up empty. This week this drone has scanned more than 42 square miles without yielding a single clue.

Malaysia's transport minister tweeted this today, they may now add more underwater drones to help in this search. Those extra drones might be deployed to a much larger zone. So that's some news that was made this morning.

Australia's top transport official says authorities may consider expanding the search area significantly but with no evidence, with no debris, right now all hopes are pinned on the Bluefin underwater's drone current mission.

So let's go now to correspondent Erin McLaughlin at the search base in Perth, Australia, with more on this mission number five -- Erin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERIC MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As of 9:00 am this morning, the Bluefin was in the water searching for any signs of missing Malaysia Flight 370. No word yet if it has completed that mission. But we are hearing more information about the fourth dive that took place last night.

We understand it was able to travel some 4.7 kilometers beneath the ocean surface, which is significant, given that it was originally thought that the 4.5-kilometer mark was on the upper reaches of its depth capacity. It had to cut its first mission short because it traveled into waters originally thought too deep.

But the fact that it's now able to travel into some of those deeper waters is important and significant that, because it's important that it be able to search this entire area that has been identified by experts, based on detailed acoustic analysis as the most probable place to find the black box.

Four dives into this search and no signs of missing plane as yet, we're still waiting again for word on the fifth mission -- Erin McLaughlin, CNN, Perth, Australia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Erin, thank you so much, 2:00 in the morning there your time in Australia.

Now this Bluefin started its latest mission roughly as she mentioned nine hours ago. Ideally it's supposed to scan the ocean floor for 16 hours plus spend two hours traveling each way from the ocean surface to the floor, of course, and vice versa. Now the Bluefin uses sonar to scan for anything unusual. It shouldn't be on the ocean floor.

So let's broaden the conversation. Van Gurley is senior manager at Tron Scientific Solutions (ph) and retired Navy captain and oceanographer.

And joining me in the studio, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers.

So, Captain, let me begin with you, because, we heard from Malaysia's transport minister, actually via Twitter, of course, that they are considering adding more AUVs in addition to this one Bluefin-21.

What else could they use?

CAPT. VAN GURLEY, FORMER U.S. NAVY OCEANOGRAPHER: Well, there are a number of AUVs that are rated at this depth. So it would be similar in technology but, again, it just sort of speeds up the search, if you have multiple assets working in an area in cooperation.

BALDWIN: Yes, I know at Air France, they used Remus 6000 three times over. And a lot of people have been wondering why aren't they using more? So maybe they will.

But let's say, Captain, that even if they throw more resources at this, that they come up empty tomorrow or in a couple of weeks. How long do you think they should go before they decide to regroup and come back with fresh eyes?

GURLEY: Well, it's not a matter of time; it's really a matter of how much of the area have they covered. So right now what they're doing is they're searching in the area where they think they heard the pings from the black boxes.

They have done some analysis. But they haven't released what it means in terms of narrowing that area down. So if look at the total area where the pings were heard, that's about 320 to 500 square miles. That's a good chunk of area, given that in four days they have only covered about 40 square miles.

So if they get through that whole area and still have found nothing and that's several weeks, maybe a month, month and a half, then it's time to regroup. But this -- we've always said this is going to take a long time. And the fact that it's taking a long time shouldn't alarm us.

BALDWIN: So OK. So not to be alarmed. Could be a couple more weeks before they really are able to look at this entire area.

But Chad, I'm still having a hard time visualizing -- you know, we throw these numbers out as far as the search area.

How big is this?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: What I could see on marinetraffic.com, I can watch the Ocean Shield just like I can go flightexplorer and watch all the air (INAUDIBLE) --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Sure.

MYERS: -- we can go to marinetraffic.com and watch all the boats. We can see them out there, we can see how fast they're going, what direction they're going and where they have been.

Now, Captain, I have a question for you, just really quickly, this Ocean Shield has been going about 0.4 knots all night their time. A half a mile per hour. Does that seem slow to you?

GURLEY: Well, again, the thing to watch is the Bluefin. It moves by itself. It's completely unconnected from the ship. That's why we call it an autonomous vehicle.

