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CNN Live Today

Deadly Building Collapse in Missouri; Abu Prisoner Release Part of Reconciliation Program

Aired June 27, 2006 - 10:00   ET

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

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, everyone.
I'm Tony Harris. Daryn Kagan has the day off.

Thank you for joining us. A lot going on this morning.

From small town America, a deadly building collapse. The local Elks Club has lost its leader, but the mayor says the whole community is hurting. We've got the story for you.

No smoking sections, no risk, no way -- a new report on second- hand smoke is out this hour.

And here we go again -- relentless rains mean more misery along the Eastern Seaboard. The flood zone straight ahead.

From celebration to chaos, it only took seconds in small town Clinton, Missouri. A tragic end to a festive Elks Club dinner. The group's 32-year-old leader is dead, killed when the building collapsed last night. Nine others were trapped and waited hours to be rescued. About 40 others managed to make it out of the rubble on their own.

The club members were having dinner on the second floor when the third floor collapsed.

Here's how one survivor described it earlier today on CNN'S "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON EATON, SURVIVED BUILDING COLLAPSE: We were on the second floor in the dining room. And we were all eating. And I'm sitting with my back, basically, to the, well, the west wall. And all of a sudden there was a loud noise. And I turned to see what it was. And the floor had disappeared.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: let's find out more from someone who was inside that building when it collapsed.

Steve Cummings was one of those who escaped on his own. His brother and best friend also made it out.

Steve joins us now from Clinton, Missouri.

And, Steve, good to talk to you.

STEVE CUMMINGS, SURVIVED BUILDING COLLAPSE: Thanks.

HARRIS: let me first ask you, were you -- were you trapped or did you sort of make it out immediately?

CUMMINGS: No, I just made it out pretty quick.

HARRIS: Pretty quick?

CUMMINGS: Yes.

HARRIS: What did you see and when did you realize that, boy, this was a bad situation and let me get the heck out of here as soon as I can?

CUMMINGS: Well, I mean, we were back in our lounge area and the suspended ceiling dropped and it was hitting you in the head and you turned around and you just saw the whole middle of the lodge disappear -- chairs, tables, people just one floor down to the other.

HARRIS: Was it a situation where it happened quickly, or did you...

CUMMINGS: Oh, yes.

HARRIS: Did you have a sense that -- could you hear creaking and that sort of thing?

CUMMINGS: No. Nobody -- everybody I talked to, nobody heard one thing.

HARRIS: Steve Komer, your leader, died in the collapse...

CUMMINGS: Tony.

No, Tony.

HARRIS: Tony. I'm sorry.

CUMMINGS: Tony Komer.

HARRIS: Yes, I'm sorry.

Tony Komer died in the collapse.

Tell us about the kind of guy he was.

CUMMINGS: You know, a community minded guy, a father of two young boys. I think five -- five or six and age two. He just happened to be up on the third floor. We were getting ready for an initiation and he just happened to be upstairs ahead of the rest of the 50 of us that were headed up there in about five or 10 minutes. And I guess that's -- I don't know what happened. I guess he didn't have any way to get out or...

HARRIS: Well...

CUMMINGS: ... you know...

HARRIS: Steve, talk to us for a moment. Describe what it feels like for you today to have arrived at the building for a celebration and to have things go this tragically wrong.

CUMMINGS: Well, it was like a -- like a nightmare. I mean you can't, even in your wildest imagination, think anything can happen to, you know, a place that I've been for 25 years. I call it my second home. My wife calls it my first home sometimes.

It's just -- it's just amazing -- I don't -- there's no way to describe anything that, you know, you think 50 of your best buddies are hurt and you don't know anything about them and you worry about them all through the night and they come out one at a time, all but one. So...

HARRIS: Steve, you also described that one of the strangest aspects of all of this with the fact that it was so silent, absence of any real noise.

CUMMINGS: Right. I mean we just -- we just heard, you know, when the -- I guess back where I was at, when the ceiling tiles hit and we turned around and there were just -- it was just like it was just disappeared, I mean just like a balloon popped. I mean there was no noise, but just like the air went out and down everything collapsed. And, you know, there's no -- no warning whatsoever. Nobody heard anything.

HARRIS: Well, Steve, our sympathies for the loss of your leader, Tony Komer.

CUMMINGS: All right.

HARRIS: And thank you for your time this morning.

CUMMINGS: OK.

Thank you.

HARRIS: OK.

Mud, muck, and, yes, more rain. It is still a mess in the eastern U.S. from the nation's capital to the capital of New York. Main streets turned into rivers. Some Maryland roads are already closed this morning. The bridges are pretty much a washout. Officials are readying rescue boats just in case.

