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CNN Live Today

Death Toll From Tsunami Continues to Climb

Aired December 28, 2004 - 10:30   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.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We're at the half hour. Good morning, I'm Daryn Kagan.
Let's take a look at what's happening now in the news. Officials in Sri Lanka have raised at country's death toll to more than 18,000, and say it will almost certainly climb higher. Hundreds of people are dead or missing in the wreckage of a train hurled off its tracks by the tsunami waves. More than 200 bodies have been recovered and the search for more continues.

The first aid is slowly trickling in to the region, and United Nations officials say this could be the largest relief effort in history. One U.N. official says the response has fallen far short, and rebuked the U.S. and other countries for being, quote, "stingy." But Secretary of State Colin Powell rejects the charge, and he did that this morning on CNN, saying that Washington has given $15 million in aide, and that number still climbs.

A car bomb explodes in Baghdad, but its intended target is not hurt. The suicide bomber was killed and five Iraqi civilians were wounded this morning. The bomb was meant for a commander of the Iraqi national guard.

We get right back in to our tsunami coverage. The death toll continues to climb. Let's take a look at the latest numbers. So far, at least 26,000 people are reported dead, mostly in Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, massive relief efforts are being launched around the region and the world. Aid is arriving in the hardest-hit spots. As for the survivors, their ordeal is only beginning. There are medical concerns over contaminated water which could spawn killer diseases. The region's death toll jumped less than three hours ago when Sri Lanka's government revised its figures to 18,000 confirmed dead. Some officials there say it will likely surpass 25,000, and that is just in Sri Lanka.

CNN's Hugh Riminton is in Colombo, and he joins us via videophone -- Hugh.

HUGH RIMINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, we're learning a little bit more as we get aware now about this apparent train disaster. Within this enormous tsunami disaster, there are so many, if you like, micro-disasters. This train seems to be an extraordinary story. There were eight carriages to this train. It was traveling between Colombo and the southern tourism city of Galle when it seemed to have been hit full blast by the tsunami. There were 1,000 people on that train. Police say they do not believe there were any survivors. That grim belief has been backed up by medical experts here in Colombo that I've spoken to just in the last hour. They say that they have sent down medical teams. I said, what are the medical issues in this particular train tragedy. He says, the only issue there is disposal of bodies. They do not believe there are any survivors to treat.

KAGAN: Hugh, this is an area that has had so much strife, even before the tsunami hit, a lot of civil war, a lot of problems here. Land mines, I understand, have been washing up and basically been unearthed because of all the flooding.

RIMINTON: That's true. There was a 20-year conflict, an extremely bitter ethnic conflict between a Tamil minority that lived in the north and east of Sri Lanka and the Sengalese (ph) majority, the Tamil Tigers, gained some notoriety around the world as the militia force for the Tamil. They laid mines. The Sengalese also laid mines across their area of disputed control. There are widespread reports that some of these mines have been unearthed as the waters came in and are knocking around and now exposed to anyone going around.

I have not heard any authenticated reports of anyone yet treading or being wounded by those mines, but it's just another thing for people to consider.

More immediately is the state of the hospital hospitals around these districts. The decision has been made that it is impossible to try to get the injured and the sick from these regional areas in towards the capital. The decision has been made to airlift doctors in from the capital. In fact the capital has been largely stripped of doctors. One-hundred and twenty five have been air lifted in to regional areas over the last 36 hours. But what they confront, a hospital that in many cases have been blown apart. They often have no electricity. They have no effective running operating rooms.

And they're also inundated by bodies. People have been bringing bodies to the hospitals. An appeal has gone out to people to stop bringing bodies to the hospitals. There is plainly nothing they can do. It is only making sanitary conditions worse around these terribly taxed hospitals where they're trying to operate around the clock. There are instead being plans made now for mass burials of those thousands of dead.

KAGAN: And the challenges continue. CNN's Hugh Riminton is Colombo, Sri Lanka. Thank you.

RIMINTON: Well, understandably relatives are in shock as they search for or they bury loved ones. The tsunami was indiscriminate in its choice of victims.

