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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Bodies Buried by Truckloads in Indonesia; Sri Lankans Strive to Cope with Loss
Aired December 29, 2004 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY PILGRIM, HOST (voice-over): Incomprehensible destruction. An unfathomable grief. The death toll in the wake of the south Asian tsunami continues to rise. Eyewitnesses recount incredible stories of survival and horror.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was having breakfast, and the wave just came in and took everybody on the beach with it, and children and old people.
PILGRIM: Dodging disaster. One couple's amazing story of being underwater when the killer wave struck. Julie and Warren Lavender share their incredible story of survival.
Cheap shot: President Bush makes his first public comments on the tragedy in south Asia, and answers the charges, the big nations are stingy.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're a very generous, kind-hearted nation.
PILGRIM: Tonight we'll have two very different views on the generosity of America in "Face Off."
Free trade or corporate greed? U.S. companies are shipping jobs and know-how to China at an alarming rate. Our guest says American workers can't compete with what amounts to slave wages in China. Congressman Bernie Sanders joins me live.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT for Wednesday, December 29. Here now for an hour of news, debate and opinion, sitting in for Lou Dobbs, who is on vacation, Kitty Pilgrim.
PILGRIM: Good evening.
Tonight, the pain, the agony and the absolute horror of the tsunami continues to reverberate around the world. International relief efforts have slowly begun to arrive. But the task ahead, unprecedented in its size and scope. The desperate search for survivors continues.
More than 80,000 people are now confirmed dead. The Red Cross says that number could top 100,000. Indonesia, the hardest hit with more than 45,000 deaths, most of those on the island of Sumatra. More than 23,000 killed in Sri Lanka. At least 10,000 dead in India. And 1,800 dead in Thailand.
We begin our series reports tonight in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, with ITN's Dan Rivers.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAN RIVERS, ITN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This was the moment of impact in Banda Aceh. This staggering footage taken by a family on a second floor apartment as the sea swallowed their town.
Terrified, the family think they will surely die. Somehow, they escaped.
Four days on, this is the scene in the port area, perhaps one of the most devastated sectors of this crippled town. We picked our way through with our guide, missing persons posters pinned to upturned trawlers.
It was surreal, obscene. Stranded boats, the twisted wreckage of a once thriving fishing community.
In the town center, corpses are being pulled by hundreds from the ruins of Banda Aceh. There is a nauseating stench everywhere, death and decay at every turn.
The army is ferrying in troops, but they're facing apocalyptic destruction, entire neighborhoods razed to the ground.
Like many, this man has lost everything. His home, his family.
(on camera) Nothing left.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing left.
RIVERS: Nothing at all?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My house has been destroyed. Everything.
RIVERS: Destroyed?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
RIVERS: If you want a graphic illustration of the sheer power of this tsunami, have a look at this. This trawler was smashed a mile and a half into the center of Banda Aceh. The locals say the tsunami was 60 feet high.
(voice-over) Those that survived are trying to clear the streets, but so far there is apparently little outside help. Banda Aceh is now an acute crisis. They are desperate for basic supplies.
The destruction is relentless, street after street utterly destroyed. Survivors stupefied by this carnage. In some places only dogs survived, waiting in vain for their owners. But out of town, the horror of all those deaths is concentrated at one place, lorries streaming in, carrying body after body.
(on camera) I've seen some terrible, awful sights today, but this is by far the worst. They're burying bodies by the lorry loads here in mass graves. They estimate there will be tens of thousands of corpses here by the end of the week.
Dan Rivers, ITV News, in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: One scene that no one in the region can escape is that of corpses and makeshift morgues virtually everywhere.
Matthew Chance in southern Thailand has more on the suffering felt by so many. We do want to warn that you some of the images you're about to see are disturbing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Beneath this smashed concrete, a whole family is trapped. But this is no search for survivors, just more bodies for Thailand's count.
This is where the awesome power of the tsunami struck this country hardest. In the mud, reminders of the many lives lived and lost here. Rescue workers told us only half the dead have yet been recovered. The final horrific cost of this disaster still in doubt.
"When we first arrived, it was total destruction," he says. "There were bodies all over the place. We've cleared it up a lot. But I believe there are many more beneath this rubble."
And for days, makeshift morgues like this one in the grounds of a Buddhist temple have filled with the remains of Thais and tourists alike. Forensic teams are helping with identification, and in a few days, they say, mass cremations will have to begin.
(on camera) This is a scene of the most gruesome kind. The bodies have been laid out in their hundreds here and are now being sprayed with disinfectant. Laid out so that their families, their loved ones, survivors can try and identify them.
But these are appalling conditions. It's hot and humid and the stench is overwhelming.
(voice-over) And so is the grief. The days here are now filled with hurried funerals.
This family told me of their terrible loss. Seven dead, ages 79 to just 6.
"We don't know what to do," says Laird (ph), the grandmother. "We've gone crazy. I don't think I can survive. All alone," she says. "No comfort." Her loneliness will be shared by so many.
Matthew Chance, CNN, Pangya (ph), Thailand.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: In Sri Lanka, help has begun to arrive, but for the people of this small island nation, the terror of the tsunami will never be forgotten. Many of those who made it out alive wonder how they will go on, having watched friends and relatives washed out to sea.
Satinder Bindra reports from Matara in southern Sri Lanka.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SATINDER BINDRA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Help and relief at last for thousands who have lost everything. Their loved ones are dead, their homes destroyed, and their belongings swept away. Now they have to live on handouts for weeks, and frightening memories for the rest of their lives.
"My father was pushed by the water onto the street," says survivor Anura Apparakagae (ph). "That was the last I saw of him."
Now, as he buries his father, Anura Apparakagae (ph) says millions of Sri Lankans feel the light has gone out of their lives.
Gamani Sumit Nanaraka (ph) shows me what remains of the restaurant he built with his life savings.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like I am alone. I can't think of what I can do in the future.
BINDRA: Others feel it's time to try and shake loose their shock. They employ local ingenuity to pull their valued possession from under tons of debris.
What lingers on here is an intense and overpowering smell.
(on camera) Decomposed bodies are still found everywhere. And health officials are getting very concerned. They're fearing the outbreak of an epidemic that could kill thousands more.
(voice-over) So far, there are no reports of any major health problems in southern Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, hundreds continue scrambling for food and cookies.
As he receives his tiny portion, this boy manages a smile. It's his way, perhaps, of saying thanks to all those across the world who are trying to help Sri Lanka.
Satinder Bindra, CNN, Matara, southern Sri Lanka.
(END VIDEOTAPE) PILGRIM: Well, those who did survive the tsunami disaster now face a second threat: the fear of widespread disease. Mosquito-borne diseases and respiratory infections from inhaling dirty water are two of the leading concerns.
Sanjay Gupta reports from Colombo, Sri Lanka.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone keeps saying help is on the way. The problem is, it isn't here yet. So in a country where public health barely exists, the people of Sri Lanka are rising up to care for their own.
(on camera) What is the most important thing you're seeing out in the field?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A couple of immediate public health problems out there. Outbreaks of diarrhea and certain other infectious diseases taking place on the third day now.
GUPTA (voice-over): Dr. Binya Arayaratna (ph), head of the country's largest NGO, gave us a behind-the-scenes look at one of the earliest command centers. It was set up just two hours after the first wave hit shore.
Two hundred doctors were organized and immediately sent all over the country, and this, a rudimentary map kept track of the displaced and the dead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's always getting up there like every other -- our workers, they are interpreting this particularly and (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
GUPTA: The situation is even more complicated, because many experts make the mistake of thinking that all parts of Sri Lanka face the same difficulties.
(on camera): I think what's sort of startling is that all these different districts have very different needs, everything from milk food to salt, 500 kilograms, boxes of matches 5,000 packets. You've got it down specifically.
(voice-over): And it's these details that make all the difference getting the right supplies to the right place at the right times, and only organizations that are boots on the ground have that right information, organizations such as the NGO Savadoya (ph), a sans-script word meaning "awakening of all."
(on camera): Do you think the tsunami has inspired an awakening of all.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tsunami is a wave of destruction. At the same time, there's is a tremendous amount of compassion, so we think that there is a wave of compassion as well.
GUPTA (voice-over): Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Sri Lanka.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Now many of those who did survive the devastation say they don't know how they made it out alive. Here in their own words stories of survival from three Americans.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was having breakfast, and the wave just came in and took everybody on the beach with it.
Life kind of slows down in a split-second. You generally don't think during those circumstances. You just have to kind of react and go.
It kind of just looked like a regular high tide wave, and then it just got more intense and more intense, and then everybody started running off the beach, and it was chaos. There was cars floating down the street.
JAKE KING, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: The water got so high that we -- the door would only open outward. We were unable to push the door outward.
So, in order to get out, he had to grab just bottles and chairs and shattered the window, and that's when the water basically pushed me all the way back. He floated his way out.
