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Dam Forces Evacuations; Florida Jail Explosion; Virginia Trail Derailment; Big Names May Bid for Clippers; Was Leak of NBA Owner's Ran "Morally Wrong"; Massive May Day Rally in Red Square

Aired May 01, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

JEANETTE REYES, REPORTER, WJLA-TV: I want to get out of the way so I can show you this flooding, massive flooding on a major road here in Laurel, Maryland. If you take a look at this car dealership not far from here, half a dozen cars completely surrounded by water. I just stalked to the dealership owner and he tells me it's a complete loss. All of those cars are useless now. About $150,000 in losses there.

Now, back to those evacuations. They're underway. Currently about 100 people have already taken shelter at the Robert J. Depetro (ph) Community Center not far from here. Hundreds more are expected.

But I want to explain why this is going on. It is due to the rainfall but somewhat indirectly. They had to open up seven gates of a dam here and so that's why this is happening. They're telling us those gates will remain open indefinitely. No word on whether or not this will worsen. But, of course, needless to say, they're asking people to avoid this road and many others that have some flooding because you just never know how deep it is. Of course, it is for their own safety.

Back to you, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks so much.

Down south outside of Pensacola, Florida, a day of heavy rain and flooding ends with a deadly gas explosion at the county jail killing two and injuring 155 more. Ed Lavandera is live outside the Escambia County Jail.

Good morning, Ed.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Well, authorities here and investigators are trying to figure out if this explosion was caused by flooding. Part of the jail that you see behind me did take in some water. You can see some of the damage and the shockwaves that were sent through this building and how some of that building has already buckled because of the shockwaves from this explosion. So, ATF investigators, state fire marshal are looking into this, trying to figure out. We've seen damage all the way to the backside of this building several stories up. So the sheer force of this was rather impressive last night.

But (INAUDIBLE) area that took on quite amount of rain. Some 20 inches of rain fell throughout parts of this region in 24 hours. At some point there were five inches of rain falling in just one hour. We saw neighborhoods that were swept away and roadways that were swept away because of these floodwaters. You saw the Scenic Highway, which is just on the eastern edge of the city that had a big crater fall out in the middle of that roadway. So this is damage that we've seen throughout much of this area, Carol, that will take months to fix.

COSTELLO: Ed Lavandera reporting live this morning, thank you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, about a dozen train cars carrying crude oil derail and burst into flames in Virginia. Now, thousands of gallons of oil are missing, as officials investigate what went so wrong. Athena Jones live in Lynchburg for us.

Hi, Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.

We're here on the banks of the James River here in Lynchburg, Virginia, talking about rail safety, this issue that's on a lot of people's minds, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Nearly 50,000 gallons of crude oil missing after a freight train derails in Lynchburg, Virginia. Unbelievable, right? About a dozen cars were involved in this accident. The fire burned for about two hours. The thick, black smoke covered the air and nearby homes were evacuated. Officials don't know how much of the crude oil burned in the fire or how much may have actually spilled into the James River. Athena Jones is following it all in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Good morning, Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

You can see the crews behind me beginning the work of trying to remove those three railcars from the James River. Safety is an issue that's been getting a lot of attention lately as more and more crude oil is being shipped by rail. Transportation safety officials say, look, millions of dollars is being spent to find and tap oil reserves here in America and also in Canada. And so a commensurate investment needs to be made in making sure that oil is transported safely.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONES (voice-over): Clouds of thick, black smoke filled the air after this CSX freight train carrying crude oil jumped the tracks in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Saw this black smoke, and flames just shooting up real bad.

JONES: In all, about a dozen cars derailed Wednesday afternoon and caught fire along the James River, burning for about two hours.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was hiding behind a car waiting for my ride to get there to let us in the car. Yes, I wasn't 25 yards.

JONES: Nearby homes and buildings were evacuated. And while no one was injured and the city said its water supply wasn't affected, the incident comes amid growing concerns about the safety of transporting dangerous chemicals by rail. Outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman held a two-day forum on the issue just last week.

