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Understanding Tsunamis; Actor Jerry Orbach Dead at 69

Aired December 29, 2004 - 14:30   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.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to the CNN Center in Atlanta. This is LIVE FROM. I'm Miles O'Brien.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Carol Lin.

Here's what's all new this half hour.

Trying to understand just how the tsunamis formed and traveled. We are going to talk with a geophysicist about how it happened.

And the body armor brigade. CNN's Barbara Starr introduces us to the troops welding metal to keep their comrades as safe as they can.

O'BRIEN: Mourning the loss of a man familiar to many. We'll look at the career of actor Jerry Orbach. Perhaps best known for his role in that hit series "Law and Order."

First, here's what's happening now in the news.

O'BRIEN: Well, the numbers are simply astonishing. 80,000 plus dead from the weekend natural disasters. About half those victims Indonesian. A United Nation spokesman says one in four in parts of Indonesia's Aceh province dead. Aid is slowly arriving in the affected countries from all over the world.

Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Two car bombs shook the city just after dark. One near the kingdom's interior ministry, another on the city's eastern edge. Some injuries reported. No major damage, however. Not many details so far. We are tracking the story.

Jami Miscik is out. She's the CIA's deputy director for intelligence and will step down in February. She is the sixth CIA higher up to resign since Porter Goss took over the agency in September. As for her reasons, no comment.

And you may know him as wise cracking detective Lennie Briscoe on "Law and Order." Jerry Orbach's acting career spanned from off Broadway in the 1960s, movies in the '80s and television until his death last night in New York. Jerry Orbach dead of prostate cancer at the age of 69. A closer look at the man and his legacy on the screen later this hour.

LIN: Americans who were caught up in the tsunamis are beginning to return home now and they are telling their harrowing tales of survival. Just listen to these.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 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. Can't really 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.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The water got so high that 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.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The TVs and mattresses inside the rooms were floating, you know, at so (ph) high and the water was coming so quick that I couldn't get out. So I basically just held on to the bathroom door until that broke off and then I was able to just kind of get my weight right out of the water. 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.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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 and we did everything we could to grab people but the water was just so powerful that you can only hold on to people so long before they either slipped out of their hands or some were strong enough to hold.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And probably three, four hours after the third tsunami, I heard him yelling my name and I was yelling his name for hours too and we just clung to each other a gave each other a big hug and said let's get the hell out of there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: Well, those tsunami survivors had just arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.

O'BRIEN: As the death toll rises, so does the number of people, survivors, dealing with the often overwhelming loss of family members. In this report from near New Orleans, one man could only watch as horrible news from his homeland got unimaginably worse. Here's Helena Moreno from our affiliate WDSU.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HELENA MORENO, WDSU REPORTER (voice over): Sameen Mohideen and his daughter are looking at pictures from their last family visit to his native country of Sri Lanka. For Mohideen, those happy memories are now sad to think about because dozens of his family members in Sri Lanka, even some pictured here, are missing or presumed dead due to the great tsunami that hit Southern Asia. The only family members he knows survived are his mother and one brother.

SAMEEN MOHIDEEN, MISSING RELATIVES IN SIR LANKA: That's why my brother is searching over there everywhere, where he could go to any camp if anyone feeding them, they're alive or their children or anybody.

MORENO: Mohideen says most of his family is from the coastal town of Colmone (ph) but his mother had recently moved further inland to the mountainous region and his known surviving brother was visiting here. Mohideen spoke with his mother yesterday.

MOHIDEEN: She said it was horrible. Everybody running here and there because those coastal area, there is no one to dig the dead body or no one to bury dead body. So everybody going from mountainside. People taking their trucks and bulldozer and digging the people into the massive (ph) graves.

MORENO: Neighbors throughout this subdivision want to help the Mohideen family but neighbors say they're struggling to figure out just how to do that. Elizabeth Martinez wonders, what do you say or do for someone who's lost generations of family members except . . .

ELIZABETH MARTINEZ, MOHIDEEN'S NEIGHBOR: Make sure that we're here for them and offer them our prayers and our support as neighbors.

MORENO: Sameen Mohideen says, that's enough.

MOHIDEEN: That is the main thing they can do for us. Their love and prayers are with us. So . . .