CNN's Suhasini Haidar has that story from south India.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUHASINI HAIDAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Laying to rest one of the tsunami's tiniest victims residents of a small fishing village on the south of the Indian coast come to mourn this 8-month- old and relive the horror of all they've seen.

Their homes are destroyed and they've seen family members and friends drowned in the giant wave that hit the village of Kalapet. Most of the dead here were women and small children.

As relatives cremate 35-year-old (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they can't even dwell on their grief. They must think of where to go next. Many from Kalapet have already moved to this building nearby, some exhausted by terror and grief. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) says she can't believe this is all that's left of her wedding dowry but at least we saved our lives, she says.

(on camera): Thousands are now pouring into schools and public buildings across the state. Many here say their huts had washed away and they can't go home. Some say they've lost loved ones and are just too traumatized to consider going back to the scene of destruction.

(voice-over): Despite his fears, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) has gone back to look for his father's body. An earth mover did find the clothes his father was wearing in the debris of his home.

"I realized then that my father must have died" he says.

Many other villagers from Kalapet haven't been found, their families staying there. Anguish depends as they can't even give their loved ones a decent burial.

Suhasini Haidar CNN, Kalapet Beach, South India.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: We're going to focus on the U.S. in just a bit. They have their share of hurricanes, even snowstorms. But should people along the east coast of the U.S. be concerned about a tsunami threat? We're going to look at the odds of that happening.

Plus, some buildings are built with the most high-tech equipment but can they survive tsunamis? Still to come, one mechanical engineer looks at what can be done to help structures withstand the waves.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: It was just a couple of months ago we were covering the hurricane season. And East Coast residents have endured a devastating hurricane season. So how do they now have to hurry about tsunamis? And do they? CNN's John Zarrella asks the experts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tens of millions of people live along the Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine. Hurricanes, they worry about. But tsunamis, too?

TIM DIXON, UNIV. OF MIAMI: Some earthquakes, it turns out, are more efficient at generating big tsunamis than others. ZARRELLA: University of Miami geology professor Tim Dixon says, don't lose any sleep over it. The speed the sea floor moves in an earthquake is one ingredient in determining whether a tsunami forms. It has to be just right.

DIXON: If I move the bowl real fast, most of the water stays in the bowl. If I move the bowl real slow, most of the water stays in the bowl. But if I move it at just the right speed, it sloshes out.

ZARRELLA: That right speed creates the tsunami. But in the Atlantic, the sea floor is, Dixon says, old, cold and dense. Not conducive to big or efficient earthquakes.

Some scientists say other natural events are more likely to trigger big waves on the East Coast. In July, 1992, a fast-moving thunderstorm created a wave at least 10 feet high that crashed ashore in Daytona Beach, Florida.

PROFESSOR JOSE BORRERO, UNIV. OF S. CALIFORNIA: It was on the night of July 3rd. So if it had been, you know, 12 hours later on the 4th of July, you could have had, you know, hundreds of people killed in Daytona Beach.

ZARRELLA: Volcanoes can do the job, too. Some scientists think if the Cumbra Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands off Africa erupts and collapses into the Atlantic, that would spin off a massive wave that could reach the U.S. East Coast.

Off the North Carolina coast, scientists found craters and gasses escaping from the walls of the continental shelf. But researchers are not sure the sea floor instability there will cause a tsunami.

PROFESSOR JEFFREY WEISSEL, COLUMBIA UNIV.: We have to ask the question, are these areas still at risk for a large-scale submarine landslide and consequent tsunami? We just don't know yet.

ZARRELLA: What geologists and volcanologists say they do know is if you live on the East Coast and you have to have something to worry about, make it hurricanes.

John Zarrella, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Well, taking another look at the tsunami disaster, is it possible to construct buildings that can withstand tsunamis? And if not can anything be done to prevent catastrophic damage? Southern Methodist University professor and tsunami expert, Peter Raad, joining us from Dallas. Professor, good morning.

PETER RAAD, SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIV.: Good morning, Daryn.

KAGAN: Is it possible to explain to us just how strong the force of the tsunami was and can be?

