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Official Death Toll in Indonesia Approaching 5,000; Relief Agencies Scrambling to Deploy People, Emergency Supplies

Aired December 28, 2004 - 13:36   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.


BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: The official death toll in Indonesia is approaching 5,000, with many of the dead found in hard-hit Aceh province.
CNN's Mike Chinoy is in the city of Banda, about 100 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Banda Aceh is a city of death. Three days after the earthquake and devastating tsunami, bodies still litter the streets. The authorities hard- pressed to deal with the scale of the crisis. Many people here say they have nowhere to go. They don't know where there relatives are. You see them sitting outside in small groups. They've lost their homes, desolate, waiting for help to arrive.

Indonesia's president, Cecilia Bombar Nguynono (ph), spent most of the day touring this area. He pledged that a relief effort would pick up speed quickly. However, at this point it's still in the very, very early stages.

On the outskirts of Banda Aceh, I visited a large pit that had been dug for a mass grave. There were a thousand bodies, bloated and contorted, being shoveled into a big hole by several bulldozers and covered over with earth. The authorities worry that in the tropical heat decomposing bodies will add to the great danger of epidemics and diseases.

At this point now, people here are simply dazed shell shocked, and there are large stretches of this part of Aceh where they have no information at all, along the coastal areas and the western part of the province, hundreds of thousands of people in seaside communities where there's no communication, we have no idea what happened to them, whether how many are dead, how many are alive and what kind of help they need.

Mike Chinoy, CNN, Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Here in the United States, relief agencies scrambling to deploy people and emergency supplies into that huge disaster area. At the same time, the push is on for private contributions of cash. The latest now from one major relief group, Americares. CNN's Allan Chernoff at the organization's headquarters in Connecticut -- Allan.

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, the long journey to provide assistance to the victims begins right here at a warehouse in Stanford, Connecticut.

And behind me, you see some of the products donated by corporations around the nations. In this box, we've got T-shirts. They happen to be Harley-Davidson T-shirts, extras. Over here, we have some I.V. kits, sponges provided by Johnson & Johnson, and here are paste bandages. These are essentially quick-setting casts with people with broken bones.

What Americares does, is they get these products, they transport the products over to the places where people need them the most. These products will be heading out to Sri Lanka within a couple of weeks. Hopefully the sooner the better. Tomorrow, though, they have a warehouse in Amsterdam, and they'll be sending an airlift out of there tomorrow.

Joining me is Christoph Gorder, and he is in charge of international products for Americas.

Christoph, thanks for being with us today.

First of all, tell us how do you coordinate with people in these places right now? I mean, their phone lines are down, very hard to communicate?

CHRISTOPH GORDER, AMERICARES: It's very, very difficult, and it's part of the challenge of -- that we're faced with in being a disaster-response organization. It's -- everything is affected, and in this case in particular the magnitude is so huge across nine countries, thousands of miles, remote areas, it's really daunting.

CHERNOFF: And so daunting situation. You've got people on the ground who can actually assess the need?

GORDER: That's correct. We reach out -- the very first day we started reaching out and very quickly, we're in touch with the Red Cross in these areas, with the local governments and with individual doctors who are seeing patients, you know, coming in and so we saw that it was going to be a big disaster.

CHERNOFF: And briefly, it is doctors on the ground there that are going to be using all this equipment?

GORDER: That's right. They're the experts and they're the ones who need the tools to save the lives.

CHERNOFF: Cristoph Gorder, thank you very much. And Miles, this organization has been doing this type of thing for more than two decades. They say they've donated $4 billion worth of goods during that time period.

O'BRIEN: All right, I suspect they haven't met a disaster like this one. We wish them well. Thank you, Allan Chernoff -- Betty. NGUYEN: Our colleagues at cnn.com have been getting an enormous number of e-mails from people looking for their loved ones in the tsunami disaster. CNN's Randi Kaye is with us now for a look at those emails.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And Betty, this not unlike 9/11 when people were searching for their loved ones.

NGUYEN: The posters, the pictures.

KAYE: Right. You saw them with the boards in New York City. And they were all desperate for answers. Well, if you would, take a look at what is going on in Phuket Island off Thailand. People are posting pictures looking for missing relatives and friends, but some can't get to Indonesia or India or Sri Lanka and walk around holding up pictures to post them on a board there, so they're finding other ways to get answers.

