The Crash of Flight 8501; Anguish of the Families of Flight 8501
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.</s>DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: And there's breaking news tonight on two big stories. On opposite sides of the world. You're looking live now at Surabaya, Indonesia's Juana International Airport. Moments away, ambulances are on standby to ferry bodies recovered from the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501. Six bodies from the flight have been recovered so far including one flight attendant, according to Indonesia's search-and-rescue chief. We have the very latest as the tragic search goes on tonight. Some 60 miles from the plane's last known location over the Java Sea. We're also live in New York's Times Square where tomorrow night, the world will be watching the New Year's Eve Ball drop. And the NYPD is stepping up security. This is CNN TONIGHT. I am Don Lemon. Thanks for joining us. But how will police keep Times Square safe when they are so at odds with the mayor they are literally turning their backs on him? We've got a lot to get to tonight. But I'm going to begin with the very latest on the crash of Flight 8501. I want to begin with reporters in the region now. Gary Tuchman is in Surabaya, Will Ripley is in Beijing. I'm going to start with you, Gary. Gary, the very latest on the grim search-and-recovery right now.</s>GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Don, the search is horrifying, it's very said, but officials say they have what they need to continue it right now. There are about 30 planes and 40 ships on the Java Sea right now looking for the bodies of passengers. As you just mentioned, at least six bodies have been recovered including a flight attendant. They know that because she was wearing her flight attendant uniform. The problem right now, though, is you have very bad weather conditions. It's very cloudy. It's very foggy. I actually just got off a plane. I flew here from Bali, another Indonesian island. And it was very hard to see. It was very windy. There is a lot of turbulence. And you see what they're dealing with on the sea. So what's very important to know is this water is not more than 100 feet deep. It's very shallow. So after covering lots of plane crashes over the years, nothing is never easy. But this is one of the more stable situations in the sense they know where the plane is and the water is not very deep.</s>LEMON: Yes. But still, as you said, the weather will definitely impact the search efforts. But, Gary, the question is, some of the families of the passengers and the crew saw bodies being pulled out of the ocean on live television. How did that happen?</s>TUCHMAN: Yes. What happened was -- and this can happen. It's no one's fault. But local TV here in Indonesia was showing the search and rescue live. And it just so happened the camera moved in and it was a body there and indeed, this is the area they are -- the families are, right behind me in that doors, that's where they're waiting right now. And we've seen this a lot of the years, too. TWA Flight 800 in the 1990s. At a hotel the families were gathered. And it's always such a sad and traumatic place to be. But they were in there watching on TV. And a couple of women fainted when they saw that because they knew that the hope that their loved ones were alive was likely over when they saw lifeless bodies being pulled out of the water. It's just so sad. And ultimately, Don, with these families, we're being told that as early as today, maybe tomorrow, the families are going to be moved out of here, and taken to a nearby hospital where the bodies will be brought when they're recovered from the scene.</s>LEMON: That was my next question. So they're being held here. But they're getting information from where the bodies are being recovered. How -- explain to us the flow of information. How does if it happen? They go out. The rescuers, the searchers go out, they come back and get information. And then how does this -- how does this happen?</s>TUCHMAN: Don, if you asked me a question, a little hard for me to hear. Can you just repeat that again? Your voice is coming in and out.</s>LEMON: So where you are now, the families are there. The searchers go out and they get information and they get bodies, and what have you. So how does the flow of information happen? How does the family -- how do the families get information where you are?</s>TUCHMAN: Yes. So what's happening is officials go into the family room and give them updates whenever the family members want it. And the question that I just asked the airport manager a short time ago is what is the main thing you're hearing from the family members right now. And they said, the main thing we're hearing over and over again is bring me back the body of my loved one. And I said, do any of them still hold out any hope that perhaps they got a life preserver and floated away and they're alive, and he told me, they don't think that. They just want to see the bodies of their loved ones.</s>LEMON: Yes. Understandable. Gary Tuchman, stand by. I want to get to Will Ripley now. Will, the USS Sampson has arrived to the search area and the Pentagon says another is being prepared. What's the latest that you're hearing from there where you are in Beijing?</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the U.S. joining this multinational effort now to recover the people who were on board that plane and continue the search also for the debris and whatnot. The Chinese Navy and Air Force has committed resources. But I wanted to touch on something that you brought up earlier, Don. It's just -- there is a huge level of interest in the story around Asia. This is front-page news on all of the papers. And it's also been covered extensively not only on CNN but a lot of the other regional networks. And one of the regional networks that broadcasts all over Asia, including here in China, Malaysia, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, they were simulcasting that live signal from local TV in Indonesia. So potentially those graphic live images of bodies went out to a number of different countries, potentially millions of viewers, and certainly here in China where there are a lot of MH-370 families following this closely, Don. Very upsetting to see that kind of thing.