MORENO: So you thank them.

MOHIDEEN: Oh, yes, of course. By our heart. By our heart.

Helena Moreno, WDSU, News Channel 6.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: With the aftershocks today and evidence of whole island shifting. What clues are scientists looking for about future quakes and tsunamis?

LIN: Also in Iraq today, insurgents try a deadly new lure to lure police into a trap.

O'BRIEN: And we got word this morning that "Law and Order" star Jerry Orbach has died. Those stories are ahead on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: A house turned into a bomb. That is how an Iraqi police officer described the scene in Baghdad after 28 people were killed in what appears to be a change in insurgent tactics. All authorities know is that Iraqi security forces were lured to a house by an anonymous caller last night. That house was apparently filled with explosives and detonated when police arrived. Now in addition to those killed, nearly two dozen people were hurt, several houses nearby were flattened -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Pentagon officials hammered from all sides in Washington say they're spending billions of dollars to up armor U.S. forces in Iraq and making sure that vehicles that go there are as safe as they can make them. Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is in Kuwait.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In the race to get armored vehicles into Iraq, this is the starting line. At this remote army camp in Kuwait, soldiers cut and weld simple steel plates into doors for soft-sided vehicles that are headed into Iraq over the coming days. For corporal Jonathan Crockett, the big picture debate in Washington is light years away.

CPL JONATHAN CROCKETT, U.S. ARMY: Whatever we can do to help our other fellow soldiers and working 20 hours are what we have to do to help them out is what we have to do, as simple as that.

STARR: These plates will protect against insurgents small arms but not much more. Still, the need is so great, even at Christmas, the work goes on 24/7.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just work until we're finished and now we've expanded the operations to six times what we had.

STARR: The soldiers working the armor line in Kuwait say they were busy long before one soldier ignited the recent controversy by asking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of armor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up armor our vehicle.

STARR: CNN got an exclusive look at the place where soldiers are authorized to poke around for extra protection.

It's been called the junkyard, a scrap pile and a landfill. But here in Kuwait, this is a vital part of the military's effort to strip vehicles damaged in Iraq of their usable armor and other parts and put it all back on the next round of vehicles going into Iraq.

At another facility, heavier armor packages are installed on humvees to offer side glass protection from roadside bombs. Lieutenant General Steve Whitcome is the senior army commander. His operation ramped up months ago.

LT. GEN. STEVE WHITCOME, U.S. ARMY: I've got right now the equipment, I've got the personnel and we've got the no shortage of materials to be able to do this. It is just a huge job.

STARR: Installation is doubling to 150 vehicles a week. These doors and armored windows can add more than 1,000 pounds to the weight of a humvee. The general, like the soldiers here, says the debate over whether there is a shortage of armored vehicles for Iraq gets personal. WHITCOME: Would I want my daughter, who was an army captain, riding in one of the vehicles that we're preparing. And I'd say, as a father and as a soldier, you know, we've all got concerns. And I would put her in one of these vehicles.

STARR: Barbara Starr, CNN, Camp Arafjon (ph), Kuwait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: But for families of those who have already died in Iraq, it is a solemn day for a U.S. military community in particular in the pacific northwest. Fort Lewis, Washington, home base for six of last week's bombing victims in Mosul, Iraq, north of Baghdad. Post officials are holding a memorial service to honor the six, all assigned to 1st brigade 25th infantry division. The service was closed to the media and the public.

A total of 22 people died last Tuesday when a suicide bomber targeted the military dining hall in Mosul. Fourteen of them American troops.

Miles.

O'BRIEN: Up next, a star on TV and Broadway, Jerry Orbach, has died. We'll take a look back at his career.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: If I was kidding you, I'd be wearing a fez and no pants. Only one character on television could pull off a line like that, tough guy detective Lennie Briscoe, the long-time hit show "Law and Order." Sad news today for fans of the show and the man who wise cracked on it for 12 seasons now. Details now live from Los Angeles, entertainment correspondent Sibila Vargas.

Sibila.

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Miles.

He played a quintessential New York detective in "Law and Order" but Jerry Orbach was so much more than a familiar face on TV. His career included roles in some of the big screens most popular movie and some of Broadway's greatest hits.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JERRY ORBACH, ACTOR: Imagine Lindsey's surprise when she found out just how friendly mom is with her main squeeze.

