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Police Get Wired to Prepare for High School Shootings
Aired June 08, 2002 - 13:00 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.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, HOST: Hello, and welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm Renay San Miguel, this week from CNN headquarters in Atlanta. James Hattori is on assignment.
When a major emergency breaks out, one of the toughest challenges facing police and fire crews is panic and chaos among those first responding to the scene, especially when lives are on the line. Here's James Hattori with the story of a project in Washington state that brings high-tech help to high-drama situations.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's what? Confirming shots outside the school?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Affirmative.
JAMES HATTORI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Police officers rush to a suburban Seattle high school. The campus is locked down after reports of shots fired.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Officer down, second level.
HATTORI: Emergency crews stand by, a command center is established inside a bus parked nearby.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does he have a go team? Is he entering that portable at this time?
HATTORI: It looks like yet another horrific crime scene, but this is a drill, to see if computers and the Internet can help save lives in an emergency.
HATTORI (on camera): What was the scenario?
DAVID BALES, SHERIFF'S DEPUTY, SNOHOMISH COUNTY, WASHINGTON: The scenario was, we had two suspects shooting people as they entered the building.
HATTORI (voice-over): It has a gruesomely familiar ring because the exercise was modeled after the 1999 incident at Columbine High School in Colorado. RICK BART, SHERIFF, SNOHOMISH COUNTY: And we did not want to respond to an emergency, God forbid, at one of these high schools, and not have the equipment and resources available for our people to do their jobs. And we realized we didn't have it.
HATTORI: That concern brought together about a dozen different agencies from western Washington state to try out rapid-responder software from Tacoma-based Prepared Response.
STERLING GRIFFIN, CEO, PREPARED RESPONSE: The key to this application is the ability to get the data available to the people that need it, so that lives can be saved and we can stop any potential property loss.
HATTORI: To start, local officials mapped out and photographed about 60 schools in Snohomish County. Offices and other facilities will come later, all loaded into a database, accessible by wireless computers over the Internet.
BART: If your job is to go in and eliminate that threat, you got to go to room 104, or whatever it is. You're going to be able to find room 104 in that software. You're going to see what it looks like, and also what it looks like to get to that room, and it's going to tell you how to get there.
HATTORI: The system also lets law enforcement, fire and other officials communicate in a secure chat room, so everyone gets the latest information.
(on camera): Despite the benefits of coordinated planning and emergency communications, officials concede technology will never eliminate a certain amount of confusion among responders in the field.
KATHY LAMBERT, COUNCIL, KING COUNTY: Last year, when we did this, we found out that the police and fire were not even on the same frequency.
BALES: And, having something run completely smooth and clockwork like, I don't think that's ever going to happen, but I think we can minimize the miscommunication, we can minimize the duplication of effort.
HATTORI: Finally, with the campus secure, students are evacuated from the mock school shooting. And, while the computerized system wasn't perfect...
KEVIN TAYLOR, ASSISTANT CHIEF, SNOHOMISH FIRE DEPARTMENT: Some of it was slow. The e-mailing from one command post function to another wasn't really as slick as we thought it would be -- it was easier to use the radio sometimes, and the cell phones.
HATTORI: Officials are convinced that, in a major ongoing emergency, technology can help bring order out of chaos.
(END VIDEOTAPE) RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR (on camera): The U.S. Custom's Service is turning to technology to protect against terrorism. As Jeanne Meserve reports, one goal is to make sure that real life is not like the movies.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JACK RYAN, MOVIE CHARACTER: It's Ryan! The bomb is in play!
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the new hit movie, "The Sum of All Fears," terrorists ship a nuclear device into the U.S., and use it. A Hollywood fantasy, but could it become reality?
ROBERT BONNER, U.S. CUSTOMS COMMISSIONER: It is much, much, much less likely that that could happen today than before 9/11.
MESERVE: To support his argument, the Customs Service trotted out for the benefit of the press its latest detection technologies.
BONNER: I've got a small little piece of cesium in here that is setting off the alarm.
