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American Morning

Michael Attardi Among in Excess of 10,000 U.S. Tourists Who Are Trapped

Aired October 26, 2005 - 08:30   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Let's get back to Cancun, and Cozumel specifically. Michael Attardi is among in excess of 10,000 U.S. tourists who are trapped in this normally paradise location in the wake of Hurricane Wilma. We've been telling you his story throughout the week as he has been trying to figure out how to get home. And he's checking in, once again, with us.
Michael, good to have you back on the program. Bring us up to date on the conditions. Do you have power, first of all?

MICHAEL ATTARDI, AMERICAN STRANDED IN COZUMEL, MEXICO: Well, we have a little bit of good news here. In fact, thanks to CNN and thanks to other groups, we have -- we've been told that there are going to be Continental Airlines flights coming in today and taking out children, women, people from the actual triage that was down in the center. They are trying to get out as many people that were hit harder at the Hotel Barracuda, as well as the Cozumel Palace. And they are sending in two flights, I believe, by continental, a couple of flights from American, and they're getting people out of here. And thanks to -- and thank you, CNN, because I don't think if -- I don't think if you guys were involved, any of this would of happened.

O'BRIEN: Let me ask you this. The airport is open then if Continental is coming. Why don't they send more airplanes and get the rest of you out of there?

ATTARDI: Yes. Well, it's still pretty much of a very danger zone still here. The problem that was occurring was that the airport was under about like three feet of water.

O'BRIEN: But now that it's opened, presumably, the floodgates, if you will, that's a bad expression, if you will, could open as far as airplanes, right?

ATTARDI: Yes, it can, but apparently it was taken over by the Mexican government for supplies coming in and out. But as far as the spirits over here, we are very, very excited. I haven't got onto the airplane yet, but at least there's a sign of hope. We -- again, thank you, again. We also got in contact with the U.S. embassy from Mexico City, who has been very, very busy over in Cancun. And so we're happy to hear that they actually know that we're here.

O'BRIEN: What about supplies, Michael, food, water, that sort of thing? Are you doing OK on that?

ATTARDI: Yes, wave been pretty fortunate in our hotel, but, like I said yesterday, we were going around the streets. I was taking some food with me, because there were quite few Americans their out of food, water. We had helped them as much as possible. The shelters have been very, very good, good source for them to, like, sleep, drink a little, but they were still having problems getting, you know, proper food.

O'BRIEN: All right. And as you were outside, describe the scenes you saw. I mean, you mentioned you sort of saw some kind of New Orleansesque scenes, looting on the street, that kind of thing. What did you see most recently? Are things calming down a bit?

ATTARDI: I will say one thing. The Mexican government here, the local government, has been incredible. You see people that are on the streets working, trying to get big debris off, small trees down. If you saw this place, it was annihilated, I mean annihilated. The whole place was in wrecks. I mean, we were fortunate here. Our hotel was probably one of the few that wasn't hit as worse, you know.

And, you know, it's just -- it was an amazing scene. It's just hard to even explain, but I would say that seeing the people out there and working with such an inspirational (INAUDIBLE).

O'BRIEN: Michael, one final thought here. Are you still with us?

ATTARDI: Yes, I am.

O'BRIEN: We had hoped to have the spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy on with you here, but we haven't been able to connect with her for some reason. If you had one question for her this morning, now you say you've spoken to U.S. embassy officials. But do you have anything you want me to pass along?

ATTARDI: Well, I just wanted to know why it took so long. You know, we've been actually trying to reach them since Saturday. And just were trying to get some answers, because there was nothing coming to us. And we had to just rely on the hotel staff because there was only one phone here, you know, and it was a very scary situation, because there were actually children, women here, senior citizens, and we were really just more -- more concerned about them.

ATTARDI: All right, Michael Attardi, stay in close contact. We'll try to keep the information flowing, and we're glad things are headed on the upside for you, and the thousands of others who are trapped there in Cancun, Cozumel, Yucatan Peninsula, hard hit, of course by Hurricane Wilma. And we will check in. We'll be talking to the spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy shortly, as soon as we can get hooked up with her.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Still to come on the program, no beer on board?

