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Among the Dead; Study: Permafrost Melt Could be Well Under Way by 2050; Consenting Adults?

Aired December 26, 2005 - 14:00   ET

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

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Today marks a year since a mighty earthquake propelled the Indian Ocean into villages and villas, cities and towns from Indonesia to the east coast of Africa. More than 200,000 people lost their lives. Several times that many lost everything but.
As part of CNN's special coverage of the state of the devastation, one year later, CNN's Alex Quade visited a site where thousands of tsunami victims were hastily, unceremoniously buried. There was no other way. But that fact alone offers no peace for one young survivor.

We should warn you, some of the images in Alex's report, first seen on "ANDERSON COOPER 360" are graphic and difficult to watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEX QUADE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This was a place of sheer horror. More than 54,000 tsunami victims were dumped here without identification, without dignity, without ceremony.

At the time, there was nothing else to do. Bodies were rotting in the streets. We followed the body baggers then. It was a nightmare. Death everywhere we looked, everywhere we stepped.

It was like that for the survivors, too. Searching among the corpses for their families.

One year later, those survivors come to the mass grave searching for solace. A nightmare about his mother, brought 18-year-old Wallace here.

WALLACE, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR (through translator): Last night, I dream, Wallace, why you didn't come to my house, she said.

Sorry.

QUADE: The college student lost more than 200 members of his family and is now responsible for his brother and little sister. But it is his mother's death that haunts him.

WALLACE (through translator): My mother was at home.

Sorry.

QUADE: Wallace, who wants to be a computer programmer, blames himself for his mother's death.

WALLACE (through translator): My father asked me to go swim out in the black water and try to find my mother. I thought it was impossible to find her in the dark water since everyone was running away to save their lives. How could I swim towards the tsunami to find my mother? It was impossible.

QUADE: Then, he confesses his secret to me.

WALLACE (through translator): I couldn't swim. I couldn't swim. So I ran away to the mountains.

QUADE: Hours later, Wallace tried swimming for the first time.

WALLACE (through translator): I finally arrived at my house but there was no house anymore just foundation. But I recognized that it was my house. I sat there and cried, "Where are you, mother? How can I find you?"

QUADE: His search brought him to the mass grave.

WALLACE (through translator): I spent hours walking around looking at the dead bodies, looking at their faces trying to find my mother. I was afraid. Because there were too many dead bodies.

QUADE: In Wallace's recurring nightmare, his mother asks why he didn't come home to save her. So he comes to the mass grave to ask her forgiveness. Though he will never know if she is really buried here.

Those who are, he says, do not rest in peace, because this is disputed land. The caretaker who grows fruit and vegetables on the grave says the 54,000 bodies were buried here without the landowner's permission. The sign says the landowner is angry, wants to be paid. A situation which brings no peace to the living.

(on camera): When you look out here...

WALLACE (through translator): Yes.

QUADE: What do you see?

WALLACE: I see the dead body.

(through translator): I saw the process with the tractor. Like animals. They just threw them away. The process was horrible. In Islam, in bury people with white clothing, but there were no burial clothes. I know that my mother was thrown from a tractor like that here.

QUADE (voice-over): The disputed mass grave is now green with life. Cows roam. Papaya trees grow. Little comfort for survivors like Wallace. There is nowhere else for them to mourn.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: Such a difficult story, and there are so many stories just like that.

Alex Quade joins us now from New York.

Alex, people are obviously still traumatized by this. How are they working through that? By talking about it?

QUADE: They really don't have much counseling, so they really aren't talking about it too much. The funny thing about Wallace here, the young man at the mass grave, we went there and he just came up to me wanting to practice his English. And so we talked a little bit.

The first thing I asked him is what is he doing here, why is he at the mass grave? And that's when he said he thought that maybe 200 members of his family were buried there.

I mean, if you could imagine just wondering if your family is buried there and having no idea, these people, all these survivors, they have no idea. They don't -- there's no identification on the bodies that were dumped here. And so as far as any sort of counseling, all of these tsunami survivors are very traumatized, still.

NGUYEN: That raises a question, because billions have been poured into this relief effort. You would think counseling would be made available, because obviously they're so traumatized, so very hurt by this.

Are these groups on the ground providing that?

QUADE: Well, what has happened, Betty, is that right after the wave came through, after the wave struck, there were so many volunteer groups and aid groups and charitable organizations that did come in. And they tried to fill that need.

And then as other disasters happened around the world, the earthquake in Pakistan, the hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, a lot of these aid groups, they moved on to the next disaster. And while there are still NGOs, non-government organizations, still on the ground in Banda Aceh, there is still need.

And even just in the aid in the tent camps, these refugee camps where many of the people are still living, they say that depression is a major problem in these camps. And it's compounded by the fact that a lot of folks still are trying to find jobs, as well.