VARGAS: At the end of last season, after 12 years, Jerry Orbach turned in his badge on the perennial drama "Law and Order" as a sarcastic detective Lennie Briscoe.

ORBACH: Oh, we're not quite done, about you and this intern.

VARGAS: Long before his tough TV exterior, this New York native began on Broadway. In 1960, he created the role as the narrator in "The Fantasticks." In 1969, he won the Tony Award for the musical "Promises, Promises." He also graced the stage in hits such as "Guys and Dolls," "42nd Street" and "Chicago."

This song and dance man soon took his acting talents to the big screen and appeared in such films such 1981's suspenseful thriller, "Prince of the City." Woody Allen's 1989 picture "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and as the wise father in 1987's "Dirty Dancing."

ORBACH: You looked wonderful out there.

VARGAS: In 1991, Orbach tapped into his musical roots as the voice behind effervescent Lumiere in the Disney blockbuster "Beauty and the Beast."

From TV to movies to theater, Orbach never stopped entertaining audiences.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VARGAS: Orbach died of prostate cancer last night in New York City. He was 69.

Now Orbach had just begun working and is still expected to appear this spring in the first episodes of the spin off "Law and Order: Trial by Jury" -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Sibila, any word on how the cast and crew is taking that on the show?

VARGAS: Yes, well, "Law and Order" creator and executive producer Dick Wolf released this statement earlier today. "I'm immensely saddened by the passing of not only a friend but a colleague. He was one of the most honored performers of his generation. His loss is irreplaceable."

Now this year, Miles, we said good-bye to a lot of entertainers like Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando and Tony Randall. And Jerry Orbach will definitely be missed.

O'BRIEN: Yes, he will. Sibila Vargas, thank you very much. Take care.

LIN: Well, recent disclosures about some major arthritis medications are raising questions about the way drugs are sold.

O'BRIEN: And now one prominent doctor is asking why they're sold directly to consumers. David Haffenreffer at the New York Stock Exchange with that story.

Hello, David.

DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Miles and Carol.

Yes, these ads are everywhere. They're virtually unavoidable. And a leading cardiologist is now urging the government to simply reassess it's policy of allowing prescription drugs to be advertised directly to the consumer. In "The Journal of the American Medical Association," Dr. Eric Topol argues that direct promotion added to the public health problem surrounding the arthritis drugs Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex. Dr. Topol is the chairman of cardiovascular medicine at world renowned Cleveland Clinic. Critics have accused the Food and Drug Administration of being to cozy with the drug industry and unwilling to pursue evidence of problems with medications that it has already approved. In the first nine months of this year, Pfizer spent an estimated $78 million advertising Celebrex and Merck spent about $68 million advertising Vioxx.

Turning now to Wall Street where shares of Toys R Us are gaining 2.5 percent. Toys R Us said that it will pay bonuses to top executives who stay on through the company's restructuring, which includes the possible sale of its struggling toy retailing business. The company will instead focus on selling baby clothes and furniture at its Babies R Us stores.

Overall, the markets is weak today. Boeing and United Technologies are both down more than $1 on reports that China will not buy any new aircraft next year. That's weighing on the Dow industrials, which are lower by 38 points at 10,815. The Nasdaq composite index is slightly lower.

And that is the latest from Wall Street.

Carol and Miles, back to you.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, David. Appreciate it.

LIN: We've got the latest on the tsunami at the top of the hour.

The United Nations estimates a quarter of parts of Aceh's population in Indonesia has decided in those tsunamis.

O'BRIEN: We continue to get new pictures of what happened that deadly day. And President Bush makes his first public comments on the disaster. All that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Scientists say the earthquake that set off Asia's tsunami disaster also made the earth wobble. It changed the map and it even slightly altered time.

Ken Hudnut of the U.S. Geological Survey on the line with us now from Pasadena, California, to share with us some just preliminary results and data which they're gathering there, obviously of great interest to them.

Ken, good to have you with us.

KEN HUDNUT, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: We have some images, which you've shared with us. We're going to go right to them. This first image basically sort of charts what's going on in the sea floor there, right near the epicenter of this quake. Why don't you walk us through it, starting with the left image to right and tell us what we're seeing here.

