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American Morning
Bad Weather Forces Steve Fossett to Land Balloon
Aired August 17, 2001 - 11:01 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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go right now to the journey's end. Tired and facing stormy weather over the Atlantic, Chicago millionaire Steve Fossett called it off this morning. He brought his balloon down somewhere near the border between Brazil and Uruguay. This happened about two hours ago, and our Jeff Flock has been standing by at mission control in St. Louis this morning.
And, Jeff, I understand we're going to be hearing from Fossett by telephone momentarily. How's that going to work out?
JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Leon, that's what everybody is excited about here right now, the opportunity to talk to him. Already just the project director talked to him and talked about some of the details about recovering the capsule. He seems to be fine. Apparently quite alert, despite somewhat sleepy, and everyone on the team here will be able to -- and this is where, of course, mission control has been based.
We hope today -- actually our vision today was as this mission continued to unfold to go step by step through what they do here, everything from the weather tracking to the way that they coordinate. These two ladies back here, I don't know if you know, see in the back of the room the two ladies standing next to each other, if we're able to get a shot of that, the translators, both Portuguese as well as Spanish speakers, able to try and guide the balloon all the way. We had big plans about showing you how that would unfold. But we have a different story to tell and that is the end of the mission, as you report, somewhere there short of the coast of Brazil deciding that, as Joe Ritchie, the man who has been managing mission control here said, you know, the mountain will be there tomorrow, but you've got to protect the mountaineer.
Joe Ritchie talked to reporters at a press conference just about -- oh, I guess about an hour ago now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE RITCHIE, MISSION CONTROL DIRECTOR: But there comes a point, when even by round-the-world balloonist standards, risks just seem too high, and I think as Steve looked out at three solid days hanging in a balloon flying through a front over the Atlantic, he just decided that point had come. And I think if around-the-world balloonist decides the risks are too high, then us normal mortals would surely agree, and I certainly think Peggy Fossett would agree. (END VIDEO CLIP)
FLOCK: Before we get away, I do want to introduce you to some of the behind the scene's people. And we've heard these lady's voices bellowing out there as you scream into the telephone. These are the people. And you are the Spanish translator.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, no,...
FLOCK: No, you are the...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... I am the Portuguese.
FLOCK: ... Portuguese and Spanish. I got it backwards.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Right.
FLOCK: What was the most crucial moment for you? What was the worst of it for you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well yesterday, Steve encounter, around 3:00 p.m. Central time, two very powerful storms and I had to translate from Spanish into English and English into Spanish back and forth, and put the mission control in contact with the Resistencia radar station in Argentina who did a great, great...
FLOCK: They helped you tremendously.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Eleven hours. For 11 hours we were, you know, guiding him through those two storms. And he finally, you know, got safely out of
(CROSSTALK)
FLOCK: It worked, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely.
FLOCK: How about your highlight? I know you've been on the phone recently...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
FLOCK: ... in terms of the recovery as well.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, mostly the hardest moment for us -- for us here at that point, for me especially, is sending out rescue operation because we knew he had been down but...
FLOCK: You didn't know what had become of it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, exactly how he was because we lost contact with him. So we needed some rescue operations, and I was able to talk to the Brazilian Air Force and they helped us.
FLOCK: You were the one who got the Brazilian Air Force to respond.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, yes. Yes, to respond and they sent the fire equipment and they also sent the police out there to try to find him and to see how -- you know to help him in any way they could. It apparently -- you know we don't know exactly who got there first but that was a very crucial point for us.
FLOCK: And he seems to be OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And he seems to be OK. A little rough landing but he is OK.
FLOCK: And you're obviously looking forward to hearing his voice on the phone here just maybe 10 minutes away.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Very, very soon. Yes, we're very glad.
FLOCK: Good deal. Thank you so much for your time and your efforts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.
FLOCK: I know you probably need to get some sleep, don't you, at some point along the way as do all of them here who have been up throughout the night. And on this 13-day mission, nobody got a lot of sleep, least of all perhaps Steve Fossett, and we'll be hearing the effects of that on him in perhaps 10 minutes time.
That's the latest from the campus of Washington University here at St. Louis. Back to you.
HARRIS: All right, thanks, Jeff. We'll get back to you then. You've got to feel for those people. I know they had a long night last night and sorry to see it come to such a sad ending.
All right, we'll see you in about 10 minutes, Jeff.
All right, in the meantime, we need to go over and check and see if Chad Myers can give us some more insight on exactly what happened weather wise here -- Chad.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, you know, it's really more of an oxygen thing and they had a -- they have to go up 30,000, 40,000 feet to try to ride over some of these thunderstorms and then they're using up their energy quite a bit.
And this is the cell right here or really the series of cells, almost a cauldron, as they called it on the weather page. The storms were just everywhere and he couldn't get through them, going up or going down. And the entire frontal system, which has been a stationary boundary right here, was too hard to get over. Even though the westerly winds would have gotten him into the Atlantic and then finally over to Africa, it was just too difficult to get over this. And then if he was having some difficulty as soon as he got over it, where you're going to be, in thousands of miles of water with nowhere to land. So that's why, obviously, they took those precautions and set it down.
Otherwise, the winds were about 60 to 70 miles per hour in some of these thunderstorms, tops to over 35,000 feet. Hard to get over those in a weather balloon or any kind of a balloon, so, yes, they probably did the right thing by setting him down. It was at least three, three more days of weather that he had yesterday still ahead of him before he actually got through it.
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