I just climbed up to a roof of the hotel, and then the roof was getting high enough to where I just had to jump on a tree and just pretty much jumped up on top and stayed on top of the tree until the tsunamis died down.
And we were grabbing people's arms from the top of the roof so that people weren't drowning. I mean, there was a lot of very old people, a lot of people that were unable to swim in these conditions, and it was just tough seeing people who weren't strong enough to get on a tree.
We did everything we could to grab people, but the water was just so powerful that you can only hold onto people so long before they either slipped out of their hands or some were strong enough to hold.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All I remember seeing is the wave coming in and cars floating, and then it's -- you know, I was just in my own, you know, self-preservation mode.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Well, just ahead, I'll be joined live by two others who narrowly escaped the tsunami. A Canadian couple scuba diving off the coast of Sri Lanka saved by their underwater adventure.
And assessing the damage. We'll hear from one relief organization at the scene of the disaster. Those stories and a whole lot more coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: President Bush today spoke publicly for the first time about the devastation from the massive earthquake and tsunami, following some criticism that he should have come out sooner.
White House Correspondent Dana Bash reports from Crawford, Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the death toll climbing towards 100,000, the vacationing president spoke for the first time from his Texas ranch about the tsunamis that swept Asia four days earlier.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This has been a terrible disaster. I mean, it's just beyond our comprehension to think about how many lives have been lost.
BASH: Mr. Bush, eager to show American leadership, announced the U.S. is helping form an international coalition to coordinate relief efforts in Asia, talked of military manpower being deployed and said he called leaders from ravaged Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand with promises to help assess and address their overwhelming long-term needs.
BUSH: I assured those leaders that this is just only the beginning of our help.
BASH: He did not announce additional financial assistance beyond the $35 million already pledged, but the president was prepared and eager to dismiss a U.N. official who initially called the U.S. and other wealthy nations generally stingy with aid to countries in need.
BUSH: The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed. Take, for example, in the year 2004, our government provided $2.4 billion in food and cash and humanitarian relief to cover the disasters for last year.
BASH: It makes sense, the president said, for the world community to develop a global warning system for tsunamis, but quipped, he's "no geologist" and admitted he doesn't know when asked if the U.S. Pacific Coast is protected.
BUSH: I can't answer your question specifically. Do we have enough of a warning system for the West Coast? I am going to -- I am now asking that to our agencies in government to let us know.
BASH: A spokesman later said the president has directed the secretaries of commerce and interior to look into whether U.S. early warning systems are sufficient.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BASH: And until now, only the president's spokesman and secretary of state spoke out on his behalf, prompting some criticism that Mr. Bush squandered a chance to earn much needed goodwill around the globe, coming out and using the bully pulpit to talk about -- send his condolences and talk about the devastation in Asia.
The White House, though, Kitty, simply says that they were waiting to have some specific U.S. actions for him to talk about -- Kitty.
PILGRIM: Dana, he did write letters of condolence to those immediately involved immediately after, did he not, and make phone calls to the people involved?
BASH: He did. He made phone calls to the people involved this morning. He did write seven condolence letters, we were told through his spokesman, right away.
But some of what the criticism is that the president as essentially the leader of the free world in some people's eyes has the responsibility to use the bully pulpit to speak out and express his condolences and to show that there is a leadership going on and the U.S. is taking that role, taking on that role, and that perhaps because he was on vacation, some of his critics say, he was too slow to come out and use that role.
PILGRIM: All right. Thanks very much.
Dana Bash.
Thank you, Dana.
Coming up, an amazing story of survival. Seventy feet underwater, one Canadian couple is saved by their scuba diving trip off the coast of Sri Lanka.
Also ahead, destruction, utter devastation. We'll have a live report by one of the hardest-hit regions, the shattered city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
And I'll be joined by the head of a relief organization, one on the ground in Sri Lanka, with more than one million people left there homeless. We'll talk about the massive efforts underway to coordinate aid.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: Among the stories of death and destruction in southern Asia, there are some remarkable tales of survival. My next guests were scuba diving off the southwest coast of Sri Lanka when the tsunami rolled right over them. Warren and Julie Lavender join us now from Kuwait City.
And, Julie and Warren, thanks for being with us this evening. We are delighted to see and speak to you this evening.
Tell us how you -- tell us how the day started when you went out scuba diving. Did you notice anything unusual?
WARREN LAVENDER, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: We never noticed anything unusual. It was a beautiful day, and -- not that that has anything to do with the tsunami, but it was like any other day. We had gone diving for two previous days, and we just went to the dive site, the same way we had previously. So there was nothing out of the ordinary.
PILGRIM: OK. And when you were underwater, tell -- take us a little bit into the environment you were in and what you felt?
JULIE LAVENDER, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: I went down with the instructor, and she was kind of helping me out because we were fairly inexperienced divers, and she told me to get to the other boat and grab the guideline, but I had difficulty doing that, so I had to grab the side of the boat, and she helped me get to the guideline.
And, as soon as we got underwater, we knew that something was so different because the current was so strong, so we were basically holding on for dear life, it felt like, and then we -- as we descended, the current got a little bit -- a little less strong.
PILGRIM: Are you experienced divers, or was this something that you just couldn't really understand?
WARREN LAVENDER: Well, we're not experienced divers. It was -- it's only our fifth time in the open water. When we did get to the bottom, we kind of figured out that it wasn't normal because we had to -- at one point, we were hanging onto coral.
And the instructor -- they -- she was looking at us, and she was also quite distressed, and we noticed more when we got to the top, the look on her face. She said she had 4,000 dives in the same spot, and she's never experienced anything like it.
PILGRIM: When you got to the surface, what was -- what were the conditions like?
JULIE LAVENDER: It seemed to be a little bit calmer once we got to the surface. So we figured that the wave had -- the big wave had passed, so we got back into the boat and started going back to shore and then realized, as we got closer to the beach, that the beach wasn't there any longer, and buildings were being -- were collapsing, and the drivers of the boats were both locals, and they couldn't believe their eyes. You could just tell on their faces that this was something they'd never seen before.
PILGRIM: Now you made the decision to land on shore. Why did you do that? Why didn't you stay out in the water?
WARREN LAVENDER: Well, we were entering -- it was an estuary where the scuba center was, and, as we were going into it, we could see the tsunami had gone up the river, and then it was coming back down, and we could see it was carrying with it all sorts of debris, parts of houses, things like that.
I'm not the strongest of swimmers, and so we just started screaming at the driver to get us onto land. So he hit -- he basically drove the boat up onto the side of a deck that had collapsed, and we just got out and ran for it.
PILGRIM: Once you got on shore, were you in fairly safe turf, or did you feel that you had to move very quickly to higher land? Did you feel there were more waves come in, and did they, indeed, come in?
WARREN LAVENDER: Well, we felt -- we felt safe as the first -- at that -- as the first wave went by us. We were confused. We never had -- we didn't have the slightest idea that we were hit by a tsunami.
We went in about 500 meters to the road, and then we turned and looked, and we saw the policemen running past us screaming, and there was about 150, 200 people behind them running, too, and we didn't need to understand their language to know that we should run ourselves.
And that's when a second wave was coming in. So we just -- actually, instead of running, we looked for the highest building we could find, and some of the people there were kind enough to let us come in the building.
PILGRIM: When did you realize what had happened?
JULIE LAVENDER: We started walking down the street, once things had been calmed down a little bit. We were still in our scuba gear and bare feet, and the manager from the hotel we were staying at came driving down the road, and they were looking for us, and so they took us back to the hotel, and then they were able to explain what had actually happened.
And a friend of ours who we were traveling with was still on our -- was on the beach when we were scuba diving. So our concern was whether she had made it back to the hotel, and she met us back there about 15 minutes later. So we were very relieved.
WARREN LAVENDER: Basically, it was watching -- we had the TV on, and that's when we realized how big it was, because we just thought it could have been a localized flood. Like no one really knew, so...
PILGRIM: What were the conditions at your hotel, and did you decide to leave immediately? What was your decision process after that?
WARREN LAVENDER: Our hotel actually was surrounded by a wall, and so we just had some minor flooding. The hotel beside us -- on either side of us, they were both destroyed, and we only had a few injuries in our hotel, but people on the buildings on either side of us -- some people were killed in both of them. They were just -- they were just demolished.
PILGRIM: You're very kind to talk to us, and I'm sure the emotional trauma is extreme. Do you feel you've absorbed the full impact of what happened to you as you see the pictures now, or is it still just a blank to you?
JULIE LAVENDER: It's very overwhelming. We -- you know, we've been watching the news, of course, and talking to family and friends back home and e-mailing, and I don't think it's quite sunk in, and we just think we're very fortunate compared to what other people have been through. So we're happy to be safe and back home.
WARREN LAVENDER: And also we're missing some friends of ours that we teach with, and they're still missing in Thailand. So we're quite concerned about them.
PILGRIM: And their names are?
WARREN LAVENDER: Mark and Sue Edwards, and they have their two little sons Jack and Sam, and we haven't heard from them at all, and we know they were on the coast. So everyone from the school is pretty concerned right now.
