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Baghdad Beat; Inside the High Altitude Chamber

Aired August 19, 2005 - 13:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Now to Iraq, where the clock is counting down to a crucial moment and a crucial document. The deadline for a draft constitution arrives Monday. As lawmakers struggle for compromises over a wreathe of issues, Britain and the U.N. are offering their help. The U.S. has already been helping the Iraqis finish the Constitution, which is to go before Iraqi voters by October 15th.
Well, a somber occasion today at the United Nations, as diplomats gathered to mark the anniversary of a bloody attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. Twenty-two people were killed and dozens were wounded in the terrorist bombing two years ago today. Among the dead was veteran diplomat Sergio Vieira De Millo. He was in Iraq as the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights. U.N. Secretary-General Koffi Annan says that the anniversary will always be a date laden with sorrow for the United Nations.

Now to a different perspective on the Iraqi capital. Kevin Flower is a CNN bureau chief, and Baghdad is his beat. We're happy to have him in the house today to tell us what it's like to be living and working in the middle of a very active battle zone. Very active to say the least.

It's nice to have you here.

KEVIN FLOWER, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: It's nice to be here.

PHILLIPS: Safe and sound.

Let's talk about covering stories, say, two years ago for now. It's a totally different ballgame, isn't it?

FLOWER: Well, I first arrived in Baghdad the Summer of 2003. And at that point, we could travel the country freely. We would routinely make road trips. We went to Falluja, to Mosul, to parts in the south in the country. We drove everywhere, and we drove fairly freely. We drove in big SUV cars.

PHILLIPS: Didn't have to worry about security?

FLOWER: Security was always a concern. We always had an element of security, but it was much more manageable at that point. We felt much more comfortable traveling around the country. And it was always a concern, but not the be all, end all like it is right now.

PHILLIPS: I mean, it's a matter of life or death, what you're up against when you're traveling through there. Well, I'm curious, do people say to you, because we get it here all the time, why don't you cover more in Iraq? Where are all the good stories? Where's the maybe more in-depth coverage on things that are taking place there. And if people only knew how desperately you're trying to reach all those stories, it's just -- it's logistics, and it's security, isn't it?

FLOWER: Well, the reality of the news coverage there is we would desperately like to cover a wider geographic area of the country, to tell more stories about the Iraqis and what the U.S. military is doing to help the Iraqis, but the fact is it's become increasingly dangerous for us to travel great distances outside of Baghdad. It's very dangerous sometimes to travel within Baghdad. So every shoot we go on, every story that we go to cover becomes a very planned endeavor. The security considerations, the personnel considerations. We don't like to send any more people than is absolutely necessary to minimize the level of risk we're exposed to. Those are the most important calculations. First and foremost are the safety of our personnel. So that's what comes first, and then, editorially, we want to do what we can. But we have to keep that in mind, they're safety always.

PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk about just living in Baghdad. You shot some video for us inside the bureau. We don't want to show exactly where it is, or the outside or identify a number of the Iraqi workers also that team up with CNN to cover this country, but here we are inside the bureau. Give us a tour. Tell us what we're seeing.

FLOWER: Well, you're seeing right now this is our newsroom, which is where we end spending most of our gays when we're not out in the field. so it's usually a 12 to 16-hour day, because we have a Baghdad day, and then there's an eight-hour time difference to the United States, so we work basically two days. So a lot of our time, in addition to being -- when we're now out in the field, we spend a lot of time on the phones, calling Iraqi police sources, and Iraqi political sources, U.S. military sources, just trying to keep up with the day-to-day story. And here you see -- in the living aspect, here's a kitchen, which is not too far from our newsroom. We work where we live, and we live where we work, so this is 20 feet away from the newsroom.

PHILLIPS: How is the food?

FLOWER: The food is good, but it gets tiring after a while. You eat a lot of the same things, a lot of rice and a lot of chicken, but it's good.

PHILLIPS: What about entertainment?

FLOWER: Entertainment -- you see here there's some distractions. We put a gym in.

PHILLIPS: Got to relieve that stress.

FLOWER: Exactly. The pool table that we've put in. The decor is not the nicest in the world.

PHILLIPS: I was impressed with the rug, actually. Was that a Persian rug, or...

FLOWER: Yes. Well, those are easy to get there.