DEBORAH HERSMAN, OUTGOING NTSB CHAIRMAN: The issue is of what shouldn't be transported in those cars.

JONES: An oil boom in North Dakota and Canada means four times more crude is being shipped by rail now than in 2005. And that means the potential for serious accidents, like this one in Quebec last July, when a derailment and fire killed 47 people. And a string of accidents last winter in Alabama, North Dakota and New Brunswick, Canada.

In a letter sent to President Obama just hours before the accident, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo demanded that the federal government strengthen national safety standards for transporting crude, warning that inadequate rail tanks could make states like New York extremely vulnerable to the impacts of a derailment, spill, fire or explosion.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: Now, we're still waiting to hear exactly what type of railcar CSX was using to transport that crude oil. We know that one common type of car, the D.O.T. 111 is prone to rupturing in an accident. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has said that those cars will either need to be retrofitted or replaced.

Carol.

COSTELLO: Athena Jones reporting live from Lynchburg, Virginia, this morning, thank you.

Still to come on the NEWSROOM, Oprah Winfrey, L.A. Clippers' co-owner? Hey, it could happen, Stephanie Elam.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, it could, Carol. We are seeing that Donald Sterling is still the owner, but that doesn't mean some big names aren't talking about rubbing their pennies together and a whole lot of pennies to potentially buy the Clippers. We'll take a look at who's interested, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The NBA's move to force Donald Sterling to sell the L.A. Clippers takes another step forward today. Ten team owners will hold a committee meeting. Sterling has not made a public comment since league commissioner, Adam Silver, imposed a lifetime ban on him for making racist comments. ESPN is reporting that LeBron James passed on signing with the Clippers when he was a free agent in 2010 because he didn't want to play for Sterling. That story was relayed by David Geffen, who says he wants to buy the Clippers. And he's certainly not the only one who wants to buy the Clippers. CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Los Angeles with more on the big names who want a piece of the Clippers.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Carol, that's a sentence most of us could say and actually mean it, "I'd like to buy the Clippers." But when you talk about people like David Geffen, when you talk about Oprah Winfrey, Larry Ellison, these are some names that have a whole lot of cash. I was taking a look at their net worth according to "Forbes." And just to put it into perspective here, Geffen worth $6.2 billion, Oprah worth $2.9 billion, and Larry Ellison, who is the man behind Oracle, the software company, he's worth $50 billion. That's 5- 0. So you're talking about a lot of money.

And these three people are talking about working together to put together a bid and take over and buy the Clippers. If that were to happen, they'd definitely have the money. Just to compare, Sterling is worth just shy of $2 billion. So a lot of money here that you're seeing.

No matter any way that this goes down, though, Carol, Donald Sterling will make money off this deal because when he bought the team in 1981, he bought it for about $12 million. Right now the estimated worth would be about $575 million. But if they are working to get him out of there, chances are that bid could go even higher. So he could still walk away with a whole lot of money.

COSTELLO: He will walk away with a whole lot of money because the Bucks, the lowly Bucks, I'm sorry, I'm sorry Buck fans, but that team went for a record $550 million. The Clippers are in L.A., which is a very, you know, desirable television market, that team could sell for, I don't know, upwards of a billion dollars, right?

ELAM: A lot more. And keep in mind here that you're talking about a team that is a playoff contender right now. There's a lot of love for the Clippers in Los Angeles now, which is a sentence, again, you would have not said a few years ago. So because they have such strength right now, people enjoy the Clippers players, they enjoy the franchise. So that could also bring in bigger money there.

I should also note that there are some other people who - that we know are interested, namely boxers. Oscar de la Hoya, Floyd Mayweather. Those are two very rich men. They're millionaires. Not the same kind of money that we're talking about with the other three, but looking to put together some sort of group to make a bid to buy the team. They also very much interested in it.