PILGRIM: All right. Well, our thoughts are with you, and we hope for the best for them. And thank you very much for sharing your story with us this evening. Be well. Thank you very much.
Julie and Warren Lavender.
Well, many of those who escaped the tsunami are now simply struggling to cope. Sons, brothers, parents dealing with the grief that seems to have no end.
Mike Chinoy reports from Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Until Sunday morning, this was the bustling port of Banda Aceh. Now it's a mass of twisted rubble: boats tossed on to rooftops by the force of the tsunami, neighborhoods flattened as far as the eye can see.
Traumatized survivors wander amidst the ruins, some hoping to salvage a few possessions, others still looking for their friends and family.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My friend here, dead. I know they found dead body. But nothing else (ph).
CHINOY: 27-year-old Eddie was a fisherman, his five brothers and sisters are missing. "My boat is somewhere out there," he says. "I don't know where my family is." In this shattered city, the living coexist uneasily with the dead. These bodies have been rotting in the heat for days. There simply aren't enough emergency workers to remove them.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHINOY: And to underscore the misery here during the course of the night and it's 6:30 in the morning, there have been a series of strong aftershocks, some over 6.0 on the Richter scale. The most recent one just about two hours ago, and it was centered barely 30 miles away from Banda Aceh -- Kitty.
PILGRIM: Mike, how do people react to these aftershocks? It must be very, very upsetting to them?
CHINOY: Well, it's very upsetting to all of us, people are trying to rest in the middle of the night. And you have this rumbling and jolting. People around where I've been trying to sleep, were running out of the building where they've been seeking shelter. It has to really compound the emotional trauma here, and especially there's no electricity, people are huddled wherever they can find shelter in the darkness of the tropical night, suddenly you get this frightening movement, and of course the few structures that are left standing would be more weakened, so there's always a possibility, and we'll see when we go around town during the day, whether any of them came toppling down.
PILGRIM: Mike, Banda Aceh is very remote. What's the aid situation that the point?
CHINOY: The aid situation has been pretty bad, it's beginning to improve. Some of the main international relief agencies, Doctors Without Borders, for example, are now here, the Australian military has flown in supplies. We're beginning, slowly, to get a trickle of help. Even here in Banda Aceh, as you go around, it's clear an awful lot of people have not gotten the basic help that they need, and outside the town, in the rural areas where hundreds of thousands of people live. We have no clear sense of the conditions there, except we assume they're very bad, and at the moment it's very unlikely they're getting any help at all. Kitty?
PILGRIM: Thank you very much, Mike Chinoy.
Well, stay with CNN at the top of the hour for continuing coverage of the tragedy in Southern Asia. Tonight, we'll have a special two hour edition of "ANDERSON COOPER 360." Now Anderson focuses on the children left orphaned by the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
And coming up next face-off tonight. Is the United States being stingy with its contribution to relief?
And the relief effort is under way. I'll be joined by one official with her assessment of the devastation. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: In a moment, Cassandra Nelson of Mercy Corps will tell us about the relief efforts to help tsunami victims. But first a look at some of the top stories.
Three explosions were reported in Saudi Arabia today, wounding several people. A car packed with explosives detonated outside the Ministry of the Interior after it tried to drive through a security checkpoint. That's according to a source within the ministry. A few minutes after another blast erupted a few miles away. And about an hour after, that a third explosion was reported. The CIA's deputy director for intelligence, Jami Miscik is stepping down. A CIA spokesman had, quote, no comment on her personnel changes. A former CIA official says she was told she would be replaced. Porter Goss is taking over as director of the CIA, replacing George Tenet.
And actor Jerry Orbach is dead at the age of 69 after a battle with prostate cancer. Orbach is best known for playing wise cracking detective Lenny Briscoe on the TV show "Law and Order" and for his role in the movie "Dirty Dancing."
Sri Lanka, one of the hardest hit countries in the devastating tsunami. And Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo is now the hub of aid distribution for the remote areas of the island. Some of which remain inaccessible. Mercy Corps is one of several relief organizations working to assist victims. And earlier I spoke with Cassandra Nelson of Mercy Corps and I asked her for her initial assessment of the situation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASSANDRA NELSON, MERCY CORPS: Well, in Colombo, you don't see the disaster here, the earthquake and the tsunami did not strike here. But you certainly see the emotional toll it's taking on the people here ha that had to really cope with the loss of loved ones as well as with a huge influx of people coming into the city. Whether being tourists from the resort areas, humanitarian aid workers have been flooding into the city. They're having to deal with a lot of emotional trauma and still keep everything running. Keep their jobs going, the hotels open, so it's a very stressful time for them, and I really think that most people here are really operating in somewhat of a state of shock.
PILGRIM: This will be the hub where aid is dispersed. From we're hearing reports of over a million people homeless, some living in the jungle. What are you hearing about the homeless situation?
NELSON: We're hearing pretty much the same thing, Mercy Corps sent some of our local partner NGOs, humanitarian aid organizations out into the field yesterday. They came back with a lot of assessment reports from the eastern coast of the island, saying they are seeing people that are living out in the jungles or the fortunate ones happen to be living either in schools or mosques or churches or any kind of structure they can find. But they said that the majority of the people that they saw do not have any kind of shelter aside from what they are able to find, and again, most are sleeping out in the open fields and jungle.
PILGRIM: How do you expect the aid will be coordinated? Do you think a system is very well in place to get them out into the more remote areas?
NELSON: There's still a lot of hurdles. We've certainly identified what the challenges are. Now getting through them is going to be what takes the next few days of planning and organizing. Some of the harder hit areas have lost all the bridges. Therefore, what it means is you cannot take any supplies in via road, you can take them to a certain point, but the road stops and you are still miles from the villages. What we're looking at having to do is take a lot of the goods, water, shelter items, nonfood items, and actually load them onto boats, and then take these boats into some of these more remote villages. So it really is compromising the ability to get aid out very quickly.
PILGRIM: One of the other concerns with this area is some sections are under rebel control, the Tamil Tigers, are you going have problems getting aid to certain groups because of that insurgency?
NELSON: At this point, it doesn't look like it's presenting any problems. The Tamil group has been cooperative, they have a humanitarian aid organization that is working with them very closely, and that the aid organizations that have been coming in, the international aid organizations have been told they need to work through to get the aid there. That's something that we are sitting down and looking at, how we can get into the areas effectively and quickly. At this point, it doesn't look like it's going to be problematic, but there is an extra hurtle, an extra step in terms of coordination that's going to need to be done to reach some of those most affected areas.
PILGRIM: Thank you very much for your assessment this evening, Cassandra Nelson, thank you, Cassandra.
NELSON: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Turning to the war in Iraq, Iraqi officials announced the capture of a terror leader in Mosul. He has links to al-Zarqawi. Now Abu Marwan was taken into custody by multinational forces after tips from Iraqi citizens. This news comes on the day of multiple deadly insurgent attacks. Jeff Koinange reports from Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It happened in the predominantly Sunny neighborhood of Gazalia (ph) in western Baghdad. Police received an anonymous tip that a man was standing on the roof of a building firing at residents. Police rushed to the scene and to the building, and the building exploded, killing 28, including the nine policemen.
U.S. military intelligence officer tell us the death toll is set to rise because the bomb weighed as much as a thousand kilograms and leveled several buildings, and rescue workers were still sifting through the rubble. Now this booby trap attack is the first of its kind in Baghdad. Such attacks were very common in Falluja when the U.S. military overran that town several months ago. There, everything from buildings to dead bodies to cars to entire streets were booby- trapped. The U.S. fears that if this is the trend that it doesn't all augur well in the coming elections.
Elsewhere across the country in the last 24 hours, dozens of Iraqi policemen and national guardsmen were killed in the town of Tikrit, former president Saddam Hussein's strong hold, insurgents fired a rocket propelled grenade into a police station and calmly walked in and executed all 12 policemen including three commanders. Further south in Baqubah, national guardsmen were on a routine patrol when they noticed an improvised explosive device. It went off, injuring three. As soon as they rescued colleagues, they noticed another device which hadn't exploded. When they went to defuse it, a suicide bomber kilt five, injuring 26.
And here in Baghdad, a suicide bomber calmly sat in the vehicle waiting for the convoy of the commander of the Iraqi national guard to pass. The convoy passed and the bomb exploded, wounding five, but the commander was uninjured. First cavalry commander Brigadier General Jeffrey Hammond in a press statement indicated he did expect insurgent attacks to increase in the coming days before the January 30th election but he did say that no matter what, the elections will go ahead.
Jeff Koinange, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Still ahead, red star rising; we'll be joined by one U.S. congressman who warns about the growing threat from China.
