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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

230+ Deaths Reported in British Columbia Amid Historic Heat Wave; Rescuers Running Out of Time to Find Condo Collapse Survivors; NYC Elections Board Counts 135,000 Non-Valid Test Ballots; Supreme Court Allows Eviction Moratorium to Remain in Place. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired June 30, 2021 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:24]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Blazing heat from coast to coast. Why it's happening and when a relief could be in store?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN ANCHOR: Engineers looking for a trigger event in the collapse of that Florida condo building, as rescuers run against time to find anyone alive.

JARRETT: And breaking overnight, the race for New York City mayor thrown into crisis. Why a vote-counting error could have ramifications even beyond America's most populous city. That is a hot mess.

WILD: Oh, absolutely.

JARRETT: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. We have reports this morning from Florida, Washington, Moscow, Tokyo, and the Pentagon, as only CNN can. This is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.

WILD: And I'm Whitney Wild in for Christine Romans. It's Wednesday, June 30th. It's 5:00 a.m. here in New York.

JARRETT: OK. It is hot out there, dangerously hot, with records falling faster than mercury is rising. In British Columbia, at least 233 deaths have been reported since Friday. That is double the average rate.

We're talking about Canada here. And it's not clear how many of those fatalities are heat-related, but the providence's chief coroner calls this, quote, an unprecedented time.

In British Columbia, the temperature climbed to a shocking 121 degrees on Tuesday, a new all-time record for the area.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SYDNEY GRAY, ALBERTA RESIDENT: There's going to be a lot of people ending up in the hospital and being really, really sick from this, because they don't -- some of them don't know how to look after themselves. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's only so much I can do to try to keep him

cool. We don't have central air or ac and weapon currently don't have any fans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILD: That is the worst sound for any mother.

In Washington state, three deaths are potentially linked to heat- related illness, and there have been nearly 1,400 heat-related emergency room visits. Spokane just set an all-time heat record of 109 degrees.

And in Oregon, officials report 506 heat-related emergency and urgent care visits in just four days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It just feels like Armageddon. It really does.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's unbelievable. But in Vegas, people are air- conditioned. That's the difference.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: OK. Let's bring in meteorologist Pedram Javaheri. Pedram, I mean, it is blazing hot here in New York, but that is nothing compared to what is going on out west.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We're feeling it across New York City, guys. It's about 10 to 15 degrees above average. In these areas across the Northwest, we're talking 35 to 45 degrees average.

It is a remarkable heat wave with this massive area of high pressure, essentially deflecting the jet stream well to the north. So all the heat warnings stretching as far north as the Arctic Circle at the height of this particular heat wave that had been in place.

But the heat is begin to dwindle. So, we go from 40-plus above average to 10 to 15 degrees above average, which is comparable to what's happening in the Northeast. So it gives you a scale of what our friends are dealing with. In the past 24 hours, observations skyrocketing to the one-teens, among the hottest temperatures you'll ever see anywhere in the U.S., let alone in the Pacific Northwest. And there's that 121 observation in British Columbia.

And out of curiosity, the top ten hottest temperatures in the world, nine of them were either in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or Iraq. And here you go, number ten, right here in British Columbia. It kind of speaks to the disparity of how extreme this heat wave has been across portions of North America.

But again, notice these temperatures in Portland, they are significantly than the one-teens that have been in place. But we're still talking about the 90s when it should be 77. And that is essentially the forecast over the next week around the Northwest. When you talked about the Northeast. There you go, heat advisories and heat warnings for yet another day. Could feel as high as 105 degrees outside, upwards of 20 records were set in Tuesday.

Newark, Boston, some of these areas not only getting close to 100, but exceeding 100. That's in the shade, without the humidity. And notice the forecast does bring it back down to reality, could see severe weather this afternoon and this evening. But notice, for the holiday weekend here, temps really cool off nicely Saturday into Sunday, and maybe even get some sunshine as temps go back up to around 80 on Fourth of July, guys.

JARRETT: Yeah, we need that cool off for sure.