Some places got more than a foot of rain and the flooding is blamed for a traffic death.

In the nation's capital, most government offices are back up and running, but the National Gallery and a few agencies are still closed.

Let's get you upstairs now to our severe weather expert Chad Myers for an update on the conditions along the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast -- good morning, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Tony.

Really ugly conditions. Another thing getting put into the recipe here is a tropical like system. It might even have a name before it runs onshore. I just think it's moving too fast for that to happen. But it's going to bring a lot of moisture back into the same areas, with another three to five inch swath of rainfall right through D.C.

Let me show you how all of this happens.

It's raining now in Buffalo on the Niagara frontier right on down through Pittsburgh. And if you watch that line, it rains all the way down into western West Virginia. And that line is going to continue to flood the Pittsburgh area today with significant heavy rains. It looks almost back to Charlotte, that same line, all the way up.

That's called training. You get one train track and you've got these train cars and they all go over the same train. They all go over the same track. So you get all this training going on and you get very heavy rainfall amounts. And then you add in this.

If it was in the Atlantic Ocean for a longer time, that would definitely turn into a tropical storm. Look how much it's blown up just in the overnight hours. The low came offshore. Now it's in very warm Gulf Stream water, about 80 degrees out here. But it will quickly, by 10:00 tonight, it will be onshore, so it's not going to have the time -- it's not going to have days and days to develop into a tropical, big hurricane. It's just going to have the tropical moisture.

Look at the airport delays already. Forty-five minutes in Houston now. JFK coming down, only 25. You were up longer than that earlier. And LaGuardia is now down from three hours to an hour-and-a- half. And that's mainly due because half the planes have been canceled out of there, so I guess you reduce the delays if you cancel the flights. I don't know how that happens, but you know how it works.

Anyway, rain showers on up into eastern parts of Pennsylvania, Baltimore, right into D.C.

Zoom you into D.C. for the next 48 hours and it's a bull's eye right over the area that has been so flooded. Baltimore, Columbia, Bowie, Maryland. We showed you pictures out of Bowie there. The Patuxent River out of its banks. It's out of its banks a lot, but still, here you go from Baltimore. This is three inches or more, and in many spots, Tony, it could be six inches or more.

And Washington, D.C. has picked up 12 inches of rain this month alone.

HARRIS: Oh, man.

MYERS: The normal should be two-and-a-half. HARRIS: You know, I'm thinking about my hometown of Baltimore.

MYERS: Right.

HARRIS: Fells Point certainly floods out quickly.

MYERS: Yes.

Bowie...

HARRIS: Towson floods out.

MYERS: Towson did flood already.

HARRIS: Did they flood?

MYERS: Yes.

HARRIS: Man, oh, man.

OK, Chad, appreciate it...

MYERS: And, look, I mean, and this is where it's going.

HARRIS: Yes.

MYERS: I mean you go here from -- take Alexandria right up the B.W. Pkwy and there's downtown Baltimore.

HARRIS: I guess that's 295?

MYERS: Yes.

HARRIS: Yes.

OK, Chad, appreciate it.

Thank you.

MYERS: You're welcome.

HARRIS: A notorious Iraqi prison back in the spotlight. Hundreds of prisoners at Abu Ghraib have their freedom today. Their release is part of the Iraqi prime minister's plan to bring the country together.

To Baghdad now and senior international correspondent Nic Robertson -- good morning to you, Nic.

And I'm wondering, was this release timed for maximum media attention?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly a lot of effort was put into getting the media out to witness this event. Iraq's national security adviser was there to give a speech to the detainees, to explain to them why they were getting their freedom, as part of this national reconciliation package, telling them this is what's important for the country to unite and for them to support the government.

But to get us out to Abu Ghraib jail facility is not an easy operation. It's a very dangerous place to go to and the U.S. military transported us out there so that we could cover this event.

It is an event that the Iraqi government and U.S. officials here do want to see get a good amount of air time -- Tony.

HARRIS: And, Nic, I'm wondering, politically, how this all plays for the new prime minister.

Does this release strengthen him?

ROBERTSON: Well, politically, the government here is saying that there are indications that, they say intermediaries are giving them positive indications that this amnesty offer and this -- the release of prisoners -- is having some small positive effect. It's not getting the insurgents to put down their weapons. But the government is characterizing it as positive indications through their intermediaries. That's what they're saying.

The prisoners that we talked to today being released, all of them said that they had been unjustly and unfairly imprisoned. They said there were plenty of other prisoners in a similar condition inside the jail who didn't deserve to be there. And they said they didn't believe that there could be full reconciliation until all those prisoners were released -- Tony.