So the fact that the Ocean Shield may be what we call hove to, sort of staying in one spot while a vehicle is on the bottom really sort of means nothing. The issue is how much of the ocean bottom is the Bluefin able to get over. And then it talks to the ship and it comes back up and it's recovered. So I wouldn't read too much into the fact that the ship is staying fairly stationary right now.

MYERS: So it doesn't mean that the Bluefin is staying fairly stationary below it. The Bluefin could be doing back and forth this -- the grass mower, back and forth, and it could just be on top of it? And that doesn't really tell us that this thing -- ?

GURLEY: Absolutely.

MYERS: -- or didn't find something, because that's what I saw.

Let me show you this, Brooke.

I saw it earlier today, and I said, wow, this boat, this Ocean Shield essentially came to a stop, and that's great news, isn't it, because if it came to a stop then maybe this Bluefin found something. But here is Australia. Here is the Indian Ocean.

That, Brooke, that little dot is what they have it down to right now. That is it. That's about 49 to 50 square miles here in that polygon I just measured it. But something else, we know that as the pinger, the listener went across, it found these two hours or 15 minutes worth of pinging.

But something else they found. They found a sofar layer -- S-O-F-A-R layer or a deep ocean layer. And I want to talk to the captain about this.

If the pinger here, there is actually something, it's the same reason why, when you were a kid you could go and listen to your short-wave radio and hear Radio Moscow because these pingers' frequencies can actually bounce back and forth a little bit and give you kind of an error of when you think you're close but you're not.

So maybe we do have to expand this area if we don't find something in the next month. Captain, have you heard about this sofar layer? And how could that really change the aspect of what they heard?

GURLEY: That is a very well known mechanism in the ocean that makes some sounds, I want to say some, go very long distances. It was discovered back in World War II and it was a mechanism by which we could find downed pilots, by listening almost halfway across the ocean.

But -- and this is the important point -- it's very dependent on the frequency of the sound. There's another piece of ocean physics that says that as you go up in frequency, get higher, the ocean itself absorbs the energy very quickly. And at the frequencies they are dealing with here, of the pinger, 37.5 kHz, it is -- that signal will not go very far. One, two, maybe three miles and that's it, there's nothing left.

MYERS: Talk about those very low sounds, boom, that can go very long distances in the ocean. Thanks, Captain.

BALDWIN: It's amazing what that teeny tiny speck, Chad, just to put it in perspective, but you know, hopefully maybe for the search efforts, they can throw some more resources at this and find something.

MYERS: Hey, Brooke, I have one more thing.

BALDWIN: Quickly, Chad.

MYERS: Can I show you this real quick?

BALDWIN: Yes.

MYERS: I just think this is one of the coolest things I have seen all day. This is what the Ocean Shield has done now -- this is the same square. That's what the Ocean Shield has done on marinetraffic.com in the past nine hours. That's it. That's all it's moved.

BALDWIN: It's incredible.

MYERS: But as the captain said, don't look at this, don't look to that. That could just be the fact that the Bluefin is down below, going back and forth, doing it. But it just has not moved very much today.

BALDWIN: OK.

Captain Van Gurley and Chad Myers, thank you both very much. Obviously we'll revisit the story, but let's move along, because coming up -- talk about a somber day in Nepal after the deadliest avalanche ever on Mt. Everest. We will get reaction from a professional climber coming up, who knows firsthand what it's like to survive there in this part of the world.

And it was confidential information about the Clinton's time in the White House -- that is until about an hour ago. We will take a look at what's inside this latest release of documents. This is actually the largest batch yet.

And we will take you inside this ferry simulator just to give you an idea of what it looks like and what it felt like as that South Korean ship capsized with all those high school students and teachers just a couple days ago. Stay here.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "He left saying, 'Dad, I'll be back,'" he says, "now he's in the sea.

"Please help my baby, my baby is crying with fear in the sea. Please save my baby. All of his friends are there. All his school friends."