VERJEE: What?

O'BRIEN: My gosh! What? What? Reports that a popular discount airline is striking back at the makers of Budweiser. Andy has that for you.

VERJEE: And next, getting your house ready for your dream retirement. We're going to show you what to do now so that you can get around easily when you're older.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk about retirement. I was thinking about tomorrow. What do you think?

VERJEE: I was thinking about now.

O'BRIEN: Can I do it? No! One of the things I might want to consider is the possibility of retiring in place, as they say. Sounds like something they do in the space program. Abandon in place is the term they use there, for like launchpads and stuff. Ninety percent of the people over 55 say they're not doing the Florida shuffle board thing. They're going to stay where they are.

VERJEE: So the thing is, if you're going to get older, which is inevitable.

O'BRIEN: We all hope we do. The alternative being not so good.

VERJEE: We have not discovered the fountain of youth. Well, if you're going to, you know, stay in the same place, you may want to just take a look now at your house and see if it's ready for some of the physical challenges of your senior years.

Gerri Willis has been looking at that -- Gerri.

GERRI WILLIS, CNN PERSONAL FINANCE EDITOR: Good morning, guys. Listen up, boomers, if your dream retirement home is your current home, there are ways of making it comfortable for you as you get older. One Connecticut woman got a jumpstart on fixing her house when her mom came to live with her.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIS (voice-over): Two years ago, Shelley Lounsbury of Stamford, Connecticut, made a big decision to bring her retired, ailing parents to live with her.

SHELLEY LOUNSBURY, HOMEOWNER: I felt that this was a real possibility, at some point, that my parents would need support. So we were prepared with the kind of house that could possibly accommodate that.

LOUNSBURY: Shelley remodeled her home with help from a local contractor, who specialized in what is now known as aging in place. We asked Alan Hanbury of the National Association of Home Builders to show us what kinds of changes people can do to make their home safer as they age. ALAN HANBURY, NATL. ASSN. OF HOME BUILDERS: This is actually a chair-lift. So if someone were in a wheelchair, they could actually roll into it, push -- operate the levers, come up to this level here. We're only going up about five feet, as you can see. But if was to be done via a ramp, it would be maybe 30 feet of ramp someplace around the house. Not a very good looking alternative and just as expensive, if not more.

WILLIS: Shelley then had the other doorways widened to three feet from the standard to accommodate a wheelchair, even in the shower.

HANBURY: The shower is absolutely perfect. It has no threshold here as well. If someone had a shower chair, it could drive right in.

WILLIS: Other safety features they added were grab bars, a handheld shower and a faucet that prevents scalding.

(on camera): So I know you teach contractors how to make these modifications for the elderly, but also younger people who may have problems as well. How do they imagine, how do you imagine, what the changes should be?

HANBURY: Certainly it's not easy.

WILLIS (voice-over): One way is by having the contractors experience how difficult it is to operate simple things we take for granted.

(on camera): So this will show me exactly what it's like if I had arthritis. Now I'm going to try to turn on these knobs and I'm having a hard time grabbing on to them, I have to tell you.

HANBURY: They're small. They're slippery. Now wouldn't it be helpful if there was maybe a little lever on it or oblong, something other than round?

WILLIS: Yes, absolutely.

HANBURY: The cost for these individual projects can range from as little as a few dollars for handle knobs to thousands of dollars for the widening of doors or adding a lift.

LOUNSBURY: I cost it out what it would conceivably cost to have my father in a nursing home, and really for two years worth of nursing home care, we were able to do this whole renovation project.

WILLIS (voice-over): And though her dad passed away before he could be with Shelley, she now has her mom at home, where she is safe and comfortable.

LOUNSBURY: You can't put a price tag on being in a home versus being in a facility. And that is what we ultimately wanted.

WILLIS: With an important additional fringe benefit.

LOUNSBURY: For me, I sleep at night knowing that she's here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIS: Getting ready for mom can be a big transition for the whole household. Shelley says there were lots of changes at her house and lots of expenses. Now, you can expect to spend even hundreds of thousands of dollars if you do the ultimate retrofitting of your house.

