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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

Hong Kong, Taiwan Ring in New Year; Weather Halts Search for AirAsia Victims; Sonar May Have Found Wreckage; Police Monitoring Potential Threats; Snow Strands Southern California

Aired December 31, 2014 - 11:00   ET

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


CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: @THISHOUR, much of Asia is ringing in 2015 with celebrations from Taiwan to Beijing and Hong Kong, where the city is putting on a huge fireworks display on Victoria Harbor. There it is.

That show is expected to last about eight minutes. It's said to be visible from anywhere in Hong Kong. But it's still not as big as the display put on for Chinese New Year. Wow.

In Taiwan, a million people or more are due to pack the capital, Taipei, for a fireworks show blending Eastern and Western cultures. Twenty-three thousand rounds of fireworks are expected to be shot off accompanied by classical music and Taiwanese folk songs. Let's listen for a moment.

Meantime, we have just 13 hours to go until that enormous crystal ball drops in New York's Times Square. Officials say revelers will see the same police presence as in past years, but behind the scenes, security will be stepped up as police scour the crowds and monitor social media for any heightened threats.

Hello, I'm Christine Romans. Berman is off. Michaela is on assignment. Happy new year, everybody.

It's going to l be a somber start to the new year in Indonesia. The search for victims in wreckage of AirAsia flight 8501 is suspended right now because of horrible, dangerous weather.

Divers and sonar-equipped ships are standing by to resume that search once gale-force winds, heavy rain, and high winds subside. A search- and-rescue official tells CNN he believes sonar equipment has detected wreckage from the plane at the bottom of the sea but couldn't confirm it.

Of course, the recovery of all 162 people who were aboard that flight is the top priority right now. So far, search teams have pulled ten bodies from the java sea. The first two bodies will return to Surabaya, which is the Indonesian city where the doomed flight originated. The victims were brought back in simple wood boxes bearing numbers 001 and 002.

Our Andrew Stevens is at that airport in Surabaya. Andrew, the two victims were given that solemn welcome. It will, of course, be the first of many.

At the same time, we have this information from investigators that there could be this possible sonar location of the wreckage, although the CEO of the airlines saying it's not exactly confirmed.

What can you tell us about where this wreckage is?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. This is very, very frustrating. They cannot confirm whether this is the actual primary wreckage, the main fuselage where the investigators search groups think most of the passengers remain.

Christine, it's a very stark image. They say they expect that when they do find fuselage to find most of the passengers still in their seats, buckled in.

What they can't say with any degree of certainty at the moment is whether they've actually pinpointed the area. It is in the crash zone. It is around the same area where the Indonesian air force first saw what they described as a shadow which looked like a plane underwater.

But at this stage with those weather conditions so bad -- we've got two more days of these bad conditions by the sounds of it -- it's going to be a very painful process for the families, of course, while they wait.

ROMANS: Absolutely.

Now, have any of the victims been identified yet? We know we saw the simple coffins 001 and another one bearing the number 002, eight bodies after that also recovered from the ocean.

Do we know who they are yet?

STEVENS: We don't. The i.d. process continues. If they have concluded it, they have not yet publicly announced who was first brought back here to Surabaya. We know it is a man and a woman.

But they're being very, very careful, authorities here, in getting absolutely the correct identification because so many people have been asked now to give whatever evidence they can to sort of back up any DNA tests that are needed.

It's interesting, Christine, because the families here, the families who are just behind me here, this was crisis center. You probably can't see it but it's all breaking down now, the families have moved. They're going much closer to the (inaudible) hospital where those victims will be taken to for those i.d. purposes.

And just finally, we're an hour away from new years here, and you're hearing a lot of firecrackers, you're seeing a lot of lights in the sky, but it's such a somber reminder because so many of the people on that flight were going to Singapore to celebrate new year there, so a very, very stark and somber reminder as the firecrackers are going off. You might be able to hear them in the background.

ROMANS: Yeah. It certainly is.

Andrew Stevens in Surabaya, thank you for that, Andrew.

Now the searchers are really having a hard time trying to get to the bodies and bringing them back to land because of the weather. The strong winds and surf are also hampering their search for those black box, which hold the clues of course to what happened to this doomed flight.

Chad Myers joins us from the CNN Weather Center, and, Chad, what are the conditions right now in this part of the world?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGISTS: Ironically, the conditions are amazing. They're great. The storms are gone. The clouds are gone. It's not raining. But it's dark.

So -- and this is this morning when they had to call off everything because the storms were everywhere. Now the storms are gone. By morning, guess what? The storms will be back.