All right. Pedram, thanks so much.

WILD: This morning, 149 people still missing in that condo collapse in Surfside, Florida. The death toll now at 12.

Rescuers are running short on time to find anybody who might have survived. All of this while engineers are just starting to figure out what caused that collapse. Just starting to work on trying to determine what took this building down.

[05:05:01]

CNN's Rosa Flores live in Surfside this morning.

Rosa, now what happens?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's a lot to unpack here, because there's a lot going on. Let me take you through this. First of all, the city of surfside has hired an engineer to study this event, to figure out exactly what happened. According to this investigation that is beginning and will be ongoing for a while, they are looking for what the trigger event here is.

And so, according to this firm, they are going to begin investigating the portion of the building that is still standing. It's what you see over my shoulder. According to the fire marshal, on the grid of their search pattern, that is considered alpha. By the way, they're not going in there right now because of stability issues. They're actually monitoring the area around it.

Now, while that is going on, search and rescue teams are, of course, looking for signs of life. This is still a very active scene, a search and rescue effort. We know that more than 800 personnel from 60 different agencies are on the scene. At the same time, city officials, county officials are trying to figure out exactly what was going on in this building before this collapse.

They're trying to paint a picture of what was happening. We, of course, know of the 2018 report that warned of structural issues, and then there's the letter from earlier this year in April, talking about the acceleration of the deterioration of that concrete, that $15 million assessment that was issued to the residents of this condo building, that they were going to begin paying just days after the collapse.

Well, now a commissioner, being very vocal last night, speaking to our Chris Cuomo about how she believes that the condo association was down playing all of this and should have done more. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELIANA SALZHAUER, SURFSIDE TOWN COMMISSIONER: Obviously, in hindsight, this is a -- they should have made more noise. They had this report. They had a report. It said very clearly, your building's in bad shape.

There wasn't a sense of urgency and we need to find out why that sense of urgency was not communicated. Everything is a public record, everything will be in there, it's just a question of how we goat to it get to it and how fast we get to it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: And now, we're learning more signs and clues about what was happening and the instability of this entire structure. We've learned about complaints that were filed from a resident about the construction going on in a neighboring building and how this resident was feeling shaking. There were concerns about this building and the construction happening next door.

We're also learning that the city official who in 2018 said that the building was, quote, in good shape. This individual was now a contractor in a nearby town of Doral is now on leave. So we're seeing the impact also of what is happening right here in Surfside.

And then there's a class action lawsuit, that was also filed. Subpoenas are being issued right now. And also, again, there's so much going on here in Surfside, as so many agencies are trying to respond and do everything they can, we've learned that the state attorney has asked a grand jury to investigate.

Now, normally, when you think of a grand jury investigation, you're thinking criminal charges. But based on this statement that was issued by the state attorney here in Miami-Dade County, she made it very clear that grand juries here also evaluate issues of public health and public safety.

So, Whitney, it's important to note here that she says that her investigation could help in the future. She said, for example, that after Hurricane Andrew, a grand jury here in Miami-Dade County did an investigation, issued a report that helped improve building code.

And so, it's unclear exactly what this grand jury investigation is going to accomplish or the goal. But for now, based on her statement, it looks like she wants to contribute with the expertise of a grand jury and a grand jury investigation to make sure that this doesn't happen again here in Miami-Dade County.

WILD: Right. Because there are so many people now looking at their buildings in south Florida wondering, are we next? So getting that information into the public record so important.

Rosa Flores, thank you.

JARRETT: Okay. A monumental screw up in New York City raising questions this morning about the results in the Democratic primary for mayor and the integrity of this entire process. The city's board of elections released numbers Tuesday suggesting that former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia was closing in on Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams' lead. Then, came the backtrack, because it turns out election officials counted more than 130,000 non-valid test ballots.

Our senior data reporter Harry Enten is with us this morning.

Harry, good morning.

As of this morning, when I last checked, the board of elections' website was blank.

