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Hurricane Ivan Hours Away from Jamaica; Despite Crash, Solar Wind Samples Salvaged from Genesis Probe
Aired September 10, 2004 - 13:00 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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: In the path of a monster -- Hurricane Ivan is just hours away from slamming into Jamaica. We'll have a live report from the Caribbean island as it gets ready for this category four storm.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm John Zarrella. The Florida Keys in full evacuation. I'll have that report coming up.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Setting the stage for survival. How this training camp in the U.S. could mean the difference between life and death in Iraq.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: When the Genesis capsule plummeted to earth 48 hours ago, it certainly was not elegant -- no style points at all. But as it turns out for scientists, it might have been a happy landing after all -- Kyra.
WHITFIELD: From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Fredricka Whitfield.
PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. It's Friday, September 10th. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
We begin this hour in Jamaica, where time's running out to either pack up and take off or board up and take your chances. Hurricane Ivan is now on the island's doorstep, with full force winds of 145 miles an hour, or even higher forecasts tonight. Since this time yesterday, the storm has gone from category five to category four, but officials note the total devastation Ivan caused in Grenada as a category three.
It's blamed for no fewer than 25 deaths in that area, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.
WHITFIELD: Well, Ivan, once it leaves the Caribbean, could be three days away from Florida if it takes that path. Still, in the Florida Keys, mandatory evacuations are under way. And for those insisting on staying, preparing for the worst. CNN's John Zarrella is watching the comings and goings, mostly goings, from Key Largo. John...
ZARRELLA: That's right, Fredricka. Certainly, the goings, the mandatory evacuation began yesterday with non-residents and tourists asked to leave, and people in mobile homes also asked to leave. Today, residents are on the move. The evacuation began at 7 AM from the lower Keys. At noon this afternoon, the middle Keys evacuation began. And at 4 o'clock this afternoon, the upper Keys, where we are, the evacuation will begin here.
Now, this is U.S. 1, the only road in an out of the Florida Keys. And as you and our viewers can see, a steady stream of traffic, lots of boat trailers, lots of campers, mobile homes, everybody is heading out. By the end of the day, emergency officials say that some 60,000 of the 80,000 residents of the Florida Keys should be off of these islands.
Now, emergency managers are saying that with a major hurricane heading for the Florida Keys, people that stay risk their lives from both wind and water.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILLY WAGNER, MONROE CO. EMERGENCY MGMT.: No shelters will be open in the Keys. And one thing everybody has to realize, with a category 3 or greater hurricane, which we are facing, their lives are at stake not only from the storm surge, but also from the wind effects.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZARRELLA: Now, from Key West, where preparations began, it's mostly deserted, all the way up to Tampa on the West Coast of Florida. People are preparing for the potential hit from this hurricane. Because of the uncertain nature, of course, the folks up in Tampa went through the preparation process for Hurricane Charley less than a month ago. Now, they're preparing one more time for the possibility of a strike from a hurricane.
So everybody in Florida, from the east coast to the west coast, keeping a very close eye on the potential for Hurricane Ivan to make landfall somewhere in Florida, possibly, in the next three days or so. Fredricka...
WHITFIELD: And John, just looking at the picture earlier, seeing this stream of cars heading north, obviously, people are taking it very seriously. And that's in part because of what Florida has experienced just within the past month of two hurricanes already.
ZARRELLA: No question about it. It's certainly hurricane anxiety here in Florida -- this possibly the third strike in less than a month, people really very tired of it. The problem that they face with this storm is because it's going from south to north, and people say evacuating the Florida Keys... where do you go? You go west, you go east, you go north; potentially, you run right into it wherever you find a place to stay.
Hotel rooms are already at a premium all up and down the coast. It's going to be another very, very difficult time here in Florida for the next several days, and perhaps much longer than that. Fredricka...
WHITFIELD: All right, John Zarrella from Key Largo, thanks so much. Well, let's head to the weather center and check in with Orelon Sidney, who's keeping a close eye on Ivan. And any definitive view of just what kind of track this might take...
(WEATHER REPORT)
PHILLIPS: So far, in Jamaica, only a few hundred of the half million people the government was hoping to evacuate have moved into shelters. CNN's Karl Penhaul joins us now by videophone from Kingston. He's been there a few days. What can you tell us, Karl?
KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Kyra. Well, those numbers in the evacuation shelters really are a reflection of some of the laidback attitudes, and the last minute approaches we've seen from some ordinary Jamaicans. Now, the government yesterday, in a press conference, said they estimated they may need to evacuate up to 500,000 people from low lying areas in Kingston and the surrounding areas.
But many people are reluctant to leave their homes. Many others simply don't believe the hurricane will hit. Now, the weather experts are saying in a couple of hours, we should start to feel tropical storm force winds. Those will build, and then, in darkness hours, once night falls, the leading edge of the hurricane will hit the southeast edge of Jamaica.