So we distract ourselves in as many ways as we can. When we're not working, we watch a lot of movies. We spend a lot of time on the computer, even if it's not for work, you know, communicating with people in the outside world via computer as well.

PHILLIPS: Even music. Look at this. Who's this?

FLOWER: That's someone playing a guitar. That's one of our Iraqi producers there in the bureau, you know.

PHILLIPS: Let's talk about that, the Iraqi employees. There's got to be a tremendous trust factor between you, and the locals, and working together in covering this country, dealing with the insurgency. Wow, just now that you think about it, especially if they've grown up in this area all their lives, I'm curious about how you develop that trust factor and what you talk about.

FLOWER: Well, first and foremost, our Iraqi staff are the absolute backbone of our operation. We could not function at all as a news organization without our Iraqi staff. They're in large measure our eyes and ears to what's going on in the country. They understand it better than we do. They've lived there. They know it better.

In terms of -- and we have to trust them. We have absolute trust in them. Most of the staff we've been working with for an extremely long time, for many years. CNN has been in the country for over you know, almost 20 years, and you develop networks with Iraqis, so most of the people we have come recommended from people we've known for a long time, so we have to trust our staff, and -- because we're lost without them.

PHILLIPS: Well, you all do a terrific job. So great to see you in person, and we look forward to what you're working on next.

FLOWER: Thank you very much.

PHILLIPS: Thanks, Kevin.

Well, if you'd like more inside information about the stories you see here on CNN, be sure to join us for "ON THE STORY" and a sneak peek inside our reporter's notebooks. That's Saturdays at 7:00 p.m. Eastern and Sunday mornings at 10:00 Eastern, right here on CNN.

Precious oxygen seeping out of a plane flying at 30,000 feet. Well, it's the reason behind the death of golfer Payne Stewart just a few years ago, and the likely cause of that commercial jet crash last week in Greece. What I found when I went inside the high-altitude chamber. We're going to show you about the training and see how pilots learn to avoid such an air disaster.

Plus, you don't see this very often, a passenger jet's perilous landing, when LIVE FROM returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: In Athens, Greece, the chief coroner has ruled out carbon monoxide as the cause of Sunday's horrific plane crash. Investigators are testing whether some other substance may have knocked out the crew and the passengers of the ill-fated jet and are still examining whether cabin decompression was the fatal catalyst.

Well, I visited the high altitude chamber at Andrews Air Force Base to experience firsthand what happens when your body is starved of oxygen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS (voice-over): What you are seeing right now is every pilot's nightmare: Losing cabin pressure, losing oxygen. This is simulation, but the effects on the body are very real and can be deadly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have reached 5,000 feet. Can I get a thumbs up if you made it OK?

PHILLIPS: We'll show you what happened to me when I went into this altitude chamber to see what it feels like. But first, October 25th, 1999...

(on camera): ... The CNN Center in Atlanta. We're talking about a Leer jet that has crashed. It's believed that there was a loss of cabin pressure. All five people have been killed.

(voice-over): Champion Golfer Payne Stewart's Lear jet lost cabin pressure. The planes we fly on are pressurized, otherwise we'd become what's called hypoxic, where a lack of oxygen causes great mental and physical impairment, unconsciousness and, eventually, death.

That's what happened to the passengers and crew on Stewart's plane. Now, investigators say they believe it was a similar loss of cabin pressure that caused 121 people aboard this Cypriot Boeing 737 to die when it crashed in Greece this past weekend.

Medical findings now show a lack of oxygen may have caused the co-pilot and others aboard to pass out before the plane went down. Air Force flight engineer, Master Sergeant Rudy Newsome (ph) knows what it's like to survive a potential disaster.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oxygen masks dropped. So, that's when we knew that, you know, we had a situation on our hands.

PHILLIPS: He and his crew were on mission when he felt, what the military understatedly calls, a malfunction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just knew that, in matter of a few moments, that you may lose oxygen, but the training just kicked in.

PHILLIPS: training that Rudy received in this altitude chamber at Andrews Air Force Base; training we got to see and feel for ourselves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, what were going to do now is we're going to start on the main portion of our flight.

PHILLIPS: Staff Sergeant Sean Hanson (ph) takes me to a simulated 25,000 feet. Watch what happens when he has me drop my oxygen mask.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you actually feel something's wrong right now, you can notice something wrong?

PHILLIPS (on camera): Absolutely.