</s>LEMON: You have been speaking with members of the MH-370 families there. What are they telling you?</s>RIPLEY: Well, it's a very difficult time. This whole week has been traumatic for them in many ways. It almost brought them back, Don, to the day when Flight 370 disappeared. I was sitting down yesterday with Steven Whang, whose mother was on the plane. And he was telling me that he was hoping for a miracle. He was hoping that perhaps some people in the AirAsia Flight might be alive because almost 10 months later, Don, he still believes that his mother may be alive. He hasn't been able to speak her name because he says she is not a victim. I can't accept that she is a victim until I have proof. And it was during our interview, Don, that we learned that the bodies were being recovered from the AirAsia crash. Yet that son that I spoke with and so many others in this part of the world still don't have any answers about Flight 370.</s>LEMON: Gary Tuchman, Will Ripley, thank you very much. I want to bring in now Erik van Sebille, he's an oceanographer at the University of North Wales in Sydney, and also David Soucie, CNN safety analyst and the author of "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370." The reason I asked Gary that question about the flow of information because those families saw that on television. And I'm wondering if there is a difference now since that happened getting information to them.</s>DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, I think --</s>LEMON: They've got to be careful.</s>SOUCIE: They do. And he pointed out real well that there wasn't an intent with what happened here. There wasn't some kind of media monger that was trying to get this on air. It was just -- it happens in an accident scene. It's almost impossible to film an accident scene without having something like that.</s>LEMON: Yes. You have to have sensitivity when it comes to this. Eric, you're an oceanographer. So tell us about this area of the Java Sea and the water conditions there.</s>ERIK VAN SEBILLE, OCEANOGRAPHER, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH WALES: Yes. So the Java Sea where the search is now going on is very shallow. It's shallower than most of the great lakes actually. It's not really an ocean, it's an inland sea, and for instance, 20,000 years ago during the last Ice Age, this was forest. It's really different environment from where, for instance, the search of MH-370 has been. It's also very different from where the Air France in the Atlantic Ocean went down. But the problem that the search team is now facing is the monsoon season. It really -- this plane couldn't have gone down in a worse time of year almost. There is really big winds. There is choppy waves. These shallow seas are notorious for just complicated waves and their very steep crest. It's really hard to work in. The other thing is that the rain brings down all this sediment. And sediment floods into the ocean. And makes it very murky, very muddy, and hard to see -- it's not very clear water anymore. And then it makes it much more difficult to, of course, work in this kind of water.</s>LEMON: Yes. And Erik, you know, it is -- it isn't exactly a remote area. There's heavy shipping traffic that happens there. Fishing. Many people live nearby. Live nearby on the coast. What impact, if any, will this have on the search and the scatter of this debris?</s>VAN SEBILLE: Yes, well, probably the biggest impact of it is that we will see a lot of debris being pulled out of the ocean that turns out not to be of the plane because this is a filthy part of the ocean. Like many other of these enclosed -- the seas where there's not really a current flushing things out. Plastic, fishing nets. All of the other things that are manmade and that go into this ocean, they linger around for months to years. And I think what we will see is that there is so much rubbish going to be collected out of the ocean. And more often not than yes, it will be from the plane.</s>LEMON: So, David, let's see. The number of victims has grown to six now. The latest three victims retrieved from the sea are two men, one female flight attendant. Yesterday three bodies, two adults, two adult females. And one of them a teen boy had been recovered. So the question everybody's mind is how -- the victims, from what will we learn from the victims? Will we learn about what possible impact the plane had once it hit the ocean.</s>SOUCIE: Right. One of the questions that I constantly get, always get, is were the victims aware of what was going on. If something happened in the air, were they aware of what happened. If they were conscious, if they were not conscious. We talked about that in MH-370 a lot.</s>LEMON: You can tell from that whether they were conscious when they hit the water?</s>SOUCIE: Yes. And so what I want to warn people is that there are people, there are family members who want to know this information. And there's those that don't. So what I'd like to do is just talk about what we do to determine whether they were conscious or not and whether they knew what was happening. So on the accident scene, when the bodies are retrieved, one of the first things we do is check for seawater in the lungs. And so when we do that, it'll give us a lot of clues. If there's seawater in the lungs what that means is that they may have ingested that water after they hit the water. So that would tell us that they were conscious as it went down.</s>LEMON: A hundred and sixty passengers on board. Only six found now. Does that say anything?</s>SOUCIE: It does say a lot to me because -- it's significant enough to know that there was some kind of impact at that point, whether it was broken off in the air or whether it hit the ground. Because they're not finding more quickly then what that tells me is that there was a large part of that aircraft that went down and took the debris with it. It's not typical to see it this way. It's typical to see a lot of debris. We're not seeing that.</s>LEMON: All right. Stand by, gentlemen. We've got a lot more ahead on the crash of Flight 8501. Coming up, searchers recover pieces of the plane. Will the wreckage tell us what happened exactly and why? Also the NYPD steps up security in Times Square ahead of New Year's Eve and under the threat of more protests over police tactics. Will it be a happy and safe new year?