But many people are still saying, no, maybe it's going to turn out to sea. And so for that reason, a government official has just told me that in government shelters now, there are only between 500 and thousand people, though he says that other people may have evacuated to go and stay with friends and relatives -- this in spite of an appeal by Prime Minister P.J. Patterson to Jamaicans to prepare for what he called imminent danger, and to prepare for what he called the worst case scenario.
In fact, the weather experts here are saying as the eye of the hurricane passes across Jamaica, the effects could be absolutely catastrophic. They say that it may be much worse than Hurricane Gilbert, the last major hurricane that passed across Jamaica in 1988. That caused 45 deaths and more than $600 million worth of damage, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Karl, you talk a lot about the locals there. You know, this is such a popular tourist area also, all those resorts, those all-inclusive resorts -- a popular place for honeymoon and weddings. How is that affecting the tourists? No one coming in... are a lot of them allowed to leave?
PENHAUL: Well, as we flew in from Miami on an Air Jamaica flight a couple of nights ago, there were still some tourists onboard, but the planes were very empty. That plane stopped off first in Montego Bay on the northern coast. And because this hurricane is going to hit the southeast coast first, then experts say that maybe it will lose some of its force as it passes across Jamaica.
Now, on the southeast coast, in the area around Kingston and towards the eastern point of Jamaica, fewer tourist resorts there. So the bulk of the tourists will be battened down. Those who have opted to stay on the island will now be battened down on the northern coast in the resort there, and some others on the western coast, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Our Karl Penhaul there in Kingston, Jamaica. We'll continue to check in with you throughout the day. Thanks, Karl.
Well, another story, as you know, we've been following -- well, maybe they should call it Phoenix now. To paraphrase Twain, reports of the demise of NASA's Genesis spacecraft, the spinning disc we all watched freefall into the Utah desert on Wednesday, were apparently exaggerated. My cohort Miles O'Brien checks in all the way from New York with the details. What's the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Miles?
O'BRIEN: Well, you've been telling me for years, Kyra, that I was kind of full of solar wind. Well, it turns out that might have been the case. And the reports that I perpetuated indicating that things looked grim for the science team there were way ahead of the curve, and I'm willing to admit that right now.
The science team, the engineering team has been poring through the wreckage of that Genesis capsule, which, as you know, 48 hours ago, landed without a parachute or the help from those stunt pilot flown helicopters that were supposed to ease it down ever so gently onto the surface of the Utah Salt Flats.
Instead, as you saw, it came down at pretty close to 200 miles an hour, broke apart, and augured right into those salt flats. Well, the good news is that those salt flats are kind of soft, and had perhaps, I guess, like an airbag type of effect, and protected two of the three main nests, if you will, or clusters of these devices, which captured pieces of the solar wind.
The solar wind was the quarry for this scientific experiment, which basically has the constituents of the very fundamental building blocks of our solar system. This spacecraft was out in space for 800 days, collecting this solar wind in these very fragile wafers. The thought was that they were so fragile that it would be very difficult to recover them, even if they landed with the help of a parachute.
Well, you saw the near 200-mile an hour crash-landing. Scientists going through that wreckage have been able to find two of these clusters of wafers intact. And now, they say, they have a great chance at getting a huge scientific payback. Let's listen to NASA Associate Administrator Al Diaz.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AL DIAZ, NASA: It looks like there is some hope that much of the science can be restored. It looks like two of the three collector systems were recovered either intact, in the case of the concentrators, or broken but useful for science in the case of the wafers. And it looks like only the foils on the outside of the canister were damaged substantially.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: NASA's having a teleconference now with some of the key people involved in this mission. We're getting some more details right now on precisely what they hope to do, how they're going to go about trying to recover all this science. But the fact is, last night, the scientific team actually had a victory dinner. Hard to imagine that 48 hours ago. Kyra...
PHILLIPS: All right, I've got a technical question for you. You ready for this?
O'BRIEN: Yes.
PHILLIPS: I remember when this happened, everybody was afraid to approach the Genesis when it crashed for fear of whatever it is that deploys the parachute might blow up.
O'BRIEN: Right.
PHILLIPS: How did they eventually get in there and get it? And also -- well, that's my first question. Answer that one first.
O'BRIEN: Well, two words for that: very carefully. They brought in... you know, this is an Air Force testing range. They're very, very accustomed to dealing with unexploded ordinance there, and they brought in a team with some specialty in that area -- rendered safe the spacecraft, as they say, or the wreckage in this case, and made it safe for people to get near it.
PHILLIPS: All right, so then, my second question, how did they get in there and collect these clusters without contaminating the wafers? And I don't even know if I'm asking that in the proper way, but...
O'BRIEN: No, that's actually a good way of answering...