[05:10:02]

What in the world happened?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: A freaking disgrace. That's what the heck happened. I was looking forward to this for a week, right? So they came out with the election night results last Tuesday, right? Eight days ago.

Then they were going to say, okay, we're going to release preliminary rank choice voting, you know, they're going to go through all the elimination rounds so on and so forth, there's still the absentee ballots to be counted. And what happened? Well, they were testing the software previously. Not a big surprise, this is new software, they want to be able to test it.

But you're supposed to clear that test software. But they left up 130,000 votes in a race where the total number of votes was going 800,000. So now all of a sudden you go, there's now 900,000 votes? How'd these extra votes get there?

It turns out it was test data. So we're not sure what we saw yesterday, Kathryn Garcia closing in on Eric Adams is exactly what happened. We don't know.

It's so bizarre to me, this whole thing. I had to print out the statement, because I've never seen anything quite like this. They say, quote/unquote, as we're going forward, board staff has removed all test ballot images from the system and will upload election night results, the cast vote record will be regenerated and the rank choice voting rounds will be retabulated.

The only word I can use is disgrace.

JARRETT: OK. Wait, so put that into English. Are they going to have to start over? ENTEN: They -- well, we should get some new results later today, if

the board of elections is to be believed. But to be perfectly honest, I don't -- if you don't believe what they have to say, I wouldn't exactly blame you.

JARRETT: That's problem.

WILD: There is no room for error right now. I mean, elections are so closely scrutinized. This is a really big deal. It might have implications beyond New York, right? Because people are hyper-worried about, you know, the voracity of their votes and the validity of that.

ENTEN: There's a lot of distrust in voting systems across the country. A lot of it's fake, you know, it shouldn't be there, but the fact of the matter is, is that if you're a board of elections in the United States, you should be taking your work extra carefully, extra seriously, at this point.

We cannot have stuff like this happen, because the margin of error is so small. We should be pumping up belief in our electoral system. And if you have garbage like this that happens, it really, really hurts the belief in the system.

I know -- look, it's humans who are doing it. They don't mean to do it. But it's just so important that people have belief in their system.

And the eventual vote that comes out, I will believe it, obviously, but this type of stuff doesn't do anybody any favors.

JARRETT: Well, you say they didn't mean to do it. And actually, Errol Louis, one of our political commentators. We all know, well, he's covered these elections better than anybody. Listen to what he had to say about this last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It never helps to have these kind of screw-ups. There's no malice here. There's no attempt to steal an election, no responsible person would allege that based on these facts. This was, you know, it doesn't even count as an attempt to distort the outcome, because the mistake was so blatant and so obvious and so quickly corrected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: So quickly corrected. That may be true, but we're coming out of a pandemic. Everybody's worried about violent crime in the city. People are feeling uneasy. So, what are they going to do to restore faith in the system now?

ENTEN: I mean, hopefully, though, there'll be very few errors throughout the rest of the process, right? But you saw what could potentially happen, right? When you had Eric Adams in that initial count, that lead shrunk significantly, with still a lot of absentees out. Look, the city is on high edge. It's so important that everyone is

sort of on their best behavior. And that's I think what we're really looking for, is candidates to be understanding, which they generally were, but obviously, they were concerned, and hopefully this is just one error that we'll be able to put in the past.

But it's just so important that we do what we need to do and votes get counted the way they're supposed to get counted.

JARRETT: And it seems like transparency is important here.

ENTEN: Yes.

JARRETT: You've got to be up-front and you got to -- you got to admit it quickly

WILD: Right.

ENTEN: And to their credit, they did come out. They did out put out the statement, they were open about it. They were transparent about it.

And, again, as Errol was pointing out, the error was just so obvious, it was very clear that no one was trying to do anything bad here. It was just that, look, they screwed up, that happens, and hopefully from here on out, we're able to do better.

WILD: The candidate's reactions are what sets the tone for how, you know, the voters react to it.

JARRETT: Yeah.

ENTEN: Yeah, and the candidates' reactions were mostly with what you would expect, right? They expect better, but at the end of the day, everyone is going to get behind this, hopefully, get behind whatever the result actually is, which we'll have to wait and see, even when we get through today, there's still 125,000 absentee ballots to be counted next week.