NGUYEN: Yes. They're without loved ones, they're without work. That future does have to seem very bleak.

You've been back, you've seen the progress. What was that like for you?

QUADE: It was very strange thing to get off the airplane in Banda Aceh and the first thing that you noticed, that the smell was different, that death no longer lingered in the air the way it did when we were first there, when we had to follow the body baggers and we had to shove Vic's Vapo-Rub up our noses and wear surgical masks. But just going back there and seeing that there is progress, that a lot of the rubble has been cleared, there was rubble that was as high as two and three stories high. And the rubble has been cleared.

Yes, there's still houses that are standing that are very decimated and damaged, but nature has really come in and taken over, has reclaimed. There's grass growing where there used to be rubble. But they do say that the recovery effort in Banda Aceh alone, where 90,000 people were killed, that the recovery effort there could take as many as 10 years.

NGUYEN: Did you talk to some people who do have success stories, stories of them getting their lives back together?

QUADE: That -- there are a lot of success stories. There is a lot of hope.

There is daily struggle, people just trying to get by. But there -- you're seeing progress.

I mean, for instance, in the refugee camp we met a young boy named Nasir. And while he is having to provide for his mother, he's having to find work, he is also able to go back to school. And that was a big step. He didn't know last year when we first met him if he'd even be able to go to school.

And we met another little boy who, he has to go fishing, he has to go fish to help support what's left of his family. And yet, he also -- he does have hope for the future. He wants to be a Muslim cleric, and he hopes that some day he can quit fishing and he can -- he can live out the dream that he wants to have.

NGUYEN: Yes, it's those little glimmers of hope that help people make it through these trying times.

I have to ask you, though, with all the numbers that started coming out shortly after the tsunami hit, it seems like they were rising. The death toll was rising by the hour.

What's the latest on that number and the number of people affected by the tsunami?

QUADE: Well, the numbers still do float around just because they still can't account for all of the missing and all of the dead. So the numbers that we have been able to figure out and to average with the other numbers that are out there, it averages at about 500,000 people in the country of Indonesia alone were made homeless. And that out of those 500,000, that about 68,000 people, nearly 68,000 people just in the one city of Banda Aceh alone, which is the provincial capital, that nearly 68,000 are still living in tents.

And again, in Banda Aceh, they can't account for 90,000 people. They really -- they believe that 90,000 people are dead, were killed by the tsunami or still missing.

NGUYEN: Oh, that is just so staggering.

Alex Quade, thank you for that report and shedding some light on what's been done since that disaster struck.

QUADE: Thank you, Betty.

NGUYEN: Be sure to join CNN's "PAULA ZAHN NOW" for more of our special coverage of "The Tsunami: A Year Later." That is tonight, 8:00 Eastern, only on CNN.

Well, there's a new report, and it suggests a possible acceleration in the process of global warming with potentially vast changes occurring to the planet this century. The study was funded by the federal government.

So, for a deeper look, we turn to our expert, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers.

So how does this work? We're talking about permafrost, right?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. It's the frost, it's the ground in Alaska in northern Canada, in all of Russia, basically, that is frozen on a permanent basis or at least maybe the top three inches might thaw for a couple of months and then the bottom part is still frozen.

NGUYEN: OK.

MYERS: The new study says that in 95 years, by the year 2100, much of this permafrost, 11 feet deep, could actually be thawed all the way down. And you think, well, how does that affect anything?

Well, the caribou won't be able to migrate. The roads that are driven on top of this -- the just planted these roads on top of ice because they said, well, that will never freeze.

NGUYEN: It's never going to fall, yes.

MYERS: Right, we'll be fine. If that -- the roads start to buckle, the buildings start to buckle, and we could release more greenhouse gases. Not sure about this yet. This is all kind of in theory. This is all kind of a working model.

But there may be carbon dioxide in that frozen tundra that would be released into the atmosphere. We all hear about the CO2 and that's what's making this...

NGUYEN: Greenhouse gases.

MYERS: ... greenhouse and the global warming in the first place.

NGUYEN: All right. So -- but what is causing this thawing? Do you know?

MYERS: Well, we're burning down the rain forests. We're driving SUVs with one person in them.

NGUYEN: All these factors? MYERS: Well, yes. I mean, you need to start using some fluorescent lights instead of incandescent lights. So many things that we can do.

You know, if you take -- you see these little incandescent bulbs, the hot ones? If you touch them, they're hot. The little fluorescent bulb, if everybody in the United States puts one fluorescent bulb in their House, that would be like taking one million cars off the road.

NGUYEN: Are you serious?

MYERS: That's an amazing -- a 60-watt bulb that is incandescent, the hot ones, equal to 13 or 17-watt bulb in fluorescent. Same amount of light. So you're using less electricity, the electricity plants don't have to run as long or as hard. So you're not putting as much pollution into the air by that.