HUDNUT: OK. These are results of modeling global seismic network data by Chinge (ph) at Cal Tech and it shows the sea floor change as a result of slip on the fault. The slip on the fault was about 20 meters or 60 feet of movement and then that related to uplift of the sea floor by as much as about four meters.

O'BRIEN: And where you see those orange place, that is where you get more uplift, isn't that correct?

HUDNUT: Right. The left image is uplift and then the right image is the horizontal movement of the sea floor. So that movement of the sea floor combined is what set off the tsunami.

O'BRIEN: OK. So the horizontal and the uplift combined is what caused that. So it's going sideways and up at the same time.

HUDNUT: Right.

O'BRIEN: And that's what you're seeing in these two images.

What's interesting to me, there's a little star here. What does that star indicate there?

HUDNUT: That's the epicenter of the earthquake. And so it started at the southeast side of the white rectangle, that's the fault plane, and then ruptured towards the northwest.

O'BRIEN: All right. And there's a line that goes through there. Is that the actual fault line that you're . . .

HUDNUT: The black line is the trench where the water depth is the greatest and that's where the Indian and Sumatra chunks of the earth's crust meet. So that's the up dip (ph) edge of the fault plane.

O'BRIEN: OK. All right.

HUDNUT: Another thing to notice is, along the coastline of northwestern most Sumatra, you can see this model coincides with subsidence of the coast by half a meter or a meter. And we're seeing some aerial photographs that seem to indicate that that's the case and it could have been the cause of some of the damage there.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now, we're going to show you some more satellite images in just a moment. This is kind of interesting to look at. Right at the center, I want to help people understand what we're seeing here. Right at the center is where the earthquake occurred. And what you've drawn essentially is sort of concentric circles here which indicate how long it would take for the wave to get any particular location. What does this tell you? HUDNUT: Right. This is modeling by Chinge Setaki (ph) at the Geological Survey of Japan. And so he took a source model similar to the one that we just looked at and then calculated how the sea floor change would generate the tsunami. And this is the calculation of then how the wave propagated. You can see the sea floor, the symmetry. There's unevenness on the sea floor that changes the shape of the wave as it goes out and it wraps around the islands as it goes past them. So the line showing one around those red aftershocks, that's one hour of travel time.

O'BRIEN: OK. So what's interesting to me here is, if you look right here where we've been talking so much about some of these islands out here, look at Madagascar. It's eight hours to get to Madagascar. That is plenty of notice. Let me see, up in Sri Lanka up there, I'm trying to read it. It's hard for me to see. What is the rough time there for Sir Lanka?

HUDNUT: It's shown as two hours here and that probably coincides pretty well with observed difference in time. I think I heard earlier reports that had it taken three hours for the tsunami to reach Sri Lanka but I expect this is well calibrated. But, anyway, yes, there would have been potentially time to get warning to some areas. You can see the coast of Australia's say four to five-hour delay. And then southeastern most tip of Sumatra itself took two to three hours to get down there.

O'BRIEN: Well, and that does begs the question. If, in fact, somewhere ringing around here there was some sort of tsunami warning system, would many lives have been saved potentially? Would you care to speculate on that?

HUDNUT: Well, potentially, and there's been a lot of talk about that, within the U.S. GS, we work on the earthquakes, NOIA (ph) works on the tsunamis and they work internationally with many different countries. And as I understand it, I'm sure that this event will produce a lot of support for having a similar network in the Indian Ocean to the one that's in the Pacific that's operated by NOIA.

O'BRIEN: How much of an opportunity is there here for scientists to learn about these events in all of this? You didn't have a lot of instrument there in the first place.

HUDNUT: Well, the global network of seismic instruments now is tremendous compared to the prior great earthquake, the '64 Alaska. So those new instruments from around the world are giving us a tremendous data set for studying the earth's structure and the source of this earthquake. And what we hope to do is then be able to, from the data collected, to be able to better model tsunamis from the earthquake source data. And that way, in the future, we'll be able to more accurately forecast the shape of the tsunami as its propagating through the ocean basins. And that could help to make a more accurate tsunami alert system in the future.

O'BRIEN: All right. Ken Hudnut, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.

HUDNUT: My pleasure.

