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Lawsuits Filed After Deadly Concert; Paul Wertheimer is Interviewed about Crowd Management; U.S. Reopens Borders to International Travelers; Barack Obama Speaks in Glasgow. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 08, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:12]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good Monday morning. I'm Erica Hill.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

Any moment now, former President Obama will speak at the U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow. This about the current need, the urgent need, for action on the climate crisis. We're going to bring you his remarks live.

First, a significant step marking the slow return to normal. Today, the United States is reopening its borders to fully vaccinated visitors, ending a 20-month-long ban on travel into the U.S. Foreign visitors must be fully vaccinated with a few exceptions, and if they are traveling by air, they will also need a negative COVID-19 test. We're going to have more on that in just a moment.

HILL: Also, a major win in Washington. A key piece of President Biden's agenda about to be signed into law. Democrats now face two additional hurdles. There is, of course, that multi-trillion-dollar social spending package and climate bill.

SCIUTTO: And, sadly, deadly chaos at a music festival in Texas. Concertgoers called it a fight for survival. At least eight people are dead, dozens more injured. Rapper Travis Scott is now facing the first of what could be a wave of lawsuits.

HILL: Let's begin with the controversy surrounding Friday's Astroworld Music Festival. Authorities declared it a mass casualty event 30 minutes into Scott's performance. Witnesses, though, say his set continued for an additional half hour, all while the chaos was unfolding. People screaming about bodies in the crowd.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is someone dead. There is someone dead.

There is someone f-ing dead in there.

There is someone dying.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop the show! Stop the show! Stop the show!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Stop the show. Stop the show, they shouted. It is unclear what Scott was able to see from the stage, whether he was aware of how serious the situation was with the crowd at the time. He released a video response on Instagram on Saturday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRAVIS SCOTT, RAPPER/ASTROWORLD FESTIVAL ORGANIZER: At any time I could make out, you know, anything that's going on, you know, I was -- you know, I'd stop the show and, you know, help them get the help they need, you know. I could just never imagined the severity of the situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Rosa Flores joins us now live from Houston.

And, Rosa, I understand you spoke with people who were at the concert all weekend. What are they telling you about what they saw?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Jim, it was so tragic. Many of them describing that they were packed in there like sardines, that it was very difficult to breathe and that now they're so traumatized by what happened, some of them saying they're never going to a Travis Scott concert again.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA WHITE, ATTENDED ASTROWORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL: I've never been in such chaos, like, so unorganized and just so many people, like, slamming into me. Like, there was -- it was just -- it was -- it was really hell.

SINCLAIRE HOYT, ATTENDED ASTROWORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL: You could feel like everybody pushing up behind you. Like, you couldn't move your arms. You couldn't breathe. Like, you couldn't see anything. It was like you were seeing the back of like really tall people's heads. So, like, when everybody was moving, there was like 15 -- like 20 minutes where like we weren't in control of our bodies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: Now, all this as new questions are surfacing about Houston officials being concerned before this concert turned deadly. "The New York Times" reporting that the Houston Police chief went to Travis Scott's trailer before he performed because he was concerned about the energy in the crowd.

Here's what we know about the timeline. According to the Houston Police Department, about 9:15 was when the crowd started compressing towards the stage. By 9:38, that event had turned into a mass casualty event, according to HPD, with one officer describing that there were multiple people on the ground in cardiac arrest, needing medical attention.

At about 10:10, that concert was shut down. And according to the fire chief, it took about an hour for all of those 50,000 people to disperse.

Now, Live Nation, Astroworld Festival and Travis Scott issuing statements, all saying that they are heartbroken, that they're devastated. But that's not enough for some of the concertgoers.

There's been multiple lawsuits already filed. Some of them claiming gross negligence, saying that these concert promoters, that the organizers did not do a good job, that it was not a safe venue, and that's why they are now filing a lawsuit.

We're, of course, expecting probably more lawsuits to happen.

Now, Jim and Poppy, I just got off the phone right before going live with the fire chief here to ask for any updates. What they do tell me is that six people remain in the hospital, five of them remain in critical condition. So that just gives you a sense of what was happening. We, of course, don't know more details about their conditions.