And is the United States stingy in foreign aid contributions? My guests have sharply different views and will face of next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: President Bush defending U.S. foreign aid donations, and that after initial criticism from the United Nations emergency relief coordinator, who said the amount overall foreign aid given by western countries is, quote, stingy. In fact, the United States gives more foreign aid than any other nation. Some $16 billion, but critics say when it comes to the percentage of GDP given in foreign aid, the United States is lacking. It comes in 22nd, giving 1/10 of a percent.
Well, that brings us to the topic of tonight's face-off. Is the United States stingy in helping countries devastated by the tsunami? And joining me from Chicago is Joel Mowbray, and he says the United States more than his fair share. And here in New York is Ian Williams, UN correspondent for "The Nation" and he says the United States is giving Asian countries a fraction of what it gave in aid after the hurricanes hit Florida. So we have a few issues to sort through. And Joel, let's hear your position on foreign aid. Is it or is it not stingy?
JOEL MOWBRAY, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Kitty, the wrong question to does is how much foreign aid we're giving, as much as the real question is how are we spending it? Quite frankly, there are a lot of areas we need to have less foreign aid given out. Ian will admit a lot of money goes to prop up dictators and tyrants and ends up in Swiss bank accounts. We have money that helps sustain unsustainable structurally sound economies. Socialist economies that wouldn't be able to float without the influx of cash given to it by the U.S. and other wealthy nations.
PILGRIM: All right, distribution is your sticking point, basically?
MOWBRAY: I think we give a lot. But we should be giving more to humanitarian purposes and less to a lot of tithe things that we do now they talked about. That's the problem.
PILGRIM: Joel, let me add a statistic here, USAID tells us 40 percent of humanitarian aid from the world came from the United States.
MOWBRAY: Absolutely.
PILGRIM: 40 percent. Seems like a lot. Let's get Ian in on this.
IAN WILLIAMS, "THE NATION": Well, the key figure is that the targets which the U.S. has agreed and every other industrial country has agreed is 0.7 percent of gross national income.
PILGRIM: So less than 1 percent?
WILLIAMS: Yes, for the U.S. it's one fifth of that. The only people who actually meet that target are the Scandinavian countries and the Dutch. The U.S., as you pointed out is the 22nd, and foreign aid is different from development aid, and other countries, these figures shouldn't and don't usually include aid to Israel, Egypt and Jordan to stop from killing each other, checks to Mobuto, the political foreign aid, and what's happened here is the $35 million that the president eventually agreed on, that cleared the kitty. There is no more money in the USAID kitty, until the -- until the Congress gets together and gives more.
PILGRIM: Let me add one more thing that's not in these figures, however, and that's private donations of U.S. citizens who are notoriously generous, Joel?
MOWBRAY: Look, the stories abound Kitty, if you talk about -- take a look at newspapers, if you talk to people who run these charitable organizations, several of them have reported people giving checks as large as $10,000 or more. You had the Agency for Indian Development, which is just a nonprofit dealing with India, someone walked in and gave a $10,000 check today. That one organization alone, based in Maryland, has gathered $270,000 already as of early today. And that's one organization in Maryland. Americans are remarkably generous people, and their hearts have opened up with the people of Asia, as well they should have, and makes me proud to be an American to see my fellow Americans giving like that, even people that don't necessarily have that much money to give. They do. And when you look at whether or not the U.S. is stingy, you have to look at private giving. In America we give international aid the way we give domestic aid more through private source than public sources.
PILGRIM: Ian, you get the last word on this one.
WILLIAMS: Well, two points. First of all, the percentage of aid coming from charitable sources, from private donations, is less than one third of the government aid. It's not 0.06 percent.
PILGRIM: But $16 billion comes from the government?
WILLIAMS: Yes. In fact, I have to agree, Americans individually are generous. It's they're representatives are mean. And in fact, today, in between jousting with Joel, I've actually been arranging -- I got an e-mail to say it was successful, a Canadian airplane, Skylink, is linking up with an NGO in Washington called counterpart and between them they are flying $2 million worth of pharmaceuticals, so I know exactly how generous people can be when the time comes. But it's not enough. The government is the only people who can pull the resources together on this scale. You know, nickels - widows (ph) mates (ph) are fine, but it's dollars in the end that count.
PILGRIM: Well, I think one thing we can agree on, it's a very important issue and something that can't be overlooked. Thank you very much for joining us, Ian Williams and Joel Mowbray. Thank you.
Coming up, my next guest says trade policies with china are destroying the middle class in this country. Congressman Bernie Sanders joins me.
We'll also have the story of two businesses that honor the principles made in America. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: China said today it would not approve any additional airplane deliveries for next year. Shares in Boeing in the United States sank on that news. Now, the connection between China and the U.S. economy, the connections are increasing, and my next guest says corporate CEOs are trying to turn China into the global and military powerhouse of the 21st century. And with that, he says, they're destroying our nation's middle class. So joining me now from Vermont is Congressman Bernie Sanders who plans to introduce legislation to repeal permanent normal trade relations with China. Thanks for being with us, sir?
REP BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: My pleasure.
PILGRIM: The reaction to the China Boeing connection, and that stock went down considerably today.
SANDERS: Well, I'm not terribly surprised. But what also concerns me, China has been making demands on Boeing, that when Boeing sells them planes, the planes will be built in China, which means a transference of important technology to China which has long-term military implications. But the bottom line is that what's happening in America is the middle class is shrinking because corporate America is transporting millions of decent paying jobs to that country, and it's not just the old blue collar manufacturing jobs, there are predictions now that within the next 20 or 30 years, china will be the information technology leader of the world, and I frankly am tired of seeing corporate America, which grew rich on the backs of American consumers and workers and subsidies that they receive from our taxpayers, saying bye-bye American middle class, we're off to China where we can hire people in a totalitarian government for 30 or 40 cents an hour, that's wrong and that's got to stop.
PILGRIM: Congressman Sanders, how would your legislation do something to correct this?
SANDERS: Well, it would take us a giant step forward. It would end the disastrous permanent normal trade relations we now have with China which has given us $130 billion trade deficit and other loss of a million jobs and say, sorry, we want to end that, we negotiate new trade agreements with China which work for the people of America, and not only China.
PILGRIM: Does it not affect American business, to start putting rules and regulations how they do business globally?
SANDERS: Come on, let's be serious about it. What corporate America is doing is selling out working people all over this country. The concern that I have is not just the loss of good paying jobs today. The projections are very clear, that the new jobs being created and the Bureau of Labor Statistics does the study. The new jobs that are being created in this country over the next ten years are going to be primarily service industry, low-wage jobs with minimal benefits. Our good-paying jobs are going abroad, and somebody has got to tell corporate America that they cannot sell American workers out go to china, hire people for 30 cents an hour and bring those products back into the country tariff free, and then on top of that, of course, they run to the taxpayers and ask for billions of dollars in corporate welfare. That is insane and that has got to change.
PILGRIM: All right, thank you for joining us your viewpoint on this, and we think it's a very serious issue for America tonight. Thank you, Congressman Bernie Sanders.
SANDERS: Thank you.
PILGRIM: And now, we'll go to a "Made in America" story. Tonight, the story of two American companies that are dedicated to the American worker. Christine Romans reports.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fish's Eddy sells American made double fired commercial grade sturdy ware, dishes that Julie Gaines and her husband David Lenovitz have been selling for 17 years. Today, the couple has become a retail rarity. Almost everything they sell is still made in America.
JULIE GAINES, FISH'S EDDY: Our business is about America and American history and how awkward would it be to turn over a mug and see "made in China."
DAVID LENOVITZ, FISH'S EDDY: If we don't support these people, who is going to support them? These are American workers. Who is going to support them?
ROMANS: That philosophy rings true with Fish's Eddy customers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You want to support American businesses, your neighbor and stuff.
ROMANS: Fish's Eddy buy 80 percent of its pottery from another company dedicated to American production. Homer Laughlin. Located in what was once the nation's potter capital. Down here in West Virginia, this small company, known for its Fiesta dishware has been fighting imports for years, first from Europe, now from Asia.
JOE WELLS, HOMER LOCKLAND: Good afternoon, ladies.
ROMANS: Joe Wells is the fourth generation to run this family business.
WELLS: I think that good old American ingenuity, I think we can continue to compete and find niches where we can sell a product and make a profit.
ROMANS: For Homer Laughlin that ingenuity means investing in technology, and selling its wares to customers like Fish's Eddy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's $19.55.
ROMANS: Who care more about quality than cheap prices.
(on camera) This business is at a crossroads. The owners of Fish's Eddy are committed to American products so long as their customers are committed to quality over price. For now, their made in America philosophy stands, but they worry about just how long they can hold out. Christine Romans, CNN, New York.
PILGRIM: Still ahead, a preview of what's ahead tomorrow. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: Thanks for being with us tonight. Please join us tomorrow; Devinda Subasinghe, the Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States is my guest. And he joins us to talk about the tsunami devastation in Sri Lanka, and then Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF joins me to talk about global relief efforts.