HARRIS: So, Nic, I'm curious as to the vetting process that led to the release.

Were these prisoners who are being released, were they in court at any point? Was there any kind of a proceeding to test the validity of their claims?

ROBERTSON: There is a legal process that goes on within Abu Ghraib and within the detention facility there. One of the detainees who had been in jail for a year-and-a-half showed me his charge sheet. And it said that he was accused of being involved in making roadside bombs and making vehicle bombs, that when he was picked up, he had explosive residue on his hands.

He denied that he'd been involved in any such activity, said that he was arrested simply for being a Sunni, simply for being from the town of Fallujah. Others, too, had different stories, but all said that they were unfairly arrested.

The picture that they painted was relatively good treatment inside the jail, but that they were now being released, that they were happy to be released, but this wasn't, perhaps, going to be a massive change in their attitude. They said it's really going to depend on what the government does next -- Tony.

HARRIS: OK, Nic, a lot more questions for you.

I think you're back with us next hour. We'll take up some of those questions then.

Senior international correspondent Nic Robertson with us.

Nic, appreciate it.

Thank you.

America's top doctor has a warning -- separate smoking sections aren't safe. New this hour, a second-hand smoking warning.

A deadly crime spree, a grief-stricken family and then this.

(VIDEOTAPE OF COURTROOM CONFRONTATION)

HARRIS: Chaos in the court. Find out what sparked this outburst.

And sad news for TV fans who will mark the passing of "Frasier's" dad's best friend.

You're watching CNN, the most trusted name in news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Well, you know him as Eddie, that cute Jack Russell Terror loved by everybody but "Frasier," the top dog from the NBC TV series. His real name was Moose.

His trainer tells "People" magazine Moose has died. Moose was 16-and-a-half years old and had been retired and living in the lap of luxury, as we can see, since he was 10.

Rush Limbaugh is back in the legal spotlight. Authorities in South Florida say the radio talk show host could face misdemeanor drug charges. He was detained for several hours at Palm Beach International Airport. Customs agents say they found a bottle of Viagra in his luggage. Instead of Limbaugh's name, the label carried the names of two doctors. Limbaugh's attorney says it was labeled that way for privacy.

Last month, Limbaugh reached a deal with prosecutors. They had accused him of illegally obtaining prescription painkillers.

Second-hand smoke -- there's no escape. A new report says no smoking sections don't work, but smoke-free areas do.

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here with the details of the surgeon general's new findings -- good to see you, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good to see you.

You know, health authorities have been telling us for 20 years that second-hand smoke is bad and you should limit your exposure as much as possible. What they're saying now is that not only is it bad, but it's bad even for just a few brief moments, even a few minutes can have an effect on your health.

Not, the report says that 126 million people are exposed to second-hand smoke and that that causes 3,000 lung cancer deaths a year and 35,000 heart disease deaths.

In addition, this report from the surgeon general says that second-hand exposure to cigarette smoke may also increase your risk of getting breast cancer.

HARRIS: So, Elizabeth, what happens to your body, based on this new information? What happens to your body with just now a limit exposure to second-hand smoke?

COHEN: Right. Just a few minutes of sitting in a bar...

HARRIS: Yes.

COHEN: Just a few minutes of sitting next to someone who's smoking. It can do several things to your body. Here are two of the biggies. Your arteries are flexible. They're supposed to be flexible. That's a good thing. Even just a matter of minute's worth of exposure to second-hand smoke can make your arteries rigid. That's a bad thing. It puts you at a higher risk of having a heart attack.

It also makes your platelets sticky in your blood, another bad thing. Sticky platelets can also help lead to a heart attack.

HARRIS: And what I have to ask you, surgeon generals have been talking about the risks of second-hand smoke for years.

What's really -- what's really new in this report?

COHEN: What they're trying to emphasize in this report is, again, that just a few brief moments could be a problem and that there's no such thing as an OK exposure to second-hand smoke. So you go into a bar, you spend an hour, that even that can have an effect.

So what they're hoping is that more cities and states pass no- smoking laws. And they're also hoping that more people will get it in their heads that second-hand smoke is bad.

We've all been on the highway and driven past someone who's smoking in a closed car with children in the back seat.

HARRIS: So is -- yes.

COHEN: And you think what are they thinking?

HARRIS: What are they thinking?

COHEN: And so the surgeon general is trying to say, with the strongest words yet, not a good idea.

HARRIS: And as we were talking...

COHEN: A terrible idea, as a matter of fact.

HARRIS: Yes. As we were talking a little earlier, you know, we've been talking about it for 20 years, but we really, really, really mean it this time.