PHILLIPS: I'm learning from you.
O'BRIEN: You're doing well, and I'm very impressed. The truth is, the purity of these wafers is a really big issue. And no matter how it landed, they planned on bringing it to this room that you see here, which is a clean room, which means essentially, there are no tiny microscopic particles in there. Air is pumped out instead of air coming in, and as a result, it's highly filtered and purified.
So this clean room was set up there already. And by the time they got to the closer part of getting to the wafers, people were in those kind of suits that you see in clean rooms -- this doesn't accurately reflect what they were doing at that time -- so that any contact with the wafers would not, in any way, further damage them. So, so far, so good on that front.
PHILLIPS: All right, and the head of NASA joining you soon, right?
O'BRIEN: We hope. We're working on that, and we hope to have Sean O'Keefe here to talk about it in a little bit. If not, we'll get that for you a little bit later.
PHILLIPS: I know he always calls you back. All right, Miles, thanks. Fred...
WHITFIELD: All right, well, the CIA concludes the latest video monologue from Osama bin Laden's right hand man is almost certainly what it seems, and taped fairly recent. In a clip that surfaced yesterday on Al Jazeera, Ayman al-Zawahiri claimed U.S. troops in Afghanistan are fighting a losing battle against resurgent holy warriors.
Not surprisingly, the White House sees things differently. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice spoke this morning with CNN's senior White House correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Their world is shrinking. We now have an Afghan government that is, of course, an ally in the war on terrorism. We've taken down in Iraq a leader who was a destabilizing force in the Middle East, and now we have a chance for a different kind of Middle East.
We have, of course, made progress in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, hopefully improving our chances of denying those terrible weapons to groups like al-Qaeda. And we've taken down three- quarters of the al-Qaeda leadership and members.
So their world is shrinking. We are making strides forward in this war on terrorism, and we will win it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: Meantime, the fight for Iraq is still being fought on many fronts, and with many tactics. And kidnapping is apparently still one of them. Today, we're following reports of four Iraq police officers seized in Najaf and displayed on al-Jazeera soon afterward. The kidnappers threatened to kill the men in 72 hours if they don't stop, quote, "harassing" the army of firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Another police officer was kidnapped later in Baghdad by attackers dressed as Iraqi national guard troops. Najaf and Baghdad also were the scenes today of opposing al-Sadr demonstrations. Hundreds rallied against al-Sadr on the cleric's home turf, and reportedly attempted to storm his office before being blocked and dispersed by police. In Baghdad, thousands rallied behind al-Sadr and against the Iraqi government.
For the fourth day in a row, U.S. air power has pounded the Sunni Triangle hotbed of Fallujah, this time, according to Marines, taking out a rocket launcher used by insurgents. No word on casualties.
PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, reduced to rubble -- a church in Connecticut blown to bits. We're going to have the latest on efforts to explain what happened. Using fictional incidents to prepare for grim reality -- why the U.S. military builds an Iraqi village in the U.S. That story still to come. Also up next...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PAUL GOLDBERGER, AUTHOR, "UP FROM ZERO": They've created a kind of awkward hybrid that's not the best of either one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Rebuilding ground zero, why the controversy continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: On the eve of the September 11, 2001 anniversary, right now, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is giving a progress report on the global report on terror. Rumsfeld's speech at the National Press Club in Washington just got under way just moments ago, and we'll be listening to it. And momentarily, we'll let you know what he has been saying -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, ground zero is sacred for the families who lost relatives on September 11th. There's been a lot of considerable controversy over what should be built at that site of the World Trade Center. Jason Carroll takes a look at the efforts to rebuild.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ground zero is undergoing an evolution -- filmmakers capturing the change with time lapse photography -- the rubble long gone, the rebuilding under way, but not without controversy.
ANTHONY GARDNER, COALITION OF 9/11 FAMILIES: We're not obstructionists. We just value our national heritage.
CARROLL: Anthony Gardner's brother worked in the Twin Towers and was killed on 9/11. Gardner says the footprints of the buildings are tangible, steel, and concrete, and should be preserved.
GARDNER: The scar that the World Trade Center attacks made on the fabric of our country is there. It's in that ground.
CARROLL: Part of that ground was used for the new train station, which has already reopened. A memorial will honor the footprints above ground with reflecting pools. Below, it calls for exposing some bedrock. It's still in the design phase -- completion 2009. The centerpiece of the skyline, the 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower, which had its cornerstone laying this past July.
But there is controversy here too. Daniel Libeskind's design was chosen during an international competition, but the site's developer got his own architect. The result, to one critic...
PAUL GOLDBERGER, AUTHOR, "UP FROM ZERO": They've created a kind of awkward hybrid that's not the best of either one.