And we continue our series of special reports "Made in America." Tomorrow, one American company fights foreign competition in manufacturing baby products. For all of us here, good night from New York. A special two-hour "ANDERSON COOPER 360" is next.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 29, 2004 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY PILGRIM, HOST (voice-over): Incomprehensible destruction. An unfathomable grief. The death toll in the wake of the south Asian tsunami continues to rise. Eyewitnesses recount incredible stories of survival and horror.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was having breakfast, and the wave just came in and took everybody on the beach with it, and children and old people.
PILGRIM: Dodging disaster. One couple's amazing story of being underwater when the killer wave struck. Julie and Warren Lavender share their incredible story of survival.
Cheap shot: President Bush makes his first public comments on the tragedy in south Asia, and answers the charges, the big nations are stingy.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're a very generous, kind-hearted nation.
PILGRIM: Tonight we'll have two very different views on the generosity of America in "Face Off."
Free trade or corporate greed? U.S. companies are shipping jobs and know-how to China at an alarming rate. Our guest says American workers can't compete with what amounts to slave wages in China. Congressman Bernie Sanders joins me live.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT for Wednesday, December 29. Here now for an hour of news, debate and opinion, sitting in for Lou Dobbs, who is on vacation, Kitty Pilgrim.
PILGRIM: Good evening.
Tonight, the pain, the agony and the absolute horror of the tsunami continues to reverberate around the world. International relief efforts have slowly begun to arrive. But the task ahead, unprecedented in its size and scope. The desperate search for survivors continues.
More than 80,000 people are now confirmed dead. The Red Cross says that number could top 100,000. Indonesia, the hardest hit with more than 45,000 deaths, most of those on the island of Sumatra. More than 23,000 killed in Sri Lanka. At least 10,000 dead in India. And 1,800 dead in Thailand.
We begin our series reports tonight in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, with ITN's Dan Rivers.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAN RIVERS, ITN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This was the moment of impact in Banda Aceh. This staggering footage taken by a family on a second floor apartment as the sea swallowed their town.
Terrified, the family think they will surely die. Somehow, they escaped.
Four days on, this is the scene in the port area, perhaps one of the most devastated sectors of this crippled town. We picked our way through with our guide, missing persons posters pinned to upturned trawlers.
It was surreal, obscene. Stranded boats, the twisted wreckage of a once thriving fishing community.
In the town center, corpses are being pulled by hundreds from the ruins of Banda Aceh. There is a nauseating stench everywhere, death and decay at every turn.
The army is ferrying in troops, but they're facing apocalyptic destruction, entire neighborhoods razed to the ground.
Like many, this man has lost everything. His home, his family.
(on camera) Nothing left.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing left.
RIVERS: Nothing at all?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My house has been destroyed. Everything.
RIVERS: Destroyed?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
RIVERS: If you want a graphic illustration of the sheer power of this tsunami, have a look at this. This trawler was smashed a mile and a half into the center of Banda Aceh. The locals say the tsunami was 60 feet high.
(voice-over) Those that survived are trying to clear the streets, but so far there is apparently little outside help. Banda Aceh is now an acute crisis. They are desperate for basic supplies.
The destruction is relentless, street after street utterly destroyed. Survivors stupefied by this carnage. In some places only dogs survived, waiting in vain for their owners. But out of town, the horror of all those deaths is concentrated at one place, lorries streaming in, carrying body after body.
(on camera) I've seen some terrible, awful sights today, but this is by far the worst. They're burying bodies by the lorry loads here in mass graves. They estimate there will be tens of thousands of corpses here by the end of the week.
Dan Rivers, ITV News, in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: One scene that no one in the region can escape is that of corpses and makeshift morgues virtually everywhere.
Matthew Chance in southern Thailand has more on the suffering felt by so many. We do want to warn that you some of the images you're about to see are disturbing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Beneath this smashed concrete, a whole family is trapped. But this is no search for survivors, just more bodies for Thailand's count.
This is where the awesome power of the tsunami struck this country hardest. In the mud, reminders of the many lives lived and lost here. Rescue workers told us only half the dead have yet been recovered. The final horrific cost of this disaster still in doubt.
"When we first arrived, it was total destruction," he says. "There were bodies all over the place. We've cleared it up a lot. But I believe there are many more beneath this rubble."
And for days, makeshift morgues like this one in the grounds of a Buddhist temple have filled with the remains of Thais and tourists alike. Forensic teams are helping with identification, and in a few days, they say, mass cremations will have to begin.
(on camera) This is a scene of the most gruesome kind. The bodies have been laid out in their hundreds here and are now being sprayed with disinfectant. Laid out so that their families, their loved ones, survivors can try and identify them.
But these are appalling conditions. It's hot and humid and the stench is overwhelming.
(voice-over) And so is the grief. The days here are now filled with hurried funerals.
This family told me of their terrible loss. Seven dead, ages 79 to just 6.
"We don't know what to do," says Laird (ph), the grandmother. "We've gone crazy. I don't think I can survive. All alone," she says. "No comfort." Her loneliness will be shared by so many.
Matthew Chance, CNN, Pangya (ph), Thailand.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: In Sri Lanka, help has begun to arrive, but for the people of this small island nation, the terror of the tsunami will never be forgotten. Many of those who made it out alive wonder how they will go on, having watched friends and relatives washed out to sea.
Satinder Bindra reports from Matara in southern Sri Lanka.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SATINDER BINDRA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Help and relief at last for thousands who have lost everything. Their loved ones are dead, their homes destroyed, and their belongings swept away. Now they have to live on handouts for weeks, and frightening memories for the rest of their lives.
"My father was pushed by the water onto the street," says survivor Anura Apparakagae (ph). "That was the last I saw of him."
Now, as he buries his father, Anura Apparakagae (ph) says millions of Sri Lankans feel the light has gone out of their lives.
Gamani Sumit Nanaraka (ph) shows me what remains of the restaurant he built with his life savings.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like I am alone. I can't think of what I can do in the future.
BINDRA: Others feel it's time to try and shake loose their shock. They employ local ingenuity to pull their valued possession from under tons of debris.
What lingers on here is an intense and overpowering smell.
(on camera) Decomposed bodies are still found everywhere. And health officials are getting very concerned. They're fearing the outbreak of an epidemic that could kill thousands more.
(voice-over) So far, there are no reports of any major health problems in southern Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, hundreds continue scrambling for food and cookies.
As he receives his tiny portion, this boy manages a smile. It's his way, perhaps, of saying thanks to all those across the world who are trying to help Sri Lanka.
Satinder Bindra, CNN, Matara, southern Sri Lanka.
(END VIDEOTAPE) PILGRIM: Well, those who did survive the tsunami disaster now face a second threat: the fear of widespread disease. Mosquito-borne diseases and respiratory infections from inhaling dirty water are two of the leading concerns.
Sanjay Gupta reports from Colombo, Sri Lanka.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone keeps saying help is on the way. The problem is, it isn't here yet. So in a country where public health barely exists, the people of Sri Lanka are rising up to care for their own.
(on camera) What is the most important thing you're seeing out in the field?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A couple of immediate public health problems out there. Outbreaks of diarrhea and certain other infectious diseases taking place on the third day now.
GUPTA (voice-over): Dr. Binya Arayaratna (ph), head of the country's largest NGO, gave us a behind-the-scenes look at one of the earliest command centers. It was set up just two hours after the first wave hit shore.
Two hundred doctors were organized and immediately sent all over the country, and this, a rudimentary map kept track of the displaced and the dead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's always getting up there like every other -- our workers, they are interpreting this particularly and (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
GUPTA: The situation is even more complicated, because many experts make the mistake of thinking that all parts of Sri Lanka face the same difficulties.
(on camera): I think what's sort of startling is that all these different districts have very different needs, everything from milk food to salt, 500 kilograms, boxes of matches 5,000 packets. You've got it down specifically.
(voice-over): And it's these details that make all the difference getting the right supplies to the right place at the right times, and only organizations that are boots on the ground have that right information, organizations such as the NGO Savadoya (ph), a sans-script word meaning "awakening of all."
(on camera): Do you think the tsunami has inspired an awakening of all.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tsunami is a wave of destruction. At the same time, there's is a tremendous amount of compassion, so we think that there is a wave of compassion as well.
GUPTA (voice-over): Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Sri Lanka.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Now many of those who did survive the devastation say they don't know how they made it out alive. Here in their own words stories of survival from three Americans.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was having breakfast, and the wave just came in and took everybody on the beach with it.
Life kind of slows down in a split-second. You generally don't think during those circumstances. You just have to kind of react and go.
It kind of just looked like a regular high tide wave, and then it just got more intense and more intense, and then everybody started running off the beach, and it was chaos. There was cars floating down the street.
JAKE KING, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: The water got so high that we -- the door would only open outward. We were unable to push the door outward.
So, in order to get out, he had to grab just bottles and chairs and shattered the window, and that's when the water basically pushed me all the way back. He floated his way out.
I just climbed up to a roof of the hotel, and then the roof was getting high enough to where I just had to jump on a tree and just pretty much jumped up on top and stayed on top of the tree until the tsunamis died down.