O'BRIEN: All right.

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 - 14:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to the CNN Center in Atlanta. This is LIVE FROM. I'm Miles O'Brien.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Carol Lin.

Here's what's all new this half hour.

Trying to understand just how the tsunamis formed and traveled. We are going to talk with a geophysicist about how it happened.

And the body armor brigade. CNN's Barbara Starr introduces us to the troops welding metal to keep their comrades as safe as they can.

O'BRIEN: Mourning the loss of a man familiar to many. We'll look at the career of actor Jerry Orbach. Perhaps best known for his role in that hit series "Law and Order."

First, here's what's happening now in the news.

O'BRIEN: Well, the numbers are simply astonishing. 80,000 plus dead from the weekend natural disasters. About half those victims Indonesian. A United Nation spokesman says one in four in parts of Indonesia's Aceh province dead. Aid is slowly arriving in the affected countries from all over the world.

Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Two car bombs shook the city just after dark. One near the kingdom's interior ministry, another on the city's eastern edge. Some injuries reported. No major damage, however. Not many details so far. We are tracking the story.

Jami Miscik is out. She's the CIA's deputy director for intelligence and will step down in February. She is the sixth CIA higher up to resign since Porter Goss took over the agency in September. As for her reasons, no comment.

And you may know him as wise cracking detective Lennie Briscoe on "Law and Order." Jerry Orbach's acting career spanned from off Broadway in the 1960s, movies in the '80s and television until his death last night in New York. Jerry Orbach dead of prostate cancer at the age of 69. A closer look at the man and his legacy on the screen later this hour.

LIN: Americans who were caught up in the tsunamis are beginning to return home now and they are telling their harrowing tales of survival. Just listen to these.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 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. Can't really 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.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The water got so high that 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.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The TVs and mattresses inside the rooms were floating, you know, at so (ph) high and the water was coming so quick that I couldn't get out. So I basically just held on to the bathroom door until that broke off and then I was able to just kind of get my weight right out of the water. 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.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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 and we did everything we could to grab people but the water was just so powerful that you can only hold on to people so long before they either slipped out of their hands or some were strong enough to hold.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And probably three, four hours after the third tsunami, I heard him yelling my name and I was yelling his name for hours too and we just clung to each other a gave each other a big hug and said let's get the hell out of there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: Well, those tsunami survivors had just arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.

O'BRIEN: As the death toll rises, so does the number of people, survivors, dealing with the often overwhelming loss of family members. In this report from near New Orleans, one man could only watch as horrible news from his homeland got unimaginably worse. Here's Helena Moreno from our affiliate WDSU.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HELENA MORENO, WDSU REPORTER (voice over): Sameen Mohideen and his daughter are looking at pictures from their last family visit to his native country of Sri Lanka. For Mohideen, those happy memories are now sad to think about because dozens of his family members in Sri Lanka, even some pictured here, are missing or presumed dead due to the great tsunami that hit Southern Asia. The only family members he knows survived are his mother and one brother.

SAMEEN MOHIDEEN, MISSING RELATIVES IN SIR LANKA: That's why my brother is searching over there everywhere, where he could go to any camp if anyone feeding them, they're alive or their children or anybody.

MORENO: Mohideen says most of his family is from the coastal town of Colmone (ph) but his mother had recently moved further inland to the mountainous region and his known surviving brother was visiting here. Mohideen spoke with his mother yesterday.

MOHIDEEN: She said it was horrible. Everybody running here and there because those coastal area, there is no one to dig the dead body or no one to bury dead body. So everybody going from mountainside. People taking their trucks and bulldozer and digging the people into the massive (ph) graves.

MORENO: Neighbors throughout this subdivision want to help the Mohideen family but neighbors say they're struggling to figure out just how to do that. Elizabeth Martinez wonders, what do you say or do for someone who's lost generations of family members except . . .

ELIZABETH MARTINEZ, MOHIDEEN'S NEIGHBOR: Make sure that we're here for them and offer them our prayers and our support as neighbors.

MORENO: Sameen Mohideen says, that's enough.

MOHIDEEN: That is the main thing they can do for us. Their love and prayers are with us. So . . .

MORENO: So you thank them.

MOHIDEEN: Oh, yes, of course. By our heart. By our heart.