"I want to jump in the sea," she says, "thinking about my child in the sea. How can I as a parent eat or drink? I hate myself for this."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Distraught families of passengers on board this capsized South Korean ferry, expressing their anguish, not knowing if their missing children and their loved ones are still alive. And as we enter day three and the search continues, the U.S. Navy is now on site to help. The U.S.S. Bonhomie Richard (ph) arrived today and will conduct search and rescue missions.

As we said at the top of the hour, we also just learned that the Department of Defense just announced it will also be sending rescue and salvage ship the U.S.S. Safeguard to help here in these waters.

Meantime, the death toll now sits at 29, 273 remain missing and an arrest warrant has now been issued for the captain of this ferry, Lee Joon Sook (ph) and two other crew members and investigators say the captain was not at the helm when the ferry sank.

In fact, they say it was a third mate who was.

Adding to the tragedy today, the high school vice principal who was one of the first to be rescued committed suicide. Officials say they found him hanging from a tree right around where the family members are waiting for word.

And murky conditions and debris forced divers to retreat. They have been unable to access the fourth floor passenger cabins on this sunk ship.

We have seen some of the dramatic scenes from inside the ferry when it began to sink. And CNN's Randi Kaye actually takes us inside a simulator for a closer look at what these frightened passengers might have experienced.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As the South Korean ferry began to lean, this is what it looked and felt like.

KAYE: So at this point, with the vessel on its side, people would be falling.

CAPT. DON MARCUS: Yes, people would have fallen. People would be injured. People would be climbing over each other if they were in a crowded compartment and there would definitely be great fear and panic.

KAYE (voice-over): This is a rare glimpse inside a ship simulator in Baltimore, Maryland. Captain Donald Marcus is showing us what those on board the ferry in the Yellow Sea may have been experiencing as the ship started to sink.

KAYE: It's so disorienting.

MARCUS: Yes. It certainly is at this point.

KAYE (voice-over): As the ferry took on water, a loudspeaker on board warned passengers to stay where they are.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Don't move. If you move it is more dangerous. Don't move.

KAYE (voice-over): This cell phone video shows people staying in place. Those who ignored the warning believe that is why they got out alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The captain announced it about 10 times, so kids were forced to stay put. So only some of those who moved survived.

KAYE (voice-over): Captain Marcus (ph) says that is not standard protocol, that passengers should have been moved to upper decks.

KAYE: Is there something that a passenger should do in a situation like that?

MARCUS: You would certainly go to a higher deck, go where you can exit the vessel. Generally speaking you are safer on the vessel until such point as you assess that, yes, the vessel is going to sink and then you need to evacuate abandon ship.

KAYE: But a blanket warning of don't move doesn't make sense to you?

MARCUS: Not to me.

KAYE (voice-over): When the ferry started to take on water, alarms like these would have sounded immediately. They wouldn't indicate whether or not the ferry had hit a rock or if there had been an explosion, nor would they specify where the water was coming in.

MARCUS: You'd be getting various alarms, you'd be doing the emergency signals, be trying to contact various crew to do assessments. KAYE (voice-over): Investigators believe the ferry likely ran off course due to foggy weather. They say the ship may have made a sharp turn to get back on track.

MARCUS: The danger is not in overcorrecting. The danger is getting to that point of no return.

KAYE: We can even simulate the rescue operation underway here. They are dealing with heavy rains, high winds, rough seas. You can see the rescue ships out there and the choppers up above, which are there.

But looking at these conditions, it's easy to understand why it has been so difficult for the rescuers to get inside that ferry and see if there's anyone there still alive.

KAYE (voice-over): Alive and perhaps in air pockets in the ship, but neither time nor temperature are on their side.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: And Randi Kaye joins me live.

And, Randi, what was it like to be in there?

KAYE: It was so strange, Brooke. I mean, first of all, it was very disorienting, as I said. But you know, it was hard at times even to remember that we were on dry land because as soon as I walked in, they had the rain going and the ship was already on its side. And it's filled with windows in there, as you could see, you know, on the sides and also straight ahead. So it was just really hard to get your bearing and figure out exactly where you were. And when you think about this happening in real life and that it did happen in real life before and also in this case, it's just terrifying to think of what these people went through.