And we were grabbing people's arms from the top of the roof so that people weren't drowning. I mean, there was a lot of very old people, a lot of people that were unable to swim in these conditions, and it was just tough seeing people who weren't strong enough to get on a tree.
We did everything we could to grab people, but the water was just so powerful that you can only hold onto people so long before they either slipped out of their hands or some were strong enough to hold.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All I remember seeing is the wave coming in and cars floating, and then it's -- you know, I was just in my own, you know, self-preservation mode.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Well, just ahead, I'll be joined live by two others who narrowly escaped the tsunami. A Canadian couple scuba diving off the coast of Sri Lanka saved by their underwater adventure.
And assessing the damage. We'll hear from one relief organization at the scene of the disaster. Those stories and a whole lot more coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: President Bush today spoke publicly for the first time about the devastation from the massive earthquake and tsunami, following some criticism that he should have come out sooner.
White House Correspondent Dana Bash reports from Crawford, Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the death toll climbing towards 100,000, the vacationing president spoke for the first time from his Texas ranch about the tsunamis that swept Asia four days earlier.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This has been a terrible disaster. I mean, it's just beyond our comprehension to think about how many lives have been lost.
BASH: Mr. Bush, eager to show American leadership, announced the U.S. is helping form an international coalition to coordinate relief efforts in Asia, talked of military manpower being deployed and said he called leaders from ravaged Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand with promises to help assess and address their overwhelming long-term needs.
BUSH: I assured those leaders that this is just only the beginning of our help.
BASH: He did not announce additional financial assistance beyond the $35 million already pledged, but the president was prepared and eager to dismiss a U.N. official who initially called the U.S. and other wealthy nations generally stingy with aid to countries in need.
BUSH: The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed. Take, for example, in the year 2004, our government provided $2.4 billion in food and cash and humanitarian relief to cover the disasters for last year.
BASH: It makes sense, the president said, for the world community to develop a global warning system for tsunamis, but quipped, he's "no geologist" and admitted he doesn't know when asked if the U.S. Pacific Coast is protected.
BUSH: I can't answer your question specifically. Do we have enough of a warning system for the West Coast? I am going to -- I am now asking that to our agencies in government to let us know.
BASH: A spokesman later said the president has directed the secretaries of commerce and interior to look into whether U.S. early warning systems are sufficient.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BASH: And until now, only the president's spokesman and secretary of state spoke out on his behalf, prompting some criticism that Mr. Bush squandered a chance to earn much needed goodwill around the globe, coming out and using the bully pulpit to talk about -- send his condolences and talk about the devastation in Asia.
The White House, though, Kitty, simply says that they were waiting to have some specific U.S. actions for him to talk about -- Kitty.
PILGRIM: Dana, he did write letters of condolence to those immediately involved immediately after, did he not, and make phone calls to the people involved?
BASH: He did. He made phone calls to the people involved this morning. He did write seven condolence letters, we were told through his spokesman, right away.
But some of what the criticism is that the president as essentially the leader of the free world in some people's eyes has the responsibility to use the bully pulpit to speak out and express his condolences and to show that there is a leadership going on and the U.S. is taking that role, taking on that role, and that perhaps because he was on vacation, some of his critics say, he was too slow to come out and use that role.
PILGRIM: All right. Thanks very much.
Dana Bash.
Thank you, Dana.
Coming up, an amazing story of survival. Seventy feet underwater, one Canadian couple is saved by their scuba diving trip off the coast of Sri Lanka.
Also ahead, destruction, utter devastation. We'll have a live report by one of the hardest-hit regions, the shattered city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
And I'll be joined by the head of a relief organization, one on the ground in Sri Lanka, with more than one million people left there homeless. We'll talk about the massive efforts underway to coordinate aid.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: Among the stories of death and destruction in southern Asia, there are some remarkable tales of survival. My next guests were scuba diving off the southwest coast of Sri Lanka when the tsunami rolled right over them. Warren and Julie Lavender join us now from Kuwait City.
And, Julie and Warren, thanks for being with us this evening. We are delighted to see and speak to you this evening.
Tell us how you -- tell us how the day started when you went out scuba diving. Did you notice anything unusual?
WARREN LAVENDER, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: We never noticed anything unusual. It was a beautiful day, and -- not that that has anything to do with the tsunami, but it was like any other day. We had gone diving for two previous days, and we just went to the dive site, the same way we had previously. So there was nothing out of the ordinary.
PILGRIM: OK. And when you were underwater, tell -- take us a little bit into the environment you were in and what you felt?
JULIE LAVENDER, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: I went down with the instructor, and she was kind of helping me out because we were fairly inexperienced divers, and she told me to get to the other boat and grab the guideline, but I had difficulty doing that, so I had to grab the side of the boat, and she helped me get to the guideline.
And, as soon as we got underwater, we knew that something was so different because the current was so strong, so we were basically holding on for dear life, it felt like, and then we -- as we descended, the current got a little bit -- a little less strong.
PILGRIM: Are you experienced divers, or was this something that you just couldn't really understand?
WARREN LAVENDER: Well, we're not experienced divers. It was -- it's only our fifth time in the open water. When we did get to the bottom, we kind of figured out that it wasn't normal because we had to -- at one point, we were hanging onto coral.
And the instructor -- they -- she was looking at us, and she was also quite distressed, and we noticed more when we got to the top, the look on her face. She said she had 4,000 dives in the same spot, and she's never experienced anything like it.
PILGRIM: When you got to the surface, what was -- what were the conditions like?
JULIE LAVENDER: It seemed to be a little bit calmer once we got to the surface. So we figured that the wave had -- the big wave had passed, so we got back into the boat and started going back to shore and then realized, as we got closer to the beach, that the beach wasn't there any longer, and buildings were being -- were collapsing, and the drivers of the boats were both locals, and they couldn't believe their eyes. You could just tell on their faces that this was something they'd never seen before.
PILGRIM: Now you made the decision to land on shore. Why did you do that? Why didn't you stay out in the water?
WARREN LAVENDER: Well, we were entering -- it was an estuary where the scuba center was, and, as we were going into it, we could see the tsunami had gone up the river, and then it was coming back down, and we could see it was carrying with it all sorts of debris, parts of houses, things like that.
I'm not the strongest of swimmers, and so we just started screaming at the driver to get us onto land. So he hit -- he basically drove the boat up onto the side of a deck that had collapsed, and we just got out and ran for it.
PILGRIM: Once you got on shore, were you in fairly safe turf, or did you feel that you had to move very quickly to higher land? Did you feel there were more waves come in, and did they, indeed, come in?
WARREN LAVENDER: Well, we felt -- we felt safe as the first -- at that -- as the first wave went by us. We were confused. We never had -- we didn't have the slightest idea that we were hit by a tsunami.
We went in about 500 meters to the road, and then we turned and looked, and we saw the policemen running past us screaming, and there was about 150, 200 people behind them running, too, and we didn't need to understand their language to know that we should run ourselves.
And that's when a second wave was coming in. So we just -- actually, instead of running, we looked for the highest building we could find, and some of the people there were kind enough to let us come in the building.
PILGRIM: When did you realize what had happened?
JULIE LAVENDER: We started walking down the street, once things had been calmed down a little bit. We were still in our scuba gear and bare feet, and the manager from the hotel we were staying at came driving down the road, and they were looking for us, and so they took us back to the hotel, and then they were able to explain what had actually happened.
And a friend of ours who we were traveling with was still on our -- was on the beach when we were scuba diving. So our concern was whether she had made it back to the hotel, and she met us back there about 15 minutes later. So we were very relieved.
WARREN LAVENDER: Basically, it was watching -- we had the TV on, and that's when we realized how big it was, because we just thought it could have been a localized flood. Like no one really knew, so...
PILGRIM: What were the conditions at your hotel, and did you decide to leave immediately? What was your decision process after that?
WARREN LAVENDER: Our hotel actually was surrounded by a wall, and so we just had some minor flooding. The hotel beside us -- on either side of us, they were both destroyed, and we only had a few injuries in our hotel, but people on the buildings on either side of us -- some people were killed in both of them. They were just -- they were just demolished.
PILGRIM: You're very kind to talk to us, and I'm sure the emotional trauma is extreme. Do you feel you've absorbed the full impact of what happened to you as you see the pictures now, or is it still just a blank to you?
JULIE LAVENDER: It's very overwhelming. We -- you know, we've been watching the news, of course, and talking to family and friends back home and e-mailing, and I don't think it's quite sunk in, and we just think we're very fortunate compared to what other people have been through. So we're happy to be safe and back home.
WARREN LAVENDER: And also we're missing some friends of ours that we teach with, and they're still missing in Thailand. So we're quite concerned about them.
PILGRIM: And their names are?
WARREN LAVENDER: Mark and Sue Edwards, and they have their two little sons Jack and Sam, and we haven't heard from them at all, and we know they were on the coast. So everyone from the school is pretty concerned right now.