RAAD: If you have a wall of water that's about ten feet tall moving at about 30 miles per hour, that initial impact can be in the millions of pounds, it could be five, six, ten million pounds. And then the sustained force after that could be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, which explains why that initial impact is so destructive, but that the sustained wall of water is extremely destructive, as well. Both going in and coming back out.

KAGAN: I think we have some animations that help explain your point, just how strong these waves are, and the kind of damage they can do. Can you see a monitor while we put these up?

RAAD: No, I can't. But I can tell you that the reason for the simulation is that tsunamis are extremely difficult to understand and model. You can take a truck or an airplane and put it in a wind tunnel and try to get a lot of instrumentation on it. But as we know, tsunamis are extremely infrequent, and when they happen, we hope not to be around, so they're very difficult to instrument, and so our hope is that we have model basins, and certain experiments that can be conducted in the laboratory.

But particularly, I think, simulation and modeling can help us understand how the waves can get generated, how they can get propagated, and most importantly, how they actually make landfall, and what happens once the wave is on the shoreline, and how it interacts with structures. So those are going to be...

KAGAN: I'm sorry, in some of these places we're hearing that some of the better-built tourist hotels did better than the less well- constructed housing that the locals lived in. Is it possible, though, to actually build to defend against something like this?

RAAD: One of the major features of tsunamis is that they're totally unpredictable. We don't normally know what direction they come from. There's certain things that we can do, though, and this is the purpose of what we do in simulation and modeling, is to try to understand how these forces might act on structures.

As an example, you will see that a lot of the larger hotels would actually have break-away floors, the first couple of floors, where the concentration is really on building columns that can withstand the force of the water, but then basically sacrifice the walls and not have any guest rooms, but just have maybe ball rooms and parking lots and things like that in the first two or three floors.

There can also be some information that we can provide urban planners. As human beings we tend to put what's important to us very close to the shoreline, things like very large containers of, you know, tankers and fisheries and things of that nature. What we don't pay attention to is that these things actually -- such as cars and destroyed reservoirs will become projectiles. So not only are having to deal with the force of the water, but now the water is laden with projectiles that can actually create some major destruction downstream.

KAGAN: Well, and as it's rebuilding, which needs to take place in these countries all around the world, is it economically feasible or practical to incorporate these ideas given that these events happen so infrequently? As bad as they are when they happen.

RAAD: Well, they are devastating when they happen. And we are the neighbors of a very awesome force, which is the ocean. In 1993, when the tsunami happened in Japan in Okushiri, it captured the hearts of the Japanese nation, and they built, at the cost of over $600 million, around the Okushiri island, walls that are 30, 40 feet tall. Sociologically and culturally, I don't see those things happening on the coast of the United States, let's say.

But some of the things that we can do better is to try to understand where there's a propensity. Indonesia has been hit a number of times in the last ten years. If there's a propensity of these tsunamis occurring in a particular region, then maybe to not have a lot of buildings in those places, or if we do have buildings to have them constructed in a way that could help them sustain very, very large forces.

But these are extremely large impact forces. They are maybe, just to give you a comparison, if you have sustained wind of about maybe 100 miles per hour, an impact of a tsunami, given that water, is about 1,000 times denser than air. You can imagine that that first impact could be 1,000 times more than that, and then the sustained forces could be maybe 10 to 100 times more than that wind, which we are used to seeing on the coast of the United States.

KAGAN: It's almost impossible for us to kind of conjure that up. But let me ask you one final question here. This is your focus, this is what you study, this is your area. What do you hope to learn from this event?

RAAD: Here's what we hope to learn. This is one of the most multidisciplinary disciplines that you can see, because it really -- we need to understand the generation of the tsunami, which is extremely difficult to understand. It's not observationable. It's typically under the ocean. Sometimes these things can happen because of an iceberg or a landslide or a submarine landslide.

So you need a lot of geologists, obviously, to understand the mechanism of starting a tsunami. Then you need the propagation throughout the ocean, which could be hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles. The tsunami that happened off of the coast of Chile in 1960 traveled 14,000 kilometers and killed two people -- actually 200 people -- in Japan, and also hit Helo, Hawaii.