Families, no doubt, are frustrated with communication knocked out in much of Southern Asia. Relatives and friends are turning to the web to find their loved ones. We have set up a link here at cnn.com and the appeals for help are pouring in. In fact, we're getting about one request every two minutes. We wanted to share a few with you and with any luck, we will bring some of these families together.

Here's the first one for you. "News of Ruth, Ian and Thomas from Glasgow, who are in Sri Lanka, please." You can tell that is from Janie looking for some answers.

Our next one, "I am desperately trying to find my brother and his fiance who were staying on Phi Phi Island. Their names are Justin Ledingham and Seda Tekoz. If you have any news, please contact me."

This next one, from someone looking for their dad. "My father, Leonel Alberto Range Rodrigues, age 55, is missing. He was in Phang Nga in Merlin Resort, Thailand."

And now here's one from friends helping friends. "My friend is looking for his family. They are: daughter Jonni, Arnold, her husband, mother Audrey Gillespie and two young children holidaying on the coast of Thailand."

And one more: "Has anyone any news of Jean Hodges, her son Jerry, his wife Joy and their son Matthew. They were in Thailand and we are desperate for news."

Lots of folks looking for some answers. If you can help any of these people or if you are looking for someone or know someone who might be, you can drop us an e-mail at tsunami@cnn.com or just go to our Web site at cnn.com/quake and there you will also find numbers and other links that might help.

NGUYEN: Now, with these e-mails, are any of them including pictures, attachments, so they can see what these people look like? Or maybe even descriptions? KAYE: There are some pretty complete descriptions. On our Web site I haven't seen any actually with pictures posted, but some of them will describe he's six feet tall, brown hair, blue eyes, what he might have even have been wearing. And we're getting one email every two minutes. So there's quite a few there. We don't have any word yet on any reunions but as more come in and we have answers, we hope we'll be able to bring some families together. That's the goal.

NGUYEN: Randi, we hope. All right. Randi Kaye, thank you so much for that.

So, could something like this happen on American shores? Up next, much more on the science behind the giant destructive waves.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Tsunami is a Japanese term. It means tsu, port, and nami, wave. The name is apt as these towering, destructive waves become that way as they reach shallow coastal waters. Now let's go to one of the world's premiere tsunami research facilities. It's the Hinsdale Wave Research Lab at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.

Joining us now is the lab's director, Dan Cox. Dan, thanks for being with us. I know you've been besieged with requests and we do appreciate it.

DAN COX, HINSDALE WAVE RESEARCH LAB: Sure. Happy to be here.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now, you are standing beside the largest manmade wave tank for scientific purposes in the world. And what that does is it simulates tsunamis. Maybe you could just run us through what goes on there and initiate one of the simulated tsunamis for us.

COX: Sure, so what you'll see behind me is the paddle moving and it creates a solitan (ph) -- it's going to come at the beach. You should be able to see that breaking on the beach and then it's going to impact a mock-up of a coastal town overtop a break water.

O'BRIEN: And beneath the surface there, what you're simulating is that -- we call them subduction earthquakes, where one plate kind of tucks under the other and flips up a little bit of energy, which causes these tremendous waves. On the open ocean, they're not nearly as noticeable as they are when they get to the shallow waters. Why is that?

COX: Yes, when they're created in the open ocean, they're only about a foot or two high but they're hundreds of miles long. And when they get to the shoreline, they slow down and because they slow down, they start to increase in wave height and they can be as high as 30, 40 feet high and higher.

O'BRIEN: All right. And we're looking at some videotape, as well of some of the other wave simulation facilities you have there. What are scientists learning about these waves and how can that be employed to make us all a little bit safer against them? COX: Yes, one of the most important things we learn is what happens when that wave hits the shoreline. So all that energy has to be released and oftentimes, it's released in moving the debris, impacting buildings and other kinds of infrastructures that we would need for evacuation efforts or rescue efforts. And so what we use the information from this laboratory -- we compare it to computer simulations to try to design safer buildings or bridges and come up with better evacuation scenarios in the event of a tsunami attack.

O'BRIEN: Is it really possible to build anything that could withstand the kind of force we witnessed just a few days ago along the rim of the Indian Ocean?

COX: Yes, absolutely. There are certain types of structures that can withstand a tsunami and I think there are some that need to be built strong enough. As I mentioned, a bridge, for example. But then there are some structures that we just can't afford to build so soundly, but we have to be able to provide safe evacuation routes and so where that debris goes is a big question and one of the research topics that we study here.