NGUYEN: But now there are critics, though, who say that this super computer or these -- several of them that were used to create this projection are wrong.

MYERS: Sure. Wrong or overestimating.

NGUYEN: Overestimating.

MYERS: Yes. And so that's the good news. And the funny part is, this study came from Colorado. The folks up in Fairbanks are going, wait a minute, this is...

NGUYEN: Yes, the people in Alaska are saying, hold the phone.

MYERS: ... wait a minute. So there is going to be a little collaboration between the people at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Colorado putting this (INAUDIBLE) study together, trying to make it a whole lot -- you're only as good as the computer programmer. And if -- I'm not saying this is, but if you make a bad computer program, it's garbage in, garbage out, just like some of our hurricane models...

NGUYEN: False reading, yes.

MYERS: ... that they go this way and the hurricane really goes this way. So the more information you can get into that computer, the more accurate that forecast will be.

NGUYEN: But the one thing is for sure, they're not saying that it's not thawing. They're saying that it's not thawing as quickly as this computer is saying.

MYERS: Right. It is thawing.

NGUYEN: OK.

MYERS: Permafrost is thawing.

NGUYEN: Bottom line, it's thawing. MYERS: Roads are buckling and all that. The researchers in Fairbanks don't think it's going to be 11 feet.

NGUYEN: Got you.

MYERS: They say it will be, but maybe not so severe.

NGUYEN: All right, Chad. That's why you're the expert.

MYERS: We all try.

NGUYEN: Thank you.

MYERS: You're welcome.

NGUYEN: Well, you probably won't need to adjust your watch, but on New Year's Eve, international timekeepers will be adding an extra second to the official world clock. Here's a quick look at how this whole leap second thing works.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS (voice-over): At exactly 11:59:59 Universal Time on New Year's Eve the world will hold its breath an extra second before ringing in the new year. This will be the first time a leap second has been added to the clock since 1998.

International coordinated Universal Time must be adjusted again to actually match the rising and setting of the sun. The clock gets out of sync because the Earth is rotating slower than it used to. And solar days are just a fraction of a second longer than 24 hours.

Universal Time is kept by extremely precise atomic clocks which measure time using the frequency of atoms. When this precise clock's time gets ahead of the time measured by the solar day, by international agreement a leap second is added. Leap seconds have reportedly caused a few technological bugs in the past. That's why some people favor abandoning the sun's time altogether and just allowing the atomic clock to march on.

But for this year, at least, the atomic clock will have to stop for one second one more time and wait for the Earth to catch up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: OK. Coming up on LIVE FROM, swapping something more than baseball cards in Canada.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a game.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a game.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we're all together alone, we make love, but when we are with people, we make sex. (END VIDEO CLIP)

NGUYEN: All right then. Canada's Supreme Court changes sex law standards and ignites controversy. We're going to have that story when LIVE FROM continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: So you might want to file this one under the heading "They're Just More Sophisticated Than We Are," or maybe not. In any case, you might also want to send younger viewers out of the room for this story. We're not kidding.

As the Supreme Court of Canada rewrites the legal definition of indecency, swingers are celebrating. But critics are appalled at the legalization of a virtual sexual smorgasbord.

CTV reporter Jed Kahane covers all the bases in Ottawa.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JED KAHANE, REPORTER, CTV (voice-over): It's a watering hole where patrons indulge in a thirst of a different kind. They pay for the drinks and the rooms, but not the sex, although there's lots of it. Orgies, swapping, voyeurism, it's all on the menu. And now Canada's highest court says it's perfectly legal.

ROBERT LA HAYE, SWINGERS CLUB LAWYER: Nobody was paid to gratify somebody with sex. It's not prostitution. It's only the exercise of the freedom, the liberty of doing what you want to do.

KAHANE: Two Cadeck (ph) swingers clubs took their fight to the Supreme Court after police raided their premises and charged the owners with running a body house and dozens of clients with committing indecent acts. But the court ruled there is no evidence "the sexual conduct at issue harmed individuals or society. Only those already disposed to this sort of sexual activity were allowed to participate and watch." And "no one was pressured to have sex or treated as a mere sexual object for the gratification of others."

In other words, says the owner, "If you don't want to sit naked in a Jacuzzi built for 40 or take part in group sex, all you have to do is stay away."

DENIS CHESNEL, CLUB OWNER: Each people in their room, they have a camera. And if they want to be seen, they open the camera. For the other people in the other place, they could see sexual in other place.

So now they have the telephone, they like this couple, "Hey, I'm in room four, open your camera, look at me." It's fun.

KAHANE: Kathleen Boit (ph) and Sylvian Picard couldn't agree more. They've been together 14 years and have been swinging for eight.

SYLVIAN PICARD, SWINGER: It's a game. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a game. That's it.

