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CNN Live Today

Death Toll in Indonesia Alone Could Reach 100,000; Vacationing Family Uses Medical Training to Help Tsunami Victims

Aired December 31, 2004 - 11:00   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: Happy New Year, Hong Kong. We are watching live pictures of 2005 ringing in. Many of the political party there decided to postpone the traditional New Year's Day march to raise money instead for tsunami victims.
Well, it is 11:00 a.m. on the East Coast and 8:00 a.m. on the West Coast. From CNN Center in Atlanta, good morning. A Happy New Year's Eve early to you. I'm Daryn Kagan. Rick Sanchez on assignment all week long.

The eyes of the world and our attention focus again today on the tsunami disaster in south Asia. It has been five days since monstrous waves ravaged the area. Both the scope of the catastrophe and the international response are reaching unprecedented levels.

The death toll continues to climb. Let's look at some of the latest numbers now.

That death toll has now surpassed 135,000, with nearly 80,000 in Indonesia alone. More relief supplies are arriving, but aid workers say the physical destruction from the tsunami is making it difficult to get hope to those who need it most. Pledges of assistance have now reached $500 million.

Secretary of State Colin Powell will head to the region to see what more the U.S. can do. Powell and Florida Governor Jeb Bush will lead a delegation set to travel to south Asia on Sunday.

CNN correspondents are tracking developments in the tsunami disaster throughout the region. Just look at how many people we have in all the different places. We're going to bring you live reports this hour and throughout the day.

Indonesia's health minister says the death toll in that country alone could reach 100,000. Our senior Asia correspondent, Mike Chinoy, is in Banda Aceh with the latest from the epicenter of the disaster -- Mike.

MIKE CHINOY, CNN SR. ASIA CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Daryn.

Well, the relief effort here is now really getting into full swing. Supplies are coming, international aid organizations are on the ground trying to get help to the people who most desperately need it. And I want to talk a little bit about this relief effort with Sabine Rens, who is with the Doctors Without Borders group. You've now set up an operation here. And earlier in the day you went out to the west coast of Sumatra, the area that seems to be the most hard hit. Tell me what you saw there.

SABINE RENS, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: Not much. Actually, almost nothing. It's completely devastated.

All of the villages are completely wiped out. The only thing you can see are the foundations of the houses. So you can guess how many houses were there or the size of the -- of the town.

Sometimes the only thing that's holding is a mosque (ph), more or less. You have roads leading into the sea, bridges that have been completely broken apart. Basically complete desolation.

CHINOY: Now, you went to the town called Chalong, right, on the coast? Which is one of those towns virtually obliterated. Did you find any people there?

RENS: Yes, we found people who came along to talk to us. Apparently there is -- they estimate between 700 and 1,000 people who survived and were right along the border.

CHINOY: What kind of shape were they in?

RENS: Bad shape. I mean, some people hadn't eaten in three days. They have no water, no food.

There in Chalong there were just two nurses that survived. They were trying to bring some medical care, but they had no medication, nothing, no materials, no doctor.

CHINOY: Well, how did they react when you folks arrived out of the blue?

RENS: Oh, well, especially in this other town where we stopped in Los Humun (ph), it was -- it's just so emotional. They started running towards us, hugging us, shaking our hands, crying in our arms. It was -- it was very hard.

CHINOY: What's the approach now to try and help these people pull themselves together?

RENS: Well, now what we're going to do is, tomorrow we're bringing a team composed of a doctor, a nurse and a psychologist to do medical consultations there. We're also going to start looking at how we can bring them water or at least have them have drinking water on site. And then there's also food. We can bring, you know, high- protein foods for some, but I hope the food organizations will also move in as soon as possible.

CHINOY: You are doing a very tough job. OK. We'll leave it there. I've been speaking with Sabine Rens of the Doctors Without Borders organization.