MESERVE: Four thousand of these radiation detectors have been distributed to customs inspectors. Another 4,000 are in the pipeline. But there is another number that haunts and irks the customs service -- that only one to two percent of the 11 million containers coming in to this country annually are ever inspected.
BONNER: We know we can't search 100 percent, or each and every one of the cargo containers, that enters this country. We don't have to.
MESERVE: Do not have to, customs argues, because its computers sift through manifests, and itineraries, separating out high risk cargo. That cargo is given a closer look. Gamma ray detectors scan containers, looking for anomalies.
Cartons or boxes can be taken out for scrutiny by portable x-ray vans, equipped with radiation detectors. An array of other tools can be used to get a peek into otherwise inaccessible items, and there are mobile laboratories which can identify suspicious substances -- nuclear, chemical or biological.
Ultimately, customs is hoping to expand the number of countries that will allow U.S. inspection of cargo before it is shipped here.
BONNER: So our strategies are designed, in short, to make the border, make our border and our seaports the last line of defense, not the first line of defense.
MESERVE: Though the system may be better than it was before, even commissioner Bonner concedes it is not foolproof, that the horrifying Hollywood scenario is not entirely beyond belief.
(END VIDEOTAPE) SAN MIGUEL: Turning to another kind of nuclear fear, highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is sitting in more than 100 storage facilities around the United States right now. They're spread over 36 states, so chances are there's one near you.
The Bush administration wants to send the stuff to a permanent storage site in the Nevada Desert, but Nevada doesn't want it, and says it's more dangerous to ship it than to leave it where it is.
Our Brooks Jackson got an inside look at one of those storage areas, and some expert opinion on the risks.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROOKS JACKSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Here's decades of nuclear waste, 38 feet below the surface of this pool, and it's getting full. There is no better place to see the nuclear disposal problem than here, 60 miles southwest of Chicago, site of the nation's first commercial reactor. Fuel first used here more than 40 years ago is still here, and is still potentially deadly.
Security is tight. We were the first news cameras inside since September 11. Our guide, Christopher Crane, explained the basics.
CHRISTOPHER CRANE, EXELON NUCLEAR: What this is is a typical nuclear fuel bundle.
JACKSON: A model, but real fuel bundles, even with real uranium pellets, are safe to handle when new, but not after six years of controlled nuclear fission inside a reactor.
(on camera): And after that, they're hot?
CRANE: After that, they're hot. The temperature coming out of the reactor is around 200 degrees.
JACKSON (voice-over): Hot and extremely radioactive. Crane took us to see through checkpoints, airlocks, until finally...
CRANE: Right now, you are standing on the top of an operating nuclear reactor.
So, after fuel has been in there for six years, it's no longer safe to handle.
JACKSON (on camera): I've heard -- read that once it's been in the reactor and come out, it's something like a million times more radioactive than when it went in. Is that accurate?
CRANE: It is -- it is hazardous, classified as hazardous material. It's highly radioactive, and that's why the safety systems and the engineered features of the facility are designed to handle fuel in that state.
JACKSON: But what do you do with it once it's been in there and it's become so radioactive? CRANE: Well, first of all, we handle it under water.
JACKSON (voice-over): The water shields this from radiation so intense that we could receive a fatal dose in just three minutes, where we're standing one yard away.
CRANE: This pool is designed to withstand an earthquake. It's stainless steel-lined, wielded seams. The walls are four-foot reinforced concrete, and the floor is six-foot reinforced concrete at a minimum.
JACKSON: But there's not much room left. The government was supposed to provide permanent storage by now, but it hasn't.
CRANE: This is 30 years' worth. It's just about full, but there is 30 years' worth there now.
JACKSON: After years under water, used fuel has cooled off enough to be moved out of the plant. This 20-ton crawler carries heavily shielded steel casks, each containing 68 used fuel assemblies, setting them down into what's called dry storage.
(on camera): Is there any radiation here?