CARROLL: Libeskind is now suing the developer over money. The group overseeing the rebuilding says enough is enough.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Now, the architects have to stop feeling sorry for themselves, quite frankly. The real victims on the site are the 2,800 people who were lost that day.
CARROLL: The Freedom Tower will be ready for occupancy in 2008. The only constant during so much change... the emotional attachment for the thousands who visit every day.
SHANNON ROSSMILLER, MONTANA TOURIST: I remember going up in those towers years ago, and it's hard to believe they're gone, for real, to see it for my own eyes.
CARROLL: A lot has changed in three years, but it's still called ground zero. Jason Carroll, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Well, recovery has been difficult on many levels. The airline industry says it has never fully recovered from the 9/11 attacks. Now, newly released figures suggest things aren't getting any better, and things could get even worse for passengers who rely on U.S. Airway. We'll explain, coming up next.
And still to come, teaching children about the terrorist attacks without terrifying them. We'll talk with an educator who has been honored by the group Families of September 11th.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think that certainly, in the days following 9/11, the country came together, no question about it. But I think largely, we've forgotten it again, and we are two sides, three sides, four sides at one another.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I think it's just because there's an election coming up, and the issues are whether we should be at war or not. So I think, you know, the Republicans versus Democrats is really all it was, and 9/11, it was more of the U.S. as one country, and not Democrats versus Republicans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: This was the scene about 50 hours ago as the Genesis return capsule came back from space after a nearly, well, little more than three-year visit there, capturing pieces of the solar wind that scientists hope to help unlock some of the more fundamental mysteries of the origins of our solar system.
Well, we all watched that crash landing and felt that the chances of deriving any sort of scientific gain out of this particular mission seemed fairly unlikely. NASA, of course, is a can-do agency, and the scientific and engineering team has been poring over the wreckage of the Genesis capsule over this short period of time, in a clean room out there in the Utah Salt Flats.
And the amazing response thus far from them is that there might be quite a bit of science to be derived out of this mission. Joining us now to tell us a little bit about it is the administrator of NASA, Sean O'Keefe, who, when we talked to him yesterday, we were bemoaning the fact that it didn't look so good. Maybe that was something I said instead of you.
But today, I've got to ask you, it seems so -- just looking at the wreckage, it seemed so unlikely that they'd be able to get anything out of there.
SEAN O'KEEFE, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: It's amazing, Miles, it is. But again, you've captured it exactly right. This is a can-do place. The primary mission of the whole Genesis spacecraft was to bring back samples that are oxygen and nitrogen isotopes. It appears as though all the canisters that collected those primary samples during the course of this three-year mission came back intact.
So we'll have to see exactly what the laboratory results will come back with. But there's a lot of excited scientists here about the fact that they have come back in very, very good condition. And it's just a testimonial. In fact, this is a pretty rugged piece of machinery to withstand this 200-mile an hour impact out there in Utah.
So it was an inelegant landing. Fortunately, we weren't looking for any Olympic style points in the way it looked on the way in. But at least the results may -- and the whole objective of what the science mission was about, which is the purpose of the whole program in the first place, may actually have some returns we're proud of.
O'BRIEN: Definitely, we'll get goose eggs from the Bulgarian judge on style points, that is for sure. I'm curious about this notion of contamination. That was a big issue. It was considered not only fragile, but needed to be handled with tender loving care so that those wafers wouldn't be contaminated by earth's atmosphere. What about that part of it?
O'KEEFE: Yeah, there were some sections of the collectors, if you will, the areas where concentrators for certain portions of the solar winds collection that were on the top end of the canister of the spacecraft itself, inside the containment vessel. That was breached, and that's the part they're concerned about, that the environmental contamination of those pieces may not yield the kind of scientific return we were looking for.
But the part that was the main focus of the scientific mission itself, this nitrogen and oxygen isotope collection section, all of the canisters and concentrators for that came back totally recovered, without any damage there. So it does look very, very promising. But we'll see exactly what the laboratory results will indicate.
O'BRIEN: You know, I know you didn't pick that landing site, because it was a nice, cushy place to do it. It's just a big hunk of restricted airspace. But as it turns out, mother nature worked on your side in this case.
O'KEEFE: Oh, indeed. It's an established, you know, federal facility where there's an awful lot of testing that typically occurs in a wide range of kind of conditions. It's an Army's deadway (ph) proving ground out there. And as a result, that was the perfect ideal location to assure that our first objective, which is we do this kind of stuff as safely as we can, was guaranteed, that this wouldn't create any collateral damage at all.
So it was the ideal condition, and it turned out just the conditions of the terra firma, if you will... the ground was such that it was soft enough to engage the impact. And as a result, we may have gotten all the returns we could have hoped for, even if had looked like a better landing than it was.
O'BRIEN: Terra not so firma sometimes can help you out. Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, thanks. What a difference 24 hours can make. We wish you and the science team well, and we look forward to seeing those papers. Perhaps some fundamental questions answered after all -- Kyra.