(voice-over): In less than two minutes, I'm showing the effects of oxygen deprivation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Alright, 100. Go back by fours for me.

PHILLIPS (on camera): One hundred, 96, 9 -- 3.

(voice-over): I keep losing my train of thought...

(on camera): Eighty -- is it 85?

(voice-over): ... as my body is starved of oxygen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's try the airplane game. All right? Flying. Flying. Down. All right.

PHILLIPS: As I put my oxygen mask back on, I realize I'm on the brink of losing consciousness. My brain is shutting down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know if you notice it or not, but toward the end you were shaking and that's another symptom.

PHILLIPS (on camera): I felt my hands shaking and jittering -- my arms, my legs.

(voice-over): For just a few minutes, I could just imagine what the people on the on board Stewart's plane felt or maybe what the passengers and crew experienced aboard that ill-fated flight in Greece.

Attention to detail in the cockpit could mean life or death. We felt it in this chamber and we heard it from survivors like Master Sgt. Rudy Newsome (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you're at a high altitude, there's no room for mistakes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, now the typical 737 is equipped with so many warning systems, it would be nearly impossible for all of them to fail or even to be missed. So if it's determined that hypoxia, indeed, caused the crash of that Greek airliner, many pilots would be pretty shocked.

General John White is one of them. He's commander of the Alabama Air National Guard, also a commercial pilot. Great to have you with us, General.

MAJ. GEN. JOHN WHITE, ALABAMA AIR NATIONAL GUARD: Thank you. It's great to be here.

PHILLIPS: Well, you and I were talking about when this happened, and you said to me, I can't believe this. Because there are so many different warnings that happen before we see something catastrophic like that. Take us through those warning systems.

WHITE: Well, initially, first of all -- yes, you'll get warnings, but also, there's also backup systems to cover the primary systems that might have failed in this scenario. First warning would be at 10,000 feet, you get this obnoxious horn that's very loud in the cockpit. In fact, the first thing you do in the simulator is turn that turn off, typically.

PHILLIPS: Because it's so annoying, no doubt.

WHITE: Yes, we have to -- we kind of have to hunt for that occasionally, because you don't use that every day to knock that horn out. But it's a loud horn. You get that at 10,000 feet pressure altitude in the cabin. At 14,000 feet, all of the oxygen masks should automatically deploy in the back. And, of course, the other things that would be going on, other than that you would get warning horns -- I mean, your ears would probably start popping moreso than ever.

The flight attendants are a great source for a lot of that that's going back there. They would notice and they would call and say, you know, the masks are down back here, we're -- we have people complaining of ear problems and all things like that that would back up the normal warning systems, too.

PHILLIPS: And you usually have enough time when -- and we'll talk about rapid decompression in a minute -- but when it's sort of that slow warning process, you've got enough time to get that mask on and get breathing. What, less than a minute?

WHITE: Should have.

PHILLIPS: About a minute?

WHITE: You mean before you would need to have it on?

PHILLIPS: Right, when...

WHITE: It would depend on the altitude. As you said, at 25,000 feet, the time of useful consciousness is typically about five minutes. At 35,000, it can be 30 seconds to a minute. And if it's a rapid decompression, those times are actually cut in half. So that's the time you're talking about to actually don your mask to put that on so you're on oxygen. PHILLIPS: And when we were talking about that Greek Airliner, F- 16s were scrambled to try to see what was going on. Pilots said they saw the one of co-pilot passed out, hunched over. If, indeed, it was a rapid decompression, meaning this happened real quickly, is it possible that he just couldn't get the oxygen on fast enough? Because when it's a situation like that, he may have only, what, five seconds to do it?

WHITE: Well, it was at 32,000 feet, I believe?

PHILLIPS: Yes, it was.

WHITE: My guess -- and this is just a guess -- he should have about 30 seconds or so, based on those other times I gave you to get that on. You know, we should be able to put that on within three to five seconds and have it up and running. We checked that before every flight, in fact, to make sure that our supplemental oxygen is working.

PHILLIPS: Now, you always make sure it's right there, it's full, it's ready to go?

WHITE: Yes, actually, it's deploy -- it's within an arm's length. You just grab it. It's a rapid one-swipe, you have it on in about five seconds or less. And typically we practice that in the simulator.