There's our search area right there. Not even a rain shower in the box, and then later on tonight into tomorrow morning, another batch of rain comes in, right when they would be wanting to launch more ships, more planes.

That's kind of the key here. It's been great in the dark and terrible during the day. And it's going to be that way for the next three days. Here's Friday day. Here's Friday morning 5:00 a.m.

They should be launching ships from the coast and there will be storms everywhere and winds 40 or 50 miles per hour. So even so, even if you could get a ship out there, you wouldn't want it in those waves, which could be 20 feet high.

Every night it calms down. Every morning it pops up. Four inches of rainfall expected in the next 48 hours, and that's just not a good sign. When you're trying to get people out there in clouds and planes and you have rain, all of a sudden, you have to fly so close to the water. You can't see anything. You don't have visibility when it's raining. And obviously the clouds are there as well, Christine.

ROMANS: All right, Chad Myers for us, thank you for that, Chad. We certainly hope that they can get sunlight and some good weather at the same time so that they can begin the process of finding those black boxes. Those will hold the key to what happened to that flight.

Ahead on this hour, we'll have much more on the investigation. Stay with us. We're going to be answering your questions, too. What do you want to do want to know about this area? Is your flight -- tweet us @THISHOUR with the hash tag "8501Qs."

There were no Americans on that AirAsia flight. A woman from Washington state lost both her parents and four other family members in that crash. Her husband Jack Song explained how he and his wife Theresa (ph) first learned the AirAsia flight to Singapore was in trouble. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK SONG, VICTIM'S SON-IN-LAW: So they texted us and said, "Hey, how are you doing? Happy new year, merry Christmas!" And then it's like, "Have you heard the news?"

And it's not just him. It's both parents, and also the really, really close uncle, and his whole family. So six of them were on the plane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Minutes after getting that text, they found her father's name on the flight manifest. They want to fly to Indonesia, but they say it's too expensive. They've reached out to AirAsia, hoping the airline will help.

Ahead @THISHOUR, he met with a white supremacist group more than a decade ago and that meeting is back to hurt him. Are his days as the third-ranking Republican House numbered or has Speaker Boehner got his back?

Then New York on high alert as it gets ready for the Super Bowl, its Super Bowl, new year's eve, of course. What the city is doing to prepare for possible protests against police.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: An official says sonar may found the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501, but @THISHOUR, there's no confirmation that the plane has been found, and weather is making the search even more challenging.

I want to take a closer look with our aviation analyst Les Abend, who is also a commercial airline pilot. We also have our safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector, David Soucie. He's written a book, "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 -- Why It Disappeared and Why It's Only a Matter of Time Before This Happens Again."

It looks like sonar might have found the wreckage of this flight. That's at least what we're hearing indications from someone on the ground there.

Now, assuming the weather settles, they'll be able to get to it pretty quickly. Where does the recovery and the investigation go from here, David?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: It's interesting you separate that because it is a separate thing. The -- before 370, we called it "the investigation," but the investigation is something that comes after the recovery operation, so it's now starting to be an investigation now that there is evidence.

But what's confusing right now, what's going on, is the fact that they are so confident about this sonar, but yet the CEO is not admitting that it is sonar. Mr. Fernandes has said it may be; it may be that.

So once we know that it is, we'll know if it's two pieces or not and then the investigation is what will really begin.

ROMANS: And I'll say gentleman, even in the -- these are the early days of this story and this investigation, you often see a lot of different people with different pieces information on information on the ground and sometimes it doesn't all square up. That's why we wait to see how things are going to unfold.

Les, let me ask you, an Indonesian official told Reuters that none of the bodies recovered were wearing a life jacket. There were ten bodies discovered so far, and that's it as far as we know.

What does all of this mean? Where does that point investigators?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It says to me, and I think David will agree with me, that it was not a planned event. The aircraft impacted the ground without any preparation. And that's with reference to the fact that there was no communication.

There might have been a serious upset with that airplane. Either the crew had no time to do it or the fact that they were already in trouble and -- because if it was a controlled situation where they were trying to control or attempting to control the airplane, they could have gotten something out.

ROMANS: If they found a body near a life jacket, that could be complete coincidence, couldn't it?

ABEND: At this point, yeah, everything --

ROMANS: Those life jackets are what? They're underneath the seat, right?

SOUCIE: They come out in a pouch. They're unwrapped from underneath, so it's possible. But why you would find a life jacket without a seat debris. There's no other debris other than the bodies and the one door.

ROMANS: And the blue suitcase. You were talking earlier this morning about the blue suitcase --

SOUCIE: Right.

