Rains Continue to Pound Southern California
AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again. In fact, we begin once again, Larry, in your neck of the woods. To give you some idea of what they've been going through in Southern California, consider this. Southern California has received more rain this year than Seattle. In fact, the most in Los Angeles in more than a century. The sun did come out today, Larry tells me, the better, sadly, for the building inspectors to survey the damage as they decide which homes may or may not be homes much longer, or ever again. So we have two reports form Southern California tonight, beginning first with CNN's Ted Rowlands.</s>TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The woman inside this house is being told she has 20 minutes to gather her things and get out. The hillside above her Los Angeles home is unstable. Her name is Hiroko Mayeda. And while she's being told to leave, a red tag is stapled to her home of more than 40 years.</s>MICHAEL CATHEY, LOS ANGELES CITY EMPLOYEE: Right now she's trying to get in touch with her two sons that live in -- nearby. She's gathering up her belongings.</s>ROWLANDS: Steve Weiss, a city inspector, has put up dozens of red and yellow tags over the past week. Red means get out now. Yellow means the home should have only restricted use.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, so we're hitting this one, this one, that one.</s>ROWLANDS: The hillside in this area is so saturated that Steve and other city inspectors are worried that movement in the soil overnight may be a sign that the entire hillside is ready to go. The decision is made to red tag four homes. The fire department is called to help escort people in and out.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just so in the event it does happen, we don't have to come in and make rescues.</s>ROWLANDS: Over the past two months, the same scenario has been playing out in hillside communities around this region. Inspectors say the still-fresh image of the January La Conchita mudslide, where 10 people died, is enough to get most people to leave without a fight.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we do is try to do a little hand-holding and sit down with the people and explain to them exactly what the dangers are, and what the problem would be with them staying in the building, and then usually they see it our way and move out.</s>ROWLANDS: It takes about 15 minutes for Hiroko's two sons, who grew up in this house, to show up and help her load. All three say they are in a state of shock.</s>HIROKO MAYEDA, RED TAG HOMEOWNER: I couldn't believe it. I look at the back, and I didn't see anything. So I thought it's OK.</s>GARY MAYEDA, HOMEOWNER'S SON: You're just on emergency mode, just think of what you need to do for the immediate moment, and take care of things later.</s>ROWLANDS: Taking care of things is not easy. Once a home is red-tagged, it's up to the owner to hire a structural engineer and possibly a geologist to assess damage and recommend needed repairs. The city then has to sign off on the plan before people like Hiroko Mayeda can move back in. Ted Rowlands, CNN, Los Angeles.</s>BROWN: Making the decision to red-tag a home comes down basically to geology. Dealing with the decision involves terrain both rockier and, at the same time, more tender than any hillside. With that dimension, here's CNN's Donna Tetrault.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is. It's really, really hard</s>DONNA TETRAULT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Facing weeks or even months of uncertainty, the one thing Robert and Patricia Pearl (ph) know for sure is that they'll never live in their dream home again. Yesterday, their home was deemed unlivable. And today...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So let's begin.</s>TETRAULT: They're forced to start all over again.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. Post office it is, huh?</s>TETRAULT: A routine stop is now a life-changing experience.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They had us mark, Is it a temporary change, or is it a permanent change? And that's really hard. And write down that as our former address, and our new address is a P.O. Box.</s>TETRAULT: Today Robert and Patricia are surrounded by confusion.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Still needing to get a</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have the insurance document here.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... are -- everything's in the bank.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just dropped my phone on the floor. Can you just pick it up?</s>TETRAULT: And in this endless stream of bad news, a moment of comic relief.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've got to clean it up?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think they can ask me to clean it up, really,</s>TETRAULT: But just as quickly, back to reality. And frustration sets in as they begin to deal with insurance.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think there's a loss of use part on the policy for, like, 16-something thousand, which is basically, you know, if we've -- we've lost the use, we're sleeping on somebody's floor right now. I mean...