So these simulations, what we try to do, is try to anticipate and model the physics so that we can actually find out how these waves propagate and how they end up hitting and what regions they end up hitting, so in the hope that we can give emergency personnel some time to know whether a wave is coming or not. And then to be able to let the populations know whether they should be evacuating or not. But we are a good maybe five to maybe ten years away from having a simulation that sophisticated, even with the very nice funding that the National Science Foundation and NOA are putting and trying to understand tsunami mitigation.

KAGAN: So a lot of work to do. Peter Raad from SMU. Professor, thank you.

RAAD: Thank you very much.

KAGAN: Still to come on CNN LIVE TODAY, the mounting costs of this Asian tsunami and how global insurance agencies plan to handle that mounting debt. And for those travelers, those of you out there who suffered through the holiday airline mishaps, Comair has something to say to you. Also this is what we're working on for next hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: Let's take a look at some other stories making news coast to coast. In Kansas City, Missouri, a federal court hearing is scheduled today for Lisa Montgomery. She's accused of strangling a pregnant woman and stealing the unborn baby from her womb. A public defender could be appointed today.

Delta's regional carrier Comair has issued an apology to the thousands of passengers it stranded over the Christmas weekend. It says the flight schedule should be back to normal tomorrow. Comair blames a massive computer outage and bad weather for the problems.

And in New York's Times Square, final prep's under way for Friday night's big New Year's Eve bash. Workers are installing the final light bulbs for the ball that will drop just seconds before midnight and usher in the New Year.

Time check now 10:55 on the East Coast, where a powerful winter storm dropped 18 inches of snow on cape cod. Thousands of people are still without power. And it's 7:55 on the west coast where it is raining in Sun Valley. Stay with us. We'll be back with a look at your morning forecast.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: As the number of deaths continue to rise in south Asia, concern also turns to the survivors and the threat of disease they now face. We'll look at what's being done to help that.

Plus, could a tsunami strike the U.S.? The answer might surprise you, as the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.

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 28, 2004 - 10:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We're at the half hour. Good morning, I'm Daryn Kagan.
Let's take a look at what's happening now in the news. Officials in Sri Lanka have raised at country's death toll to more than 18,000, and say it will almost certainly climb higher. Hundreds of people are dead or missing in the wreckage of a train hurled off its tracks by the tsunami waves. More than 200 bodies have been recovered and the search for more continues.

The first aid is slowly trickling in to the region, and United Nations officials say this could be the largest relief effort in history. One U.N. official says the response has fallen far short, and rebuked the U.S. and other countries for being, quote, "stingy." But Secretary of State Colin Powell rejects the charge, and he did that this morning on CNN, saying that Washington has given $15 million in aide, and that number still climbs.

A car bomb explodes in Baghdad, but its intended target is not hurt. The suicide bomber was killed and five Iraqi civilians were wounded this morning. The bomb was meant for a commander of the Iraqi national guard.

We get right back in to our tsunami coverage. The death toll continues to climb. Let's take a look at the latest numbers. So far, at least 26,000 people are reported dead, mostly in Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, massive relief efforts are being launched around the region and the world. Aid is arriving in the hardest-hit spots. As for the survivors, their ordeal is only beginning. There are medical concerns over contaminated water which could spawn killer diseases. The region's death toll jumped less than three hours ago when Sri Lanka's government revised its figures to 18,000 confirmed dead. Some officials there say it will likely surpass 25,000, and that is just in Sri Lanka.

CNN's Hugh Riminton is in Colombo, and he joins us via videophone -- Hugh.

HUGH RIMINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, we're learning a little bit more as we get aware now about this apparent train disaster. Within this enormous tsunami disaster, there are so many, if you like, micro-disasters. This train seems to be an extraordinary story. There were eight carriages to this train. It was traveling between Colombo and the southern tourism city of Galle when it seemed to have been hit full blast by the tsunami. There were 1,000 people on that train. Police say they do not believe there were any survivors. That grim belief has been backed up by medical experts here in Colombo that I've spoken to just in the last hour. They say that they have sent down medical teams. I said, what are the medical issues in this particular train tragedy. He says, the only issue there is disposal of bodies. They do not believe there are any survivors to treat.