O'BRIEN: All right, the ultimate retrofitting can cost a few bucks. What if you don't have a lot of money to do this?

WILLIS: Well, start small. You can start by just changing the light bulbs and upping the voltage. Make sure that whatever light you're putting it into can accommodate that. And make sure you don't just do it where people sit down and redo it at the front door. That's one of the big places that older people have problems.

Also, make sure that the thresholds are easy to cross over. You know, where you go from one room to another. There might be a little mound on the floor. Lots of people trip and fall on that. And make sure, too, that the knobs that we showed you with the little tests, make sure you change those knobs. They're easy to do. You can do it yourself, not very expensive.

VERJEE: How hard was it to move your hands around when you were holding the...

WILLIS: You can't grab anything. It's really difficult.

VERJEE: What about finding contractors, then, to do this sort of work?

WILLIS: Well, the good news here is that the National Association of Homebuilders has a program, aging in place specialists. They certify them. You can go to their Web site at NAHB and find out details about how to hook up with somebody who knows how to do this in your area.

VERJEE: Gerri, thank you so much.

WILLIS: Thank you.

VERJEE: Appreciate it.

O'BRIEN: And we're going to continue our series tomorrow. We're looking at retirement. Makes me feel older by the moment. We're going to talk about retiring to a coastal community. You know, given what we've seen with the hurricane season, there's a lot of thoughts about this. Katrina, Wilma. Should you still do it? Some things you need to know and ask if you still want to move there.

Gerri Willis, thanks for dropping by.

WILLIS: Thank you. O'BRIEN: Speaking of Wilma and Mexico, let's back to that story we were telling you a little bit ago. Those tourists who were stuck in Cancun, Yucatan peninsula, Cozumel. We just heard from Michael Attardi, who we've had an ongoing dialogue with over the situation there.

And we promised you we'd check in also with the spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. Judith Bryan with us now. Judith, you are in Cancun, is that correct?

JUDITH BRYAN, U.S. EMBASSY IN MEXICO: Yes, that's right, Miles. We're here in Cancun.

O'BRIEN: All right, well, good. First of all, I want to get your assessment of the situation there. What are you seeing? And what is the U.S. doing and able to do to help out?

BRYAN: OK. We have a team on the ground here about 25 people, and we have another 25 in Merida. What we're doing here is two things. We're trying to help American citizens get out so that we can -- we're coordinating with the Mexican authorities to help them find out what their options are so that they can leave. And we also have a team from USA's office of foreign disaster assistance, working with Mexican officials to help Mexico. So there are two parts of our mission here.

And there's a lot of devastation but it's amazing to see how quickly the Mexican authorities and the local authorities have cleaned up. They've gotten things moving. The airport is probably going to reopen today. They've had extra flights from Merida and we've also gotten some humanitarian flights out of Cancun, as well as some charters.

We've moved almost 2,000 people in buses to Cancun to Merida so that they can get on those extra flights out of Merida. And we will continue to work really hard on emergency cases. We've sent people out to check out these shelters to make sure that they are being given food and water. The conditions are not optimal, but they are improving. I think the worst part was over the weekend when the hurricane just sort of sat here much longer than anybody predicted and the supplies did run low. But as soon as the roads were able to open on Sunday or Monday, they started coming back in.

O'BRIEN: All right. Good briefing. Thank you, Judith. I want to throw in a question here. Michael Attardi was with us a moment ago. We were hoping you guys would be on that the same time, it didn't work out. I want you to listen to the question he would have posed to you if he'd had an opportunity.

BRYAN: All right.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MICHAEL ATTARDI, AMERICAN STRANDED IN COZUMEL, MEXICO: I just wanted to know why it took so long. You know, we've been actually trying to reach them since Saturday. And we just were trying to get some answers, because there was nothing coming to us and we had to just rely on the hotel staff, because there was only one phone here, you know, and it was a very scary situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: All right, Judith, why so long?

BRYAN: Well, because exactly what he pointed out. There were no communications with Cozumel, and Cozumel was cut off. There were no ferries going across, etc. We did have one person was on the ground in Cozumel. We have a consular agent. Her house was also damaged like many other things there, but she has been on the ground working as much as she could, and we finally only heard from her yesterday, because the communications have been so bad.