</s>TETRAULT: Walking to their next stop.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, look there.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God.</s>TETRAULT: Front-page news. They never thought something like this could happen to them.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our biggest thing, frankly, was just trying to get our kids back to it as very quickly, as early as today, back to a normal routine. We just wanted them to feel like their lives haven't been completely disrupted. We took them back to school. They went to school yesterday, but back to school properly today.</s>TETRAULT: As a long, hard day ends, one good thing is certain -- while their home is all but gone, the Pearl family is safe, and remains intact.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Seat belts, please. Seat belts, please. Here. Take your backpacks.</s>TETRAULT: Donna Tetrault for CNN, Los Angeles.</s>BROWN: On to Texas now, where the decisions only get more difficult. Sun Hudson, an infant, has never had an easy day in his short life. That is a simple truth. Perhaps the only thing simple in a story that pits a mother's hope against the knowledge of great doctors and a legal system that sometimes is at odds with itself. Reporting tonight, CNN's Keith Oppenheim.</s>KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): His name is Sun Hudson, and a machine keeps him alive. When he was born five months ago, Sun Hudson was diagnosed with thanataphoric dysplasia, a skeletal disorder that prevents his lungs from maturing. Since birth, he's been on life support, connected to feeding tubes and a respirator at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. William Winslade, a bioethicist, has followed the case, and explained the prevailing medical opinion.</s>WILLIAM WINSLADE, MEDICAL ETHICIST: Eventually, even with life support, the baby will die.</s>OPPENHEIM: The baby's condition led Texas Children's Hospital to convene a panel of specialists and neonatal care and medical ethics, a team that concluded it would be wrong to keep Sun Hudson on life support. Hospital officials would not speak on camera, but in a statement said, "Sun is currently heavily sedated, although he is capable of feeling discomfort and pain. We are deeply saddened that no treatment can save this child."</s>WINSLADE: Normally, once the parents or the patients understand the circumstances, they will come to an agreement with the hospital about what to do.</s>OPPENHEIM: Wanda Hudson, the single mother of Sun, has not come to any such agreement.</s>WANDA HUDSON, MOTHER: We all have a right to continue living. Just because something is so small, it doesn't mean that it can't speak and it doesn't have a voice.</s>OPPENHEIM: Wanda Hudson believes all her son needs is more time, more time he can only get on life support. (on camera): So you believe that your child will grow and eventually be healthy?</s>HUDSON: Yes. I saw the vision.</s>OPPENHEIM (voice-over): Her vision is that the sun is her creator and created the baby boy that she then named after it. While her beliefs are unusual -- some, even her parents, say, delusional -- her attorney, Mario Caballero, says what matters in a court of law is Wanda's desire to get treatment for her baby. What's driving this case is a conflict between different laws here in Texas. (on camera): On the one hand, by law, Texas patients can request life support, even if a condition is terminal or irreversible. On the other, Texas has established a process by which a hospital can refuse to respect a family's wishes if treatment is futile. Texas Children's officials say they contacted 40 other hospitals, but none would take the case, all agreeing no treatment could save Sun Hudson. (voice-over): Just last week, a judge, acting under the latter law, lifted restrictions against Texas Children's, giving the hospital the authority to decide whether to continue treatment for Sun Hudson. But a stay from the Texas Court of Appeals has kept the case, and the infant, alive. And while his mother and the hospital that is caring for him agonize over what is the right thing to do, Sun Hudson remains connected to life support. Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Houston.</s>BROWN: Our next story deals also with who decides. In this case, who decides what sort of education your child receives. Today, a bipartisan panel of state lawmakers took aim at the president's No Child Left Behind program, which lays out federal standards for math and reading. Under the initiative, the panel said, the federal government's role has become excessively intrusive in the day-to-day operation of public education. Legislators in nine states have already begun challenging the law. In red states -- in fact, in some of the reddest of states. From Utah tonight, CNN's Frank Buckley.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): ... and the home of the brave.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): ... and the home of the brave.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): ... and the home of the brave.</s>FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: By all appearances, Amelia Earhart Elementary in Provo, Utah, is a great school.</s>ROSEMARY SMITH, PRINCIPAL: We have L.J. Brown for always doing his best work.