One last footnote about that town of Chalong. I heard a story today of a man who survived who walked the 90 miles here to Banda Aceh. He did it on foot, on what is left of the roads. He swam five rivers because there were no bridges. And he told people when he arrived he didn't see a single living soul -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Mike, I'd like to take the opportunity to get some personal perspective from you. You for so many years have been covering the world, and especially much of Asia. From the stories that you've covered and the things that you've seen, how does this compare in your own personal experience?

CHINOY: There is no comparison at all. This is just in another realm altogether.

We talk about this a lot, my producer, my cameraman, the other colleagues here. It's really -- it's hard to compute. It's hard to take in.

I mean, maybe it's like if you could have covered the atomic bomb -- the aftermath of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. I spent a lot of today wandering around Banda Aceh. There's a big field. It's like a big park in this town. On Sunday, in the morning, a lot of kids are out there playing soccer.

This past Sunday they were having a big marathon. There were crowds there. I went to the park today. For about six or eight feet, there's just debris, metal, wood, corrugated iron, roofs, twisted wreckage of cars, trees, thick mud. You couldn't see the ground. And this was the size of maybe six or seven American football field, with god knows how many people, especially kids, buried underneath.

How are you supposed to deal with that?

Then I went with an aid worker to another place and there were just bodies lined up on the road almost six days after the -- after the tsunami. And as we were there, my cameraman was taking some pictures and the ground started shaking, they had another aftershock.

So it's just overwhelming. It's just overwhelming. It's really all one can say about it.

KAGAN: Well, we thank you and our CNN crew for your reporting from that region. Thank you. Mike Chinoy, from Banda Aceh.

Well, this might also help bring home what Mike was talking about. The scope and destruction from the tsunami difficult to grasp, as he was saying. But striking before and after satellite images provide perspective. Let's take a look.

This is Banda Aceh before the tsunami hit. Can you see roads and the rooftops of homes and buildings. Now the same area after. Flattened ruins with very few structures left intact.

The view from space also startling, but the view at the ground level is astounding. Ahead, we're going to hear from a reporter who made it deep inside Aceh Province and saw the devastation up close. That comes up in about 10 minutes. Tourists swept up in the tsunami disaster are returning home with harrowing stories of survival. But we have a story of a vacationing family that stayed behind. They wanted to lend a helping hand in their native country.

Our senior medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has that story from Sri Lanka.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): At a time when many tourists and vacationers have vividly recounted their stories of survival and loss, one family can tell the story of their own personal relief effort.

DR. W.T. MAHESWARAN, VOLUNTEER DOCTOR: Well, we come from the U.K. for a holiday. And then we had to cut short our holiday because of the things that happened here.

DR. DHANUSHA, VOLUNTEER DOCTOR: She's not ever had anything like this happen before. I mean, we're in shock. And then you think, well, OK, we're not in the mood to travel around and do holiday stuff anymore. And so you just think you need to do something.

W.T. MAHESWARAN: Today, we have visited five camps and we have treated roughly about 400 patients.

GUPTA: The Maheswaran family emigrated to the U.K. years ago. But it managed to return to beautiful Sri Lanka for holiday every few years. But as the entire world now knows, this trip was different.

Father W.T. had been a medical doctor for more than 40 years. Dr. Dhanusha is 24 and had just graduated from medical school.

W.T. MAHESWARAN: We heard about this on the radio, and then we went traveling on the (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

D. MAHESWARAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and the right time. And we saw the complications and we feel like we should be able to do something. So we couldn't -- couldn't leave really.

GUPTA: Vidhya is 20 years old and in her third year of medical school. The Maheswaran doctors have joined the handful of Sri Lankan doctors who are in their native country to offer their services.

VIDHYA MAHESWARAN, VOLUNTEER AID WORKER: Every single day you turn the TV on and the death toll is just, you know, even higher than maybe even 10 minutes ago. We feel quite lucky, and we just wanted to give back in some way. I mean...

GUPTA (on camera): You feel you did some good here?

W.T. MAHESWARAN: Yes.

D. MAHESWARAN: Yes. It's really nice to feel like -- like you've done something.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Sri Lanka.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Well, a volunteer medical group from the U.S. has sent teams to south Asia to help in the recovery effort. Another team will leave tomorrow and it will include firefighters.