[09:05:02]

And, excuse me, Jim and Erica, we don't know more about their condition. But that just gives you a sense. This happened on Friday. There's still some people today in critical condition.

SCIUTTO: And some of them just very young people.

Rosa Flores, good to have you there. Thank you.

Joining us now, the founder of Crowd Management Strategies, Paul Wertheimer. He's provided crowd safety guidance for more than 30 years.

Paul, it's good to have you on this morning given your background here. And I wonder, looking at this concert, based on what you know now, have you been able to identify security failures in advance that had they been followed might have been able to prevent something like this?

PAUL WERTHEIMER, FOUNDER, CROWD MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES: Sure. Crowd safety experts like me and others have seen this situation historically over decades, causing many deaths to young people in the front of the stage, one of the most dangerous areas for standing room.

So, you look at it, and you say, first of all, the crowds are too dense. And you ask the question, who is monitoring the crowd, and who is managing the crowd. And in this case, from what I can tell so far, what we know, nobody seems to have been doing either of those things. You realize you have to reduce density before people begin to get crushed. I mean you've heard -- we've heard that security for Travis Scott has

had a history, like most vessels, of pulling people out in the front of the stage. That tells you right there, the crowd is dangerous. But they play Russian roulette. And on Friday, things went really badly.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WERTHEIMER: Then you have to say, how did they plan for this event? You plan properly, you have to know the crowd profile and the history of the artist. Not now. You -- you -- the people who plan, manage and approve it should have known those things before so you could property plan.

HILL: In terms of that planning, Paul, are there any -- I wasn't able to find much when I was looking. Are there regulations, you know, whether it's at a state level, whether it's a county or the venue, when you know you're going to have a massive number of people in essentially a standing area, right -- and, look, I love being at areas like that at a concert. But are there any sort of regulations, it doesn't seem there were, to space them out properly, to make sure there's only "x" number of people in this pen, "x" number of people in the pen behind it, and no way to jump those barriers, does that exist?

WERTHEIMER: It -- it's -- you know, yes, they do. It's a great question. Yes, they do. And the primary areas -- the National Fire Protection Association, 101 life safety code, the NFPA is a group of approximately 70,000 fire officials and life safety officials. They develop a standard for the festival seating environments for this very type of environment in front of the stage because it was recognized as so dangerous. There was industry input in the standard.

I served on the committee that helped create that standard. And what it says is, there should not be festival seating until there's a life safety evaluation, assuming that's like a risk assessment, can it be done safely.

Density has to be kept under control. The crowd -- festival seating crowd has to be open enough that emergency first responders can easily enter it to help people in need. And people in the crowd have to have enough room that they can easily leave the festival seating crowd under reasonable conditions. And then you have to have special trained crowd managers to look after and monitor the crowd. These are the things known. This is a national standard. Been in effect since the '90s.

SCIUTTO: Listen, so many missed opportunities there, and sad to see a loss of life as a result.

Paul Wertheimer, thanks so much.

WERTHEIMER: My pleasure. Thank you.

HILL: After nearly two years, U.S. borders reopen today to international travelers. Visitors must be fully vaccinated and some also need to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test.

CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean joining us now from Dulles Airport in Virginia.

SCIUTTO: Pete, this is a big day --

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Erica, this is a huge day for worldwide air travel, but it's also such a huge day here at Dulles because we're standing by for passengers from 13 countries to clear customs through the doors behind me here. In fact, we're waiting on flights from Brussels, Frankfurt and London. All of those from United Airlines. And United tells us those flights weren't all that full not that long ago. Now they're nearly full, if not completely full. The end of a 600-day-long wait, not only for those individuals who have been separated by oceans in some of these cases because of these travel restrictions, but also for the travel industry.