Helena Moreno, WDSU, News Channel 6.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: With the aftershocks today and evidence of whole island shifting. What clues are scientists looking for about future quakes and tsunamis?

LIN: Also in Iraq today, insurgents try a deadly new lure to lure police into a trap.

O'BRIEN: And we got word this morning that "Law and Order" star Jerry Orbach has died. Those stories are ahead on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: A house turned into a bomb. That is how an Iraqi police officer described the scene in Baghdad after 28 people were killed in what appears to be a change in insurgent tactics. All authorities know is that Iraqi security forces were lured to a house by an anonymous caller last night. That house was apparently filled with explosives and detonated when police arrived. Now in addition to those killed, nearly two dozen people were hurt, several houses nearby were flattened -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Pentagon officials hammered from all sides in Washington say they're spending billions of dollars to up armor U.S. forces in Iraq and making sure that vehicles that go there are as safe as they can make them. Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is in Kuwait.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In the race to get armored vehicles into Iraq, this is the starting line. At this remote army camp in Kuwait, soldiers cut and weld simple steel plates into doors for soft-sided vehicles that are headed into Iraq over the coming days. For corporal Jonathan Crockett, the big picture debate in Washington is light years away.

CPL JONATHAN CROCKETT, U.S. ARMY: Whatever we can do to help our other fellow soldiers and working 20 hours are what we have to do to help them out is what we have to do, as simple as that.

STARR: These plates will protect against insurgents small arms but not much more. Still, the need is so great, even at Christmas, the work goes on 24/7.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just work until we're finished and now we've expanded the operations to six times what we had.

STARR: The soldiers working the armor line in Kuwait say they were busy long before one soldier ignited the recent controversy by asking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of armor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up armor our vehicle.

STARR: CNN got an exclusive look at the place where soldiers are authorized to poke around for extra protection.

It's been called the junkyard, a scrap pile and a landfill. But here in Kuwait, this is a vital part of the military's effort to strip vehicles damaged in Iraq of their usable armor and other parts and put it all back on the next round of vehicles going into Iraq.

At another facility, heavier armor packages are installed on humvees to offer side glass protection from roadside bombs. Lieutenant General Steve Whitcome is the senior army commander. His operation ramped up months ago.

LT. GEN. STEVE WHITCOME, U.S. ARMY: I've got right now the equipment, I've got the personnel and we've got the no shortage of materials to be able to do this. It is just a huge job.

STARR: Installation is doubling to 150 vehicles a week. These doors and armored windows can add more than 1,000 pounds to the weight of a humvee. The general, like the soldiers here, says the debate over whether there is a shortage of armored vehicles for Iraq gets personal. WHITCOME: Would I want my daughter, who was an army captain, riding in one of the vehicles that we're preparing. And I'd say, as a father and as a soldier, you know, we've all got concerns. And I would put her in one of these vehicles.

STARR: Barbara Starr, CNN, Camp Arafjon (ph), Kuwait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: But for families of those who have already died in Iraq, it is a solemn day for a U.S. military community in particular in the pacific northwest. Fort Lewis, Washington, home base for six of last week's bombing victims in Mosul, Iraq, north of Baghdad. Post officials are holding a memorial service to honor the six, all assigned to 1st brigade 25th infantry division. The service was closed to the media and the public.

A total of 22 people died last Tuesday when a suicide bomber targeted the military dining hall in Mosul. Fourteen of them American troops.

Miles.

O'BRIEN: Up next, a star on TV and Broadway, Jerry Orbach, has died. We'll take a look back at his career.

Stay with us.

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O'BRIEN: If I was kidding you, I'd be wearing a fez and no pants. Only one character on television could pull off a line like that, tough guy detective Lennie Briscoe, the long-time hit show "Law and Order." Sad news today for fans of the show and the man who wise cracked on it for 12 seasons now. Details now live from Los Angeles, entertainment correspondent Sibila Vargas.

Sibila.

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Miles.

He played a quintessential New York detective in "Law and Order" but Jerry Orbach was so much more than a familiar face on TV. His career included roles in some of the big screens most popular movie and some of Broadway's greatest hits.

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JERRY ORBACH, ACTOR: Imagine Lindsey's surprise when she found out just how friendly mom is with her main squeeze.