Scott Gotter among those heading to Sri Lanka. He joins us this morning from Portland, Oregon.

Scott, good morning. Thanks for being here with us.

SCOTT GOTTER, FIREFIGHTER: Good morning. Thank you.

KAGAN: You have been to a number of disaster areas. Is that, do you think, going to help prepare you for what you face when you land in Sri Lanka?

GOTTER: Yes, it will help us get oriented faster, but each event is its own problem. And I'm sure it will be overwhelming, especially the size of this event.

KAGAN: And what are you expecting?

GOTTER: We're expecting a lot of displaced people. These -- these people have no place to go, let alone meeting their needs of medicine and food. They have no place to go. And I think it's going to be overwhelming, at least for awhile, until the infrastructure can start to be rebuilt.

KAGAN: You've been to Sri Lanka before, but many years ago under very different conditions.

GOTTER: Yes, that's true. It's beautiful there.

KAGAN: Was it just a vacation that you were there before?

GOTTER: Yes. My wife and I spent three months in Asia just after we were married. And we just went because we had heard of its beauty and read some about Sri Lanka. And we wanted to see it for ourselves.

KAGAN: It takes a special kind of person that -- that gives up the comforts of what you have here in the U.S. to go. I think you're planning on going for about a month. Why do you -- why do you go?

GOTTER: Actually, it's easy to go. I've been so blessed and have such a supportive family, and have received -- my children have needed medical care -- that just to take the opportunity -- and to only go for a month is no problem at all. It's -- it's really a privilege to be able to go and just give some help at a time like this and such an event like this.

KAGAN: And on another hand, you're lucky in that you have skills that apply and that you can go. What would you say to folks that aren't in that same position that still want to help? GOTTER: I would really consider looking to get on the Internet, listen to the news about groups that are going, find somebody in your area that you can contact, and give them the support that you can. This is something that's happening right now, and it will be going on for a while. But the need is right now. And I'd do it as soon as they could if it's at all possible.

KAGAN: Scott Gotter with Northwest Medical Teams. We wish you well. And safe travels in your journey.

GOTTER: Thank you.

KAGAN: Thanks for visiting with us before you go.

GOTTER: OK.

KAGAN: Well, you might have seen the amazing aerial video of parts of Indonesia where the tsunami left behind utter devastation. Coming up, we're going to take a closer look at the area and tell you what one reporter found when he got a rare first-hand glimpse of what Indonesians are calling their ground zero. We'll take you there in a moment.

And an American living in Phuket, Thailand, for nearly a decade shares his tsunami story and his perspective on what it will take to rebuild.

Back here in the U.S., police officers and revelers preparing to ring in the new year in Times Square. We'll tell you there live for a look at what's being done to ensure a fun and safe celebration.

You're watching CNN LIVE TODAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Very few outsiders have reached the Indonesian countryside to see the tsunami destruction close up. But Britain's ITV reporter Dan Rivers did make it deep inside the Aceh Province's ground zero, but found very little left except desperation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN RIVERS, REPORTER, ITV NEWS (voice-over): The first glimpse of what the Indonesians are calling their ground zero. The west coast of Aceh Province was hardest hit. This amateur footage shows the town of Molabo.

Officially 3,000 died here. Unofficially, some think perhaps half the 30,000 residents have perished.

It is a town still cut off from the outside world five days after this catastrophe. This is all that remains of Tunam (ph). Not a single building left standing. And this is Chalong. It's been wiped off the map.

It was filmed by conservationist Mike Griffiths. He showed it to the deputy governor of Aceh Province today. He was horrified, unaware of just how bad the west coast now is. Later, we ventured down Aceh's nightmarish seaboard, driving through mile after mile of desolation.

(on camera): This is just typical of the scenes we've encountered on this road. The tsunami smashed its way through here. You can see, before the tsunami came, you couldn't see to the horizon. Now you can see all the way out to sea.