[09:10:07]

We saw these symbolic simultaneous takeoffs from London Heathrow today by Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, both of those flights bound for JFK in New York. Those routes were pretty much shuttered by the pandemic. United Airlines tells us it expects about 30,000 international travelers to arrive in the U.S. today. That is a 50 percent increase over last Monday. Delta tells us it's seeing a 450 percent increase in international bookings. But CEO Ed Bastian says these procedures might not be perfect right away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ED BASTIAN, CEO, DELTA: It's going to be a bit sloppy at first. I can -- I can assure you. There will be lines, unfortunately, as people -- because it's going to be hit with an onslaught of travel all at once, I think November 8th. It's just like we saw this summer, you know, in the U.S. domestic system. But we'll get it sorted out. But people really want to come here and that's a great sign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: So, somebody traveling into the United States has to show that they are fully vaccinated, either with a vaccine approved by the FDA under Emergency Use Authorization or by the WHO. So that list expands a little bit.

They will also need to show to customs agents here records of getting the vaccine. It can be either digital, it can be paper, it does not have to be in English, it can be an on app with a QR code. They will also need to show records that they have tested within 72 hours leading up to their departure.

You know, we will see how smoothly this goes, Jim and Erica. The travel industry cannot wait for this. A $300 billion impact that they have missing out on and they say that it will be until 2024 for levels to get back to 2019, when it comes to international travel. So we're just at the start of all of this.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, I'll tell you, having flown international recently, those flights are full. At least the ones that are going.

Pete Muntean, thanks so much.

MUNTEAN: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Any moment now former President Obama will make a rare speech at the COP26 Global Climate Summit. He is expected to urge leaders to do more. And, is going to take a swipe at former President Trump's inaction on the climate crisis. We're going to bring you his comments live as soon as they begin.

HILL: Plus, President Biden manages to get his bipartisan infrastructure bill over the finish line. We have the details on what's in this. What does it mean for you, and also the fate of that even larger social safety net bill, that's just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: Let's take you straight to Glasgow, Scotland, COP26, where, as you can see, former President Obama is speaking.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I don't get invited to the big group photo. Traffic is a thing again. Music doesn't play when I walk into the room.

On the positive side, I can give a speech like this without wearing a tie and not create a scandal back home. I hope.

But, even though I'm not required to attend summits like this anymore, old habits die hard. And when the issue at hand is the health of our planet, and the world of our children and our grandchildren will inherit, then you will have a hard time keeping me away. And that's why I'm here today, to talk about what's happened in the six years since I spoke to the United Nations climate change conference in Paris and to talk about the steps we need to take if we want to keep doing big things. Because when it comes to climate, time really is running out.

You heard the same message from world leaders last week. And now that they've left, here's what we can report. Meaningful progress has been made since Paris. And the agreements made here in Glasgow, thanks to so many of you, including my friend John Kerry here, who is tireless, and his team, thanks to your efforts here in Glasgow, we see the promise of further progress.

What is also true is that collectively and individually we are still falling short. We have not done nearly enough to address this crisis. We are going to have to do more. And whether that happens or not, to a large degree, is going to depend on you, not just those of you in this room, but anybody who is watching or reading a transcript of what I say here today.

That was true six years ago as well. And on Paris, our goal was to turn progress into an enduring framework that would give the world confidence in a low carbon future. An agreement where countries would update their emissions target on a regular basis. An agreement that would help developing nations get the resources they need to skip the dirty phase of development and help those nations that are most vulnerable to climate change get the resources they need to adapt.

[09:20:04]

An agreement that would give businesses and investors the certainty that the global economy is on a firm path towards a clean and sustainable future.

In other words, our hope was to create an agreement that gave our planet a fighting chance. That was our ambition.

And by some measures, the agreement has been a success. For the first time leaders of nearly 200 nations, large and small, developed and developing, made a commitment to work together to confront a threat to the people of all nations. And that's seemed proof that for all the divisions in our world, when a crisis threatens all of us, we can come together to address it.

At the time, we also believed that if enough national governments showed they were serious about climate, then other institutions, particularly in the private sector, would start raising their sights as well. And over the last six years, that is what's happened. Today, more than one-fifth of the world's largest companies have set net zero emissions targets. Not just because it's the right thing to do for the environment, but in many cases because it makes sense for their bottom line.

More than 700 cities in more than 50 countries have pledged to cut their emissions in half by the end of the decade and reach net zero by 2050. About a third of the global banking sector has agreed to align their work with the Paris agreement. So that's meaningful.