PILGRIM: All right. Well, our thoughts are with you, and we hope for the best for them. And thank you very much for sharing your story with us this evening. Be well. Thank you very much.
Julie and Warren Lavender.
Well, many of those who escaped the tsunami are now simply struggling to cope. Sons, brothers, parents dealing with the grief that seems to have no end.
Mike Chinoy reports from Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Until Sunday morning, this was the bustling port of Banda Aceh. Now it's a mass of twisted rubble: boats tossed on to rooftops by the force of the tsunami, neighborhoods flattened as far as the eye can see.
Traumatized survivors wander amidst the ruins, some hoping to salvage a few possessions, others still looking for their friends and family.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My friend here, dead. I know they found dead body. But nothing else (ph).
CHINOY: 27-year-old Eddie was a fisherman, his five brothers and sisters are missing. "My boat is somewhere out there," he says. "I don't know where my family is." In this shattered city, the living coexist uneasily with the dead. These bodies have been rotting in the heat for days. There simply aren't enough emergency workers to remove them.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHINOY: And to underscore the misery here during the course of the night and it's 6:30 in the morning, there have been a series of strong aftershocks, some over 6.0 on the Richter scale. The most recent one just about two hours ago, and it was centered barely 30 miles away from Banda Aceh -- Kitty.
PILGRIM: Mike, how do people react to these aftershocks? It must be very, very upsetting to them?
CHINOY: Well, it's very upsetting to all of us, people are trying to rest in the middle of the night. And you have this rumbling and jolting. People around where I've been trying to sleep, were running out of the building where they've been seeking shelter. It has to really compound the emotional trauma here, and especially there's no electricity, people are huddled wherever they can find shelter in the darkness of the tropical night, suddenly you get this frightening movement, and of course the few structures that are left standing would be more weakened, so there's always a possibility, and we'll see when we go around town during the day, whether any of them came toppling down.
PILGRIM: Mike, Banda Aceh is very remote. What's the aid situation that the point?
CHINOY: The aid situation has been pretty bad, it's beginning to improve. Some of the main international relief agencies, Doctors Without Borders, for example, are now here, the Australian military has flown in supplies. We're beginning, slowly, to get a trickle of help. Even here in Banda Aceh, as you go around, it's clear an awful lot of people have not gotten the basic help that they need, and outside the town, in the rural areas where hundreds of thousands of people live. We have no clear sense of the conditions there, except we assume they're very bad, and at the moment it's very unlikely they're getting any help at all. Kitty?
PILGRIM: Thank you very much, Mike Chinoy.
Well, stay with CNN at the top of the hour for continuing coverage of the tragedy in Southern Asia. Tonight, we'll have a special two hour edition of "ANDERSON COOPER 360." Now Anderson focuses on the children left orphaned by the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
And coming up next face-off tonight. Is the United States being stingy with its contribution to relief?
And the relief effort is under way. I'll be joined by one official with her assessment of the devastation. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: In a moment, Cassandra Nelson of Mercy Corps will tell us about the relief efforts to help tsunami victims. But first a look at some of the top stories.
Three explosions were reported in Saudi Arabia today, wounding several people. A car packed with explosives detonated outside the Ministry of the Interior after it tried to drive through a security checkpoint. That's according to a source within the ministry. A few minutes after another blast erupted a few miles away. And about an hour after, that a third explosion was reported. The CIA's deputy director for intelligence, Jami Miscik is stepping down. A CIA spokesman had, quote, no comment on her personnel changes. A former CIA official says she was told she would be replaced. Porter Goss is taking over as director of the CIA, replacing George Tenet.
And actor Jerry Orbach is dead at the age of 69 after a battle with prostate cancer. Orbach is best known for playing wise cracking detective Lenny Briscoe on the TV show "Law and Order" and for his role in the movie "Dirty Dancing."
Sri Lanka, one of the hardest hit countries in the devastating tsunami. And Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo is now the hub of aid distribution for the remote areas of the island. Some of which remain inaccessible. Mercy Corps is one of several relief organizations working to assist victims. And earlier I spoke with Cassandra Nelson of Mercy Corps and I asked her for her initial assessment of the situation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASSANDRA NELSON, MERCY CORPS: Well, in Colombo, you don't see the disaster here, the earthquake and the tsunami did not strike here. But you certainly see the emotional toll it's taking on the people here ha that had to really cope with the loss of loved ones as well as with a huge influx of people coming into the city. Whether being tourists from the resort areas, humanitarian aid workers have been flooding into the city. They're having to deal with a lot of emotional trauma and still keep everything running. Keep their jobs going, the hotels open, so it's a very stressful time for them, and I really think that most people here are really operating in somewhat of a state of shock.
PILGRIM: This will be the hub where aid is dispersed. From we're hearing reports of over a million people homeless, some living in the jungle. What are you hearing about the homeless situation?
NELSON: We're hearing pretty much the same thing, Mercy Corps sent some of our local partner NGOs, humanitarian aid organizations out into the field yesterday. They came back with a lot of assessment reports from the eastern coast of the island, saying they are seeing people that are living out in the jungles or the fortunate ones happen to be living either in schools or mosques or churches or any kind of structure they can find. But they said that the majority of the people that they saw do not have any kind of shelter aside from what they are able to find, and again, most are sleeping out in the open fields and jungle.
PILGRIM: How do you expect the aid will be coordinated? Do you think a system is very well in place to get them out into the more remote areas?
NELSON: There's still a lot of hurdles. We've certainly identified what the challenges are. Now getting through them is going to be what takes the next few days of planning and organizing. Some of the harder hit areas have lost all the bridges. Therefore, what it means is you cannot take any supplies in via road, you can take them to a certain point, but the road stops and you are still miles from the villages. What we're looking at having to do is take a lot of the goods, water, shelter items, nonfood items, and actually load them onto boats, and then take these boats into some of these more remote villages. So it really is compromising the ability to get aid out very quickly.
PILGRIM: One of the other concerns with this area is some sections are under rebel control, the Tamil Tigers, are you going have problems getting aid to certain groups because of that insurgency?
NELSON: At this point, it doesn't look like it's presenting any problems. The Tamil group has been cooperative, they have a humanitarian aid organization that is working with them very closely, and that the aid organizations that have been coming in, the international aid organizations have been told they need to work through to get the aid there. That's something that we are sitting down and looking at, how we can get into the areas effectively and quickly. At this point, it doesn't look like it's going to be problematic, but there is an extra hurtle, an extra step in terms of coordination that's going to need to be done to reach some of those most affected areas.
PILGRIM: Thank you very much for your assessment this evening, Cassandra Nelson, thank you, Cassandra.
NELSON: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Turning to the war in Iraq, Iraqi officials announced the capture of a terror leader in Mosul. He has links to al-Zarqawi. Now Abu Marwan was taken into custody by multinational forces after tips from Iraqi citizens. This news comes on the day of multiple deadly insurgent attacks. Jeff Koinange reports from Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It happened in the predominantly Sunny neighborhood of Gazalia (ph) in western Baghdad. Police received an anonymous tip that a man was standing on the roof of a building firing at residents. Police rushed to the scene and to the building, and the building exploded, killing 28, including the nine policemen.
U.S. military intelligence officer tell us the death toll is set to rise because the bomb weighed as much as a thousand kilograms and leveled several buildings, and rescue workers were still sifting through the rubble. Now this booby trap attack is the first of its kind in Baghdad. Such attacks were very common in Falluja when the U.S. military overran that town several months ago. There, everything from buildings to dead bodies to cars to entire streets were booby- trapped. The U.S. fears that if this is the trend that it doesn't all augur well in the coming elections.
Elsewhere across the country in the last 24 hours, dozens of Iraqi policemen and national guardsmen were killed in the town of Tikrit, former president Saddam Hussein's strong hold, insurgents fired a rocket propelled grenade into a police station and calmly walked in and executed all 12 policemen including three commanders. Further south in Baqubah, national guardsmen were on a routine patrol when they noticed an improvised explosive device. It went off, injuring three. As soon as they rescued colleagues, they noticed another device which hadn't exploded. When they went to defuse it, a suicide bomber kilt five, injuring 26.
And here in Baghdad, a suicide bomber calmly sat in the vehicle waiting for the convoy of the commander of the Iraqi national guard to pass. The convoy passed and the bomb exploded, wounding five, but the commander was uninjured. First cavalry commander Brigadier General Jeffrey Hammond in a press statement indicated he did expect insurgent attacks to increase in the coming days before the January 30th election but he did say that no matter what, the elections will go ahead.
Jeff Koinange, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Still ahead, red star rising; we'll be joined by one U.S. congressman who warns about the growing threat from China.
And is the United States stingy in foreign aid contributions? My guests have sharply different views and will face of next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: President Bush defending U.S. foreign aid donations, and that after initial criticism from the United Nations emergency relief coordinator, who said the amount overall foreign aid given by western countries is, quote, stingy. In fact, the United States gives more foreign aid than any other nation. Some $16 billion, but critics say when it comes to the percentage of GDP given in foreign aid, the United States is lacking. It comes in 22nd, giving 1/10 of a percent.