VARGAS: At the end of last season, after 12 years, Jerry Orbach turned in his badge on the perennial drama "Law and Order" as a sarcastic detective Lennie Briscoe.

ORBACH: Oh, we're not quite done, about you and this intern.

VARGAS: Long before his tough TV exterior, this New York native began on Broadway. In 1960, he created the role as the narrator in "The Fantasticks." In 1969, he won the Tony Award for the musical "Promises, Promises." He also graced the stage in hits such as "Guys and Dolls," "42nd Street" and "Chicago."

This song and dance man soon took his acting talents to the big screen and appeared in such films such 1981's suspenseful thriller, "Prince of the City." Woody Allen's 1989 picture "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and as the wise father in 1987's "Dirty Dancing."

ORBACH: You looked wonderful out there.

VARGAS: In 1991, Orbach tapped into his musical roots as the voice behind effervescent Lumiere in the Disney blockbuster "Beauty and the Beast."

From TV to movies to theater, Orbach never stopped entertaining audiences.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VARGAS: Orbach died of prostate cancer last night in New York City. He was 69.

Now Orbach had just begun working and is still expected to appear this spring in the first episodes of the spin off "Law and Order: Trial by Jury" -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Sibila, any word on how the cast and crew is taking that on the show?

VARGAS: Yes, well, "Law and Order" creator and executive producer Dick Wolf released this statement earlier today. "I'm immensely saddened by the passing of not only a friend but a colleague. He was one of the most honored performers of his generation. His loss is irreplaceable."

Now this year, Miles, we said good-bye to a lot of entertainers like Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando and Tony Randall. And Jerry Orbach will definitely be missed.

O'BRIEN: Yes, he will. Sibila Vargas, thank you very much. Take care.

LIN: Well, recent disclosures about some major arthritis medications are raising questions about the way drugs are sold.

O'BRIEN: And now one prominent doctor is asking why they're sold directly to consumers. David Haffenreffer at the New York Stock Exchange with that story.

Hello, David.

DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Miles and Carol.

Yes, these ads are everywhere. They're virtually unavoidable. And a leading cardiologist is now urging the government to simply reassess it's policy of allowing prescription drugs to be advertised directly to the consumer. In "The Journal of the American Medical Association," Dr. Eric Topol argues that direct promotion added to the public health problem surrounding the arthritis drugs Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex. Dr. Topol is the chairman of cardiovascular medicine at world renowned Cleveland Clinic. Critics have accused the Food and Drug Administration of being to cozy with the drug industry and unwilling to pursue evidence of problems with medications that it has already approved. In the first nine months of this year, Pfizer spent an estimated $78 million advertising Celebrex and Merck spent about $68 million advertising Vioxx.

Turning now to Wall Street where shares of Toys R Us are gaining 2.5 percent. Toys R Us said that it will pay bonuses to top executives who stay on through the company's restructuring, which includes the possible sale of its struggling toy retailing business. The company will instead focus on selling baby clothes and furniture at its Babies R Us stores.

Overall, the markets is weak today. Boeing and United Technologies are both down more than $1 on reports that China will not buy any new aircraft next year. That's weighing on the Dow industrials, which are lower by 38 points at 10,815. The Nasdaq composite index is slightly lower.

And that is the latest from Wall Street.

Carol and Miles, back to you.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, David. Appreciate it.

LIN: We've got the latest on the tsunami at the top of the hour.

The United Nations estimates a quarter of parts of Aceh's population in Indonesia has decided in those tsunamis.

O'BRIEN: We continue to get new pictures of what happened that deadly day. And President Bush makes his first public comments on the disaster. All that ahead.

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O'BRIEN: Scientists say the earthquake that set off Asia's tsunami disaster also made the earth wobble. It changed the map and it even slightly altered time.

Ken Hudnut of the U.S. Geological Survey on the line with us now from Pasadena, California, to share with us some just preliminary results and data which they're gathering there, obviously of great interest to them.

Ken, good to have you with us.

KEN HUDNUT, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: We have some images, which you've shared with us. We're going to go right to them. This first image basically sort of charts what's going on in the sea floor there, right near the epicenter of this quake. Why don't you walk us through it, starting with the left image to right and tell us what we're seeing here.