Now, back in the United States, of course, some of our progress stalled when my successor decided to unilaterally pull out of the Paris agreement in his first year in office. I wasn't real happy about that. And yet the determination of our state and local governments, along with the regulations and investment that my administration had already put in place, allowed our country to keep moving forward despite hostility from the White House.

The $90 billion investment that we made in 2009 helped to jumpstart the clean energy industry in the United States. And markets adapted. And so did consumers. And even when the Trump administration rolled back emissions requirement for automakers, along with regulatory changes and efficiency standards, many businesses chose to stay the course. They kept reducing emissions. They continued the transition to electric vehicles and energy saving appliances. The ball had been rolling, and it didn't stop.

And, meanwhile, science and technology continued to advance. So, today, the price of solar and wind energy has dropped to the point where in some places clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels. Around the world, scientists and entrepreneurs are integrating abundant renewable energy, more powerful batteries, breakthroughs in fields like synthetic biology to invent a better future that is healthier and more affordable. That's all good news for the planet. And it is also good news for

people looking for a job. In the U.S. alone, more than 3 million people now work in clean energy related jobs. That is more than the number of people currently employed by the entire fossil fuel industry.

So despite four years of active hostility toward climate science, coming from the very top of our federal government, the American people managed to still meet our original commitment under the Paris agreement. And not only that, but the rest of the world stayed in the deal. And now, with President Biden and his administration rejoining the agreement, the U.S. government is once again engaged and prepared to take a leadership role. And everybody who's been watching John Kerry run around here knows that we take that role seriously.

As the world's second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the U.S. has to lead. We have enormous responsibilities.

[09:25:02]

And, obviously, we still have a lot of work to do. But last week, Congress passed President Biden's bipartisan infrastructure bill that will, among other things, create manufacturing -- create jobs manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines and batteries and electric vehicles, and build out the first ever national network of charging stations so families can travel across the U.S. in electric vehicles. And I'm confident that a version of President Biden's Build Back Better bill will pass through Congress in the coming next few weeks. And here's what it will mean when that bill does pass. That legislation will devote over half a trillion dollars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over a billion metric tons by the end of the decade, at least ten times more than any legislation previously passed by Congress.

Along the way, it will reduce consumer energy costs, it will invest in a clean energy economy, it will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and it will set the United States on course to meet its new climate targets, achieving a 50 percent to 52 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030.

So, the U.S. is back. And in moving more boldly, the U.S. is not alone.

Earlier this year, the U.K. government, our hosts, announced they plan to cut emissions by almost 80 percent by 2035. This summer, the European Union put themselves on a path to carbon neutrality by 2050. Korea passed a carbon neutrality act in September that requires the government to cut greenhouse gas emissions 35 percent or more by 2030. The Canadian government has laid out a path to carbon neutrality by 2050 with milestones to hit along the way.

So, Paris showed the world that progress is possible, created a framework, important work was done there and important work has been done here. That is the good news.

Now for the bad news. We are nowhere near where we need to be yet. For starters, despite the progress that Paris represented, most countries have failed to meet the action plans that they set six years ago. And the consequences of not moving fast enough are becoming more apparent all the time.

Last month, a study found that 85 percent of the global population has experienced weather events that were more severe because of climate change. Stronger storms, longer heat waves, more intense flooding, crippling droughts. Parts of the world are becoming more dangerous to live in, triggering new migration patterns and worsening conflict around the globe. It's one of the reasons why the U.S. Pentagon and other U.S. agencies have said that climate change poses a national security threat for the U.S. and for everyone else.

But not only did we not hit all of the targets that were pledged in Paris, but, remember, Paris was always supposed to be a beginning, not an end point of our joint effort to control climate change.

Back in 2015, we knew that even if the commitments made as a part of the Paris agreement were fully met, we would still fall short of our goal of keeping global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius. And that's why Paris was designed to be a framework for countries to constantly ratchet up their ambitions as they got more resources, and as technology reduced the cost of transitioning to a clean energy economy.

So, we come now here to Glasgow, and just was as true with the Paris agreement, there is good news and bad news about what has happened here this past week.

[09:29:39]

The good news, in large part because of the efforts of the people in this room, the hours of work that you spend with, you know, weak coffee and bad food and feeling sleepy, because of you, countries around the world are recognizing this is a decisive decade to.