CRANE: If you stood here for an hour, you would pick up the same amount of radiation as you did flying from Washington to Chicago to come and visit us today.
JACKSON: How safe are these sitting here?
CRANE: They are very safe. They were built to withstand great forces from drops, penetrations, fires. They're safe, sound and reliable.
JACKSON: Now, since September 11, you know, a lot of concern that these and others like it around the country might be targets. What happens if somebody blows one of these things up?
CRANE: Well, first they'd have to get here. They are small targets within a very secure facility, with well-armed guards and systems that detect individuals that aren't supposed to be in certain areas.
JACKSON (voice-over): In fact, casks like these have never been subjected to full-scale tests, only computer simulations and scale model tests, and they are vulnerable to armor-piercing missiles. Opponents of the proposed permanent storage site in Nevada say it would be more dangerous to ship this deadly cargo across country than to leave it where it is.
(on camera): Why don't we just leave it here forever?
CRANE: It doesn't make sense. These stored here, there are right now over 130 storage locations in the country in 36 states. They're safe, they're reliable, they've been designed to withstand great deals of force, but it only makes sense to securely store them 1,000 feet below the ground in secured facility in Nevada.
JACKSON: So what you're telling me is they're safe here, but they'd be safer under a mountain in Nevada?
CRANE: That's correct.
JACKSON (voice-over): That's what will soon be debated in Washington, but so far so good. After hours of standing around this stuff, I've still received too little radiation for my decimeter to measure.
(on camera): Even if the Senate approves, it will be years before these containers start the long journey to Nevada. By that time, some of the fuel inside will be 50 years old.
Brooks Jackson, CNN, Grande County, Illinois.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILLIAM LO, EXECUTIVE DIR., GROUP SENSE: ...as long as it is in the range, and then you can make the communication.
KIRSTIE LU STOUT (voice-over): The company says a typical GSM phone emits 800 times more radiation than the Greenphone. The contrast is impressive, but does little to resolve the debate over cell phone safety.
(on camera): For years, the big question has remained unanswered: Are mobile phones safe? Although there's been no conclusive link between handsets and health hazards, the public concern has escalated, and that has prompted official action.
(voice-over): China is now considering strict rules that would cut radiation emissions by half of what's allowed overseas. The regulation could saddle handset makers with the cost of redesigning entire lines. It could also create an instant market for products like the Greenphone.
CONNIE LAU, CONSUMER COUNCIL: There are some manufacturers or agents or traders -- are preying on the fear of the consumers, in terms of those emission of radiation.
LO: We don't build anything on the fear. We just try to be objective. We give out statistics. This one gives out one unit. GSM gives out 800 units of radiation. That is objective. It is up to the consumer to choose.
STOUT: Some experts say the best way to limit exposure is not a cell phone split into two, but a phone call made short and sweet.
(END VIDEOTAPE) SAN MIGUEL: If you're into home theater, here's something to get you salivating -- a high-quality, 61-inch TV screen that's much thinner and lighter weight than other monitors its size. Unfortunately, the price tag is as hefty as the TV is light. Our Bruce Burkhardt checked it out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Explain to me what is plasma TV?
BOB HANNA, VP, NIPPON ELECTRONICS COMPANY: The plasma display monitor is actually -- it's a technology that differs from normal CRT sort of tube technology and LCD. Inside this particular display are millions of small little bubbles, if you will.
BURKHARDT: What makes it better?
HANNA: Number one thing is you can get plasma in a very large format where CRT tubes really get too weighty, too cumbersome.
BURKHARDT: Which also explains why it's thin.
HANNA: Very thin. It's less than five inches in depth, so you get the advantage of depth. You get the advantage of weight. Very large screen, as well as angle of view.
BURKHARDT: Well, this looks great. I would love to have this for my family room. How much would this set me back?
HANNA: The 61-inch retails for $20,000.
(LAUGHTER)
A year ago it was $27,000, so it is coming down.
BURKHARDT: The trend is coming down.
HANNA: Exactly. Part of our responsibility is to get that cost down further and to expand the market and make it a more affordable technology.