O'BRIEN: Now, back behind your left shoulder there, there's that mock-up of a city there and as we watch those waves come in, miniature. you really get a sense. Is that a fairly accurate depiction of what it would be like in full scale?

COX: Yes, it would be. This is about a one-on-40 scale model and so you would see an extremely large wave coming in, could be as high as 10 meters, 35 feet high, that could impact a coastal city. And then as you saw in the first shot, the debris that gets moved around is oftentimes the most dangerous part of the disaster scenario.

O'BRIEN: So there are better buildings that can be built, better warning systems that can be put in place, but just as it is impossible to predict earthquakes, it is impossible to predict tsunamis, isn't it?

COX: Yes, that's correct. But once the earthquake does happen, there are a number of sensors that are in place, for example, near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska that NOA (ph) has put in there to help the United States with warning systems. And I think we just need to improve these types of systems and continue our research to provide safer evacuation and safer structures that could help save lives on the coast.

O'BRIEN: It's too bad there wasn't such a system in the Indian Ocean.

COX: That's unfortunate.

O'BRIEN: Dan Cox, who is the director of Oregon State University's Hinsdale Wave Research Lab in Corvallis, Oregon. Thanks for your time. We appreciate it.

COX: Happy to be here. Thanks.

O'BRIEN: Betty?

NGUYEN: Spending appears to be on the rise as we close out 2004. What's the word, David?

DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Betty, the major averages here at the New York Stock Exchange jumping today in reaction to a new report on consumer confidence. We'll have that story coming up on LIVE FROM. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Although they are fortunately rare, the recent Asian tsunamis are not without precedent, of course. In 1883, Krakatoa's volcano exploded so violently that the sound was said to have been heard 3,000 miles away. The Indonesian island that was home to the volcano was almost completely blown away. The majority of the damage and death came from a series of four huge tsunamis triggered by the eruption.

Best-selling author and historian and journalist Simon Winchester wrote the definitive book on this cataclysmic event, came out last year. I talked with him last night about it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON WINCHESTER, AUTHOR, "KRAKATOA": Well, I think Krakatoa has interested me principally because it was the largest explosion -- natural explosion in the history of the planet that has at least been recorded by mankind. It was a gigantic event. I mean, an island, 11 square miles, just evaporated a microsecond and it created the biggest bang that has ever been generated on the surface of the planet. And then it produced these four gigantic tsunamis, which killed 36,000 people. So it was an incredibly lethal volcano.

So in terms of record-breaking alone, it was a mighty event, but it also had all sorts of extraordinary other consequences. It was seen as a sign from god or, more specifically, a sign from Allah by Muslim fundamentalists. And so they began a rebellion triggered by this sign from above, as they saw it, which eventually drove the Dutch out. So on all sorts of levels, human, sociological and scientific, as well in terms of sheer record-breaking ferocity, Krakatoa was an almighty event.

O'BRIEN: In a way it amazes me that in our day and age, we could be caught just as off guard as they were in the 1880s.

WINCHESTER: So you have an incredibly seismically active and volcanilogically active part of the world. So once again, it ruptures and causes tsunamis not locally -- I mean they were local ones in the northern end of Sumatra, but because the nearest shores were in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Burma -- that's where the waves spread to and they spread within a matter of two or two and a half hours from the moment of the actual fracture.

We should have been prepared at least in the way that the Pacific Ocean is prepared to telegraph a warning. It's entirely possible that sirens could have gone off in Sri Lanka, east coast of India, Thailand saying that in two hours or two and a half hours there's going to be a tsunami, get out of there. Perhaps we'll learn from this event.

O'BRIEN: It is a humbling thing, isn't it, the more you think about these events?

WINCHESTER: Well, that's why I'm so fascinated by geology, because it puts us all so much in perspective. We are so puny. The trials that we have in the Middle East or wherever, nature is indomitably powerful and when it decides to flex its muscles, we all better beware.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: That was author Simon Winchester, who's out with this book, just came out last year, on Krakatoa. And he will join us a little bit later at 3:00 p.m. our Eastern time. We'll talk a little bit more about the lessons of history, those warning systems, or perhaps in this case, the lack thereof in the Indian Ocean and how that might change -- Betty.