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Aired September 10, 2004 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: In the path of a monster -- Hurricane Ivan is just hours away from slamming into Jamaica. We'll have a live report from the Caribbean island as it gets ready for this category four storm.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm John Zarrella. The Florida Keys in full evacuation. I'll have that report coming up.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Setting the stage for survival. How this training camp in the U.S. could mean the difference between life and death in Iraq.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: When the Genesis capsule plummeted to earth 48 hours ago, it certainly was not elegant -- no style points at all. But as it turns out for scientists, it might have been a happy landing after all -- Kyra.
WHITFIELD: From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Fredricka Whitfield.
PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. It's Friday, September 10th. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
We begin this hour in Jamaica, where time's running out to either pack up and take off or board up and take your chances. Hurricane Ivan is now on the island's doorstep, with full force winds of 145 miles an hour, or even higher forecasts tonight. Since this time yesterday, the storm has gone from category five to category four, but officials note the total devastation Ivan caused in Grenada as a category three.
It's blamed for no fewer than 25 deaths in that area, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.
WHITFIELD: Well, Ivan, once it leaves the Caribbean, could be three days away from Florida if it takes that path. Still, in the Florida Keys, mandatory evacuations are under way. And for those insisting on staying, preparing for the worst. CNN's John Zarrella is watching the comings and goings, mostly goings, from Key Largo. John...
ZARRELLA: That's right, Fredricka. Certainly, the goings, the mandatory evacuation began yesterday with non-residents and tourists asked to leave, and people in mobile homes also asked to leave. Today, residents are on the move. The evacuation began at 7 AM from the lower Keys. At noon this afternoon, the middle Keys evacuation began. And at 4 o'clock this afternoon, the upper Keys, where we are, the evacuation will begin here.
Now, this is U.S. 1, the only road in an out of the Florida Keys. And as you and our viewers can see, a steady stream of traffic, lots of boat trailers, lots of campers, mobile homes, everybody is heading out. By the end of the day, emergency officials say that some 60,000 of the 80,000 residents of the Florida Keys should be off of these islands.
Now, emergency managers are saying that with a major hurricane heading for the Florida Keys, people that stay risk their lives from both wind and water.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILLY WAGNER, MONROE CO. EMERGENCY MGMT.: No shelters will be open in the Keys. And one thing everybody has to realize, with a category 3 or greater hurricane, which we are facing, their lives are at stake not only from the storm surge, but also from the wind effects.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZARRELLA: Now, from Key West, where preparations began, it's mostly deserted, all the way up to Tampa on the West Coast of Florida. People are preparing for the potential hit from this hurricane. Because of the uncertain nature, of course, the folks up in Tampa went through the preparation process for Hurricane Charley less than a month ago. Now, they're preparing one more time for the possibility of a strike from a hurricane.
So everybody in Florida, from the east coast to the west coast, keeping a very close eye on the potential for Hurricane Ivan to make landfall somewhere in Florida, possibly, in the next three days or so. Fredricka...
WHITFIELD: And John, just looking at the picture earlier, seeing this stream of cars heading north, obviously, people are taking it very seriously. And that's in part because of what Florida has experienced just within the past month of two hurricanes already.
ZARRELLA: No question about it. It's certainly hurricane anxiety here in Florida -- this possibly the third strike in less than a month, people really very tired of it. The problem that they face with this storm is because it's going from south to north, and people say evacuating the Florida Keys... where do you go? You go west, you go east, you go north; potentially, you run right into it wherever you find a place to stay.
Hotel rooms are already at a premium all up and down the coast. It's going to be another very, very difficult time here in Florida for the next several days, and perhaps much longer than that. Fredricka...
WHITFIELD: All right, John Zarrella from Key Largo, thanks so much. Well, let's head to the weather center and check in with Orelon Sidney, who's keeping a close eye on Ivan. And any definitive view of just what kind of track this might take...
(WEATHER REPORT)
PHILLIPS: So far, in Jamaica, only a few hundred of the half million people the government was hoping to evacuate have moved into shelters. CNN's Karl Penhaul joins us now by videophone from Kingston. He's been there a few days. What can you tell us, Karl?
KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Kyra. Well, those numbers in the evacuation shelters really are a reflection of some of the laidback attitudes, and the last minute approaches we've seen from some ordinary Jamaicans. Now, the government yesterday, in a press conference, said they estimated they may need to evacuate up to 500,000 people from low lying areas in Kingston and the surrounding areas.
But many people are reluctant to leave their homes. Many others simply don't believe the hurricane will hit. Now, the weather experts are saying in a couple of hours, we should start to feel tropical storm force winds. Those will build, and then, in darkness hours, once night falls, the leading edge of the hurricane will hit the southeast edge of Jamaica.