It deposited all this debris here. And after the wave had come through, the villagers say there were screams of people still trapped alive, hadn't drowned. The next day, this entire place had fallen silent.

(voice-over): The people here are starving. This 60-year-old woman survived but will die unless she gets food. She told me she hasn't eaten for five days.

This woman has been found on a nearby hill. She's weak and has had no water since Sunday. We helped her into an ambulance bound for Banda Aceh.

(on camera): We've just given this woman 100,000 rupee, which is a few pounds. And they say it might make the difference between surviving and not surviving. They're taking her to the hospital. She's been up in the jungle with four days with no food and no water. And this example is just one of hundreds of thousands of people here.

(voice-over): This old man has been pulling corpses from the rubble, without help, without water. We give him ours. He's too tired, too traumatized to talk. The bodies are everywhere, rotting in the road.

(on camera): And just horrific.

(voice-over): Laid out without ceremony, grotesquely deformed. Mike can't see this from the air, but nothing could prepare him for experiencing this up close.

MIKE GRIFFITHS, CONSERVATIONIST: It does remind me of the pictures we see of Nagasaki or Hiroshima, where there was just, I think, one building, one cathedral standing, a gutted cathedral standing, and the rest was leveled. A leveled plain of shards.

And there's more to the situation here. We have one big building to our left and the rest is just nothing except debris.

RIVERS: These people are on their own. There's no aid here yet. They're walking to escape, but this road leads nowhere.

Dan Rivers, ITV News, Aceh.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Well, this week has brought an onslaught of images from the tsunami, both overwhelming and heartbreaking. Some of the most powerful images can be found in still photographs. Our Beth Nissen tells the story in pictures straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Our "Security Watch" today focuses on New Year's Eve. Authorities taking steps to keep the party safe in New York's Times Square. That's where we find our Alina Cho.

Alina, good morning.

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, this is the biggest New Year's party in the world. Certainly the most famous, and perhaps the toughest to secure. But police say they are ready, they are watching things very closely on land, by sea and from the air.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RAYMOND KELLY, NYPD COMMISSIONER: Hi guys. How are you doing? How you doing? Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Thanks.

CHO (voice-over): For New York City's top cop, Commissioner Ray Kelly, New Year's Eve security in Times Square is like a well-oiled machine.

KELLY: Well, you'll see as usual a large number of uniformed officers.

CHO: Uniformed and plain-clothes officers, checkpoints, specialized terrorism units, and seven helicopters, including, he says, a new one that can detect radioactive material and is equipped with cameras that can identify people clearly in the dark.

(on camera): In real time?

KELLY: Real time. It has high-powered cameras. It transmits pictures right down to the -- to the ground.

CHO (voice-over): The city says New York for the first time since September 11 is back as the number one tourist destination for New Year's.

(on camera): Do you breathe a big sigh of relief on January 1st every year?

KELLY: Yes. Yes. I mean, there was a collective sigh of relief, but then on to the next challenge.

This is New York. We have major events here all the time. So we always have these challenges, but it is the nature of the city. It's what makes New York New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHO: Now, one thing the NYPD is doing today is they are testing the air quality at various locations throughout Times Square on an hourly basis. One variable today, Daryn, is the weather. Though it doesn't feel that way right now, it is expected to be unseasonably warm, and that could draw a larger crowd -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Just what Times Square needs, more people. Alina Cho, thank you.

CNN "Security Watch" keeps you up to date on safety. And stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

Well, you heard it's going to be unseasonably warm in Times Square. What about the rest of the country?

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: The difficult time is still going on for families of western tourists. They are still missing in great numbers in Thailand. We're going to have a live update on efforts to find lost loved ones when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Coming up on the half-hour. I'm Daryn Kagan on this New Year's Eve morning. Rick Sanchez is in New York City on assignment. Here's a look at what's happening "Now in the News."

The Justice Department has officially made torture off limits when interrogating terror suspects. A memo dated yesterday states there are no exceptions. The U.S. faces numerous lawsuits from current and former prisoners from Iraq and Afghanistan who say they were mistreated while in U.S. custody.