KAGAN: Hugh, this is an area that has had so much strife, even before the tsunami hit, a lot of civil war, a lot of problems here. Land mines, I understand, have been washing up and basically been unearthed because of all the flooding.

RIMINTON: That's true. There was a 20-year conflict, an extremely bitter ethnic conflict between a Tamil minority that lived in the north and east of Sri Lanka and the Sengalese (ph) majority, the Tamil Tigers, gained some notoriety around the world as the militia force for the Tamil. They laid mines. The Sengalese also laid mines across their area of disputed control. There are widespread reports that some of these mines have been unearthed as the waters came in and are knocking around and now exposed to anyone going around.

I have not heard any authenticated reports of anyone yet treading or being wounded by those mines, but it's just another thing for people to consider.

More immediately is the state of the hospital hospitals around these districts. The decision has been made that it is impossible to try to get the injured and the sick from these regional areas in towards the capital. The decision has been made to airlift doctors in from the capital. In fact the capital has been largely stripped of doctors. One-hundred and twenty five have been air lifted in to regional areas over the last 36 hours. But what they confront, a hospital that in many cases have been blown apart. They often have no electricity. They have no effective running operating rooms.

And they're also inundated by bodies. People have been bringing bodies to the hospitals. An appeal has gone out to people to stop bringing bodies to the hospitals. There is plainly nothing they can do. It is only making sanitary conditions worse around these terribly taxed hospitals where they're trying to operate around the clock. There are instead being plans made now for mass burials of those thousands of dead.

KAGAN: And the challenges continue. CNN's Hugh Riminton is Colombo, Sri Lanka. Thank you.

RIMINTON: Well, understandably relatives are in shock as they search for or they bury loved ones. The tsunami was indiscriminate in its choice of victims.

CNN's Suhasini Haidar has that story from south India.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUHASINI HAIDAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Laying to rest one of the tsunami's tiniest victims residents of a small fishing village on the south of the Indian coast come to mourn this 8-month- old and relive the horror of all they've seen.

Their homes are destroyed and they've seen family members and friends drowned in the giant wave that hit the village of Kalapet. Most of the dead here were women and small children.

As relatives cremate 35-year-old (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they can't even dwell on their grief. They must think of where to go next. Many from Kalapet have already moved to this building nearby, some exhausted by terror and grief. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) says she can't believe this is all that's left of her wedding dowry but at least we saved our lives, she says.

(on camera): Thousands are now pouring into schools and public buildings across the state. Many here say their huts had washed away and they can't go home. Some say they've lost loved ones and are just too traumatized to consider going back to the scene of destruction.

(voice-over): Despite his fears, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) has gone back to look for his father's body. An earth mover did find the clothes his father was wearing in the debris of his home.

"I realized then that my father must have died" he says.

Many other villagers from Kalapet haven't been found, their families staying there. Anguish depends as they can't even give their loved ones a decent burial.

Suhasini Haidar CNN, Kalapet Beach, South India.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: We're going to focus on the U.S. in just a bit. They have their share of hurricanes, even snowstorms. But should people along the east coast of the U.S. be concerned about a tsunami threat? We're going to look at the odds of that happening.

Plus, some buildings are built with the most high-tech equipment but can they survive tsunamis? Still to come, one mechanical engineer looks at what can be done to help structures withstand the waves.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: It was just a couple of months ago we were covering the hurricane season. And East Coast residents have endured a devastating hurricane season. So how do they now have to hurry about tsunamis? And do they? CNN's John Zarrella asks the experts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tens of millions of people live along the Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine. Hurricanes, they worry about. But tsunamis, too?

TIM DIXON, UNIV. OF MIAMI: Some earthquakes, it turns out, are more efficient at generating big tsunamis than others. ZARRELLA: University of Miami geology professor Tim Dixon says, don't lose any sleep over it. The speed the sea floor moves in an earthquake is one ingredient in determining whether a tsunami forms. It has to be just right.