PICARD: When we are together alone, we make love. But when we are with people, we make sex.

KAHANE: A dangerous game for those who say parliament, not the courts, should be writing the laws on such matters.

BRIAN RUSHFELT, CANADA FAMILY ACTION COALITION: The message to society is, well, this thing is OK, this kind of activity is OK. And so I think parents trying to teach their children otherwise now are up against a Supreme Court saying, oh, no, there's nothing harmful about this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: There you have it.

Moving right along, shall we, it is a Christmas one Oregon surfer will likely never forget. Brian Anderson is nursing 70 stitches on his leg after a great white shark cruising for a Christmas Eve dinner spotted him in the water Saturday. It bit Anderson on the calf and ankle, but he fought back and he and a fellow surfer talked about the ordeal earlier today with our Miles O'Brien on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN ANDERSON, BITTEN BY SHARK: And I was waiting for a set wave and George was on the inside of me, and the shark just grabbed my leg. I felt a sharp pain on my foot, and it happened in some split seconds.

And right after that, then I saw the shark just right up in my face. And I just gave it a good punch to get it to let go.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh boy.

ANDERSON: And it did. And it let go after I hit it.

O'BRIEN: Was it a reflex response? Did you have time to even think at that point?

ANDERSON: Yes, I had time to think because I saw -- I looked down and saw the shark and knew it was a great white. And then a couple swear words came out of my mouth, and then I just punched it as hard as I could in the eye. And then it let go, and the drama, real drama starts when you start paddling back in.

I stayed on my board and my foot was totally numb. So I couldn't tell how bad the damage was to my foot. And it was just real amazing because the waves just kind of let me in real gently on the beach. I was practically on the shore before George even got in, and he was way closer to the beach than I was.

O'BRIEN: Well, but your concern -- your concern at that point was, once you punch a shark, could that make him mad? Could it actually get worse? What were you thinking as you were paddling in?

ANDERSON: I was just praying that I would live through this day. That's all. That's what I was thinking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NGUYEN: And like a true surfer, Anderson says he does plan on surfing once again, despite the attack.

That's a brave guy there.

Coming up, a dream come true at an early age for a 12-year-old golfer, but Dakota Dowd (ph) is in a race against time. We're going to tell you why when CNN LIVE FROM returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: OK. So, the bun is hot, the owner is cross and Nashville has a crime on its hand.

Peter White with our affiliate WKRN has more on the theft of a revered roll.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETER WHITE, REPORTER, WKRN (voice-over): It was ineffable. It was inedible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People came from all over the world to see.

WHITE: But now it is gone. Some time last night an evil Grinch pried the door off the Bongo Java Cafe and got away with the Mother Teresa cinnamon bun.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I came out here with the police, I saw the angel on the ground there that usually hangs on the display case. And I glanced in and I immediately knew it was gone. It was a very deliberate break- in. They had touched nothing else but the case and just took it with them.

WHITE: Until last night, anyone who came in to the Bongo Java Cafe could see the bun. It sat on a shelf below the cash register. A large cup filled with change and a piggybank sitting next to the bun were not taken.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It happened like nine years ago. This gal, she used to make cinnamon rolls for us. And one of them turned out kind of ugly, you know.

And so -- and she used to have like scrap that I would -- she's like, "Here's the extra." But she didn't that one morning, so I figured I'd buy the ugly one and leave the squirrelly ones for the customers, and ended up seeing a little face in it. And the rest is history, as they say, you know?

WHITE: When Ryan Finny (ph) first saw Mother Teresa in the Christmas bun, it made big news. Finny, who is not Catholic but considers himself spiritual, has been watching over the roll ever since.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like looking at something in the clouds, you know? You see something. But, you know, obviously other people saw the same thing I did. It's pretty distinct, you know, with the hood and everything.

WHITE: Hundreds of people packed the Bongo Java in the weeks after Christmas Day in 1996, but Catholic officials never considered its sudden appearance to be any kind of miracle. In fact, when the Bongo Java's owner started selling T-shirts with a picture of the bun on the front and music city miracle, the Mother Teresa cinnamon bun written on the back, he got a letter from Calcutta. Mother Teresa was not amused.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But whoever stole it, they didn't just steal it from us. They stole it from everybody who, you know, enjoyed seeing something like that. You know?

WHITE: Bob Bernstein (ph), the Bongo Java's owner, stopped using her name and suggested calling it "The Immaculate Confection" instead.

Mother Theresa didn't like that either, so it became the "Nun Bun." According to Bernstein, Mother Theresa discussed the T-shirts bearing her likeness on her deathbed. Her lawyer asked the famous missionary what she wanted to do about the "Nun Bun." Mother Theresa laughed and pointed to her successor, Sister Imnermala (ph), and said, "find a roll that looks like her."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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