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Aired December 31, 2004 - 11:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Happy New Year, Hong Kong. We are watching live pictures of 2005 ringing in. Many of the political party there decided to postpone the traditional New Year's Day march to raise money instead for tsunami victims.
Well, it is 11:00 a.m. on the East Coast and 8:00 a.m. on the West Coast. From CNN Center in Atlanta, good morning. A Happy New Year's Eve early to you. I'm Daryn Kagan. Rick Sanchez on assignment all week long.

The eyes of the world and our attention focus again today on the tsunami disaster in south Asia. It has been five days since monstrous waves ravaged the area. Both the scope of the catastrophe and the international response are reaching unprecedented levels.

The death toll continues to climb. Let's look at some of the latest numbers now.

That death toll has now surpassed 135,000, with nearly 80,000 in Indonesia alone. More relief supplies are arriving, but aid workers say the physical destruction from the tsunami is making it difficult to get hope to those who need it most. Pledges of assistance have now reached $500 million.

Secretary of State Colin Powell will head to the region to see what more the U.S. can do. Powell and Florida Governor Jeb Bush will lead a delegation set to travel to south Asia on Sunday.

CNN correspondents are tracking developments in the tsunami disaster throughout the region. Just look at how many people we have in all the different places. We're going to bring you live reports this hour and throughout the day.

Indonesia's health minister says the death toll in that country alone could reach 100,000. Our senior Asia correspondent, Mike Chinoy, is in Banda Aceh with the latest from the epicenter of the disaster -- Mike.

MIKE CHINOY, CNN SR. ASIA CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Daryn.

Well, the relief effort here is now really getting into full swing. Supplies are coming, international aid organizations are on the ground trying to get help to the people who most desperately need it. And I want to talk a little bit about this relief effort with Sabine Rens, who is with the Doctors Without Borders group. You've now set up an operation here. And earlier in the day you went out to the west coast of Sumatra, the area that seems to be the most hard hit. Tell me what you saw there.

SABINE RENS, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: Not much. Actually, almost nothing. It's completely devastated.

All of the villages are completely wiped out. The only thing you can see are the foundations of the houses. So you can guess how many houses were there or the size of the -- of the town.

Sometimes the only thing that's holding is a mosque (ph), more or less. You have roads leading into the sea, bridges that have been completely broken apart. Basically complete desolation.

CHINOY: Now, you went to the town called Chalong, right, on the coast? Which is one of those towns virtually obliterated. Did you find any people there?

RENS: Yes, we found people who came along to talk to us. Apparently there is -- they estimate between 700 and 1,000 people who survived and were right along the border.

CHINOY: What kind of shape were they in?

RENS: Bad shape. I mean, some people hadn't eaten in three days. They have no water, no food.

There in Chalong there were just two nurses that survived. They were trying to bring some medical care, but they had no medication, nothing, no materials, no doctor.

CHINOY: Well, how did they react when you folks arrived out of the blue?

RENS: Oh, well, especially in this other town where we stopped in Los Humun (ph), it was -- it's just so emotional. They started running towards us, hugging us, shaking our hands, crying in our arms. It was -- it was very hard.

CHINOY: What's the approach now to try and help these people pull themselves together?

RENS: Well, now what we're going to do is, tomorrow we're bringing a team composed of a doctor, a nurse and a psychologist to do medical consultations there. We're also going to start looking at how we can bring them water or at least have them have drinking water on site. And then there's also food. We can bring, you know, high- protein foods for some, but I hope the food organizations will also move in as soon as possible.

CHINOY: You are doing a very tough job. OK. We'll leave it there. I've been speaking with Sabine Rens of the Doctors Without Borders organization.

One last footnote about that town of Chalong. I heard a story today of a man who survived who walked the 90 miles here to Banda Aceh. He did it on foot, on what is left of the roads. He swam five rivers because there were no bridges. And he told people when he arrived he didn't see a single living soul -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Mike, I'd like to take the opportunity to get some personal perspective from you. You for so many years have been covering the world, and especially much of Asia. From the stories that you've covered and the things that you've seen, how does this compare in your own personal experience?

