CNN10 2024-10-03




CNN 10

A Deeper Look at the U.S. Port Strike; Efforts to Help Communities Still Digging Out of Helene's Unprecedent Destruction. Aired 4-4:10a ET

Aired October 03, 2024 - 04:00 ET

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

COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to CNN 10, your daily 10 minutes of news where I simply tell you the what, letting you decide what to think.

I'm Coy Wire. It's Thursday, October 3rd. Happy Friday Eve. We've got an action-packed show. Let's get right to it.

We start on the Eastern coast of the United States where we have an update on the potential longshore port workers strike we told you about earlier this week. Now it is official. The workers went on strike on Tuesday over two main issues, increasing their wages and restricting automation.

As for pay, the Longshoremen's Union is demanding a $5 per hour increase in pay for each year of the next six-year contract. As for automation, the workers want airtight language that the ports will not introduce automation or semi-automation, which could potentially put them out of jobs if the port were to decide to use automated cranes or driverless trucks to shuttle goods from container ships in place of humans.

For their part, the United States Maritime Alliance, or USMX, said its latest offer would boost dock workers' wages by nearly 50%, triple employer contributions to employee retirement plans, and enhance healthcare coverage while also preserving existing safeguards against automation.

Now, the port strike has major potential to disrupt the economy. No dock workers means heavily imported goods like bananas, for instance, are not shipped. That would in turn mean no profits for the companies that produce and ship them.

Longshore work can be grueling, and the people working at ports are vital to getting some of the stuff we like to buy onto shelves in stores.

Our Brian Todd has more on the potential impact of this strike.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Longshoremen at the port of Baltimore holding their ground and possibly losing money doing it.

ALONZO KEY, LONGSHOREMAN, PORT OF BALTIMORE: Once we exhaust our savings, I mean, we don't know what the next move is going to be.

TODD (voice-over): A potentially damaging port strike in the U.S. has just begun. Thousands of port workers in Baltimore and at about three dozen other facilities along the east coast and Gulf coast have walked off the job.

KATHY HOCHUL, NEW YORK GOVERNOR: The stakes are very high. The potential for disruption is significant.

TODD (voice-over): This strike, the first at those ports in almost 50 years, could disrupt the flow of almost half the goods that come into the U S. That could lead to shortages, then higher prices.

TODD: What's going to be in short supply?

MATTHEW SHAY, CEO AND PRESIDENT, NATIONAL RETAIL FEDERATION: Perishables. Obviously we can't bring those in advance. So anything that's in the produce categories that comes in. Bananas have been talked about a lot. Cherries and other fruits that come in from South America and other places that will be impacted right away with any stoppage.

TODD (voice-over): Furniture, household goods, clothing, cars and auto parts could also be in shorter supply and then get more expensive. But officials and retail analysts say we should not rush to stores and stockpile goods like many did during the COVID pandemic.

SHAY: We don't want to panic. The retailers and their partners in the shipping business and other importers have done everything they can to mitigate any disruption. So they've tried to bring things in. They've got inventory already here on the east coast and near the population centers.

They've got inventory rerouted to the west coast that'll come over by rail.

TODD (voice-over): The workers from the International Longshoremen's Association feel like they've fallen way behind other sectors in wages.

PROF. HARRY KATZ, CORNELL SCHOOL OF INDUSTRY AND LABOR RELATIONS: The workers are asking for more wages and also are concerned about the introduction of new technology, which may replace some of them.

TODD (voice-over): The industry, led by the United States Maritime Alliance, says it's offered a fair wage increase and accuses the port workers union of negotiating in bad faith.

ALL: Corporate green has got to go.

TODD (voice-over): This stoppage comes on the heels of successful strikes by the United Auto Workers Union and UPS employees. Workers at Boeing have been on strike for more than two weeks.

KATZ: It's a mixed picture overall. Workers are doing and unions are doing better because the economy is better, but they're not always winning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE: Next, an update on the destruction and loss in the wake of Hurricane Helene. In the U.S. Southeast, search and rescue efforts are still underway. Almost a week after Helene dumped a devastating amount of water on the region, 40 trillion gallons of rain. That's like more than all of the water in Lake Tahoe coming down on the region in just a matter of days. That unleashed unprecedented floods and landslides that destroyed towns and infrastructure. What we're seeing there is heartbreaking.