But many people are still saying, no, maybe it's going to turn out to sea. And so for that reason, a government official has just told me that in government shelters now, there are only between 500 and thousand people, though he says that other people may have evacuated to go and stay with friends and relatives -- this in spite of an appeal by Prime Minister P.J. Patterson to Jamaicans to prepare for what he called imminent danger, and to prepare for what he called the worst case scenario.
In fact, the weather experts here are saying as the eye of the hurricane passes across Jamaica, the effects could be absolutely catastrophic. They say that it may be much worse than Hurricane Gilbert, the last major hurricane that passed across Jamaica in 1988. That caused 45 deaths and more than $600 million worth of damage, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Karl, you talk a lot about the locals there. You know, this is such a popular tourist area also, all those resorts, those all-inclusive resorts -- a popular place for honeymoon and weddings. How is that affecting the tourists? No one coming in... are a lot of them allowed to leave?
PENHAUL: Well, as we flew in from Miami on an Air Jamaica flight a couple of nights ago, there were still some tourists onboard, but the planes were very empty. That plane stopped off first in Montego Bay on the northern coast. And because this hurricane is going to hit the southeast coast first, then experts say that maybe it will lose some of its force as it passes across Jamaica.
Now, on the southeast coast, in the area around Kingston and towards the eastern point of Jamaica, fewer tourist resorts there. So the bulk of the tourists will be battened down. Those who have opted to stay on the island will now be battened down on the northern coast in the resort there, and some others on the western coast, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Our Karl Penhaul there in Kingston, Jamaica. We'll continue to check in with you throughout the day. Thanks, Karl.
Well, another story, as you know, we've been following -- well, maybe they should call it Phoenix now. To paraphrase Twain, reports of the demise of NASA's Genesis spacecraft, the spinning disc we all watched freefall into the Utah desert on Wednesday, were apparently exaggerated. My cohort Miles O'Brien checks in all the way from New York with the details. What's the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Miles?
O'BRIEN: Well, you've been telling me for years, Kyra, that I was kind of full of solar wind. Well, it turns out that might have been the case. And the reports that I perpetuated indicating that things looked grim for the science team there were way ahead of the curve, and I'm willing to admit that right now.
The science team, the engineering team has been poring through the wreckage of that Genesis capsule, which, as you know, 48 hours ago, landed without a parachute or the help from those stunt pilot flown helicopters that were supposed to ease it down ever so gently onto the surface of the Utah Salt Flats.
Instead, as you saw, it came down at pretty close to 200 miles an hour, broke apart, and augured right into those salt flats. Well, the good news is that those salt flats are kind of soft, and had perhaps, I guess, like an airbag type of effect, and protected two of the three main nests, if you will, or clusters of these devices, which captured pieces of the solar wind.
The solar wind was the quarry for this scientific experiment, which basically has the constituents of the very fundamental building blocks of our solar system. This spacecraft was out in space for 800 days, collecting this solar wind in these very fragile wafers. The thought was that they were so fragile that it would be very difficult to recover them, even if they landed with the help of a parachute.
Well, you saw the near 200-mile an hour crash-landing. Scientists going through that wreckage have been able to find two of these clusters of wafers intact. And now, they say, they have a great chance at getting a huge scientific payback. Let's listen to NASA Associate Administrator Al Diaz.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AL DIAZ, NASA: It looks like there is some hope that much of the science can be restored. It looks like two of the three collector systems were recovered either intact, in the case of the concentrators, or broken but useful for science in the case of the wafers. And it looks like only the foils on the outside of the canister were damaged substantially.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: NASA's having a teleconference now with some of the key people involved in this mission. We're getting some more details right now on precisely what they hope to do, how they're going to go about trying to recover all this science. But the fact is, last night, the scientific team actually had a victory dinner. Hard to imagine that 48 hours ago. Kyra...
PHILLIPS: All right, I've got a technical question for you. You ready for this?
O'BRIEN: Yes.
PHILLIPS: I remember when this happened, everybody was afraid to approach the Genesis when it crashed for fear of whatever it is that deploys the parachute might blow up.
O'BRIEN: Right.
PHILLIPS: How did they eventually get in there and get it? And also -- well, that's my first question. Answer that one first.
O'BRIEN: Well, two words for that: very carefully. They brought in... you know, this is an Air Force testing range. They're very, very accustomed to dealing with unexploded ordinance there, and they brought in a team with some specialty in that area -- rendered safe the spacecraft, as they say, or the wreckage in this case, and made it safe for people to get near it.
PHILLIPS: All right, so then, my second question, how did they get in there and collect these clusters without contaminating the wafers? And I don't even know if I'm asking that in the proper way, but...
O'BRIEN: No, that's actually a good way of answering...
PHILLIPS: I'm learning from you.