And, you know, I should also point out, too, about Larry Ellison. He, four years ago, tried to buy the Golden State Warriors and lost that bid. So this is not something that he hasn't tried to do before.

COSTELLO: OK of course first Donald Sterling has to agree to sell the team. But -- but it's interesting to speculate. Stephanie Elam.

ELAM: That's small detail.

COSTELLO: Yes.

ELAM: Very small detail. COSTELLO: Stephanie Elam, many thanks.

My next guest says what happened to Donald Sterling was, quote, "morally wrong." His name is Marc Randazza, he's the managing partner of the Randazza Legal Group. In a widely read op-ed for CNN.com he writes, in part quote, "Don't get me wrong, Sterling does seem to be a bad person, but sometimes the bad person is also the victim and he stands in for us. In this story there are two villains. Sterling represents the bad old days, but Stiviano's behavior represents the horrifying future. Shouldn't we condemn the complete breakdown of privacy and trust at least as loudly as we condemn some old man's racist blathering?"

Marc I want to welcome you. Hi. Thanks for being here. Your op-ed certainly --

MARC RANDAZZA, MANAGING PARTNER, RANDAZZA LEGAL GROUP: It's a pleasure.

COSTELLO: -- your op-ed struck a nerve. It got what 13,000 comments and they're still coming in. Why do you think your op-ed struck such a nerve, first off?

RANDAZZA: You know, I think maybe there is a collective awakening to the fact that we now live in essentially a voluntary police state. You know, in -- eastern Europe before the fall of communism, people lived in East Germany constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering, which one of their neighbors was reporting on them. Which room was safe, which place had a microphone? Where were there hidden cameras? And people fought to get out of that. People lived under incredibly stress for that.

And now we don't have that imposed on us by the government, although the NSA, notwithstanding, but we are rushing toward that voluntarily and delightfully. And maybe it's time we step back and say, do we really want to live in this technological panopticon?

Let's forget about Donald Sterling. Put ourselves there. How many times a day do you have a private conversation that you really don't want to have recorded and then rebroadcast? And the technological element of this is what makes it really scary. We've always lived in a world where you could be talking to a trusted confidante, and they might repeat what you said. But that is markedly different from having yourself recorded or videotaped everywhere. And we are giving it away voluntarily.

And maybe it's time that we realize we're at the bottom of the slippery slope. It's time to try to climb back up. And climb back up helping each other climb back up, not like crabs in a pot trying to climb on top of one another and we all wind up in the water.

COSTELLO: Right.

RANDAZZA: We need to realize that privacy is important. And we really need to start taking some steps, whether it's legally, technologically or just socially to condemn this. COSTELLO: Well, in fairness, this V. Stiviano who made these recordings says she was Mr. Sterling's archivist and he wanted her to make these recordings. She said -- well, her lawyer said -- that she didn't release these tapes. So we really don't know who released these tapes. Does that make a difference?

RANDAZZA: Well, that makes a difference in this story. If that's her story and we take her at her word, it doesn't change the larger conversation that I think -- I and all the people who read that piece are having. This isn't really about a racist old man and his -- his lovely archivist. This is about at any given moment, this could be you. This could be me. And at probably dozens of moments a day, this is you and me. How many times do you walk under a surveillance camera that was put there voluntarily that you don't even know about? How many of your movements are tracked? How much of your conversation is recorded? And I'm not talking when you're here at work, of course. We're all fair game here on TV.

So you know, her story -- I'll take her at her word for now, but I -- I don't personally find it credible.

COSTELLO: Well, you know, the real irony -- the real irony here -- it took a recorded conversation in someone's home to be released for someone to react to Donald Sterling's history of racism. That's the irony part here because there were plenty of examples publicly for NBA players to react, for the NBA itself to react, and it didn't, but it took this invasion of privacy to get the ball rolling, so to speak.