Fortunately, the Mexican government did a fantastic job in getting people into shelters, working with the tourism industry, so that there were no deaths, and there were very, very minor injuries to American citizens.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Judith, final thought here. Why not get a military airlift under way to get those American tourists out of there?

BRYAN: Because essentially, that's not the way we do things. We rely on the commercial tourist industry. We coordinate very strongly with them, and they have done a tremendous job. They've gotten a lot more airlines in. Continental has come in with extra flights. I understand American is also going to be coming in. The Royal Caribe (ph) Cruise Line is going to Cozumel, and they will be leaving from Cozumel with any Americans who still need to leave on Thursday. So the commercial tourist industry has done a tremendous job.

O'BRIEN: But why not have the military help out?

BRYAN: That's something that you might want to ask someone else, because I don't know the answer to that, but I know the way that we usually do things is to coordinate with the local government and the American and other tourist industries.

O'BRIEN: Judith Bryan is the spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Mexico. Thanks very much. Good luck there -- Zain.

VERJEE: Miles, still to come, one football team's success means big pizza freebies for fans. Andy is "Minding Your Business," ahead today on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: That Budweiser was pretty funny. I heard it a couple of times. I heard it on the radio.

SERWER: yes.

O'BRIEN: Or maybe it was XM or something. But, whatever, Andy Serwer is here to explain how Bud is pulling... SERWER: You can't hear it anymore; it is pulled. You know, those real men of genius ads? I think they're absolutely pretty funny. Well, Budweiser did one about discount airlines and their pilots, and some of those airlines found it rather offensive.

Here are some of the words, "Hey, Mr. Discount Airline Pilot Guy, your minimal experience flying a plane will never land awe job at a reputable airline. Luckily, you don't work for one. You put the fly in fly-by nights."

And also, "Sure we're concerned for our lives, just not as concerned as saving nine bucks on a round trip to Ft. Myers."

Anyway, Valujet got very ticked off, no sense of humor.

O'BRIEN: Even though their name was not mentioned?

SERWER: They demanded that the spot be removed. Airtran, it was ValuJet, now Airtran.

O'BRIEN: Said they had a little problem with it.

SERWER: Yes, exactly, and demanded they said they would either remove the ad or remove Budweiser from our flights. They'd have to serve Milwaukee's Best, the beast.

O'BRIEN: Well, they certainly are not going to be serving then to the pilots, definitely.

SERWER: Yes, that's right. They did apologize. They did remove it. Anyway, and interestingly, Bud had one, Mr. Really Bad Toupee Wearer. And the American Hair Loss Council demanded that they remove that ad, and they did not. So you can see Bud cutting close to the edge here.

O'BRIEN: Boy, who's next?

SERWER: TV anchors!

O'BRIEN: Hey, Mr. TV anchorman!

SERWER: Yes.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's -- you got some NFL stuff, news?

SERWER: I do, yes.

O'BRIEN: More importantly, Redskins news.

SERWER: Yes, this is a story about the Washington Redskins, which is the finest team in the NFL, in the NFC East.

O'BRIEN: Yes, in your own (INAUDIBLE) opinion.

SERWER: That's Clinton Portis, Clinton Portis cartwheeling his way to another touchdown! Anyway, Papa John's in Washington D.C. had this promotion where this will give a free topping every time the Redskins score. The Redskins have been so lousy over the past couple of years, they decided to up the ante: two toppings free every time they scored a touchdown in a Redskins victory.

Well, last week, they played the 49ers, 52 points, seven touchdowns, 14 free toppings they were serving on their pizzas. So Papa John's had to serve up a lot of extra pepperoni this week in Washington D.C.

O'BRIEN: But they're happy in D.C., for sure?

SERWER: The best team in the NFL.

O'BRIEN: You might say.

SERWER: Yes.

O'BRIEN: You can say that.

SERWER: I did.

O'BRIEN: In a moment, indictments in the CIA leak investigation. They could come as soon as today. It looks as if the White House is already feeling the effects. We'll go live to Washington for that, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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