CHINOY: There is no comparison at all. This is just in another realm altogether.

We talk about this a lot, my producer, my cameraman, the other colleagues here. It's really -- it's hard to compute. It's hard to take in.

I mean, maybe it's like if you could have covered the atomic bomb -- the aftermath of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. I spent a lot of today wandering around Banda Aceh. There's a big field. It's like a big park in this town. On Sunday, in the morning, a lot of kids are out there playing soccer.

This past Sunday they were having a big marathon. There were crowds there. I went to the park today. For about six or eight feet, there's just debris, metal, wood, corrugated iron, roofs, twisted wreckage of cars, trees, thick mud. You couldn't see the ground. And this was the size of maybe six or seven American football field, with god knows how many people, especially kids, buried underneath.

How are you supposed to deal with that?

Then I went with an aid worker to another place and there were just bodies lined up on the road almost six days after the -- after the tsunami. And as we were there, my cameraman was taking some pictures and the ground started shaking, they had another aftershock.

So it's just overwhelming. It's just overwhelming. It's really all one can say about it.

KAGAN: Well, we thank you and our CNN crew for your reporting from that region. Thank you. Mike Chinoy, from Banda Aceh.

Well, this might also help bring home what Mike was talking about. The scope and destruction from the tsunami difficult to grasp, as he was saying. But striking before and after satellite images provide perspective. Let's take a look.

This is Banda Aceh before the tsunami hit. Can you see roads and the rooftops of homes and buildings. Now the same area after. Flattened ruins with very few structures left intact.

The view from space also startling, but the view at the ground level is astounding. Ahead, we're going to hear from a reporter who made it deep inside Aceh Province and saw the devastation up close. That comes up in about 10 minutes. Tourists swept up in the tsunami disaster are returning home with harrowing stories of survival. But we have a story of a vacationing family that stayed behind. They wanted to lend a helping hand in their native country.

Our senior medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has that story from Sri Lanka.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): At a time when many tourists and vacationers have vividly recounted their stories of survival and loss, one family can tell the story of their own personal relief effort.

DR. W.T. MAHESWARAN, VOLUNTEER DOCTOR: Well, we come from the U.K. for a holiday. And then we had to cut short our holiday because of the things that happened here.

DR. DHANUSHA, VOLUNTEER DOCTOR: She's not ever had anything like this happen before. I mean, we're in shock. And then you think, well, OK, we're not in the mood to travel around and do holiday stuff anymore. And so you just think you need to do something.

W.T. MAHESWARAN: Today, we have visited five camps and we have treated roughly about 400 patients.

GUPTA: The Maheswaran family emigrated to the U.K. years ago. But it managed to return to beautiful Sri Lanka for holiday every few years. But as the entire world now knows, this trip was different.

Father W.T. had been a medical doctor for more than 40 years. Dr. Dhanusha is 24 and had just graduated from medical school.

W.T. MAHESWARAN: We heard about this on the radio, and then we went traveling on the (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

D. MAHESWARAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and the right time. And we saw the complications and we feel like we should be able to do something. So we couldn't -- couldn't leave really.

GUPTA: Vidhya is 20 years old and in her third year of medical school. The Maheswaran doctors have joined the handful of Sri Lankan doctors who are in their native country to offer their services.

VIDHYA MAHESWARAN, VOLUNTEER AID WORKER: Every single day you turn the TV on and the death toll is just, you know, even higher than maybe even 10 minutes ago. We feel quite lucky, and we just wanted to give back in some way. I mean...

GUPTA (on camera): You feel you did some good here?

W.T. MAHESWARAN: Yes.

D. MAHESWARAN: Yes. It's really nice to feel like -- like you've done something.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Sri Lanka.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Well, a volunteer medical group from the U.S. has sent teams to south Asia to help in the recovery effort. Another team will leave tomorrow and it will include firefighters.

Scott Gotter among those heading to Sri Lanka. He joins us this morning from Portland, Oregon.