NGUYEN: All right. Thank you. A little health news now. If you're one of the millions of Americans who take cholesterol-lowering drugs, there is a chance you could soon buy your medicine over-the- counter. According to "USA Today," the FDA next month will consider a second request from Merck to sell the drug Mevacor without a prescription. Cholesterol drugs are popular, to the tune of $14 million in U.S. sales last year alone, but the drugs have been linked to liver and kidney problems.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

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Aired December 28, 2004 - 13:36   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: The official death toll in Indonesia is approaching 5,000, with many of the dead found in hard-hit Aceh province.
CNN's Mike Chinoy is in the city of Banda, about 100 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Banda Aceh is a city of death. Three days after the earthquake and devastating tsunami, bodies still litter the streets. The authorities hard- pressed to deal with the scale of the crisis. Many people here say they have nowhere to go. They don't know where there relatives are. You see them sitting outside in small groups. They've lost their homes, desolate, waiting for help to arrive.

Indonesia's president, Cecilia Bombar Nguynono (ph), spent most of the day touring this area. He pledged that a relief effort would pick up speed quickly. However, at this point it's still in the very, very early stages.

On the outskirts of Banda Aceh, I visited a large pit that had been dug for a mass grave. There were a thousand bodies, bloated and contorted, being shoveled into a big hole by several bulldozers and covered over with earth. The authorities worry that in the tropical heat decomposing bodies will add to the great danger of epidemics and diseases.

At this point now, people here are simply dazed shell shocked, and there are large stretches of this part of Aceh where they have no information at all, along the coastal areas and the western part of the province, hundreds of thousands of people in seaside communities where there's no communication, we have no idea what happened to them, whether how many are dead, how many are alive and what kind of help they need.

Mike Chinoy, CNN, Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Here in the United States, relief agencies scrambling to deploy people and emergency supplies into that huge disaster area. At the same time, the push is on for private contributions of cash. The latest now from one major relief group, Americares. CNN's Allan Chernoff at the organization's headquarters in Connecticut -- Allan.

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, the long journey to provide assistance to the victims begins right here at a warehouse in Stanford, Connecticut.

And behind me, you see some of the products donated by corporations around the nations. In this box, we've got T-shirts. They happen to be Harley-Davidson T-shirts, extras. Over here, we have some I.V. kits, sponges provided by Johnson & Johnson, and here are paste bandages. These are essentially quick-setting casts with people with broken bones.

What Americares does, is they get these products, they transport the products over to the places where people need them the most. These products will be heading out to Sri Lanka within a couple of weeks. Hopefully the sooner the better. Tomorrow, though, they have a warehouse in Amsterdam, and they'll be sending an airlift out of there tomorrow.

Joining me is Christoph Gorder, and he is in charge of international products for Americas.

Christoph, thanks for being with us today.

First of all, tell us how do you coordinate with people in these places right now? I mean, their phone lines are down, very hard to communicate?

CHRISTOPH GORDER, AMERICARES: It's very, very difficult, and it's part of the challenge of -- that we're faced with in being a disaster-response organization. It's -- everything is affected, and in this case in particular the magnitude is so huge across nine countries, thousands of miles, remote areas, it's really daunting.

CHERNOFF: And so daunting situation. You've got people on the ground who can actually assess the need?

GORDER: That's correct. We reach out -- the very first day we started reaching out and very quickly, we're in touch with the Red Cross in these areas, with the local governments and with individual doctors who are seeing patients, you know, coming in and so we saw that it was going to be a big disaster.

CHERNOFF: And briefly, it is doctors on the ground there that are going to be using all this equipment?

GORDER: That's right. They're the experts and they're the ones who need the tools to save the lives.

CHERNOFF: Cristoph Gorder, thank you very much. And Miles, this organization has been doing this type of thing for more than two decades. They say they've donated $4 billion worth of goods during that time period.

O'BRIEN: All right, I suspect they haven't met a disaster like this one. We wish them well. Thank you, Allan Chernoff -- Betty. NGUYEN: Our colleagues at cnn.com have been getting an enormous number of e-mails from people looking for their loved ones in the tsunami disaster. CNN's Randi Kaye is with us now for a look at those emails.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And Betty, this not unlike 9/11 when people were searching for their loved ones.

NGUYEN: The posters, the pictures.

KAYE: Right. You saw them with the boards in New York City. And they were all desperate for answers. Well, if you would, take a look at what is going on in Phuket Island off Thailand. People are posting pictures looking for missing relatives and friends, but some can't get to Indonesia or India or Sri Lanka and walk around holding up pictures to post them on a board there, so they're finding other ways to get answers.

Families, no doubt, are frustrated with communication knocked out in much of Southern Asia. Relatives and friends are turning to the web to find their loved ones. We have set up a link here at cnn.com and the appeals for help are pouring in. In fact, we're getting about one request every two minutes. We wanted to share a few with you and with any luck, we will bring some of these families together.