DIXON: If I move the bowl real fast, most of the water stays in the bowl. If I move the bowl real slow, most of the water stays in the bowl. But if I move it at just the right speed, it sloshes out.

ZARRELLA: That right speed creates the tsunami. But in the Atlantic, the sea floor is, Dixon says, old, cold and dense. Not conducive to big or efficient earthquakes.

Some scientists say other natural events are more likely to trigger big waves on the East Coast. In July, 1992, a fast-moving thunderstorm created a wave at least 10 feet high that crashed ashore in Daytona Beach, Florida.

PROFESSOR JOSE BORRERO, UNIV. OF S. CALIFORNIA: It was on the night of July 3rd. So if it had been, you know, 12 hours later on the 4th of July, you could have had, you know, hundreds of people killed in Daytona Beach.

ZARRELLA: Volcanoes can do the job, too. Some scientists think if the Cumbra Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands off Africa erupts and collapses into the Atlantic, that would spin off a massive wave that could reach the U.S. East Coast.

Off the North Carolina coast, scientists found craters and gasses escaping from the walls of the continental shelf. But researchers are not sure the sea floor instability there will cause a tsunami.

PROFESSOR JEFFREY WEISSEL, COLUMBIA UNIV.: We have to ask the question, are these areas still at risk for a large-scale submarine landslide and consequent tsunami? We just don't know yet.

ZARRELLA: What geologists and volcanologists say they do know is if you live on the East Coast and you have to have something to worry about, make it hurricanes.

John Zarrella, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Well, taking another look at the tsunami disaster, is it possible to construct buildings that can withstand tsunamis? And if not can anything be done to prevent catastrophic damage? Southern Methodist University professor and tsunami expert, Peter Raad, joining us from Dallas. Professor, good morning.

PETER RAAD, SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIV.: Good morning, Daryn.

KAGAN: Is it possible to explain to us just how strong the force of the tsunami was and can be?

RAAD: If you have a wall of water that's about ten feet tall moving at about 30 miles per hour, that initial impact can be in the millions of pounds, it could be five, six, ten million pounds. And then the sustained force after that could be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, which explains why that initial impact is so destructive, but that the sustained wall of water is extremely destructive, as well. Both going in and coming back out.

KAGAN: I think we have some animations that help explain your point, just how strong these waves are, and the kind of damage they can do. Can you see a monitor while we put these up?

RAAD: No, I can't. But I can tell you that the reason for the simulation is that tsunamis are extremely difficult to understand and model. You can take a truck or an airplane and put it in a wind tunnel and try to get a lot of instrumentation on it. But as we know, tsunamis are extremely infrequent, and when they happen, we hope not to be around, so they're very difficult to instrument, and so our hope is that we have model basins, and certain experiments that can be conducted in the laboratory.

But particularly, I think, simulation and modeling can help us understand how the waves can get generated, how they can get propagated, and most importantly, how they actually make landfall, and what happens once the wave is on the shoreline, and how it interacts with structures. So those are going to be...

KAGAN: I'm sorry, in some of these places we're hearing that some of the better-built tourist hotels did better than the less well- constructed housing that the locals lived in. Is it possible, though, to actually build to defend against something like this?

RAAD: One of the major features of tsunamis is that they're totally unpredictable. We don't normally know what direction they come from. There's certain things that we can do, though, and this is the purpose of what we do in simulation and modeling, is to try to understand how these forces might act on structures.

As an example, you will see that a lot of the larger hotels would actually have break-away floors, the first couple of floors, where the concentration is really on building columns that can withstand the force of the water, but then basically sacrifice the walls and not have any guest rooms, but just have maybe ball rooms and parking lots and things like that in the first two or three floors.

There can also be some information that we can provide urban planners. As human beings we tend to put what's important to us very close to the shoreline, things like very large containers of, you know, tankers and fisheries and things of that nature. What we don't pay attention to is that these things actually -- such as cars and destroyed reservoirs will become projectiles. So not only are having to deal with the force of the water, but now the water is laden with projectiles that can actually create some major destruction downstream.