The death toll from the storm continues to rise. Many people remain missing, perhaps unable to leave their location or contact family as communications infrastructure in some places are nearly non-existent. Officials are working around the clock to clear roads and debris.

One nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, has been helping to feed folks who have been affected in the area, even sending a helicopter to areas that are only accessible by air.

CNN's Gary Tuchman takes us to see how and why it's still so difficult to access some of the areas that have been hit.

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GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This area is known as Green River Cove. It's right near Hendersonville, North Carolina, southeast of Asheville.

This road is treacherous even in the best of times, when it rains, it's even more treacherous. But now it has been devastated from the remnants of the storm.

You could see the guard rail is gone. The drop here off the side of the road, which has been so heavily damaged about a hundred feet down. Cars are not supposed to be on here anymore. There are also houses below.

We've talked to some people who live in the area. They said they were trying to get down to the house to see if people they know are still there because they haven't been able to find out what happened to those people, but they weren't able to hike down and neither are we.

We have been told that there had been helicopter rescues of people who live in the homes below. But there's absolutely no way to know for sure if there are still people who are in those homes that have been damaged below us.

We decided to go down the hill farther and what we saw is the literal and figurative end of the road. The devastation of the storm, look what it led to. This is the street right here and you can see that the street just comes to an end before plunging down here.

These boulders that are right here, the locals here say these boulders actually moved from the force of the storm.

BRAD MCMILLAN, GREEN RIVER COVE, NC RESIDENT: All the houses in front of mine on the river side of the road are gone.

TUCHMAN: Brad McMillan and Nick Wolfe both live in this area. Their homes are okay. But the experience has been traumatic.

NICK WOLFE, GREEN RIVER COVE, NC RESIDENT: We moved here because the green river narrows is an iconic piece of classified whitewater and we are whitewater kayakers. So we moved our whole lives down here for this area in these riverbeds and they've all been completely destroyed and rearranged, so it's extremely emotional on a lot of different levels.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE: It took about three minutes to sink, but only about five minutes for a team to stumble upon the site of a shipwreck, albeit 130 years later. A duo of maritime experts got pretty lucky at the start of what was supposed to be a three-day ship hunting expedition in Lake Michigan, finding a sunken tugboat that had been missing since 1895. Check it out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a look at how a Wisconsin shipwreck missing for 130 years was found in five minutes by a very lucky pair of ship hunting historians. In 1895, the tugboat John Evenson was lost after colliding with a larger steamer in Wisconsin's Sturgeon Bay Canal. The wreck was widely reported, but search efforts didn't start until the 1980s and with no success.

A local dive club even offered a cash reward for the discovery, but still no luck. Then in September of 2024, maritime historians Brendon Baillod and Bob Jaeck combined historical records with modern search tech and headed out on a planned three-day expedition. But a mere five minutes after they started scanning, this happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just screamed out boiler. There's a boiler down there. We just couldn't believe it. We actually hadn't even started our search.

We're just getting the equipment up and going. I mean, this is crazy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The pair immediately marked and thoroughly documented the discovery, eventually using more than 2,000 photos to have a full 3D rendering of the site created.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE: Pop quiz hot shot. Scientifically known as vibrissae, what physical trait do house cats share with sea lions? Fur, teeth, whiskers, or claws?

Whiskers is your answer here. Vibrissae is the long stiff hair around the mouth or face of many mammals used to sense their environment.

Today's story getting a 10 out of 10. A sea lion rescue worth quite the sea-lebration. A curious sea lion wandered up onto land in California, miles from the ocean, and ended up stranded on the side of a highway. Officials came to its rescue and even got a police escort to a rehabilitation facility. No word on how or why the mammal wandered so far from home.

All right, everyone, I want to give a special shout out today to Academy 1 Middle School in Jersey City, New Jersey. Rise up.

Fun fact, did you know that Jersey City is actually closer to the Statue of Liberty than New York City? And it's home to Ellis Island, an historic site where millions of people entered the U.S. in the 18' and early 1900s.

Hope you're doing well up there and from wherever you might be joining me around the world. Hope you have an awesome day. I'll see you right back here tomorrow on CNN 10.

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