BURKHARDT: This is really isn't a television, it's really just a monitor. It doesn't have speakers. It doesn't have a tuner. It doesn't have all the normal stuff a television has, right?
HANNA: It doesn't have a tuner like you would normally categorize a television as, but it does have additional speakers. It has an audio output, so you can have speakers.
Quite frankly, the sex appeal, the thinness, the high-tech part of it draws people's attentions quicker than just a normal television monitor system.
BURKHARDT: What are we looking at here, Bob? HANNA: We are actually looking at the split feature -- split screen feature, where you're able to put a video source on one side -- in this instance we have the "Spider-Man" game going on, as well as, then, a computer source.
BURKHARDT: How easy is it to go kind of back and forth, to go to like...
HANNA: Very much like a picture in picture technology, where you can size it. You can move it around a little bit. Here, you can see that we've made the data larger.
BURKHARDT: This is the largest plasma monitor?
HANNA: World's largest plasma monitor, at 61 inches.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAN MIGUEL: You can find more about the plasma screen and other stories in the show on our web site: Cnn.com/next. Coming up, find out why this year's hurricane season is making forecasters nervous. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAN MIGUEL: After almost a week of delays, another space shuttle mission is finally under way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...zero. We have booster ignition and liftoff of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
SAN MIGUEL: The shuttle endeavour roared into space on Wednesday, carrying a new crew to the International Space Station. The astronauts will perform some delicate surgery on the station's robotic arm. Miles O'Brien has more on the mission.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The first trip to space can be a real doozy, just ask shuttle commander Ken Cockrell who has now logged four trips to the world of weightlessness.
KEN COCKRELL, COMMANDER: Many people don't feel well when they transition from 1G to 0G so they have the added distraction of a little bit of nausea or just the strange surrounding, you know, pulling their mind off their job.
O'BRIEN: Now imagine your first job in space will last at least four-and-a-half months, maybe as long as a half a year. Now what would you be worried about? Ask space station keeper-to-be Peggy Whitson.
PEGGY WHITSON, MISSION SPECIALIST: Oh I hope I don't screw up. That's the biggest things (UNINTELLIGIBLE). In four-and-a-half months, you know, you have a lot more time to screw up so.
O'BRIEN: High anxiety indeed. Whitson and two cosmonaut crew mates are the main reason this space shuttle will fly. The current triad on board the space station have already logged their six months above the planet and would probably kill for a juicy steak and a beer by now.
That is not all that will happen during this dozen-day detail to orbit. Endeavour will carry a space age shipping container full of food, clothing, supplies and experiments. Once empty, the crews will stuff it full of flotsam and jetsam for the trip back home, an exotic trash hauler.
Amid all the toting, astronauts Franklin Chang Diaz and Philippe Perrin hope to take three walks in space, more construction work on the high tech gandy dancer that will ride the spine of the completed station, and they hope to replace a bulky wrist joint on the station's robot arm.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAN MIGUEL: This is the first week of the Atlantic hurricane season, and government forecasters are predicting an average or slightly above average season.
Scientists say the biggest threat in a hurrican may come not from the atmosphere but from people's attitudes.
John Zarrella has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you want to do with a recon...
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ten years ago this August, Hurricane Andrew took shape in the warm waters of the deep tropics off Africa, marched across the Atlantic, slammed south Florida and made history. The costliest natural disaster ever in the U.S.
Have we already forgotten the Andrew nightmare? The nation's top hurricane experts are afraid we have.
MAX MAYFIELD, HURRICANE EXPERT: Our memories are very short and I think a lot of people have what I call Hurricane Amnesia.
ZARRELLA: Max Mayfield directs a team of forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. He's got lots of worries. During the past two years, although dozens of storms formed, not a single hurricane, weak or strong, has hit the U.S. That's good, Mayfield says, but it also breeds hurricane malaise. A Red Cross study last year showed half of the people living in coastal areas most likely to be hit by a hurricane don't have an evacuation plan. And, Mayfield believes, many people have the misconception that big, powerful hurricanes only strike in years when the experts are predicting lots of storms. MAYFIELD: In fact, the deadliest hurricane the U.S. ever had, the costliest hurricane and the most intense hurricane that we ever had, all three of those hurricanes occurred in the years with below average numbers.