KAGAN: Well, and as it's rebuilding, which needs to take place in these countries all around the world, is it economically feasible or practical to incorporate these ideas given that these events happen so infrequently? As bad as they are when they happen.

RAAD: Well, they are devastating when they happen. And we are the neighbors of a very awesome force, which is the ocean. In 1993, when the tsunami happened in Japan in Okushiri, it captured the hearts of the Japanese nation, and they built, at the cost of over $600 million, around the Okushiri island, walls that are 30, 40 feet tall. Sociologically and culturally, I don't see those things happening on the coast of the United States, let's say.

But some of the things that we can do better is to try to understand where there's a propensity. Indonesia has been hit a number of times in the last ten years. If there's a propensity of these tsunamis occurring in a particular region, then maybe to not have a lot of buildings in those places, or if we do have buildings to have them constructed in a way that could help them sustain very, very large forces.

But these are extremely large impact forces. They are maybe, just to give you a comparison, if you have sustained wind of about maybe 100 miles per hour, an impact of a tsunami, given that water, is about 1,000 times denser than air. You can imagine that that first impact could be 1,000 times more than that, and then the sustained forces could be maybe 10 to 100 times more than that wind, which we are used to seeing on the coast of the United States.

KAGAN: It's almost impossible for us to kind of conjure that up. But let me ask you one final question here. This is your focus, this is what you study, this is your area. What do you hope to learn from this event?

RAAD: Here's what we hope to learn. This is one of the most multidisciplinary disciplines that you can see, because it really -- we need to understand the generation of the tsunami, which is extremely difficult to understand. It's not observationable. It's typically under the ocean. Sometimes these things can happen because of an iceberg or a landslide or a submarine landslide.

So you need a lot of geologists, obviously, to understand the mechanism of starting a tsunami. Then you need the propagation throughout the ocean, which could be hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles. The tsunami that happened off of the coast of Chile in 1960 traveled 14,000 kilometers and killed two people -- actually 200 people -- in Japan, and also hit Helo, Hawaii.

So these simulations, what we try to do, is try to anticipate and model the physics so that we can actually find out how these waves propagate and how they end up hitting and what regions they end up hitting, so in the hope that we can give emergency personnel some time to know whether a wave is coming or not. And then to be able to let the populations know whether they should be evacuating or not. But we are a good maybe five to maybe ten years away from having a simulation that sophisticated, even with the very nice funding that the National Science Foundation and NOA are putting and trying to understand tsunami mitigation.

KAGAN: So a lot of work to do. Peter Raad from SMU. Professor, thank you.

RAAD: Thank you very much.

KAGAN: Still to come on CNN LIVE TODAY, the mounting costs of this Asian tsunami and how global insurance agencies plan to handle that mounting debt. And for those travelers, those of you out there who suffered through the holiday airline mishaps, Comair has something to say to you. Also this is what we're working on for next hour.

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KAGAN: Let's take a look at some other stories making news coast to coast. In Kansas City, Missouri, a federal court hearing is scheduled today for Lisa Montgomery. She's accused of strangling a pregnant woman and stealing the unborn baby from her womb. A public defender could be appointed today.

Delta's regional carrier Comair has issued an apology to the thousands of passengers it stranded over the Christmas weekend. It says the flight schedule should be back to normal tomorrow. Comair blames a massive computer outage and bad weather for the problems.

And in New York's Times Square, final prep's under way for Friday night's big New Year's Eve bash. Workers are installing the final light bulbs for the ball that will drop just seconds before midnight and usher in the New Year.

Time check now 10:55 on the East Coast, where a powerful winter storm dropped 18 inches of snow on cape cod. Thousands of people are still without power. And it's 7:55 on the west coast where it is raining in Sun Valley. Stay with us. We'll be back with a look at your morning forecast.

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KAGAN: As the number of deaths continue to rise in south Asia, concern also turns to the survivors and the threat of disease they now face. We'll look at what's being done to help that.

Plus, could a tsunami strike the U.S.? The answer might surprise you, as the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.

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