Here's the first one for you. "News of Ruth, Ian and Thomas from Glasgow, who are in Sri Lanka, please." You can tell that is from Janie looking for some answers.

Our next one, "I am desperately trying to find my brother and his fiance who were staying on Phi Phi Island. Their names are Justin Ledingham and Seda Tekoz. If you have any news, please contact me."

This next one, from someone looking for their dad. "My father, Leonel Alberto Range Rodrigues, age 55, is missing. He was in Phang Nga in Merlin Resort, Thailand."

And now here's one from friends helping friends. "My friend is looking for his family. They are: daughter Jonni, Arnold, her husband, mother Audrey Gillespie and two young children holidaying on the coast of Thailand."

And one more: "Has anyone any news of Jean Hodges, her son Jerry, his wife Joy and their son Matthew. They were in Thailand and we are desperate for news."

Lots of folks looking for some answers. If you can help any of these people or if you are looking for someone or know someone who might be, you can drop us an e-mail at tsunami@cnn.com or just go to our Web site at cnn.com/quake and there you will also find numbers and other links that might help.

NGUYEN: Now, with these e-mails, are any of them including pictures, attachments, so they can see what these people look like? Or maybe even descriptions? KAYE: There are some pretty complete descriptions. On our Web site I haven't seen any actually with pictures posted, but some of them will describe he's six feet tall, brown hair, blue eyes, what he might have even have been wearing. And we're getting one email every two minutes. So there's quite a few there. We don't have any word yet on any reunions but as more come in and we have answers, we hope we'll be able to bring some families together. That's the goal.

NGUYEN: Randi, we hope. All right. Randi Kaye, thank you so much for that.

So, could something like this happen on American shores? Up next, much more on the science behind the giant destructive waves.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Tsunami is a Japanese term. It means tsu, port, and nami, wave. The name is apt as these towering, destructive waves become that way as they reach shallow coastal waters. Now let's go to one of the world's premiere tsunami research facilities. It's the Hinsdale Wave Research Lab at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.

Joining us now is the lab's director, Dan Cox. Dan, thanks for being with us. I know you've been besieged with requests and we do appreciate it.

DAN COX, HINSDALE WAVE RESEARCH LAB: Sure. Happy to be here.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now, you are standing beside the largest manmade wave tank for scientific purposes in the world. And what that does is it simulates tsunamis. Maybe you could just run us through what goes on there and initiate one of the simulated tsunamis for us.

COX: Sure, so what you'll see behind me is the paddle moving and it creates a solitan (ph) -- it's going to come at the beach. You should be able to see that breaking on the beach and then it's going to impact a mock-up of a coastal town overtop a break water.

O'BRIEN: And beneath the surface there, what you're simulating is that -- we call them subduction earthquakes, where one plate kind of tucks under the other and flips up a little bit of energy, which causes these tremendous waves. On the open ocean, they're not nearly as noticeable as they are when they get to the shallow waters. Why is that?

COX: Yes, when they're created in the open ocean, they're only about a foot or two high but they're hundreds of miles long. And when they get to the shoreline, they slow down and because they slow down, they start to increase in wave height and they can be as high as 30, 40 feet high and higher.

O'BRIEN: All right. And we're looking at some videotape, as well of some of the other wave simulation facilities you have there. What are scientists learning about these waves and how can that be employed to make us all a little bit safer against them? COX: Yes, one of the most important things we learn is what happens when that wave hits the shoreline. So all that energy has to be released and oftentimes, it's released in moving the debris, impacting buildings and other kinds of infrastructures that we would need for evacuation efforts or rescue efforts. And so what we use the information from this laboratory -- we compare it to computer simulations to try to design safer buildings or bridges and come up with better evacuation scenarios in the event of a tsunami attack.

O'BRIEN: Is it really possible to build anything that could withstand the kind of force we witnessed just a few days ago along the rim of the Indian Ocean?

COX: Yes, absolutely. There are certain types of structures that can withstand a tsunami and I think there are some that need to be built strong enough. As I mentioned, a bridge, for example. But then there are some structures that we just can't afford to build so soundly, but we have to be able to provide safe evacuation routes and so where that debris goes is a big question and one of the research topics that we study here.

O'BRIEN: Now, back behind your left shoulder there, there's that mock-up of a city there and as we watch those waves come in, miniature. you really get a sense. Is that a fairly accurate depiction of what it would be like in full scale?