PHILLIPS: Now here's what -- something else that I learned. You're military plus a commercial pilot, so you have to do that high- altitude chamber training, but if you were just a commercial pilot, the FAA doesn't require the chamber training. That just seems odd to me.

WHITE: Well, most of our airline pilots are former military. And you're right, it is required that undergraduate pilot training, we go through the altitude chamber just like we did, and then once every five years, we have to go back to return training. If you've got 20 years of aviation service, you're not required to do that once every five year routine.

Yes, I think any hands-on training you get would be better than reading about it or someone telling you about it. As you saw yesterday, once you experience it, you understand what your symptoms are. And everybody's symptoms are a bit different for hypoxia. It depends on the physical condition you're in and a lot of other factors that are associated with it, But any kind of hands-on training obviously is better than reading it in a book.

PHILLIPS: Oh, yes. And that's what commercial pilots, for example, aside from your military background -- as a commercial pilot, you had to do some type of high-altitude training, right? Was it just in a book?

WHITE: Yes, it's stressed very hard that, you know, this is important, obviously. And, certainly, like I said, most -- besides just having the FAA rules and regulations that pertain to that -- most guys that have flown airliners, I would say probably better than 50 percent are former military, and they've had that training. Yes, it would be good, but is it necessary? I'm not sure. There are methods that general aviation pilots can actually go out and get training in altitude chambers. The FAA does allow that.

PHILLIPS: Now, see, very important. I hope all pilots are listening to that.

WHITE: Well, they have to do that voluntarily, but yes.

PHILLIPS: Right. Major General John White, thank you so much. Appreciate your time today.

WHITE: Well, thank you. I enjoyed being here.

PHILLIPS: We're going to take a quick break. More LIVE FROM right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Two developing stories we're working for you right now. First, we want to take you to San Francisco, where there's been an explosion in a downtown shopping district.

Just moments ago, Vick Lee with our CNN affiliate KRON filed this report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VICK LEE, KRON REPORTER: Well, Chris, as I said earlier, police have forced my photographer Gwen Kwinnean (ph) and I behind the police perimeter. We are now at Post and Grant, and the yellow tape is keeping pedestrians from going into the area of the explosion. We're a long block away from Post and Kearney. Again, this explosion apparently happened shortly after 9:30. A manhole cover exploded, and police believe that there is a transformer beneath the ground there that may have exploded, causing the manhole cover to blow. It's -- the force of the explosion was so strong that the manhole cover was sent flying across the street. It also totally damaged the front window facade of the Ralph Lauren store, which was on the corner of the Crocker Galleria building.

At this time, there are PG&E crews around the scene of the explosion, as well as HEF agents. I can see them from my vantage point.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS; From San Francisco now to Detroit, another story that we're working for you, live pictures via our affiliate WXYZ. This trench we were telling you about earlier, there were two men trapped in this trench, and firefighters and coworkers were desperately trying to dig as fast as they could to save those two workers, pretty much buried alive in this trench. We're told that one of those workers has been taken out of that trench. They were able to rescue one of the individuals. I'm told that he is alive. There's another one still in that trench, and a fire officials is telling us it looks like that individual is showing no vital signs at this point.

So we're going to continue to monitor this trench collapse in an alley just behind a couple commercial homes here in Detroit. One man rescued from the trench, one still in there, apparently showing no vital signs at this point according to fire officials. We'll let you know what happens.

We're going to take a quick break. More LIVE FROM right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

PHILLIPS: Well, ladies, you say you've tried blind dates, right? You've tried speed dating, video dating, match.com, and you're still single? Well, we may have found your soulmate -- make that soil mate. It's Pieter Dehond corny approach to romance. He planted his cornfield to grow into a heartfelt plea for a single female. Read it for yourselves. Got to love farming.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PIETER DEHOND, CORNY ROMANTIC: I would think that they think there's some crazy goon down there writing signs in the field. So I don't know.

QUESTION: Are they right?

DEHOND: I think we're all a little crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Crazy and creative, I guess. The 41-year-old divorced father of two planted his lovelorn message in the flight path of planes traveling from Rochester to New York City. He says he's been getting a bunch of phone calls and e-mails. Apparently, he's not real concerned about attracting stalkers.

Coming up in the second hour of LIVE FROM, it's become the great debate down under. Australia's most famous nickname banned. We'll go inside the great mate debate.

LIVE FROM's second hour begins right now.

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