HUDNUT: OK. These are results of modeling global seismic network data by Chinge (ph) at Cal Tech and it shows the sea floor change as a result of slip on the fault. The slip on the fault was about 20 meters or 60 feet of movement and then that related to uplift of the sea floor by as much as about four meters.

O'BRIEN: And where you see those orange place, that is where you get more uplift, isn't that correct?

HUDNUT: Right. The left image is uplift and then the right image is the horizontal movement of the sea floor. So that movement of the sea floor combined is what set off the tsunami.

O'BRIEN: OK. So the horizontal and the uplift combined is what caused that. So it's going sideways and up at the same time.

HUDNUT: Right.

O'BRIEN: And that's what you're seeing in these two images.

What's interesting to me, there's a little star here. What does that star indicate there?

HUDNUT: That's the epicenter of the earthquake. And so it started at the southeast side of the white rectangle, that's the fault plane, and then ruptured towards the northwest.

O'BRIEN: All right. And there's a line that goes through there. Is that the actual fault line that you're . . .

HUDNUT: The black line is the trench where the water depth is the greatest and that's where the Indian and Sumatra chunks of the earth's crust meet. So that's the up dip (ph) edge of the fault plane.

O'BRIEN: OK. All right.

HUDNUT: Another thing to notice is, along the coastline of northwestern most Sumatra, you can see this model coincides with subsidence of the coast by half a meter or a meter. And we're seeing some aerial photographs that seem to indicate that that's the case and it could have been the cause of some of the damage there.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now, we're going to show you some more satellite images in just a moment. This is kind of interesting to look at. Right at the center, I want to help people understand what we're seeing here. Right at the center is where the earthquake occurred. And what you've drawn essentially is sort of concentric circles here which indicate how long it would take for the wave to get any particular location. What does this tell you? HUDNUT: Right. This is modeling by Chinge Setaki (ph) at the Geological Survey of Japan. And so he took a source model similar to the one that we just looked at and then calculated how the sea floor change would generate the tsunami. And this is the calculation of then how the wave propagated. You can see the sea floor, the symmetry. There's unevenness on the sea floor that changes the shape of the wave as it goes out and it wraps around the islands as it goes past them. So the line showing one around those red aftershocks, that's one hour of travel time.

O'BRIEN: OK. So what's interesting to me here is, if you look right here where we've been talking so much about some of these islands out here, look at Madagascar. It's eight hours to get to Madagascar. That is plenty of notice. Let me see, up in Sri Lanka up there, I'm trying to read it. It's hard for me to see. What is the rough time there for Sir Lanka?

HUDNUT: It's shown as two hours here and that probably coincides pretty well with observed difference in time. I think I heard earlier reports that had it taken three hours for the tsunami to reach Sri Lanka but I expect this is well calibrated. But, anyway, yes, there would have been potentially time to get warning to some areas. You can see the coast of Australia's say four to five-hour delay. And then southeastern most tip of Sumatra itself took two to three hours to get down there.

O'BRIEN: Well, and that does begs the question. If, in fact, somewhere ringing around here there was some sort of tsunami warning system, would many lives have been saved potentially? Would you care to speculate on that?

HUDNUT: Well, potentially, and there's been a lot of talk about that, within the U.S. GS, we work on the earthquakes, NOIA (ph) works on the tsunamis and they work internationally with many different countries. And as I understand it, I'm sure that this event will produce a lot of support for having a similar network in the Indian Ocean to the one that's in the Pacific that's operated by NOIA.

O'BRIEN: How much of an opportunity is there here for scientists to learn about these events in all of this? You didn't have a lot of instrument there in the first place.

HUDNUT: Well, the global network of seismic instruments now is tremendous compared to the prior great earthquake, the '64 Alaska. So those new instruments from around the world are giving us a tremendous data set for studying the earth's structure and the source of this earthquake. And what we hope to do is then be able to, from the data collected, to be able to better model tsunamis from the earthquake source data. And that way, in the future, we'll be able to more accurately forecast the shape of the tsunami as its propagating through the ocean basins. And that could help to make a more accurate tsunami alert system in the future.

O'BRIEN: All right. Ken Hudnut, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.

HUDNUT: My pleasure.

O'BRIEN: All right.

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