Scott, good morning. Thanks for being here with us.

SCOTT GOTTER, FIREFIGHTER: Good morning. Thank you.

KAGAN: You have been to a number of disaster areas. Is that, do you think, going to help prepare you for what you face when you land in Sri Lanka?

GOTTER: Yes, it will help us get oriented faster, but each event is its own problem. And I'm sure it will be overwhelming, especially the size of this event.

KAGAN: And what are you expecting?

GOTTER: We're expecting a lot of displaced people. These -- these people have no place to go, let alone meeting their needs of medicine and food. They have no place to go. And I think it's going to be overwhelming, at least for awhile, until the infrastructure can start to be rebuilt.

KAGAN: You've been to Sri Lanka before, but many years ago under very different conditions.

GOTTER: Yes, that's true. It's beautiful there.

KAGAN: Was it just a vacation that you were there before?

GOTTER: Yes. My wife and I spent three months in Asia just after we were married. And we just went because we had heard of its beauty and read some about Sri Lanka. And we wanted to see it for ourselves.

KAGAN: It takes a special kind of person that -- that gives up the comforts of what you have here in the U.S. to go. I think you're planning on going for about a month. Why do you -- why do you go?

GOTTER: Actually, it's easy to go. I've been so blessed and have such a supportive family, and have received -- my children have needed medical care -- that just to take the opportunity -- and to only go for a month is no problem at all. It's -- it's really a privilege to be able to go and just give some help at a time like this and such an event like this.

KAGAN: And on another hand, you're lucky in that you have skills that apply and that you can go. What would you say to folks that aren't in that same position that still want to help? GOTTER: I would really consider looking to get on the Internet, listen to the news about groups that are going, find somebody in your area that you can contact, and give them the support that you can. This is something that's happening right now, and it will be going on for a while. But the need is right now. And I'd do it as soon as they could if it's at all possible.

KAGAN: Scott Gotter with Northwest Medical Teams. We wish you well. And safe travels in your journey.

GOTTER: Thank you.

KAGAN: Thanks for visiting with us before you go.

GOTTER: OK.

KAGAN: Well, you might have seen the amazing aerial video of parts of Indonesia where the tsunami left behind utter devastation. Coming up, we're going to take a closer look at the area and tell you what one reporter found when he got a rare first-hand glimpse of what Indonesians are calling their ground zero. We'll take you there in a moment.

And an American living in Phuket, Thailand, for nearly a decade shares his tsunami story and his perspective on what it will take to rebuild.

Back here in the U.S., police officers and revelers preparing to ring in the new year in Times Square. We'll tell you there live for a look at what's being done to ensure a fun and safe celebration.

You're watching CNN LIVE TODAY.

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KAGAN: Very few outsiders have reached the Indonesian countryside to see the tsunami destruction close up. But Britain's ITV reporter Dan Rivers did make it deep inside the Aceh Province's ground zero, but found very little left except desperation.

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DAN RIVERS, REPORTER, ITV NEWS (voice-over): The first glimpse of what the Indonesians are calling their ground zero. The west coast of Aceh Province was hardest hit. This amateur footage shows the town of Molabo.

Officially 3,000 died here. Unofficially, some think perhaps half the 30,000 residents have perished.

It is a town still cut off from the outside world five days after this catastrophe. This is all that remains of Tunam (ph). Not a single building left standing. And this is Chalong. It's been wiped off the map.

It was filmed by conservationist Mike Griffiths. He showed it to the deputy governor of Aceh Province today. He was horrified, unaware of just how bad the west coast now is. Later, we ventured down Aceh's nightmarish seaboard, driving through mile after mile of desolation.

(on camera): This is just typical of the scenes we've encountered on this road. The tsunami smashed its way through here. You can see, before the tsunami came, you couldn't see to the horizon. Now you can see all the way out to sea.

It deposited all this debris here. And after the wave had come through, the villagers say there were screams of people still trapped alive, hadn't drowned. The next day, this entire place had fallen silent.