RANDAZZA: Yes, because it was salacious, and it made headlines. But you're right. There is a long history of this guy being exactly what he was revealed to be in the tape. So why not do it before? You know, it is -- and that is, you know, that raises another issue of but -- but regardless, why not before?

He's got a documented history of being an abject bigot. And the NBA can, of course, eject him for that reason if they want to. But what troubles me is that it was the private conversation that did start the ball rolling. Where I'd be happy is if the NBA said, we're convening this hearing to throw him out and we're going to exclude that tape- recording because that's wrong. But we think that there's plenty of other evidence saying that he's bad for the brand and we want to get rid of him. That would be acceptable to me.

But unfortunately, I think the NBA is not going to take that stand. It's taking a stand on race which we'll give them any compliment they deserve for that, but I really think the larger issue here is privacy.

I mean I think there are worse things than being a bigot. And one of them is being a rat. And I think if you're -- you know, if you're a rat on your friends and you're tape-recording your friends in conversations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, I find that far more intolerable than if you have some very weird views on race.

COSTELLO: I don't think many people would agree with that part of your argument, but I can certainly understand where you're coming from. Marc Randazza thanks for being on. I appreciate it.

RANDAZZA: My pleasure.

COSTELLO: If you want to read more of Marc's op-ed titled "What happened to Sterling was morally wrong in its entirety," this is CNN.com/opinion. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be winning the struggle for Eastern Ukraine and I mean big time. The acting Ukrainian president says, quote, "I will be frank. Today security forces are unable to quickly take the situation in Donetsk and Luhansk regions under control. They are, quote, "helpless in those matters."

It's a stunning acknowledgment as pro-Russian militants now firmly control much of eastern Ukraine. And if there's any doubt Mr. Putin wants to return Russia to its Cold War grandeur, take a look at what happened at Red Square today. 100,000 people gathered for a massive May Day rally. We haven't seen anything like this since the communist Soviet Union dissolved.

CNN's Matthew Chance was there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Russian authorities say this is not meant to be any kind of Soviet revival, but for the first time since 1991, tens of thousands of Russians are parading through Red Square to commemorate May Day.

Now, officially, this has been organized by Russia's unions. The people here are students. They're factory workers. They're doctors and teachers. But it comes amid a growing sense of national pride in Russia, particularly in the face of international sanctions and the events in Ukraine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Well, maybe the young generation doesn't have the same pride that existed in Soviet times, but we're trying to rebuild our traditions.

CHANCE: Given the tensions between Russia and the West at the moment, are you concerned that the country could be drawn into another Cold War?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I'm not sure we're afraid of a new Cold War. I believe our country is independent and can get by alone, but other countries understand that we're strong and the world economy relies on us.

CHANCE: Well from some of the signs that people are carrying, you get a further indication of the public mood. This one here saying (inaudible), which means "Putin is Right". A lot of support for the Russian president but first and foremost, this is a festive occasion and an opportunity for Russians to exhibit their national pride.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. So that rally is now over. Matthew Chance joins me live from Moscow. You mentioned in your report that officials say the rally wasn't a political event, but it really was, wasn't it?

CHANCE: Well, I think, Carol, that everything that's staged publicly like this in Moscow right now and across Russia has a political dimension to it because there's such a lot of international pressure on Russia, the sanctions, I mentioned in that report, the unfolding situation in eastern Ukraine. It's having an effect on various aspects of Russian society. The economy is being impacted.

But you know, as I was mentioning in that report and as I saw in Red Square, you know, it's also bringing people together, perhaps bizarrely. People are feeling that they're under pressure from the outside. They're bonding together. And coming together in these big rallies like this one we saw in Red Square today. And it tallies with what some of the opinion polls are saying.

The latest polls that I've seen coming from La Vada (ph) census it's an independent polling agency here in Russia saying the approval ratings of Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, during this period of tension with the international community have reached 82 percent, which is pretty astonishing.

COSTELLO: You got that right. Matthew Chance reporting live from Moscow this morning.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.