COHEN: Right. Exactly. That's what they're trying to say, is we're serious now. Listen up.

HARRIS: And pay attention.

OK, Elizabeth, we appreciate it.

Thank you.

COHEN: Thanks.

HARRIS: Still ahead, a deadly crime spree, a grief-stricken family, chaos in court. Take a look at this scene.

What was behind this courtroom brawl? That story when LIVE TODAY returns.

This is CNN, the most trusted name in news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Hey, how about this?

Live pictures right now from the Kennedy Space Center. Our first look, I believe, this week at the crew of Discovery. Expected to make some statements, maybe a brief talk with the press, at about 10:30 this morning.

Commander Steve Lindsey and the crew arriving just a bit early in Florida because of weather concerns.

Discovery set to take off this Saturday, July 1st, at 3:48 p.m.

And a big thumbs up from the crew there of Discovery.

And we want to check on how the markets are performing early in the trading day here on Wall Street.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

HARRIS: High emotion in a Texas courtroom -- a man face-to-face with the person who allegedly killed his niece. Police believe the murder was part of a crime spree that began months ago. Take a look at that scene.

Reporter Joel Eisenbaum of our affiliate KPRC has details.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE) JOEL EISENBAUM, KPRC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Capital murder suspect Dexter Johnson in court. Suddenly it's chaos. The uncle of murder victim Chrisalee Aparece out of control, angry and grief- stricken. The defendant whisked away. The family spilled out of the courtroom.

ANGELITA APARECE ANDUYAN, VICTIM'S AUNT: This is the first time he heard what they did to her. And it was just too much for him.

EISENBAUM: Aparece was found shot and killed along with 17-year- old Huy Ngo and police say they're not the only murder victims in what was an incredibly brutal crime spree, one that's netted five arrests and 15 capital murder charges between them.

OFFICER ALAN BROWN, HOUSTON POLICE: We've collectively agreed that this may be the meanest bunch of guys we've come across, or just the coldest.

EISENBAUM: Dexter Johnson and Keithron Fields were the ringleaders, police say. Timothy Randle, Alvie Butler and Ashley Ervin were involved in deadly crimes, too, just weeks before Aparece and Ngo's murders, Brady Davis was robbed and shot and killed at a car wash. Two days after the Aparece-Ngo murders, another man, Jose Lopez, was the victim.

BROWN: He was robbed and ultimately shot and left in the back seat of his vehicle.

EISENBAUM: Police say the suspects who appeared in court were not part of an organized gang, but were all either friends or related. Police say most have confessed to the crimes. Aparece's friends and family could not believe homeowners sinister those crimes really were.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Totally unbelievable that these guys can do that to a very demure lady and even one who cannot -- could not fight. It's just totally indescribable.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

HARRIS: And this just in to CNN. Authorities in Bremen, Georgia are reporting an explosion at a Quality Inn hotel just about an hour ago. No word at this time on injuries or deaths. The explosion then led to a partial collapse of at least one of the walls of the hotel. And we're hearing that people were trapped, but so far no confirmation on how many people might be trapped or the extent of any injuries.

We understand that five cars were actually crushed under the wall, so it sounds like it might have been in a parking structure connected to the hotel. And we certainly have a crew on the way to the scene to get the latest information that we can on that.

This reporting coming from our local affiliates here in the Atlanta area.

Once again, Bremen police -- this is in Bremen, Georgia -- confirming that a Quality Inn hotel has seen an explosion there, a partial collapse of at least one of the walls. And we're hearing that a number of people may have been trapped. And no word on the extent of injuries at this time.

We'll continue to follow this story and bring you the latest developments on it.

Still ahead, expect the unexpected. That is the word in the Mid- Atlantic Region. Rain and misery may be sticking around for a while.

And a small town in shock and mourning. A community leader dead. A building lies in rubble. What happened and what's next?

That story ahead on CNN, the most trusted name in news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Live pictures now. Take a look. We saw them just a moment ago. And you can see one of the crew members of the Space Shuttle Discovery about to get out of their fighter jet. The crew, led by Commander Steve Lindsey, we believe will be making a few brief comments about the mission. The entire crew arriving at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida just a short time ago.

The astronauts arriving in Florida just a little earlier than planned because of weather concerns in the area. The crew will test new equipment and procedures to improve shuttle safety, as well as deliver some supplies and make repairs to the International Space Station. We'll learn more about that from Commander Lindsey.

Our Miles O'Brien begins coverage for us here Saturday. The launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery at 3:00 p.m. And the launch is scheduled, as you can see there, at 3:49 Eastern time.

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