ROMANS: -- that we keep seeing these pictures -- right there.

SOUCIE: Yes.

ROMANS: That's something that's equipment for the crew, equipment for the plane?

SOUCIE: That's for the plane. In case the aircraft has to land in a different location, it's some basic maintenance stuff, some light bulbs, circuit breakers, things like that in case it was ever needed, but that's what that case is, and that's all that's in that.

ROMANS: Let's talk quickly about the flight data recorders. They are key. They've got some time. They've got some time. They can be underwater. There's a long time that data can stay underwater. If they know where the wreckage is they should be able to find those.

One of those flight data recorders will have the voice -- voices from the cockpit we suspect, and we'll know what was happening with those pilots. The rest will be all the avionics.

This is the next key. This is what's incredibly -- aside from returning these bodies as the families so desperately need, it's the data we need, isn't it, gentlemen?

ABEND: It is and all that in addition to the cockpit voice recorder recording air traffic control negotiation, reporting the cockpit voices, it will record sounds -- switches being hit, potentially heavy rain hitting the wind screen of the airplane.

So there's a lot of things, and then it will coordinate with the digital flight data recorder with a program that David is familiar with.

ROMANS: And that will be the key to unlock the investigation at that point. We have to find the wreckage, find the black boxes, return those bodies, of course, and then try to solve the mystery.

All right, David Soucie, Les Abend, thank you so much for your guidance on these past few days.

Ahead @THISHOUR, we have less than 13 hours to go until that enormous crystal ball drops in New York's Times Square, what the city is doing to tighten security. You're looking at live pictures from Times Square.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: And that will be the key to unlock the investigation at that point. We have to find the wreckage, find the black boxes, return those bodies, of course, and then try to solve the mystery. All right, David Soucie, Les Abend, thank you so much for all of your guidance on these past few days.

Ahead @THISHOUR, we have less than 13 hours to go until that enormous crystal ball drops in New York's Times Square. What the city is doing to tighten security. You're looking at live pictures from Times Square.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: It's already 2015 in much of Asia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS (voice-over): And look at these spectacular images taken just a few minutes ago in Taiwan. Revelers in the capital city rang in the new year with a fireworks show, blending Eastern and Western cultures. A million people -- a million people -- expected to join in the New Year's merriment.

And on this final day of 2014, Pope Francis gave thanks for a year that's almost in the history books. Just moments ago, he addressed the faithful, speaking in Latin and Italian to offer a hymn of thanksgiving for the past year. It's been quite a year for this pope from his trip to the Middle East in March to his role this month in brokering a deal to normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

ROMANS (on camera): We are less than 13 hours from the start of 2015 on the East Coast in the U.S. and, of course, that means the iconic ball drop in New York's Times Square.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS (voice-over): Revelers have already started to stake out their spots and the NYPD is gearing up for a very busy night of its own with counterterrorism teams, bomb-sniffing dogs, helicopters all pressed into action to keep as many as a million partiers safe.

JAMES O'NEILL, CHIEF OF DEPARTMENT, NYPD: There will be hundreds of cameras, some of which are displayed on the screen in our joint operations center and monitored live via the NYPD's domain awareness system.

ROMANS: Layering on a new concern this year, police are also monitoring social media and keeping an eye out for protests that may arise following weeks of demonstrations demanding an end to police brutality.

Our Rosa Flores is in Times Square.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS (on camera): Set the scene for us, Rosa.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Christine. Well, let me show you what's around me. Thousands of revelers from all around the country and, here's the deal, so they are not going to see anything different when it comes to security. Everything will be status quo. But the NYPD does tell us that they will have heightened security. They'll have more police officers on the street and they're going to be monitoring social media very closely. Why? Because of the increased threats against police officers.

You and I know very recently two police officers were ambushed and then killed. Well, they're going to be monitoring that very, very closely so, again, the biggest take away is for people from around the world who are going to be here in Times Square in New York City, everything is going to be the same. It's going to have the same feel, Christine.

ROMANS: What about the new element this year? Police, are they expecting protests? It's been a tense few weeks and months for the New York Police Department.

FLORES: You know, for the past five weeks, protests have erupted all around this city. Well, they are prepared for that. The NYPD is prepared for that. For these past five weeks they have had a specific detail ready to go that they can activate at a moment's notice. So, that is still the case. That detail is still ready to go, they're on standby just in case. But again, for all of those people from around the world who are not only here in New York at Times Square but watching at home, nothing is going to change, Christine. That's the biggest takeaway.

ROMANS: And what are we expecting tonight?