ZARRELLA: Case in point, Andrew -- 1992 was a strong El Nino year, not a good climate for hurricanes. In all, there were only six named storms. Well below the average. But one of them was Andrew. And the experts are convinced we're ripe for a hurricane hit this year. Since record keeping began in 1871, there have never been three consecutive years without a hurricane hitting the U.S.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAN MIGUEL: In February 1864, the confederate submarine Hunley became the first sub to sink a ship in battle. The same night, the Hunley and its eight-man crew vanished into the black waters off of Charleston, South Carolina.
The Hunley wasn't found until 1995, when a recovery effort began. As Brian Cabell reports, the history-making submarine is still producing surprises.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Peer inside the rusted, encrusted submarine, and you'll see where the eight Confederate crewmen spent their last hours in the sinking vessel. That's their bench there, and that's the hand crank they used to power the 40-foot- long, 4-foot high sub.
Their remains and everything else inside the Hunley rested at the bottom of the atlantic off of Charleston until august of 2000, when the old sub, the first in the world ever to sink an enemy ship, finally saw sunlight again.
And now, this remarkably well-preserved vessel, which mysteriously sank after planting a torpedo on the side of a Union ship, sits in a Charleston laboratory.
WARREN LASCH, CHAIRMAN, FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY: This is a very sturdy, durable, well-thought-out, well-planned fighting machine.
CABELL: Historians had thought the Hunley would be more primitive -- a simple steel cylinder. Instead, it appears to have been relatively sleek and quick. Archaeologists, day after day, are finding it to be a treasure of artifacts.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me gently show this item to you.
CABELL: The remnants of a candle and a wooden candleholder. A lit candle would have told the crewmen they still had oxygen onboard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got this very interesting item here, which is a wallet.
CABELL: A leather wallet, next to a wool jacket.
PAUL MARDIKJAN, HUNLEY CURATOR: The fabric is in very extremely poor condition, the reason being that those items for that many years underwater are extremely weak.
CABELL: They care for these items like they are priceless, which, to archaeologists, they are: a comb here, a pencil there, a shoe belonging to one of the men onboard.
(on camera): Remains of the eight crewmen have all been recovered for the submarine. Scientists are now doing forensic and DNA work on them, and they are hoping to bury the remains in a Charleston cemetery by the end of next year.
(voice-over): That's where two other crews who died testing the Hunley have been laid to rest. But long after the human remains are buried, the discoveries will continue here.
Look at these X-rays of still unexcavated sediment. That's a pocket watch with a chain there, a buckle there. The long object? A pocket knife. The work here may be slow and tedious, but it's exciting when you are exploring a time capsule.
Brian Cabell, CNN, Charleston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Still ahead, how would you catch a 30-pound fish without using a line or a net?
If your answer is very carefully, you obviously haven't tried hand-grabbing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAN MIGUEL: A lot of people love suburbia. So do a lot of wild animals. Problems arise when the animals and the people get too close together. Anne McDermott reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Californians take their critters in stride. Moose in the pool? No problem. Bear in the hot tub? Boy, you can almost hear him say "Ahh!" But this mountain lion in the back yard of a Monrovia home wasn't so lucky. She was killed. State fish and game officials said there were just too many people around to get her safely tranquilized and relocated.
LT. ANGEL RATON, CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME DEPT.: When we have the situations where public safety's an issue -- there was kids all around -- we could not -- we had no other choice.
MCDERMOTT: Why do they come? Because we push them out and then we lure them back in again. MARTINE COLLETTE, WILDLIFE WAY STATION: We plant trees and shrubs and flowers and fruit trees and nut trees and vegetable gardens. We create artificial pools, ponds.