O'BRIEN: You're doing well, and I'm very impressed. The truth is, the purity of these wafers is a really big issue. And no matter how it landed, they planned on bringing it to this room that you see here, which is a clean room, which means essentially, there are no tiny microscopic particles in there. Air is pumped out instead of air coming in, and as a result, it's highly filtered and purified.
So this clean room was set up there already. And by the time they got to the closer part of getting to the wafers, people were in those kind of suits that you see in clean rooms -- this doesn't accurately reflect what they were doing at that time -- so that any contact with the wafers would not, in any way, further damage them. So, so far, so good on that front.
PHILLIPS: All right, and the head of NASA joining you soon, right?
O'BRIEN: We hope. We're working on that, and we hope to have Sean O'Keefe here to talk about it in a little bit. If not, we'll get that for you a little bit later.
PHILLIPS: I know he always calls you back. All right, Miles, thanks. Fred...
WHITFIELD: All right, well, the CIA concludes the latest video monologue from Osama bin Laden's right hand man is almost certainly what it seems, and taped fairly recent. In a clip that surfaced yesterday on Al Jazeera, Ayman al-Zawahiri claimed U.S. troops in Afghanistan are fighting a losing battle against resurgent holy warriors.
Not surprisingly, the White House sees things differently. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice spoke this morning with CNN's senior White House correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Their world is shrinking. We now have an Afghan government that is, of course, an ally in the war on terrorism. We've taken down in Iraq a leader who was a destabilizing force in the Middle East, and now we have a chance for a different kind of Middle East.
We have, of course, made progress in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, hopefully improving our chances of denying those terrible weapons to groups like al-Qaeda. And we've taken down three- quarters of the al-Qaeda leadership and members.
So their world is shrinking. We are making strides forward in this war on terrorism, and we will win it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: Meantime, the fight for Iraq is still being fought on many fronts, and with many tactics. And kidnapping is apparently still one of them. Today, we're following reports of four Iraq police officers seized in Najaf and displayed on al-Jazeera soon afterward. The kidnappers threatened to kill the men in 72 hours if they don't stop, quote, "harassing" the army of firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Another police officer was kidnapped later in Baghdad by attackers dressed as Iraqi national guard troops. Najaf and Baghdad also were the scenes today of opposing al-Sadr demonstrations. Hundreds rallied against al-Sadr on the cleric's home turf, and reportedly attempted to storm his office before being blocked and dispersed by police. In Baghdad, thousands rallied behind al-Sadr and against the Iraqi government.
For the fourth day in a row, U.S. air power has pounded the Sunni Triangle hotbed of Fallujah, this time, according to Marines, taking out a rocket launcher used by insurgents. No word on casualties.
PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, reduced to rubble -- a church in Connecticut blown to bits. We're going to have the latest on efforts to explain what happened. Using fictional incidents to prepare for grim reality -- why the U.S. military builds an Iraqi village in the U.S. That story still to come. Also up next...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PAUL GOLDBERGER, AUTHOR, "UP FROM ZERO": They've created a kind of awkward hybrid that's not the best of either one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Rebuilding ground zero, why the controversy continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: On the eve of the September 11, 2001 anniversary, right now, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is giving a progress report on the global report on terror. Rumsfeld's speech at the National Press Club in Washington just got under way just moments ago, and we'll be listening to it. And momentarily, we'll let you know what he has been saying -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, ground zero is sacred for the families who lost relatives on September 11th. There's been a lot of considerable controversy over what should be built at that site of the World Trade Center. Jason Carroll takes a look at the efforts to rebuild.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ground zero is undergoing an evolution -- filmmakers capturing the change with time lapse photography -- the rubble long gone, the rebuilding under way, but not without controversy.
ANTHONY GARDNER, COALITION OF 9/11 FAMILIES: We're not obstructionists. We just value our national heritage.
CARROLL: Anthony Gardner's brother worked in the Twin Towers and was killed on 9/11. Gardner says the footprints of the buildings are tangible, steel, and concrete, and should be preserved.
GARDNER: The scar that the World Trade Center attacks made on the fabric of our country is there. It's in that ground.
CARROLL: Part of that ground was used for the new train station, which has already reopened. A memorial will honor the footprints above ground with reflecting pools. Below, it calls for exposing some bedrock. It's still in the design phase -- completion 2009. The centerpiece of the skyline, the 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower, which had its cornerstone laying this past July.
But there is controversy here too. Daniel Libeskind's design was chosen during an international competition, but the site's developer got his own architect. The result, to one critic...
PAUL GOLDBERGER, AUTHOR, "UP FROM ZERO": They've created a kind of awkward hybrid that's not the best of either one.
CARROLL: Libeskind is now suing the developer over money. The group overseeing the rebuilding says enough is enough.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Now, the architects have to stop feeling sorry for themselves, quite frankly. The real victims on the site are the 2,800 people who were lost that day.