</s>BUCKLEY: Principal Rosemary Smith praises L.J. during morning announcements, and she's proud of all of her students. They test in the top 20 percent among Utah students in reading and math. Parents are actively involved as volunteers. But appearances can be deceiving, because by the accountability standards of the No Child Left Behind law, this school is in need of improvement, and is in danger of being labeled a failing school because of three students.</s>SMITH: The only category that we failed in was children with disabilities. And there were three children that did not make the mark in that testing category.</s>BUCKLEY: Smith says her teachers will continue to work with learning-disabled students to achieve progress at a level appropriate for each student. But Smith also says teachers are demoralized after working so hard to make Amelia Earhart School the pride of a community, only to have it labeled in need of improvement.</s>SMITH: I felt like, why try any harder?</s>BUCKLEY: Parents, like Mike and Julie Austin, who both volunteer at the school and not just to help their own six children, were devastated.</s>JULIE AUSTIN, PARENT: We feel like failures. As a nation, we want to be great. We want our children to be well educated, to give them opportunity in the future. But I think that's really hard for people sitting in Washington always to know what is best in Utah for our students.</s>BUCKLEY: Amelia Earhart Elementary isn't alone. Nearly half of Utah's 850 schools are considered in need of improvement. And it isn't just parents and educators who are upset. State legislators are angry. This month, the Utah House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill now pending before the Senate that comes close to rejecting No Child Left Behind. It instructs school district officials to give first priority to Utah programs when it comes to education, including placing Utah's accountability standards ahead of federal standards.</s>MARGARET DAYTON (R), UTAH STATE REPRESENTATIVE: While the federal government is certainly justified in encouraging us to make sure we don't leave any student behind, I don't think there was any program already in place in Utah that did. We will just pursue our own accountability and educational efforts here.</s>BUCKLEY: This challenge to President Bush's education initiative from Republican Margaret Dayton in the reddest of the red states. More than 70 percent of Utah's voters voted for President Bush. (on camera): Some people might perceive this as an attack on your own president.</s>DAYTON: I would hope they wouldn't. I totally love and support George Bush. I think he is a great president. My concern, however, is that I think the federal government here has overstepped its bounds by going into a state's rights issue, and I think we need to realign the division here between state control and federal involvement.</s>BUCKLEY: Utah officials are asking the federal Department of Education for flexibility. They don't want to lose federal funding or local control. (on camera): Federal education officials declined an on-camera interview, but they say the program is working, forcing schools to be accountable for every student. And while they say they will listen to Utah's concerns, they will not waver from the core principles of No Child Left Behind. (voice-over): Patti Harrington is the superintendent of Utah schools. (on camera): They said it's working and it's getting under the skin of some people in the way that it should be. What do you say to that?</s>PATTI HARRINGTON, SUPERINTENDENT, UTAH SCHOOLS: I totally disagree. That's like saying it works when you smack your child because they're not doing well. You know, a school deemed in need of improvement is a smack. Any way you look at it, it is an offensive move as a sanction.</s>BUCKLEY (voice-over): And No Child Left Behind does include sanctions, sanctions that could mean Rosemary Smith would no longer be the principal of Amelia Earhart School, a school on the brink of failure in the eyes of federal officials, a school that is still regarded with pride in Provo. Frank Buckley, CNN, Provo, Utah.</s>BROWN: More to come in this hour on NEWSNIGHT, beginning in Iraq. In one of the most dangerous corners of Iraq, American soldiers reach out to the other side.</s>JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: There are 32,000 soldiers from Saddam's army here, hundreds of former generals, and a lot of current Ba'athists.</s>BROWN: How talking to the enemy is helping to reduce violence in the Sunni heartland. The science that has made peace of mind possible for so many 9/11 families, but not all of them, not nearly.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sixty-one percent of the remains did not give sufficient results to make an identification. Of those 61 percent, 28 percent gave no DNA test results.</s>BROWN: The limits of science, and what the future might hold. In Vermont, a dream come true. Turning cheese, fancy cheese, into dough.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Constant Bliss. It's named after a Revolutionary War scout who was killed in Greensboro in the 1780s.</s>BROWN: From the barn to the store shelves, on the rise in the world of cheesemaking. From Vermont to New York and beyond, this is NEWSNIGHT.