All right, Rosa Flores, thank you so much for that, Rosa. You can ring in the New Year tonight with CNN. Our special coverage begins at 9:00 Eastern, and what you can expect, you can expect Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper, you never know what they're going to do. But you can expect they'll be there tonight. And Michaela Pereira will be joining them, so make sure you tune in tonight to that.

All right, dozens of people had to be rescued from their cars after being caught in a mountain pass near L.A. last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS (voice-over): A wreck blocked the road and then snow piled up on top of them. By the time they got the wreck out, they were all trapped. Three all terrain Sno-Cat vehicles showed up to ferry them to a church shelter overnight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a fleet of Sno-Cats for our mountain resort communities and we brought them down to some lower elevations, and we took some stranded motorists on the Lake Arrowhead side to Crestline First Babtist Church where they'll be sheltered overnight. And then on the other side, our L.A. County side, the Mount Baldy area, we took 40 occupants. Mount Baldy road was closed and impassable so we took them by crew buggy, a vehicle we use to transport our fire crew members up to Mount Baldy lodge and they'll be spending the night there until the morning.

ROMANS: And you can see folks took pictures with their cell phone, posted them to Twitter. The good news is everyone is safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS (on camera): And this, a fierce wind storm is hitting California's Catalina Island right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS (voice-over): The rough seas are battering sailboats and sending surf over the -- look at that! Winds up to 40 miles per hour are being charted. Those waves are going right over the sea wall. Our affiliate KTLA reports a harbor patrol officer was killed in an incident on the island. No word yet on the circumstances of his death. You can see those are some fierce winds and surf battering Catalina Island this hour.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ROMANS (on camera): All right, coming up next, weather conditions halt the search for Flight 8501. How wind, rain and strong currents are preventing crews from getting to the main part of the aircraft and recovering the black boxes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a lot of rain, so that is something that we have to look at more carefully because the weather is changing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: Indonesian officials plan to return the remains of more victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 to Surabaya as soon as possible. That's the city where the doomed flight originated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS (voice-over): So far, search teams have recovered several bodies from the Java Sea. The first two were brought back to Surabaya in simple wood boxes bearing numbers 001 and 002. The search for victims and wreckage has been suspended because of horrible, dangerous weather. Divers and sonar equipment are standing by to resume the search once these gale-force winds, heavy rains and high waves subside and they can get some daylight and good weather at the same time.

A search-and-rescue official tells CNN that he believes sonar equipment has detected wreckage from the plane at the bottom of the sea, but at this point couldn't confirm it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS (on camera): I want to bring in retired Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christensen. He's an aviation consultant with extensive background in search and rescue operations with the U.S. Air Force. Also joining us, CNN analyst and renowned oceanographer David Gallo. Ken, let me start with you. Explain the complexities for me of looking for and discovering debris and bodies from the sea.

LT. COL. KEN CHRISTENSEN (RET.), AVIATION CONSULTENT: When you get to the search area where there's a concentrated search, sometime the atmospheric conditions can make it very difficult for the searchers from above in the airplane to actually see the wreckage. To further complicate that, high winds or high seas, as the wave is cresting, this can look like white parts of an airplane that would be on this airliner. So those things are always of concern.

In addition, the people in the boats, they have a little less God's eye view, if you will, to look for the debris and they have some difficulties as well because as they're trying to recover the wreckage that's reported by the airplane, it can be problematic and often dangerous to pick up those items and put them on the boat.

ROMANS: You know, David, most recently in the case of MH370, that could be in water up to 19,000 feet deep. I mean, we just don't know. It's been ten months, still looking for that aircraft. This is an aircraft who people -- investigators think they have a good idea where it is, and it's shallow. It's 100 feet deep. But with that shallow water also comes the treachery of monsoon season, and these high winds, and difficult conditions at the surface.

DAVID GALLO, CNN ANALYST: Yes, Christine. It's sad that way, especially when you think about the anguish of the families. Out here, again, they've had yet another day, and maybe a few more days, before the weather breaks. You know, I'm encouraged to hear Chad say that at nighttime things lit up quite a bit, and you can do a lot of work underwater at night, but not if it's still unsafe at the surface, so we'll have to see what happens in the following days.

ROMANS: David, let's talk about these critical black boxes. I mean, it's what we need to have the next piece of this puzzle is finding out what happened in that cockpit and what was happening with the avionics of that craft.

Given the weather conditions and the fact that the underwater locator beacons, those pingers, last only 30 days, what are you expecting? When you look at this terrain and what we're dealing with, are you confident they're going to be able to find them?