BALDWIN: So frightening. Thank you for us -- trying to bring us their perspective, Randi Kaye in New York for us.

Coming up next, Martin Savidge, our correspondent, he's at it again. He's reporting from the depths of Horseshoe Bay, what it's like navigating the ocean floor from inside a sub. We'll take you live underwater.

Also a deadly avalanche on Mt. Everest kills the men who were trying to ensure the safety of others. We will talk to a man who has summitted the world's highest peak and knows all too well why this mountain has become one of the globe's most famous graveyards.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news. BALDWIN: We have got some breaking news here in this missing Malaysia Airlines 370 that's just coming in from the senior Malaysian aviation source, telling CNN a couple of things. First of all, Flight 370 did indeed have four emergency locator transmitter. These are the ELTs on board this plane and according to this source, it is odd that these ELTs, these transmitters, did not activate or at the very least were not picked up by the emergency monitoring satellite.

So Richard Quest, our CNN aviation analyst who has been all over this since day one, here's my first question to you.

Can you just explain to me what ELTs are and why this is so bizarre?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN HOST: So the ELT, the emergency locator transmitter, this is different to the pingers. The pingers are designed to continue to transmit a particular signal on the recognized frequency that we have been talking about for so many weeks.

The ELTs are designed to send a signal to a satellite in the event of an impact. They are not only used by planes, they are used by ships. They are even used in some cases by expeditions where anytime, if you were to get into trouble, you would need to send an emergency signal.

They are picked up by satellites. They are then processed through emergency services and then obviously help and rescue is brought along. But there is some difficulty in understanding their capabilities underwater.

BALDWIN: OK. So we can deduce, based upon all of the searching and the analysis, this plane is somewhere in the water thus it would have had that impact with the water, the ELTs should have gone off. So the obvious follow-up is could someone turn them off before they made contact?

QUEST: Very unlikely. Extremely unlikely that they would have been disabled. I say unlikely; you know, in this -- we are in unique, unprecedented territory here, but the location of the ELTs -- in this case we believe one is in the cockpit, one is in the fuselage, one is behind the rear door, one is behind the front door.

And is it possible? Well, there's a possibility.

One of the great unknowns about 370 has always been why the ELTs, as they're called, the ELTs gave no signal, either on impact if it had crashed on land or crashed on water.

Why was there no ELT transmission?

And now we know that there is four or it is believed there were four of them on board the aircraft. That is something that will have to come out in the investigation, the failure of the ELTs to give a destination or to give a transmission.

BALDWIN: All of these methods of communication, Richard, the ACARS, other communicative devices, now these ELTs, none of them worked. It's perplexing, but I will move on from that because my other question, now that we are getting more information from this senior Malaysian source, is more about the altitude of this plane, after that veer off course, after that left turn, what do we know now?

QUEST: Right. So this source is telling CNN that the turn, which we know is about 01:22, the turn happens in Vietnamese airspace. That shouldn't be a surprise because if you'll remember, the "Good night, Malaysia 370" was the handoff from Kuala Lumpur control to Ho Chi Minh control. So within moments it was going to be in Vietnamese airspace. Then the turn takes place. The transponder is switched off. We know this already from what's being -- has been announced. And then apparently the plane climbs from flight level 35,000, we know that is where it was at because that was the last air traffic control that we had. And it climbs to flight level 39,000 feet. And thereupon -- I'm going to talk it through with the map -- so, oh, I was going to say --

BALDWIN: Bring the map up, guys. Bring the map up.

QUEST: Bring the map up. And I will talk this through with you through the animation.

BALDWIN: It's coming. Here we go.

QUEST: All right. So at this point, it's at 35,000 feet. That point is at Vietnamese airspace. It climbs to 39,000 feet. It stays at that for 20 minutes until a descent roughly where you see Parak (ph) and then an ascent. That's the way the source explains what's happened.

It turns in Vietnamese, it climbs to 39,000, it crosses 39,000 it then descends thereafter.