Well, that brings us to the topic of tonight's face-off. Is the United States stingy in helping countries devastated by the tsunami? And joining me from Chicago is Joel Mowbray, and he says the United States more than his fair share. And here in New York is Ian Williams, UN correspondent for "The Nation" and he says the United States is giving Asian countries a fraction of what it gave in aid after the hurricanes hit Florida. So we have a few issues to sort through. And Joel, let's hear your position on foreign aid. Is it or is it not stingy?
JOEL MOWBRAY, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Kitty, the wrong question to does is how much foreign aid we're giving, as much as the real question is how are we spending it? Quite frankly, there are a lot of areas we need to have less foreign aid given out. Ian will admit a lot of money goes to prop up dictators and tyrants and ends up in Swiss bank accounts. We have money that helps sustain unsustainable structurally sound economies. Socialist economies that wouldn't be able to float without the influx of cash given to it by the U.S. and other wealthy nations.
PILGRIM: All right, distribution is your sticking point, basically?
MOWBRAY: I think we give a lot. But we should be giving more to humanitarian purposes and less to a lot of tithe things that we do now they talked about. That's the problem.
PILGRIM: Joel, let me add a statistic here, USAID tells us 40 percent of humanitarian aid from the world came from the United States.
MOWBRAY: Absolutely.
PILGRIM: 40 percent. Seems like a lot. Let's get Ian in on this.
IAN WILLIAMS, "THE NATION": Well, the key figure is that the targets which the U.S. has agreed and every other industrial country has agreed is 0.7 percent of gross national income.
PILGRIM: So less than 1 percent?
WILLIAMS: Yes, for the U.S. it's one fifth of that. The only people who actually meet that target are the Scandinavian countries and the Dutch. The U.S., as you pointed out is the 22nd, and foreign aid is different from development aid, and other countries, these figures shouldn't and don't usually include aid to Israel, Egypt and Jordan to stop from killing each other, checks to Mobuto, the political foreign aid, and what's happened here is the $35 million that the president eventually agreed on, that cleared the kitty. There is no more money in the USAID kitty, until the -- until the Congress gets together and gives more.
PILGRIM: Let me add one more thing that's not in these figures, however, and that's private donations of U.S. citizens who are notoriously generous, Joel?
MOWBRAY: Look, the stories abound Kitty, if you talk about -- take a look at newspapers, if you talk to people who run these charitable organizations, several of them have reported people giving checks as large as $10,000 or more. You had the Agency for Indian Development, which is just a nonprofit dealing with India, someone walked in and gave a $10,000 check today. That one organization alone, based in Maryland, has gathered $270,000 already as of early today. And that's one organization in Maryland. Americans are remarkably generous people, and their hearts have opened up with the people of Asia, as well they should have, and makes me proud to be an American to see my fellow Americans giving like that, even people that don't necessarily have that much money to give. They do. And when you look at whether or not the U.S. is stingy, you have to look at private giving. In America we give international aid the way we give domestic aid more through private source than public sources.
PILGRIM: Ian, you get the last word on this one.
WILLIAMS: Well, two points. First of all, the percentage of aid coming from charitable sources, from private donations, is less than one third of the government aid. It's not 0.06 percent.
PILGRIM: But $16 billion comes from the government?
WILLIAMS: Yes. In fact, I have to agree, Americans individually are generous. It's they're representatives are mean. And in fact, today, in between jousting with Joel, I've actually been arranging -- I got an e-mail to say it was successful, a Canadian airplane, Skylink, is linking up with an NGO in Washington called counterpart and between them they are flying $2 million worth of pharmaceuticals, so I know exactly how generous people can be when the time comes. But it's not enough. The government is the only people who can pull the resources together on this scale. You know, nickels - widows (ph) mates (ph) are fine, but it's dollars in the end that count.
PILGRIM: Well, I think one thing we can agree on, it's a very important issue and something that can't be overlooked. Thank you very much for joining us, Ian Williams and Joel Mowbray. Thank you.
Coming up, my next guest says trade policies with china are destroying the middle class in this country. Congressman Bernie Sanders joins me.
We'll also have the story of two businesses that honor the principles made in America. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: China said today it would not approve any additional airplane deliveries for next year. Shares in Boeing in the United States sank on that news. Now, the connection between China and the U.S. economy, the connections are increasing, and my next guest says corporate CEOs are trying to turn China into the global and military powerhouse of the 21st century. And with that, he says, they're destroying our nation's middle class. So joining me now from Vermont is Congressman Bernie Sanders who plans to introduce legislation to repeal permanent normal trade relations with China. Thanks for being with us, sir?
REP BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: My pleasure.
PILGRIM: The reaction to the China Boeing connection, and that stock went down considerably today.
SANDERS: Well, I'm not terribly surprised. But what also concerns me, China has been making demands on Boeing, that when Boeing sells them planes, the planes will be built in China, which means a transference of important technology to China which has long-term military implications. But the bottom line is that what's happening in America is the middle class is shrinking because corporate America is transporting millions of decent paying jobs to that country, and it's not just the old blue collar manufacturing jobs, there are predictions now that within the next 20 or 30 years, china will be the information technology leader of the world, and I frankly am tired of seeing corporate America, which grew rich on the backs of American consumers and workers and subsidies that they receive from our taxpayers, saying bye-bye American middle class, we're off to China where we can hire people in a totalitarian government for 30 or 40 cents an hour, that's wrong and that's got to stop.
PILGRIM: Congressman Sanders, how would your legislation do something to correct this?
SANDERS: Well, it would take us a giant step forward. It would end the disastrous permanent normal trade relations we now have with China which has given us $130 billion trade deficit and other loss of a million jobs and say, sorry, we want to end that, we negotiate new trade agreements with China which work for the people of America, and not only China.
PILGRIM: Does it not affect American business, to start putting rules and regulations how they do business globally?
SANDERS: Come on, let's be serious about it. What corporate America is doing is selling out working people all over this country. The concern that I have is not just the loss of good paying jobs today. The projections are very clear, that the new jobs being created and the Bureau of Labor Statistics does the study. The new jobs that are being created in this country over the next ten years are going to be primarily service industry, low-wage jobs with minimal benefits. Our good-paying jobs are going abroad, and somebody has got to tell corporate America that they cannot sell American workers out go to china, hire people for 30 cents an hour and bring those products back into the country tariff free, and then on top of that, of course, they run to the taxpayers and ask for billions of dollars in corporate welfare. That is insane and that has got to change.
PILGRIM: All right, thank you for joining us your viewpoint on this, and we think it's a very serious issue for America tonight. Thank you, Congressman Bernie Sanders.
SANDERS: Thank you.
PILGRIM: And now, we'll go to a "Made in America" story. Tonight, the story of two American companies that are dedicated to the American worker. Christine Romans reports.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fish's Eddy sells American made double fired commercial grade sturdy ware, dishes that Julie Gaines and her husband David Lenovitz have been selling for 17 years. Today, the couple has become a retail rarity. Almost everything they sell is still made in America.
JULIE GAINES, FISH'S EDDY: Our business is about America and American history and how awkward would it be to turn over a mug and see "made in China."
DAVID LENOVITZ, FISH'S EDDY: If we don't support these people, who is going to support them? These are American workers. Who is going to support them?
ROMANS: That philosophy rings true with Fish's Eddy customers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You want to support American businesses, your neighbor and stuff.
ROMANS: Fish's Eddy buy 80 percent of its pottery from another company dedicated to American production. Homer Laughlin. Located in what was once the nation's potter capital. Down here in West Virginia, this small company, known for its Fiesta dishware has been fighting imports for years, first from Europe, now from Asia.
JOE WELLS, HOMER LOCKLAND: Good afternoon, ladies.
ROMANS: Joe Wells is the fourth generation to run this family business.
WELLS: I think that good old American ingenuity, I think we can continue to compete and find niches where we can sell a product and make a profit.
ROMANS: For Homer Laughlin that ingenuity means investing in technology, and selling its wares to customers like Fish's Eddy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's $19.55.
ROMANS: Who care more about quality than cheap prices.
(on camera) This business is at a crossroads. The owners of Fish's Eddy are committed to American products so long as their customers are committed to quality over price. For now, their made in America philosophy stands, but they worry about just how long they can hold out. Christine Romans, CNN, New York.
PILGRIM: Still ahead, a preview of what's ahead tomorrow. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PILGRIM: Thanks for being with us tonight. Please join us tomorrow; Devinda Subasinghe, the Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States is my guest. And he joins us to talk about the tsunami devastation in Sri Lanka, and then Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF joins me to talk about global relief efforts.
And we continue our series of special reports "Made in America." Tomorrow, one American company fights foreign competition in manufacturing baby products. For all of us here, good night from New York. A special two-hour "ANDERSON COOPER 360" is next.
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