So, this is far from over. This saga continues. But in a summer in which there are no other elections, I guess I welcome it.

JARRETT: I was going to say, this is good for you and your business, and we will have you back as soon as we actually get the real results.

Harry Enten, thank you so much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

JARRETT: All right. Still ahead, the U.S. Supreme Court weighing in on the nationwide eviction moratorium. What it means for struggling Americans just trying to stay in their homes right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:19:10] WILD: Some new relief for renters this morning. The Supreme Court has voted to keep in place a CDC order banning landlords from evicting tenants who fail to pay rent amid the pandemic. The rule now lasts until July 31st.

Chief justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh join the court's three liberal justices in that decision.

The challenge to the ban was filed by a group of real estate agents who had argued that Congress never gave the CDC that much power.

Kavanaugh wrote a complimentary reasoning -- yeah, concurring, sorry, this is the legal expert helping me out, concurring reasoning here.

And basically, his argument was, the ban is temporary, however, if the agency wants to extend the rule. They're going to have to have congressional authorization.

JARRETT: Microsoft calling on Congress for legislative reform this morning when it comes to how the government secretly collecting your customer data.

[05:20:05]

The tech giant plans to argue at a hearing on Capitol Hill that the Justice Department has abused the use of what's known as gag orders to keep warrants and subpoenas under wrap in federal investigations. Several recent reports have revealed how the DOJ under former President Trump pursued information stored by these tech companies for politically sensitive investigations and court-ordered gag orders prevented those companies discussing it with customers until recently. Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed on Tuesday that the DOJ will change its regulations for seeking records from journalists.

Well, health officials have been warning about this for weeks now. The delta variant, the one that exploded in India, took off in the U.K., now spreading in the United States, especially in areas with low vaccination rates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: When you have such a low level of vaccination, superimposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, it's almost like it's going to be two Americas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: Two Americas. And new data shows the vaccination rate likely won't pick up anytime soon.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:25:43]

JARRETT: All right. We've got live pictures coming in here of Russian President Vladimir Putin holding his annualized telephone phone-in with the Russian people. The country is facing a new wave of coronavirus infections, daily deaths in Russia are at record highs while vaccination rates remain extremely low.

CNN's Matthew Chance is live for us in Moscow.

Matthew, what's he been talking about?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think it all started in the past couple of minutes. And we were told beforehand this was going to be focusing mainly on the COVID pandemic and that's what they've been talking about so far.

There's been a couple of, you know, lines that have come out of it. First of all, Vladimir Putin has confirmed for the first time that he's been vaccinated with Sputnik V, which was the Russian vaccine, the first vaccine, actually, to be registered by any country for public use up until now. It was shrouded in secrecy, which vaccine he had. Now he's come out and said, it's Sputnik V.

The other thing that's came out in the past few minutes is, you know, I'm against people being forced to get vaccinated, which is strange. Because just a couple of days ago, the Russian government passed laws, which compels people in front line jobs like in transport or in, you know, kind of retail or hospitality and things like that to actually get the vaccine. And if they don't get it, they're going to be, you know, they'll lose their livelihoods.

And so, that's a sort of form of mandatory vaccination the government have already pushed through in certain sectors of the economy. The reason they're doing that is because Russia has found itself, unfortunately, amid a third, very powerful surge in COVID-19.

Across the country, infection rates are running at record levels. Just today, we've had the highest number of deaths across the country since the pandemic began. I think the number is 669 people. And those are official figures, remember. The real figure could be much higher.

And so, the government is having to do everything it can, to try to get a very hesitant, skeptical Russian population, who don't want to take any vaccine at all, to get vaccinated, and in some cases, they're actually compelling to do that.

JARRETT: Certainly a big challenge there.

All right. Thanks so much, Matthew.

WILD: America's longest war could be over in a matter of days, but problems in Afghanistan will continue. We bring you the latest from the Pentagon. That's next.

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