MCDERMOTT (on camera): We have water...
COLLETTE: We have water.
Turn around there. Come on.
MCDERMOTT (voice-over): Martine Collette knows about saving animals. She runs the Wildlife Way Station in Tahuga (ph), California, home to more than 700 creatures who've been abandoned by man or nature. And she has lions and tigers and bears. Oh, yeah. And she has lots and lots of mountain lions. They are endangered in some parts of the country but not in California, though they cannot be hunted here. They can, however, be killed if they are judged to be a danger. And according to the results of an animal autopsy done on the Monrovia lion, the creature had eaten a dog.
Now, coyotes have been known to eat dogs, too. This year southern Californians have reported lots of back yard wildlife sightings, and authorities say part of the blame lies with the drought. Animals know suburbia has water. Collette says people must learn to cohabit with these creatures, to build fences and other barriers that will keep us safe from wildlife and to keep the wildlife safe from us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAN MIGUEL: Of course, not everyone is interested in keeping wildlife safe, especially when the wildlife in question is something like a catfish. Catching the wily catfish is a thrill for many fishermen and some of them have found a way to make it really thrilling. Bruce Burkhardt reports from the Big Black River in Mississippi.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BURKHARDT (voice-over): Back in the old days, back before modern fishing equipment...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ricky, I want to go on that (ph).
BURKHARDT: Back before fancy rods and reel...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's jerking too much.
BURKHARDT: There was a different way to catch fish, big fish.
Gerald Moore and buddies, Keith, Mike and Ricky are practitioners of what might be call add an extreme sport, hand-grabbin'.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We live and breathe for this time of year.
BURKHARDT: This time of year along the Big Black River west of Jackson, Mississippi is when the big catfish spawn. They look for hollow logs or holes in which to make their nests.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just like me and you would not like something coming into our house, they will bite you. That's what you want them to do. They have got to bite you in order to catch them, and that's where the fun starts.
BURKHARDT: Fun?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Boy, he's clamping down on my hand.
BURKHARDT: While many hand-grabbers rely on hollow logs already in the river, Gerald and friends came up with their own method. They built wooden boxes that mimic a hollow log.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got one end only open. The blocker blocks it. The grabber will go in and catch a fish.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got it through. He is a good fish, 30- pound fish.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Me and Keith have been doing it for something like 20-something years. I mean, we know what to do. Just teamwork. We lose fish. We don't lose many.
Get him out. Get him out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got my foot...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You let him come up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got two feet in there. That's all I can get.
BURKHARDT: But that's a rarity. Most of the time if there is a fish in there, they grab him, go back under to get a stringer through his mouth and...
(CROSSTALK)
BURKHARDT: It is their catfish supply for the whole year. They take him home, clean him, freeze him.
(on camera): This sounded like a good idea when you were talking about it on the phone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You right down there, you've got to do it, just get in there.
BURKHARDT (voice-over): Sounds like a ball, reaching easily into a hole which could just as easily be home to a water moccasin or snapping turtle. And the idea of a catfish with teeth chomping down on my hand. Plus, the water was cold, muddy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just go in and reach in with your hand and feel around first. Go in with your hand like this; if he grabs your hand, you grab him.
BURKHARDT: It was a baptism of sorts. We came up empty here, but at another box -- the baptism continued, induction into the brotherhood of hand-grabbers.
Bruce Burkhardt, CNN, on the big Black River in Mississippi.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAN MIGUEL: We may never get Bruce back to reporting. And believe it or not, there is a hand grabbing Web site. It's at mississippihandgrabbing.com.
Here is what is coming up next week. World Cup soccer fans are some of the most enthusiastic fans anywhere. We'll show you some Web sites where you can share their passion.
And we'll visit a place where there are more puffins than people.
And meet some researchers who are working to ensure that this Icelandic treasure continues to thrive.
That's coming up on NEXT.
Until then, let us hear from you. You can e-mail us at next@cnn.com. Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us on the sci-tech beat, I'm Renay San Miguel. See you next time.
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