COX: Yes, it would be. This is about a one-on-40 scale model and so you would see an extremely large wave coming in, could be as high as 10 meters, 35 feet high, that could impact a coastal city. And then as you saw in the first shot, the debris that gets moved around is oftentimes the most dangerous part of the disaster scenario.

O'BRIEN: So there are better buildings that can be built, better warning systems that can be put in place, but just as it is impossible to predict earthquakes, it is impossible to predict tsunamis, isn't it?

COX: Yes, that's correct. But once the earthquake does happen, there are a number of sensors that are in place, for example, near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska that NOA (ph) has put in there to help the United States with warning systems. And I think we just need to improve these types of systems and continue our research to provide safer evacuation and safer structures that could help save lives on the coast.

O'BRIEN: It's too bad there wasn't such a system in the Indian Ocean.

COX: That's unfortunate.

O'BRIEN: Dan Cox, who is the director of Oregon State University's Hinsdale Wave Research Lab in Corvallis, Oregon. Thanks for your time. We appreciate it.

COX: Happy to be here. Thanks.

O'BRIEN: Betty?

NGUYEN: Spending appears to be on the rise as we close out 2004. What's the word, David?

DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Betty, the major averages here at the New York Stock Exchange jumping today in reaction to a new report on consumer confidence. We'll have that story coming up on LIVE FROM. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Although they are fortunately rare, the recent Asian tsunamis are not without precedent, of course. In 1883, Krakatoa's volcano exploded so violently that the sound was said to have been heard 3,000 miles away. The Indonesian island that was home to the volcano was almost completely blown away. The majority of the damage and death came from a series of four huge tsunamis triggered by the eruption.

Best-selling author and historian and journalist Simon Winchester wrote the definitive book on this cataclysmic event, came out last year. I talked with him last night about it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON WINCHESTER, AUTHOR, "KRAKATOA": Well, I think Krakatoa has interested me principally because it was the largest explosion -- natural explosion in the history of the planet that has at least been recorded by mankind. It was a gigantic event. I mean, an island, 11 square miles, just evaporated a microsecond and it created the biggest bang that has ever been generated on the surface of the planet. And then it produced these four gigantic tsunamis, which killed 36,000 people. So it was an incredibly lethal volcano.

So in terms of record-breaking alone, it was a mighty event, but it also had all sorts of extraordinary other consequences. It was seen as a sign from god or, more specifically, a sign from Allah by Muslim fundamentalists. And so they began a rebellion triggered by this sign from above, as they saw it, which eventually drove the Dutch out. So on all sorts of levels, human, sociological and scientific, as well in terms of sheer record-breaking ferocity, Krakatoa was an almighty event.

O'BRIEN: In a way it amazes me that in our day and age, we could be caught just as off guard as they were in the 1880s.

WINCHESTER: So you have an incredibly seismically active and volcanilogically active part of the world. So once again, it ruptures and causes tsunamis not locally -- I mean they were local ones in the northern end of Sumatra, but because the nearest shores were in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Burma -- that's where the waves spread to and they spread within a matter of two or two and a half hours from the moment of the actual fracture.

We should have been prepared at least in the way that the Pacific Ocean is prepared to telegraph a warning. It's entirely possible that sirens could have gone off in Sri Lanka, east coast of India, Thailand saying that in two hours or two and a half hours there's going to be a tsunami, get out of there. Perhaps we'll learn from this event.

O'BRIEN: It is a humbling thing, isn't it, the more you think about these events?

WINCHESTER: Well, that's why I'm so fascinated by geology, because it puts us all so much in perspective. We are so puny. The trials that we have in the Middle East or wherever, nature is indomitably powerful and when it decides to flex its muscles, we all better beware.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: That was author Simon Winchester, who's out with this book, just came out last year, on Krakatoa. And he will join us a little bit later at 3:00 p.m. our Eastern time. We'll talk a little bit more about the lessons of history, those warning systems, or perhaps in this case, the lack thereof in the Indian Ocean and how that might change -- Betty.

NGUYEN: All right. Thank you. A little health news now. If you're one of the millions of Americans who take cholesterol-lowering drugs, there is a chance you could soon buy your medicine over-the- counter. According to "USA Today," the FDA next month will consider a second request from Merck to sell the drug Mevacor without a prescription. Cholesterol drugs are popular, to the tune of $14 million in U.S. sales last year alone, but the drugs have been linked to liver and kidney problems.

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