CARROLL: The Freedom Tower will be ready for occupancy in 2008. The only constant during so much change... the emotional attachment for the thousands who visit every day.
SHANNON ROSSMILLER, MONTANA TOURIST: I remember going up in those towers years ago, and it's hard to believe they're gone, for real, to see it for my own eyes.
CARROLL: A lot has changed in three years, but it's still called ground zero. Jason Carroll, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Well, recovery has been difficult on many levels. The airline industry says it has never fully recovered from the 9/11 attacks. Now, newly released figures suggest things aren't getting any better, and things could get even worse for passengers who rely on U.S. Airway. We'll explain, coming up next.
And still to come, teaching children about the terrorist attacks without terrifying them. We'll talk with an educator who has been honored by the group Families of September 11th.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think that certainly, in the days following 9/11, the country came together, no question about it. But I think largely, we've forgotten it again, and we are two sides, three sides, four sides at one another.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I think it's just because there's an election coming up, and the issues are whether we should be at war or not. So I think, you know, the Republicans versus Democrats is really all it was, and 9/11, it was more of the U.S. as one country, and not Democrats versus Republicans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: This was the scene about 50 hours ago as the Genesis return capsule came back from space after a nearly, well, little more than three-year visit there, capturing pieces of the solar wind that scientists hope to help unlock some of the more fundamental mysteries of the origins of our solar system.
Well, we all watched that crash landing and felt that the chances of deriving any sort of scientific gain out of this particular mission seemed fairly unlikely. NASA, of course, is a can-do agency, and the scientific and engineering team has been poring over the wreckage of the Genesis capsule over this short period of time, in a clean room out there in the Utah Salt Flats.
And the amazing response thus far from them is that there might be quite a bit of science to be derived out of this mission. Joining us now to tell us a little bit about it is the administrator of NASA, Sean O'Keefe, who, when we talked to him yesterday, we were bemoaning the fact that it didn't look so good. Maybe that was something I said instead of you.
But today, I've got to ask you, it seems so -- just looking at the wreckage, it seemed so unlikely that they'd be able to get anything out of there.
SEAN O'KEEFE, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: It's amazing, Miles, it is. But again, you've captured it exactly right. This is a can-do place. The primary mission of the whole Genesis spacecraft was to bring back samples that are oxygen and nitrogen isotopes. It appears as though all the canisters that collected those primary samples during the course of this three-year mission came back intact.
So we'll have to see exactly what the laboratory results will come back with. But there's a lot of excited scientists here about the fact that they have come back in very, very good condition. And it's just a testimonial. In fact, this is a pretty rugged piece of machinery to withstand this 200-mile an hour impact out there in Utah.
So it was an inelegant landing. Fortunately, we weren't looking for any Olympic style points in the way it looked on the way in. But at least the results may -- and the whole objective of what the science mission was about, which is the purpose of the whole program in the first place, may actually have some returns we're proud of.
O'BRIEN: Definitely, we'll get goose eggs from the Bulgarian judge on style points, that is for sure. I'm curious about this notion of contamination. That was a big issue. It was considered not only fragile, but needed to be handled with tender loving care so that those wafers wouldn't be contaminated by earth's atmosphere. What about that part of it?
O'KEEFE: Yeah, there were some sections of the collectors, if you will, the areas where concentrators for certain portions of the solar winds collection that were on the top end of the canister of the spacecraft itself, inside the containment vessel. That was breached, and that's the part they're concerned about, that the environmental contamination of those pieces may not yield the kind of scientific return we were looking for.
But the part that was the main focus of the scientific mission itself, this nitrogen and oxygen isotope collection section, all of the canisters and concentrators for that came back totally recovered, without any damage there. So it does look very, very promising. But we'll see exactly what the laboratory results will indicate.
O'BRIEN: You know, I know you didn't pick that landing site, because it was a nice, cushy place to do it. It's just a big hunk of restricted airspace. But as it turns out, mother nature worked on your side in this case.
O'KEEFE: Oh, indeed. It's an established, you know, federal facility where there's an awful lot of testing that typically occurs in a wide range of kind of conditions. It's an Army's deadway (ph) proving ground out there. And as a result, that was the perfect ideal location to assure that our first objective, which is we do this kind of stuff as safely as we can, was guaranteed, that this wouldn't create any collateral damage at all.
So it was the ideal condition, and it turned out just the conditions of the terra firma, if you will... the ground was such that it was soft enough to engage the impact. And as a result, we may have gotten all the returns we could have hoped for, even if had looked like a better landing than it was.
O'BRIEN: Terra not so firma sometimes can help you out. Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, thanks. What a difference 24 hours can make. We wish you and the science team well, and we look forward to seeing those papers. Perhaps some fundamental questions answered after all -- Kyra.
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