(voice-over): The people here are starving. This 60-year-old woman survived but will die unless she gets food. She told me she hasn't eaten for five days.

This woman has been found on a nearby hill. She's weak and has had no water since Sunday. We helped her into an ambulance bound for Banda Aceh.

(on camera): We've just given this woman 100,000 rupee, which is a few pounds. And they say it might make the difference between surviving and not surviving. They're taking her to the hospital. She's been up in the jungle with four days with no food and no water. And this example is just one of hundreds of thousands of people here.

(voice-over): This old man has been pulling corpses from the rubble, without help, without water. We give him ours. He's too tired, too traumatized to talk. The bodies are everywhere, rotting in the road.

(on camera): And just horrific.

(voice-over): Laid out without ceremony, grotesquely deformed. Mike can't see this from the air, but nothing could prepare him for experiencing this up close.

MIKE GRIFFITHS, CONSERVATIONIST: It does remind me of the pictures we see of Nagasaki or Hiroshima, where there was just, I think, one building, one cathedral standing, a gutted cathedral standing, and the rest was leveled. A leveled plain of shards.

And there's more to the situation here. We have one big building to our left and the rest is just nothing except debris.

RIVERS: These people are on their own. There's no aid here yet. They're walking to escape, but this road leads nowhere.

Dan Rivers, ITV News, Aceh.

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KAGAN: Well, this week has brought an onslaught of images from the tsunami, both overwhelming and heartbreaking. Some of the most powerful images can be found in still photographs. Our Beth Nissen tells the story in pictures straight ahead.

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KAGAN: Our "Security Watch" today focuses on New Year's Eve. Authorities taking steps to keep the party safe in New York's Times Square. That's where we find our Alina Cho.

Alina, good morning.

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, this is the biggest New Year's party in the world. Certainly the most famous, and perhaps the toughest to secure. But police say they are ready, they are watching things very closely on land, by sea and from the air.

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RAYMOND KELLY, NYPD COMMISSIONER: Hi guys. How are you doing? How you doing? Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Thanks.

CHO (voice-over): For New York City's top cop, Commissioner Ray Kelly, New Year's Eve security in Times Square is like a well-oiled machine.

KELLY: Well, you'll see as usual a large number of uniformed officers.

CHO: Uniformed and plain-clothes officers, checkpoints, specialized terrorism units, and seven helicopters, including, he says, a new one that can detect radioactive material and is equipped with cameras that can identify people clearly in the dark.

(on camera): In real time?

KELLY: Real time. It has high-powered cameras. It transmits pictures right down to the -- to the ground.

CHO (voice-over): The city says New York for the first time since September 11 is back as the number one tourist destination for New Year's.

(on camera): Do you breathe a big sigh of relief on January 1st every year?

KELLY: Yes. Yes. I mean, there was a collective sigh of relief, but then on to the next challenge.

This is New York. We have major events here all the time. So we always have these challenges, but it is the nature of the city. It's what makes New York New York.

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CHO: Now, one thing the NYPD is doing today is they are testing the air quality at various locations throughout Times Square on an hourly basis. One variable today, Daryn, is the weather. Though it doesn't feel that way right now, it is expected to be unseasonably warm, and that could draw a larger crowd -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Just what Times Square needs, more people. Alina Cho, thank you.

CNN "Security Watch" keeps you up to date on safety. And stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

Well, you heard it's going to be unseasonably warm in Times Square. What about the rest of the country?

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KAGAN: The difficult time is still going on for families of western tourists. They are still missing in great numbers in Thailand. We're going to have a live update on efforts to find lost loved ones when we come back.

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KAGAN: Coming up on the half-hour. I'm Daryn Kagan on this New Year's Eve morning. Rick Sanchez is in New York City on assignment. Here's a look at what's happening "Now in the News."

The Justice Department has officially made torture off limits when interrogating terror suspects. A memo dated yesterday states there are no exceptions. The U.S. faces numerous lawsuits from current and former prisoners from Iraq and Afghanistan who say they were mistreated while in U.S. custody.

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